Political Action/Legislation
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In 2004, after a long string of Republican governors and the shockingly narrow defeat of Prop. 72—which would have ushered in the most progressive health care reform ever implemented in the United States—California labor leaders got mad. And then they got organized.
Delegates to the AFL-CIO Convention this afternoon passed a resolution expressing support for the goals of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) but also addressing a number of issues about the ACA's implementation, including the way the ACA treats multi-employer health care plans. The resolution reiterates that the labor movement's ultimate health care goal is health care for everyone under a single-payer model.
Hareth Andrade-Ayala, a former Union Summer participant and DREAMer who came to the AFL-CIO Convention to read her poem, "America," was hoping she could ask President Barack Obama a very important question: Will you please stop the deportation of my father?
But, she realized, actions speak louder than words, and asked the delegates to stand in solidarity with her father. Then something really cool happened.
Watch the video in the post to see.
Welcome to the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention live blog. Comments will appear after moderation. See our comment guidelines here . You can participate in the discussion from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT (11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. EDT).
Check out the live blog after the jump.
Attendees of the action session, “This Is NOT What Democracy Looks Like! The Democracy Initiative,” heard hopeful solutions to large problems with our democratic process. The tool for correcting these problems of political inequality was the topic of the session: the Democracy Initiative . The executive director of the Democracy Initiative, Marissa Brown, summed up the group’s task: “We are about making government function for people who voted for a government that functions.”
Delegates to the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention today elected a trio of top officers to lead the labor movement to become, said re-elected AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, “the movement America needs us to be and we must be.”
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Shuler was elected to a second term and, in a classic American success story, Tefere Gebre, a 45-year-old Ethiopian political refugee who immigrated to the United States as a teenager, was elected executive vice president.
Today, the AFL-CIO reaffirmed its commitment to a comprehensive immigration policy that respects workers' rights, including a road map to citizenship . Delegates at the AFL-CIO Convention called for an immigration policy that protects U.S. workers, reduces exploitation of immigrant workers and reduces employers' incentive to hire undocumented workers rather than U.S. workers. Such a policy, the convention resolution states, will increase shared prosperity, improve productivity and quality, limit wage competition, strengthen labor standards and collective bargaining rights, protect the health and safety of workers and provide a social safety net and quality education and training for working families.
“The labor movement,” Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez told delegates to the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention in Los Angeles this morning, “is one of the greatest forces for middle-class economic security."
An economy that grows from the middle out can only be achieved if we continue to have a dynamic and empowered labor movement in America.
Welcome to the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention live blog. Comments will appear after moderation. See our comment guidelines here . You can participate in the discussion from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT (11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. EDT).
Check out the live blog after the jump.
Bankruptcy laws are rigged against working people. Employers, corporations and lenders often exploit these laws to weaken our retirement security, cut health care and leave young workers saddled with student loan debt, without the prospect of a good job or the ability to discharge the debt through bankruptcy.
Today, the AFL-CIO passed a convention resolution addressing the need to reform our country's bankruptcy laws to better shield workers from harm in the form of broken pension and health care promises and to diminish economic hardship that comes from these bankruptcies.
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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