In a major address at the National Press Club today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka charted an aggressive independent approach by working people and their unions to build the power of working people in the workplace and in the political sphere. Trumka told the live audience and thousands of viewers on C-SPAN and other news outlets:

Working people want a labor movement strong enough to help return balance to our economy, fairness to our tax system, security to our families and moral and economic standing to our nation. Our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate. It is to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our country.

More details out today on how the Republican move to balance the federal budget by ending Medicare would cost seniors a lot. A  new state-by-state analysis by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) finds that annual out-of-pocket Medicare health care costs will more than double in every state for seniors turning 65 in 2022 under the Republican budget plan. Seniors living in Florida would be the hardest hit with a $7,383 jump in medical costs, the JEC estimates.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will deliver a major address May 20 at the National Press Club’s luncheon in Washington, D.C. Trumka will put a sharp edge on the questions our nation faces as he reflects on recent activity in states like Wisconsin and Ohio and looks toward the 2012 elections. He’ll discuss demands for austerity in a jobless economic recovery, as housing prices go down and gas prices go up, and the shared values that can and should form America’s path forward.

The House Republican budget plan would throw as many as 44 million low-income adults and children out of Medicaid over the next 10 years and likely leave them with no health care coverage, according to a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).

Our elected leaders should act quickly to protect the interests of our nation’s youth and working people by enacting the DREAM Act and by bringing relief to these young people who continue to be jailed and deported, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. 

In a letter to the New York Times today,  Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United (NNU), says the Republican plan put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is “little more than a thinly veiled scheme to destroy one of the most fundamental reforms in American history through privatization and further cost-shifting to many of the most vulnerable in our society.”

Republican lawmakers have gotten a broad and angry response this congressional recess as they meet with constituents back home irate over a Republican federal budget proposal that would make senior’s Medicare costs explode by forcing them to buy coverage from greedy insurance companies. The Republican budget also would cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, slash education funding, repeal health care reform and decimate up to 2 million jobs.

Forty years after the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act), “there is much more work to be done….The job safety laws must be strengthened,” finds the 2011 AFL-CIO annual job safety report “Death on the Job,” released this morning to commemorate Workers Memorial Day. (Click here for the full report.)

In hundreds of events around the nation on Workers Memorial Day, April 28, workers will gather together at worksites, city parks, houses of worship and local and state government offices to remember those who have lost their lives on the job and demand strong safety laws and tough enforcement of those laws.

If congressional Republicans were listening to the American public, they wouldn’t be pushing so hard to turn Medicare over to Big Insurance through a voucher program and slash Medicaid for seniors, children and people with disabilities.