More than 1,000 nurses will be joined by union and community allies in a rally outside the White House, Chamber of Commerce and Congress tomorrow to call for a new agenda to heal the nation.

Tom Trotter in the AFL-CIO Legislation Department sends the following. 

A group of House Republicans, led by Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) and Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), yesterday joined every Democrat except Dan Boren of Oklahoma, in defeating attacks on Davis-Bacon (prevailing wage) and Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) on key appropriation bills moving through Congress. Both Davis-Bacon and PLAs are instrumental in making sure that federally funded projects create good jobs and are done by using skilled labor, are completed on time and on budget.

James Gilbert, director of the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council, asks that we all remember the reason for the Memorial Day holiday.

Memorial Day, which falls on the last Monday of May, honors the men and women who died while serving in the American military. It is a day for Americans to offer tribute and honor to the heroes who laid down their lives to preserve freedom.

In a 40-57 vote, the U.S. Senate rejected the budget passed by House Republicans. The budget would have replaced Medicare’s guaranteed health care funding for seniors with underfunded vouchers for private insurance, forcing a typical 65-year-old to spend $6,359 more a year in out-of-pocket costs by 2022. It also would have made drastic cuts to services for children and working families to pay for tax cuts that mostly would benefit corporations and the wealthy.

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.”