Tomorrow, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will detail the choices elected leaders across the country are facing and outline working people’s vision for the future of the American economy when he delivers a major speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Every October, Anita’s parents fall into the Medicare prescription drug donut hole, and some of their medications cost $30 per pill. The new health care reform law already has begun to close that gap in coverage and eventually will eliminate it all together.
If the new health care reform law is repealed—and today, Republican lawmakers are taking their first step toward repeal—more than 129 million Americans would be put at risk of losing their health insurance.
In his latest book, All Labor Has Dignity, historian Michael Honey brings together 16 of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches on economic justice, many of them unpublished until now. Honey, a professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, edited the speeches and wrote an introduction for the book. AFL-CIO Now senior writer James Parks interviewed Honey about King and his legacy of economic justice.
As more states consider offering paid family leave, state legislators would do well to check out a new guide released last week that offers a primer on the nation’s first paid family leave program, implemented six years ago in California. Published by the Labor Project for Working Families and the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic & Family Security, the guide includes the dos and don’ts other states should consider as they pursue similar proposals.
Let’s get one thing out of the way right off the bat—contrary to popular belief, mimes can talk. The silent mime we’re all accustomed to is just one form of the ancient theater art. Not only do mimes talk, they sing and dance in the legendary San Francisco Mime Troupe ’s “Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker.”
Ohio’s Gov. John Kasich and his allies are attempting to blame and punish low-income workers for the state of the economy. Ohio Field Communications Coordinator Andrew Richards reports on a candlelight march and rally in support of the workers’ right to bargain.
The light from hundreds of candles lit up the facade of Cincinnati’s City Hall tonight as workers and community members came out to support home health care and child care providers and to protest Gov. John Kasich’s plan to strip away their rights to bargain for a better life. .
Today, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) took steps to enforce workers’ rights as guaranteed by U.S. law. The board advised the attorneys general of Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah that so-called secret ballot amendments to their state constitutions are pre-empted by the National Labor Relations Act, which offers workers two paths to choosing a union.
Every day across the country, millions of workers in low-wage jobs are being robbed of billions of dollars they are owed by their employers. A new video by Interfaith Worker Justice ( IWJ ) shows how the practice of wage theft is a national epidemic no one is paying attention to.
Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this weekend, died fighting for the freedom of Memphis sanitation workers to form a union with AFSCME . For King, economic justice went hand in hand with civil rights and the right to join a union was critical to gaining economic justice.
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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