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On Nov. 8, Ohio voters repealed SB5, which took away the right of public employees to bargain for a middle-class life. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka joined working families at the phone bank and walking door to door to get-out-the-vote against the law, pushed by Gov. John Kasich and passed early in 2011.

Early last Friday morning, as the Occupy Wall Street protesters were just uncurling from their sleeping bags, I went downtown for a walkthrough of their campsite at Zuccotti Park, now also known as Liberty Plaza. I met up there with AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and New York City Central Labor Council President Vincent Alvarez. (I’m president of an AFL-CIO affiliated union.)

There were just a few of us in our group, and as the sun burned through the dawn’s chill, not much attention was paid as we took the tour. We kept our voices low and walked carefully, doing our best to keep from tripping over and waking those who were still asleep

One or two reporters hooked up with us, not including the kid you may have seen with the fake cardboard Fox News camera and microphone, who tossed out questions as he walked along behind us. That was the extent of the media coverage.

Every once in a while someone would ask who Trumka was and he would stop and chat. At the end of our visit, he sat with a group at the west end of the park, across from ground zero, and quietly offered encouragement, discussing strategy, goals and on a practical level, the essentials needed to keep the protest going.

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America is facing historic choices that will shape our economy, our society and our democracy for decades to come, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today.

Speaking at the prestigious Brookings Institution, he said, “Our nation does not have a debt crisis. We have a jobs crisis.”

America isn’t broke. Our nation’s basic promise—an ever-rising, ever-widening prosperity—is being broken.

It is being broken by three decades of a contradictory economic strategy based on low wages and consumption, he said. As a result, the rich have gotten much richer, the poor have gotten poorer and those left in the middle are struggling to hang on. U.S. trade policies have decimated our nation’s manufacturing base and our tax policies promote inequality.

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From Santa Rosa to Fresno and from Sacramento to San Jose, 23,000 registered nurses walked picket lines, joined rallies and sent a strong message yesterday to three large employers that they will not accept reductions in patient services or cuts to nurses and other caregivers. The one-day strike by members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) ended this morning at 7 a.m. PT.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who joined nurses on the picket line at Sutter Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley, praised the RNs as “the last line of defense for patients.” Trumka said the 23,000 nurses who took a stand were joined by “millions of patients” and had the support of working people across the country.

The walkout affected Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, as well as Children’s Hospital in Oakland.

Sutter nurses protested up to 200 sweeping demands for concessions they say would restrict their ability to effectively advocate for patients. They say Sutter managers’ focus on the bottom line effectively forces nurses to work when sick, dangerously exposing extremely ill patients to infection.

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Labor Day is the time of year we recognize the value of work and all who do it. We need bold action now to put America back to work. Sign the pledge to put America back to work. Text PLEDGE to 235246 or go to www.aflcio.org.

Davon Lomax, a member of the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 9 in New York, hasn’t worked for more than a year. One of his colleagues lost his home and ended up panhandling in the subways.

Katie Hofman, a teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio, says more and more of her students are homeless. Teachers who have not had a pay raise for five years regularly go into their pockets to buy lunch for children who are hungry and whose families have no money.

Lomax and Hofman were two of the panelists who spoke at the AFL-CIO and The King Center  symposium on “Jobs, Justice and the American Dream” this morning. Participants in the first panel, Jobs and the American Dream, agreed that 48 years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the nation is still far from achieving his vision of a nation where everyone who wants to work has a good job and the freedom to achieve to the best of his or her abilities.

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The AFL-CIO today is announcing a major “commitment to action” to bring public and private partners together to encourage both workers’ capital and skilled labor to promote large-scale investments in America’s infrastructure.

This pioneering commitment, which will be announced at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago, will seek to create good jobs and address our public infrastructure deficit and the threats posed to the environment and our economy by the way in which we use energy.

As part of the commitment, the AFL-CIO will work with business and government to promote infrastructure investment with a goal of at least $10 billion in new funding over the next five years. (more…)

If China increased the value of its currency to its real level, the resulting growth in the United States could create 2.25 million new U.S. jobs, according to a new report.

The Benefits of Revaluation, released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), explains that if the value of the Chinese currency, the yuan, and satellite currencies, such as those in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, were increased by 25 percent to 30 percent against the dollar, the U.S. gross domestic product would grow as much as $285.7 billion, creating up to 2.25 million U.S. jobs. Creating that many jobs would reduce the U.S. unemployment rate by at least one full percentage point. (more…)

by Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

A new study shows that miners in unionized coal mines are far less likely to be killed or injured on the job than miners in nonunion operations. The independent study funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found that “unionization predicts an 18-33 percent drop in traumatic injuries and a 27-68 percent drop in fatalities.”

The comprehensive study, conducted by Stanford University law professor Alison D. Morantz,  the John A. Wilson Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, looked at coal mine fatality and injury statistics from 1993 to 2008.

Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts says the study “quantifies the profound differences in safety underground coal miners experience when working union versus working nonunion.” (more…)