AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has been particularly passionate about fighting racism, and speaking to the Missouri AFL-CIO,
he addressed the killing of Michael Brown:
Now, some people might ask me why our labor movement should be involved in all that has happened since the tragic death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. And I want to answer that question directly. How can we not be involved?
Union members’ lives have been profoundly damaged in ways that cannot be fixed. Lesley McSpadden, Michael Brown’s mother who works in a grocery store, is our sister, an AFL-CIO union member, and Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Michael Brown, is a union member, too, and he is our brother. Our brother killed our sister’s son and we do not have to wait for the judgment of prosecutors or courts to tell us how terrible this is.
So I say again, how can we not be involved? This tragedy and all the complexities of race and racism are a big part of our very big family as they always have been. A union is like a home. And in any home, good and bad things happen. We have to deal with all of them, honestly.
And more:
- Sens. Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander aren't the only congressional Republicans railing against the National Labor Relations Board. Speaker John Boehner delivered a warning about the agency's evil to the International Franchise Association.
- And here's a great example of why Republicans hate the NLRB so much:
The National Labor Relations Board ruled against the CNN cable television network on Monday in an 11-year-old labor dispute, ordering the network to rehire or compensate about 300 former workers.
The NLRB agreed with a November 2008 ruling by one of its administrative judges that CNN improperly replaced a unionized subcontractor, Team Video Services (TVS), with in-house non-union staffers, claiming "anti-union" bias.
- Nice! There's a proposal in Seattle to have a city office dedicated to labor law enforcement. So workers would be more likely to actually get their $15 minimum wage and paid sick days.
- My father (and a co-author) wrote a thing! 'Flexible' schedules aren't flexible at all. Let's end the always-on-call work day:
A nursing assistant who lives in a trailer told us that she skips vacation and works extra “so I know I have the oil for the coming winter”. Though she and her coworkers get six days a year of paid sick leave, she told us that they’re penalized each time they use one and that, if anyone were to call in sick four times in three months, she thinks she would be fired.
- Do you own anything manufactured in Indonesia? (Probably.) Take a quick look at this picture.