Richard Fleming served 12 years in the U.S. Army and has worked for the past 20 years at the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA's) Temple Texas hospital. He began with an entry-level job in the kitchen and, with training and education, became a surgical technician. He also is one of the thousands of modestly paid VHA workers whose jobs have been arbitrarily downgraded.

Nobody talked  to me about it. I found out I was downgraded through a memo….I was downgraded by people who do not ever see what I do on a day-to-day basis.

Thousands of hardworking Veterans Health Administration (VHA) employees—including many veterans—have seen their job classifications arbitrarily downgraded over the past two years. Tomorrow, VHA workers from health care facilities in 20 states will march from Veterans Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., to the White House.

Consumer protest is growing against a proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that could put contaminated poultry products on your family’s dinner plates and throw more than 800 trained federal food safety inspectors out of work. Join the fight for safe poultry products. Click here to sign AFGE’s “We the People” petition on the White House website urging that the proposed USDA rule be withdrawn.

A proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Agriculture would not only reduce the number of trained federal food safety inspectors on the lines in poultry processing plants and allow plant management to nearly double the speed of those lines, it would also turn many inspection duties over to plant employees.

While unemployment insurance (UI) is running out for nearly 13 million unemployed workers, congressional Republicans have spent their time pushing a UI  extension that included harsh and punitive requirements for jobless workers such as requiring unemployed workers to pay for re-employment services, acquire a high school degree, undergo drug testing and more. They also called for cutting 40 weeks of benefits from the unemployed.

In a nationwide advertising campaign getting underway this weekend, AFGE members are calling out Republican lawmakers for supporting a plan to pay for the payroll tax relief extension by slashing federal employee wages.

House Republican leaders unveiled a budget plan today in which “once again rushed to the rescue of the 1 percent” by insisting that millionaires should not have to pay one penny in taxes, according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Instead,

the House Republican proposal would cut benefits for jobless workers, cut pay for public employees, cut preventive health services, reduce premium assistance for low- and middle-income individuals buying health insurance, and raise premiums for many Medicare beneficiaries. House Republicans obviously have more sympathy for millionaires than for the jobless.

Voting rights are human rights. To bring that point home, a coalition of labor, civil rights and community organizations will celebrate Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, with a Stand for Freedom march and rally, beginning at the Manhattan headquarters of Koch Industries, and ending at the United Nations’ Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl doesn’t want to to pay for a one-year extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut by taxing the wealthiest 1 percent. He wants to take it out of the pay of federal workers.

Registered nurses at Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah, Fla., last night overwhelmingly voted—86 percent—to join National Nurses Organizing Committee-Florida, the state affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU). Earlier this month, AFGE signed up 700 medical professionals at the Veterans Affairs’ (VA’s) Edward Hines Jr. Hospital in Hines, Ill.