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.
Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this from Alabama, where she will report on the delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders as they investigate Alabama’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.
With the passage of H.B. 56, Alabama has taken a huge step backward, into the 1950s. Today, an African American delegation of labor and civil rights leaders traveled to Birmingham, Ala., to help shed a light on what is seen as one of the harshest immigration laws in the country and how it invokes inhumanity reminiscent of the Jim Crow South.
Workers at the U.S. Army Human Resources Command in Ft. Knox, Ky., voted by a better than 3-to-1 margin to join AFGE . The more than 1,400 workers are Army civilian personnel specialists who provide human resources services to soldiers, veterans, retirees and Army families. They are part of the Army’s Human Resource Command.
Today, AFGE members who work for the Social Security Administration (SSA) and their allies are staging informational pickets outside some 140 Social Security offices around the nation. They are protesting huge proposed budget cuts that would severely impact services to the elderly, disabled and children.
Brian Pugh, deputy political director for the Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation, sends us this report.
The Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation celebrated the end of summer with a Brunch to Build Homes on behalf of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Newburgh. Dozens of union members took part in the Sept. 10 fundraiser on the Newburgh Waterfront and raised $2,000. Labor sponsors included the HVALF, the Wappingers Congress of Teachers, AFGE Local 3740, Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) Local 302, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1500 and Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 30.
As the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack approaches, the union movement remembers those who lost their lives, those who risked their lives to get others to safety and those who took part in the cleanup and rebuilding efforts that followed.
It’s been four years since low-wage workers got a raise. Sign the petition to tell Congress it’s time to raise the minimum wage.
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