More than a 1,000 Pennsylvania union members, laid-off workers and community allies rallied outside a downtown Philadelphia Bank America office, hundreds streamed through the bank lobby along with a delegation carrying a $145 billion check. Shouting, “No jobs, no future,” they demanded BofA endorse the check and help finance creation of the 11 million jobs Wall Street gambled away.

After all: Wall Street’s Big Six-Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia-Wells Fargo-received $145 billion taxpayer bailout funds.

Kelle Sallard, an unemployed Verizon worker and member of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) member from Verizon, told the crowd she lost her medical benefits but doesn’t qualify for free health care.

While the CEO of Verizon makes 18 million and gets lifetime free health care, I lost my job at Verizon, lost my benefits and make too much on unemployment to qualify for free health care.  How is that fair?

Philadelphia AFL-CIO President Pat Eiding, AFSCME 1199C President Henry Nicholas and AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka hold a $145 billion owed to America’s workers. Pennsylvania State AFL-CIO President Bill George speaks to the crowd outside the Bank of America.      

Pennsylvania State AFL-CIO Bill George put it bluntly:

It’s time to get ours back. The banks got theirs. It’s revolution time. It’s the only thing they understand.

The Philadelphia action-in which members from all area unions took part-was one of more than 200 “Good Jobs Now, Make Wall Street Pay” actions taking place through March 25. The rallies and marches will demand that the Big Six Wall Street banks:

• Pay their fair share to restore the jobs their actions destroyed.
• Stop their fight and multi-million dollar lobbying blitz to kill financial reform.
• Start lending to communities, small businesses and others starved for credit.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the crowd that Big Banks and Wall Street speculators “Played Russian roulette with our economy,”

and while Wall Street cashed in, they left Main Street holding the bag. They peddled meaningless junk-derivatives, credit default swaps, overpriced mortgages-and none of it was real. None of it created a job or gave a loan to small business.

Pat Gillespie, business manager of the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, talked about how workers in the trades ‘”desperately need work.” Meanwhile, said Gillespie:

Infrastructure is going to hell. We’re already trained just put our people to work.

As Philadelphia central labor council President Pat Eiding put it, the union movement is letting people know that “working peoples’ voices are strong.” He added:

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Today is about jobs. It’s about putting workers right here in Philadelphia, and all over this country, back to work.

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Among other Make Wall Street Pay actions around the country, in Buffalo, N.Y., union and community activists set up a poker table yesterday at a Bank of America branch. U Under a “Gambling with Our Lives” banner, Buffalo, N.Y., they reenacted the banks’ risky wagers that wrecked the economy. Sam Williams, co-chair of the Western New York Area Labor Federation (WNYALF), told the Buffalo News:

Wall Street has been protected at the expense of Main Street families. Wall Street must restore the jobs that they destroyed.

Also yesterday, union activists held demonstrations in Des Moines, Iowa; Jersey City, N.J.; and Manchester, N.H. Several more actions are set for today.

Find out about events in your area here. If you take part in an event, be sure to send us your photo or video here.

You also can tell Wall Street executives to pay to create good jobs by sending a letter urging them to do the right thing. Just click here.

Today is about jobs. It’s about putting workers right here in Philadelphia, and all over this country, back to work.

Among other Make Wall Street Pay actions around the country, in Buffalo, N.Y., union and community activists set up a poker table yesterday at a Bank of America branch. U Under a “Gambling with Our Lives” banner, Buffalo, N.Y., they reenacted the banks’ risky wagers that wrecked the economy. Sam Williams, co-chair of the Western New York Area Labor Federation (WNYALF), told the Buffalo News:

Wall Street has been protected at the expense of Main Street families. Wall Street must restore the jobs that they destroyed.

Also yesterday, union activists held demonstrations in Des Moines, Iowa; Jersey City, N.J.; and Manchester, N.H. Several more actions are set for today.

Find out about events in your area here. If you take part in an event, be sure to send us your photo or video here.

You also can tell Wall Street executives to pay to create good jobs by sending a letter urging them to do the right thing. Just click here.<-->

In Philadelphia this morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka joined Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Bill George in pledging the union movement's support for an impending strike by Temple University Hospital’s 1,500 nurses and professional and technical employees. Shortly before the press event, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) delivered a 10-day strike notice to the hospital. The employees have been without a contract since last September, and Bill Cruice, Executive Director of PASNAP, said "Temple is on a reckless path." They are willing to spend more money on imported strikebreakers than it would take to settle a fair contract. We know from other healthcare strikes that patients’ lives will be put at risk by the strikebreakers, who are flown in from all around the country in search of quick money. Trumka put it this way: We will not allow Temple Hospital, an institution supported by taxpayer funds, to thumb their noses at these workers or the union movement. And we’re going to enlist the help of political leaders who consistently support Temple’s repeated requests for additional funding.

In honor of Women’s History Month, the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) last night presented its first annual Working Women’s Awards to 11 women who have left their mark on and helped build the labor movement.

The ceremony, at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., honored the women for their

extraordinary achievements, leadership, and for being exemplary models for working women who seek to advance in their workplace, union and community.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, who received one of the awards, said it was thanks to the work and success of many of the women in attendance that she has been able to walk down the path they pioneered.

Take a look around this room. Wow, what incredible talent, what incredible commitment to working women there is right here. As you all know, this celebration is all about Women’s History Month…but you don’t just celebrate women’s history-you make it yourselves. I owe a lot to you. It’s because of you that I can stand here tonight.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, another honoree, said women’s workplace rights have a come a long way, but

the struggle to close the pay gap between men and women still continues, although we have come a long way, we haven’t completely closed the gap.  If I could grant one right to working women, it would be  pay equity. 

The other women honored were Letter Carriers (NALC) Secretary-Treasurer Jane E. Broendel; UAW Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn; Change to Win (CTW) Chair Anna Burger; AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Emerita Linda Chavez-Thompson; Alliance for Retired Americans President Barbara J. Easterling; CLUW Presidents Emerita Gloria T. Johnson and Joyce D. Miller; AFGE Vice President Augusta Thomas; and Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Secretary-Treasurer Emerita Nancy Wohlforth.

This morning, The New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman presented the straight-forward, reasoned and no-hype case why the U.S. House this weekend should pass health care reform.

For one thing, he writes, the bill would end abuses like those of a South Carolina health insurance company that had “a systematic policy of revoking its clients’ policies when they got sick.”

What is on the table, ready to go, is legislation that is fiscally responsible, takes major steps toward dealing with rising health care costs, and would make us a better, fairer, more decent nation.

Read Krugman’s entire column here and then call 1-877-3-AFLCIO and tell you representative to vote this Sunday to pass health care reform.

      

This afternoon, the AFL-CIO Executive Council said waiting 60 years for health care reform is long enough. Council members agreed to actively support President Obama’s health care bill and called on Congress to pass the legislation, which the U.S. House is set to vote on this Sunday.

Nearly every president since Harry Truman has sought health care reform. But powerful opposition from the insurance industry and others has scuttled each attempt. In a video message to working families, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:

We can’t miss this opportunity. We’ve been fighting for health care for 60 years. When I look at the years we have put into fighting for health care and what it means to working families to start down the path of comprehensive reform, I know the time to step forward is now.

Trumka urged union members to call their representatives and tell them to pass the bill (call toll free 1-877-3-AFLCIO). He acknowledges many people have been “conflicted” about the bill. In a press conference call, he told reporters:

It is not a perfect bill. But we are realistic enough to know it’s time for the deliberations to stop and for progress to begin. And we are idealistic enough to believe this is an opportunity to change history we can’t afford to miss.

Trumka says action by working families during the health care debate “has made the health care bill stronger,” much to the dismay of the insurance industry that has:

plastered their money and lobbyists across Capitol Hill to try to stop this bill because it’s a game-changer for them. It ends what is literally a reign of insurance company terror.

Among other provisions, the bill:

• Immediately stops greed-driven insurance company abuse such as denying care based on pre-existing conditions.
• Toughens penalties on employers that try to run from their responsibilities.
• Puts the burden of paying for health care where it belongs–on the wealthy.
• Gets life-saving health coverage to 30 million more people and improves coverage for millions more.
• Reduces prescription drug costs for seniors and saves money for small businesses.

Trumka told reporters:

Rising health care costs are crushing families and businesses. Middle-class families are losing health care coverage faster than any other group today.

This bill is a solid first step in changing that.

Be sure to call your representative at 1-877-3-AFLCIO and tell him or her to pass the health care reform bill.

The victory was so beautiful it deserved a poem--even a rap.

In December 2008, just a few weeks after Barack Obama’s election, the United Food and Commercial Workers won one of the largest union elections in decades at the Smithfield Foods pig slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina. The 5,000-worker plant is the largest in the world, killing 32,000 pigs a day. The workers are mostly African Americans and Latino immigrants.

The victory was so beautiful it deserved a poem--even a rap.

In December 2008, just a few weeks after Barack Obama’s election, the United Food and Commercial Workers won one of the largest union elections in decades at the Smithfield Foods pig slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina. The 5,000-worker plant is the largest in the world, killing 32,000 pigs a day. The workers are mostly African Americans and Latino immigrants.

     

The 2010 Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference is set for May 4-6, in Washington, D.C., and you can click here to register. The conference brings together union members, environmentalists, business leaders, elected and administration officials to map out the path to green economy that creates good jobs, reduces global warming and preserves America’s economic and environmental security.

United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo W. Gerard says the conference “comes at a pivotal time.”

America is working to build a green economy. Now, it’s time to ensure that we create good jobs that support our families and our communities—revitalizing the American economy and protecting the environment for future generations.

Among this year’s speakers are Gerard; AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka; Sierra Club Executive Director Carol Pope; Rick Fedrizzi, president and CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council; George H. Miller, president of the American Institute of Architects; and high-ranking Obama administration officials.

The conference will include more than 100 workshops on topics ranging from green manufacturing to environmental and occupational health and safety to business, investment and new markets. Click here for a schedule of the workshops and here for the entire agenda.

In addition, the conference features the 2010 Green Innovation Expo, where more than 100 exhibitors from labor, industry, environment and academia will be on hand to demonstrate how they are charting the path toward growing the green economy and developing clean energy jobs.

The conference is being coordinated by the Blue Green Alliance, the partnership of the labor and environmental organizations, which include the USW, Communications Workers of America (CWA), AFT, Utility Workers (UWUA), Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Click here to register.

Some 4,500 UAW Local 2244 members have ratified a closing agreement for the Fremont, Calif., plant with New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI). In today’s ratification vote, members of Local 2244 approved the agreement by a margin of 90 percent.

UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles praised members of the Local 2244 bargaining committee for their hard work and solidarity.

We are all deeply saddened to see these operations come to an end. While this is not the outcome we had hoped for, the terms of this agreement will certainly help cushion the impact for our members.

UAW Region 5 Director Jim Wells says the NUMMI workers’ solidarity and support from the union movement helped the workers through a difficult time.

We are grateful to the members for the solidarity they’ve shown throughout this process. We also want to thank our brothers and sisters in the labor movement, community leaders and consumers across the country for the support they’ve given the NUMMI workers.

Established as a joint venture between General Motors (GM) and Toyota Motors in 1984, the NUMMI facility most recently built the Pontiac Vibe, Toyota Corolla and Tacoma pickup. As part of a structured bankruptcy, GM eliminated its Pontiac brand in 2009. Shortly after, Toyota announced its intention to close the NUMMI facility on April 1, 2010.

   

David Groves at the Washington State Labor Council reports on the area union movement’s second Make Wall Street Pay rally in Seattle this week.

More than 600 building and construction trades workers from the Seattle metropolitan area rallied downtown on St. Patrick’s Day to demand the “green-lighting” of major job-creating public-works investments being delayed by political wrangling.

“We want jobs NOW!” chanted the workers the same day that new Washington State unemployment numbers showed construction payrolls fell by another 3,200 jobs in February and have dropped 32 percent in the past 20 months. The Seattle-area construction industry is suffering from unprecedented unemployment rates of 35 percent—even higher in some trades.

New Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, an environmental advocate who has frustrated both business and labor interests with his proposals to change, review or otherwise delay major infrastructure projects, addressed the crowd. As he discussed his support for good family-wage jobs, union members repeatedly interrupted him by shouting:

But we need jobs NOW!

King County Executive Dow Constantine got it right. He talked about the need to immediately start major projects, including replacement of the Highway 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington, replacement of the crumbling Alaskan Way viaduct along Seattle’s waterfront and expansion of the Washington State Convention Center downtown.

Our economy cannot afford years of job-stopping delays. We need jobs now! It is time to get past the delays and hand-wringing. Let’s get this job done!

Washington State Labor Council President Rick Bender reminded all who is to blame for our economic problems.

We have a jobs crisis in America, it was caused by the big Wall Street banks and they should have to pay to create jobs!

After accepting hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars to bail them out, Bender said,

They handed out $145 billion in bonuses last year, and now they are lobbying against legislation to set some rules to keep this from ever happening again.

Wednesday’s rally was sponsored by the Seattle-King County Building and Construction Trades Council and the Martin Luther King County Labor Council.

This page will no longer be updated. In order to keep in touch with the latest news from the new international please access our new website. http://www.ituc-csi.org...

Vienna, 31 October 2006: Tomorrow will see the dawn of a new trade union international, a stronger and more united voice of workers' worldwide set to tackle the challenge of globalisation with...

Vienna, 30 October 2006: The 19th Congress of the ICFTU, to be held tomorrow in Vienna, will be its last. Following the dissolution of the World Confederation of Labour (WCL) tomorrow morning, the...

Brussels, 16 October 2006 (ICFTU Online): As part of the Global Month of Action of GCAP, on 15-16 October workers world wide joined the global attempt to set an official Guinness World Record for...

Brussels, 09 October 2006 (ICFTU Online): The second annual ICFTU Youth Solidarity Mission will take place in Honduras from 10 to 11 October. This event has been coordinated by the ICFTU Youth...

Brussels, 9 October 2006 (ICFTU Online): Kyrgyzstan, one of the Central Asian states formerly in the Soviet Union, must do more to ensure workers’ rights and to eliminate its serious child labour...

Brussels, 03 October 2006 (ICFTU Online): The ICFTU has called today on the authorities of Cambodia to reopen the investigation into the murder of Chea Vichea, President of the Free Trade Union of...

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) who this week launched a television ad slamming working families as “outside interests” is continuing her descent into “yet another hypocritical, flip-flopping D.C., politician,” says Arkansas AFL-CIO President Alan Hughes.

Lincoln in recent months has piled up a Senate record opposing working families–including voting to send jobs overseas via bad trade deals, reversing her initial support for the Employee Free Choice Act and opposing health care reform legislation with a public health insurance option. Arkansas unions now have endorsed Lt. Gov. Bill Halter (D.) in the upcoming U.S. Senate primary. Says Hughes:

Lincoln has ignored the interests of working people in Arkansas too many times. It’s easy for her to try to paint opponents as outsiders, but working-class voters in Arkansas can see as well as anybody that she has turned her back on us.

Although she’s attacking working families and their unions today, Lincoln sang quite a different tune in 2004 when she was grateful for the backing of the Arkansas AFL-CIO, along with more than $260,000 in working families’ PAC donations. Said Lincoln at the time:

I’m honored to receive the endorsement today from the Arkansas AFL-CIO for my work in the Senate to improve the lives of Arkansas working families.

Her strong support for Wal-Mart, headquartered in Fayetteville, and her silence about the company’s virulent anti-unionism and labor law violations, has earned her the nickname “the senator from Wal-Mart.”

Lincoln was also just one of two Democrats who voted to block President Obama’s nomination of respected attorney Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Says Hughes:

Only someone who has become a career politician in Washington, D.C., could spend 10 years asking for our support, take hundreds of thousands of dollars from blue-collar workers, then turn around and attack us as outsiders because we wouldn’t help her this time around. Those are not the values people in Arkansas believe in.

The U.S. Senate today passed a jobs bill that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calls a ”good start” in helping the nation’s workers climb out of the 11-million-deep jobs hole dug by the Wall Street greed that propelled the economy’s nosedive.

But he says the bill—which is on its way to the White House for President Obama’s signature—must be the first step of a broad and intensive effort to rebuild the economy.

Much more needs to be done. We need to restore the jobs that were lost to the financial debacle, and Wall Street should pay to create them. We must invest in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and in the green jobs of the future. We have to maintain funding for vital services by state and local governments and prevent destructive cuts in education, police and fire protection and more.

We must take the additional steps needed to extend unemployment insurance and health care lifelines to the unemployed. We must increase funding for neglected communities to match people who want to work with jobs that need to be done. And we should move right now to use leftover TARP money to get credit flowing to Main Street.

The $17.6 billion bill includes a one-year extension of the federal highway program, an extension of the Build America Bonds program that helps states finance certain infrastructure projects and tax incentives for employers to hire workers.

The Senate first passed the legislation in February, but minor changes by the House forced a second vote on the legislation.

Other pending jobs legislation includes a December-passed House bill that is a more extensive jobs bill with an emphasis on jobs-creating infrastructure projects. The next step for the bill is uncertain—Senate leaders have promised to move further jobs-related legislation, but no time table has been set.  Also this month, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) introduced the Local Jobs for America Act, which would create or save up to 1 million public- and private-sector jobs. Jobs saved would include those such as the firefighters, the police and teachers and others whose jobs are in jeopardy because of local government budget cuts.

      

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was found guilty yesterday of conspiracy to wreck the economy, destroy jobs and the immoral use of taxpayer bank bailout money for millions in Wall Street bonuses.

The courtroom was on a Madison Wis., street in front a JPMorgan Chase bank branch and the jury included dozens of union and community activists. The street theater was part of the AFL-CIO union movement’s two weeks of action across the country to Make Wall Street pay to create jobs and fix they economy they ravaged.

Jim Cavanaugh, president of the South Central Federation of Labor, which organized the curbside drama, says:

We bailed out Wall Street now its time for Wall Street to bail out Main Street.

More than 200 “Good Jobs Now, Make Wall Street Pay” actions are planned through March 25. The rallies and marches will demand that the Big Six Wall Street banks–Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia-Wells Fargo–take the following actions:

• Pay their fair share to restore the jobs their actions destroyed.
• Stop their multi-million dollar lobbying blitz to kill financial reform.
• Start lending to communities, small businesses and others starved for credit.

Also yesterday, union members distributed leaflets in front of JPMorgan Chase branch in Baton Rouge, La., and rallied at a Bank of America office in Charleston, S.C. Today union activists in Butte, Mont., will march in the town’s St. Patrick’s Day parade carrying “Make Wall Street Pay” signs and banners. This afternoon, the West Virginia AFL-CIO, along with community allies, staged a rally in front a Wells Fargo/Wachovia Bank in Charleston.

Find out about events in your area here. If you take part in an event, be sure to send us your photo or video here.

You also can tell Wall Street executives to pony up and create good jobs by sending a letter urging them to do the right thing. Just click here.