AFL-CIO unions reacting to presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s selection of Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul “End Medicare as We Know It” Ryan as his running mate say the Romney-Ryan ticket is the wrong choice for America.

Yesterday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, "Whether it's outsourcing American jobs or picking his running mate, Mitt Romney's proven just how bad his decision making is for working people. Aligning himself with the poster-child for ending Medicare and Social Security puts to rest any suggestion that Romney has a clue what the middle class needs. We're witnessing the radical Tea Party extremes drive the final nail in what was once the Republican Party."

Here’s what unions had to say:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) cut straight to the chase Friday at a Bring Jobs Home roundtable in Charleston.

We now give tax incentives for people who move jobs offshore. That's just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Unless the nation’s campaign laws that allow corporations and the wealthy unlimited—and, many times, anonymous—campaign contributions are changed, “we will lose the right to collectively bargain,” within the next 10 years, says United Steelworkers (USW) Present Leo W. Gerard.

Speaking to a group of USW members in Homestead, Pa., over the weekend, Gerard warned that without a massive turnout of union voters this fall, the unprecedented flood of campaign cash to candidates and barely concealed extremist front groups could swing the election to candidates dedicated to destroying the union movement.

The AFL-CIO,  United Steelworkers (USW) and UAW represented the U.S. labor movement at the national convention of the CUT, Brazil’s leading labor federation. CUT unions are partners in the Workers Party (PT) that has governed Brazil since 2003 during the presidencies of metalworker and union leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and the current president, Dilma Rousseff.  

Union members from around the Detroit metro area rallied Tuesday in support of the Bring Jobs Home Act (S. 2884), a common sense bill authored by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.)  that would incentivize American companies to bring jobs back to America from overseas. The bill would also close tax loopholes that reward corporations that continue to outsource in the pursuit of outsized corporate profits. Stabenow told the crowd:

The time is now for my Republican colleagues to stop stonewalling this common sense legislation and do what’s right for the American people.

Good jobs should be as American as apple pie, but U.S. corporations have shipped some six million American jobs overseas in the past decade. Yesterday in Pittsburgh, some 200 union members told U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) that it’s time to “Bring Jobs Home.”

Hoping to talk to Sen. Toomey (R-PA) or his staff to urge support for the Bring Jobs Home Act (S. 2884), the activists from 19 unions and labor groups marched to Toomey’s home office. But even the offering of an All-American, union-made apple pie (courtesy of Food and Commercial Workers [UFCW] Local 23) couldn’t get the group in the door.

Things looked bleak for United Steelworkers Local 10-1 last September when Sunoco Inc. announced it would shut down its Philadelphia refinery if a buyer was not found.  But after a hard-fought, ten-month campaign waged by the local and international union, USW Local 10-1 members ratified a contract with a new owner, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, which is a joint partnership between The Carlyle Group and Sunoco.

USA

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve highlighted American products, jobs and stories for our Made in America series, and we asked for your thoughts. Earlier in June, we rounded up what you told us are your favorite USA-made goods, here. This time around, there have been lots of great comments supporting Buy American, and a few questions.

Los Angeles carwash workers are getting health care—all because of a dynamic partnership between the United Steelworkers and members of the local community who have joined forces to help carwasheros gain a voice on the job.

Click here to see a video clip that highlights how this partnership improves the lives of workers.

As carwash worker Oscar says: "Now, thank God my life has changed. If I get sick and feel bad, I have a clinic to go to. This is all because of the campaign."

Summer Olympic Games medal supplier, Rio Tinto—a union-busting global mining conglomerate with a track record of worker and environmental abuse—should be kept off the podium in London, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. In a letter sent to the chairman of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), Trumka points to Rio Tinto’s Jan. 1 lockout of 750 USW members in Alma, Quebec.