Labor & Employment Law

Flight Attendants Donate Services to Haiti Relief Flight

Posted on January 22, 2010
         A Los Angeles County search and rescue team, members of the Fire Fighters, pull a woman from the rubble in Haiti.          Members of the Flight Attendants-CWA working for United Airlines donated their services on a Haiti relief flight to call attention to the efforts of the American Red Cross...

Boeing Official Calls out French for Protectionism

Posted on January 22, 2010
While French-based Airbus is trying to grab a multibillion aerial tanker contract from the U.S. Air Force, its home country won’t even allow the United States to compete in its defense market. Now, a leading French businessman is calling out the French government for its protectionist policies...

Thomas Perez: Fighting Discrimination a Top Priority

Posted on January 22, 2010
    Thomas Perez         More than 40 years after Martin Luther King’s death, the nation still has a long way to go to achieve his dream of equality and justice, says Thomas Perez. In a Point of View guest column at the AFL-CIO site, Perez, assistant U...

The Working Class Has Spoken. Will Democrats Listen?

Posted on January 21, 2010
       Massachusetts voters sent a strong signal to Washington lawmakers Tuesday that they want results?and aren’t seeing any. Not on health care reform, not on job creation and not on fixing the nation’s economy. Voters also sent another powerful message for Democrats: Ignore the working class at your peril...

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Honor Fallen Workers with Memorial Brick at Labor College Site

Posted on January 21, 2010
    Workers are remembered by their co-workers, family and friends with a named brick in their memory as part of the Workers Memorial to be built at the National Labor College.         Construction of the National Workers Memorial to honor individuals killed on the job is under way at the National Labor College (NLC)...

Olympic Sportswear Producers in Race to Bottom

Posted on January 21, 2010
       As the Winter Olympics approaches, an international coalition of workers’ rights organizations has released its rating of corporate efforts to eliminate sweatshop abuses in their global supply chains. The ratings are based on the responses of the sportswear companies, including Nike, Adidas, Puma and others, to a series of demands put forward by the coalition on the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics...

UAW Donates $500,000 to Haiti Relief as Unions Continue Strong Aid Efforts

Posted on January 21, 2010
    Two Haitians use crowbars, shovels and their hands in an attempt to reach survivors of the earthquake.         Despite the impact of one of the worse recessions in U.S. history, union members continue to generously support efforts to help survivors of the devastating earthquake in Haiti...

Trumka: Massachusetts Voters Say Democrats Haven?t Gone Far Enough

Posted on January 21, 2010
       When Massachusetts voters cast their ballots for Scott Brown on Tuesday, they were sending a message to Washington lawmakers that they have not gone far enough to create jobs, reform health care and fix our nation’s economy, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka...

Health Care Reform Would Cure Many Ills?and More Health News

Posted on January 20, 2010
      A new study shows the connections between low income, poor health and overall inequality and how providing better access to quality health care?exactly what health care reform is all about?can improve more than just health. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) explains: “In their new book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett review the medical and sociological research that links inequality to poorer outcomes, not just in health but also for trust, political institutions, violence, social mobility and education...

TSA Nominee Southers Withdraws, Citing ?Partisan Climate? That Risks U.S. Security

Posted on January 20, 2010
Erroll Southers, the choice of President Obama to head the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and whose nomination was held hostage by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) because DeMint opposes allowing TSA workers the freedom to form a union, withdrew his name from consideration today...

Activists to Discuss New Catholic Hospital Organizing Rules

Posted on January 20, 2010
Seven months after the U.S. Catholic Church released guidelines aimed at improving sometimes bitter relations between workers and management in Catholic hospitals, the church’s social activists will learn how well the guidelines are working and what more can be done to ensure justice for workers...

Ironworker Sworn in as N.J. State Senate President

Posted on January 20, 2010
    New Jersey AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Laurel Brennan, State Senate President Steve Sweeney, a member of Ironworkers Local 399, and New Jersey AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech.         Steve Sweeney, a member of Ironworkers Local 399 and one of the early graduates of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO’s Labor Candidates School, was sworn in last week as president of the New Jersey State Senate...

Trumka: Massachusetts Election Shows Need for Results in Washington

Posted on January 20, 2010
The loss of Martha Coakley to Scott Brown in yesterday’s Senate race in Massachusetts shows the American people are “frustrated at the lack of action coming from Washington,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.  Saying “the American people are justifiably uncertain and fearful in these tough economic times,” Trumka warned that the election should be “a sobering reminder to candidates running in 2010...

Working Families Getting out the Vote in Massachusetts Special Election

Posted on January 19, 2010
      Today, Massachusetts working families are going to the polls to help put Martha Coakley in the U.S. Senate in a special election. The election day get-out-the-vote drive follows a long Martin Luther King Jr.  weekend that saw thousands of union members working at phone banks in local union halls, knocking on doors of other union members and talking with their co-workers at jobs sites across the Bay State...

Senate Candidate Brown Refused Unions? Invite to Discuss the Issues

Posted on January 19, 2010
Just what does Scott Brown think of Massachusetts working families and their unions? Not much, and apparently he wants to keep it secret, too. According to Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes,  Brown?unlike Martha Coakley, who is battling Brown for the Bay State’s U...

Union Support Pouring in for Haiti

Posted on January 19, 2010
The support by union members continues to pour in to help the survivors of last week’s massive earthquake in Haiti. You can take action now to help the Haitian survivors by clicking on the AFL-CIO Haitian Disaster Relief site here. As of yesterday, nearly $13,000 had been donated to the Solidarity Center’s Earthquake Relief for Haitian Workers’ Campaign...

AFSCME Blocks Prison Privatizing Profiteers

Posted on January 19, 2010
In Minnesota, AFSCME and its correction officer members won a major victory in the fight against privatizing the state’s prisons when the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) announced it is shutting down its 1,600-bed Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton next month...

Top Civil Rights Official: Discrimination Persists in 2010

Posted on January 19, 2010
       After eight years in which “critical civil rights protections gathered dust,” the Obama administration has made enforcement of civil rights laws a major priority, the nation’s top civil rights official said over the weekend...

Civil Rights Pioneer: Post-Racial World Doesn?t Exist

Posted on January 18, 2010
    From left, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair and Joseph McNeil, the four North Carolina A&T students who staged the 1960 sit-in, are shown leaving Woolworth’s.         The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is a good time to assess that post-racial world we’re supposed to be living in now...

Massachusetts Working Families Mount Big Weekend Push for Coakley

Posted on January 17, 2010
      This weekend, Massachusetts working families are on the phones, doorsteps and worksites–mobilizing a get-out-the-vote drive for Martha Coakley in Tuesday’s special election for the U.S. Senate. Coakley, the Bay State’s attorney general, has a long record of supporting working families...

King?s Legacy: Fighting for Justice, Community

Posted on January 16, 2010
Martin Luther King Jr. addresses striking sanitation workers in April 1968, the day before he was killed in Memphis. While people of color have made tremendous progress in the past 50 years, there is still a long way to go before Martin Luther King Jr...

Airline Pilots, AFSCME Come to Haiti?s Aid

Posted on January 15, 2010
    Capt. Dan Jones, right, and Flight Engineer Jeremy Studney, center, are part of the First Air crews flying relief supplies to Haiti.         Wherever there is a need for help, union members are quick to respond. With estimates as high as 100,000 killed and 40,000 buried during this week’s earthquake in Haiti, three crews of pilots and flight engineers of the Canadian airline First Air, all members of Air Line Pilots (ALPA) Councils 240 and 241, are flying relief supplies to the Caribbean for the U...

Las Vegas Nurses Join National Nurses Movement

Posted on January 15, 2010
Registered nurses at MountainView Hospital in Las Vegas voted yesterday to affiliate with the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC). The 500 nurses are the first RNs to unionize with the growing national nurses movement?National Nurses United (NNU)?following its formation last month with the joining together of CNA/NNOC, the United American Nurses (UAN) and the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA)...

Jobless Workers Get Answers from Trumka, Franken Via Working America

Posted on January 15, 2010
Listen to call here. Lisa in Louisville, Ky., was one of some 20,000 unemployed Working America members who took part in a conference call today with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) to talk about solutions to the jobs crisis and how to make the economy work for working families again...

Apprenticeships, Training Trusts Are Key Elements in Solvings Workforce Problems

Posted on January 15, 2010
Daniel Marschall, AFL-CIO legislative and policy specialist for workforce issues, reports on union participation in the final meeting of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. It is important to build upon the model of joint apprenticeship and training programs as the nation develops solutions to critical problems in the preparation of workers for the jobs of the future, Jim Hunter of the Electrical Workers (IBEW) Utility Department told the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) at a meeting in Washington, D...

L.A. Carwash Workers Detail Abuses at Workers? Rights Hearing

Posted on January 15, 2010
      Chloe Osmer of the Clean Carwash Campaign in Los Angeles sends this report on yesterday’s National Workers’ Rights Board hearing investigating the abuse and harassment faced every day by carwash workers. Several Los Angeles area carwash workers yesterday told a National Workers’ Rights Board hearing that they had been cheated out of wages, harassed and fired for trying to form a union and forced to work in dangerous conditions...

Arlene Holt Baker: Without Jobs, Civil Rights an Empty Promise

Posted on January 15, 2010
Without good jobs, the gains of the civil rights movement are empty: Just as Martin Luther King Jr. fought to secure basic rights for all Americans, we must now fight for economic justice, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said. Speaking this morning at the Martin Luther King Prayer Breakfast in Atlanta, Holt Baker said: The freedom to sit at a lunch counter or in the Oval Office was won for us...

IAM Initiative Helps the Jobless ?Cube by Cube?

Posted on January 15, 2010
      If you’re one of the nation’s 15 million officially jobless workers?or one of the more than 16 million who are underemployed or have dropped out of the job market?there are likely times you feel isolated and powerless. A new community service program by the Machinists (IAM) can put you in touch with other men and women struggling to cope with the stress and pressure of being jobless in America...

Just Transition to Green Economy Would Create Jobs, Profits

Posted on January 15, 2010
A just transition to a green economy is the only path toward building the broad support needed to combat climate change and to creating and retaining quality jobs and decent work, AFL-CIO Policy Director Damon Silvers said.  Speaking yesterday at the U...

Create New Jobs Now to Save African American Communities

Posted on January 15, 2010
      The job crisis has hurt everyone. But for African American communities, which were suffering before the crisis hit, it has been a disaster. Unless the nation takes immediate steps to create jobs now, the damage will become more entrenched and we will all pay the price...

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