Los Angeles Labor is the antidote to the Republican tea party politics!

http://launionaflcio.org/by Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO

(Los Angeles) – We did it!  We elected Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer, and all of our statewide candidates, Kamala Harris pending.  Across the country, the Republican and tea party candidates may have won, but in California, the two main expressions of tea party politics, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, were stopped in their tracks.

For the last six weeks, we ran a major campaign from Lancaster to Long Beach to elect Jerry Brown. We filled more than 14,000 volunteer shifts on the phones and knocking on doors. Our efforts resulted in 450,000 one-on-one conversations with voters on the most important issue of this election—Jobs.

“We learned here in California, that the antidote to the tea party is the labor, Latino, African-American, progressive White vote coming together,” said Maria Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO “If we do our job right, there are more of us than there are of them. Thanks to all of the sisters and brothers of LA Labor who did all the work and deserve this victory.”

Missing: A Vision of Economic Possibility

It is now the morning after. Republicans, as expected, are celebrating a sweeping victory. Democrats are licking their wounds. Meanwhile, record numbers of people are still contending with the hardships of unemployment and foreclosure with no relief in sight. And the nation braces for deepening political gridlock.

It is a moment of opportunity for America to set a new course and for a young President Barack Obama to establish his place in history as a path-breaking leader.

So how does electoral failure and political gridlock create a moment of opportunity?

We are a nation consumed by short-term thinking and fragmented political contests centered on narrowly defined issues. Neither of our two major parties has a credible vision for the economic future of our nation.

The Republicans offer only their standard prescription of tax cuts for the rich, a rollback of regulations on predatory corporations, and elimination of the social safety net—a proven prescription for further job loss and devastation of the middle class.

The Democrats have no identifiable program for economic recovery, let alone for adapting our economy to the dramatic demographic, environmental, economic, and political changes that rule out any chance of a return to pre-2008 business as usual.

10 Ways to Solve the Jobs Problem
There are many ways to create jobs while building a better economy.

Continue reading Unemployment and Home Foreclosures Still Top Issues →

A post-election numbers game

Friday, November 5, 2010

  zero – The number of newly elected Republican senators in genuinely contested Senate races (excluding, therefore, those like North Dakota’s) who carried voters ages 18 to 29. Republicans may have picked up seats in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin, and held them in Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio, but young voters in those states voted Democratic. Even in Ohio, where Republican Rob Portman beat Democrat Lee Fisher by 18 percentage points, Fisher won the youth vote 49 percent to 45 percent. In the national exit poll on House voting, the Republicans lost the 18-to-29-year-olds by 17 points, and did better the older the voters got. Moral: There was absolutely a Republican wave on Tuesday, but it looks more like the wave of the past than the wave of the future. Then again, as Faulkner reminded us and as the Republicans continually hope, the past isn’t necessarily dead.

1 – The number of white Democratic House members in the next Congress who will come from the Deep South (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina). Democrats still send nine members from this long-ago Democratic region to the House, but eight of them are African Americans from districts in which whites don’t make up a majority. Democratic strength in the white South began its downward plunge when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, but until Tuesday, there were still seven white Democrats in Congress from the Deep South. Now there’s just one, Georgia’s John Barrow.

24 – The gap, in percentage points, between the levels of support for Democrats and Republicans among white voters without college degrees who have union members in their household and white voters without college degrees who don’t. In Tuesday’s national exit poll on House voting, working-class whites voted overwhelmingly for Republicans – unless they lived with or were themselves union members, in which case they supported Democrats by a margin of 55 percent to 43 percent. Working-class voters from nonunion households backed Republican candidates 68 percent to 31 percent – a huge difference. It’s not because unionized UPS drivers and nonunion FedEx drivers, say, are two different species of human. It’s because the unions’ political education and mobilization programs are very effective.

Continue reading White Union Workers Support Democrats by 24% Margin vs. White non-union Workers →

Inmetco workers ratify union contract

Dave Alters, a member of the union negotiation team, said the three-year contract was ratified in a 42-22 vote, and that it calls for a 10 percent pay increase over the contract term and a signing bonus. The company’s employees voted last April in favor of representation under Teamsters Local 261, based in New Castle.

One reason the negotiations took an extended time was that this was the initial collective bargaining agreement, which forced both sides to start more or less from scratch in creating a new contract. Alters said there were few difficulties in negotiations.

Continue reading Inmetco Workers Win First Contract →

The Empire Strikes Back: Explaining the Republican Wave

What a difference two years make. In 2008, President Obama swept into office on a platform of hope and change. All across America, there was a ground swell of voices calling for an end to a political system that upholds the powerful special interests that ran America into the Great Recession. In 2010, an empire of big corporate interests fought back, riding a wave of anger and economic dissatisfaction.

by Randy Shannon

November 4, 2010

As AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka has said, this election was about jobs. This election was also about health care and the progressive change that was promised but not delivered. The voters punished the corporate Democrats who helped block legislation to help working people, the unemployed, and those without health care.

The Republicans promised jobs. We won’t be satisfied until they deliver. Let’s start with extending unemployment benefits, Child Nutrition programs, and tax cuts for working families, and blocking cuts to social security in the lame duck Congress that starts November 14th.

Of the 88 co-sponsors of HR 676, the Medicare for All bill in the 111th Congress, 81 ran for another term in Congress. One ran for Governor of Hawaii. 79 of the 81 were re-elected to Congress by large margins. The candidate for Governor also won. Hawaii and Vermont now have Governors who support single payer health care.

The Blue Dog Democrats, like Jason Altmire, who worked in committee to water down the healthcare bill and block the public option lost over half of their seats. 28 of 54 Blue Dogs were defeated. 4th CD Congressman Altmire who worked in committee to gut the health care bill and then voted against it was re-elected by a margin of less than 2%.

All of the Democrats who voted against extending unemployment benefits for victims of the recession caused by the criminal bankers were defeated.

Of the 69 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) 66 were re-elected to Congress. Progressive Democrats of America works closely with the Congressional Progressive Caucus on legislation and elections.

Continue reading Medicare for All Co-sponsors Returned to Congress by Big Margins →

Trumka: Tuesday’s Vote Was About Jobs, Not Republican Agenda by James Parks, Nov 3, 2010

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America’s voters are angry about the economy and the lack of jobs, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this morning during a discussion at the National Journal’s “The Day After” conference. And if Republicans don’t listen to what the voters were saying, they will be thrown out in 2012.

Trumka said the Republicans would be making a big mistake if they believe voters endorsed the Republican agenda. The votes in fact were a rebuke to the party in power, he said. Speaking to Mike Duncan, chairman of American Crossroads, the Republican mega political action group, Trumka said:

The America people know the economy doesn’t work. They’re suffering and they’re angry because of that and you’re going to have to come up with a way to create jobs and get the economy back on the move. They’re frustrated not because too much was done, but too little was done. But now that you’re in the governing structure, you just can’t say no.

He pointed out that 63 percent of voters in the 100 congressional races that swung the election oppose tax breaks for people who make more than $250,000—a key plank in the Republican’s Pledge to America. Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) oppose privatizing Social Security—another Republican proposal, and a large number do not want the retirement age raised to 70.

The union movement’s massive mobilization effort worked, Trumka said. Union members received information or contact with their union 15 to 20 times during the election cycle. As a result, unions counteracted the huge sums spent by corporate front groups like American Crossroads, which spent tens of millions on the election, including $3 million alone on a dozen House races. When union members heard the real facts, they voted for progressives in large numbers.

Duncan even acknowledged that the Republicans this year copied the union movement’s model for getting out the vote, although he told Trumka, “We’re not as good as you are on the deployment.”

Trumka advised Democrats and President Obama to do “what we’re going to because beginning today we’re going to have three priorities: jobs, jobs and more jobs.”

We are going to be pushing our five-point plan to create jobs. I think the President should do that and put these guys to the test. They said they could do it. Now let’s make them do it. And I wish you success because for every job you create there’s an American out there who’ll be able to make a living.

He said he would tell Obama and Democrats to work with Republicans, but not to compromise their principles.