Live from Chicago, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is talking about the future of the union movement and new models of worker representation. This event is hosted by Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies and televised and streamed by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV). Watch the live stream after the jump. 

At its February meeting, the AFL-CIO Executive Council, representing 57 affiliate unions, adopted several statements that covered energy and jobs, workers' rights and the National Labor Relations Board and immigration, among other things. 

Tom Ward was 13 when his father came home from what would be his last day of work. Ward's father "barely made it through the door, fell to the floor and, between tears, said, 'I can't do it anymore.'"

This is an excerpt of "White House Inaction on Silica Is Deadly for Workers," by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, originally published on The Huffington Post. Read the rest. 

More than 1,500 people rallied Tuesday on Capitol Hill in support of working families and to tell Congress not to make any benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They also told Congress to close tax loopholes for big corporations and the wealthiest 2% and to prevent the sequester from going into effect and harming the country. Throughout the rally, working families spoke with a unified voice calling for "jobs, not cuts."

There is a deep and personal reason AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is passionate about enacting immigration reform that provides a real pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants who call this country home. In a post today on Daily Kos, he writes:

When people use the word 'immigrant' like an epithet, I take it personally. I come from a small town in southwestern Pennsylvania’s coal country called Nemacolin. It was not easy when my family came to this country. My parents and grandparents fled poverty and war from different corners of Europe. 

Trumka sent this message to working family activists on Tuesday:

I’m from Nemacolin, Pa. It’s like a lot of other little towns: close-knit, lots of great families, working together in tough times and good times, just trying to make something of themselves.

In some year-end reviews of labor in 2012 (here and here), we see an important missed connection that the union movement is committed to building in 2013. While these reviews identify important worker struggles throughout the year, they fail to recognize that all workers—immigrant, public, private, low-wage and middle-class—share values and experiences that unite them in a broad-based union movement. A major theme of many of last year’s important labor struggles was how immigrant workers and the union movement came together in local communities to win justice.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka condemned the actions of Gov. Rick Snyder and the radical Republicans in Michigan who announced today that "right to work" for less legislation would be pushed forward in the state's "lame-duck" session. Working families filled the Lansing Capitol building Thursday, outraged at the attempts to strip them of their voice in the workplace. Snyder is the latest in a line of extreme Republican governors, such as Scott Walker of Wisconsin, John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Scott of Florida, who are assaulting the rights of working families.

The budget proposal President Obama gave Republicans yesterday "keeps faith with the voters in last month’s election, who overwhelmingly opposed tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans and benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare," says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

The ball is now in the Republicans’ court. Unfortunately, Republicans do not seem to have learned the lessons from their shellacking at the polls in November.  They are still insisting on the very things voters rejected so resoundingly: tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% and benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

As President Obama meets today with Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling for improved rights for Mexico's working families. In recent months, Mexican workers have faced a series of challenges to their basic rights.