Monthly Archives: October 2011

Blue Dogs, GOP, labor, unemployment

Talking to Local Unions on Jobs, President Presses Hard on GOP and Blue Dogs

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President Obama Visits Pittsburgh

to Push His ‘Jobs for America’ Bill

By Timothy McNulty
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Oct. 11, 2011 – President Barack Obama blitzed the city to stump for his jobs plan today, delivering a 20-minute speech at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers hall on the South Side and then leaving town by 3:20 p.m.

Before his speech the president also met for more than an hour with a job-creating council of nationwide business, labor and academic leaders as they try to wrestle with the nation’s chronic unemployment problems.

Little in the president’s address on his $447 billion jobs plan was new: he touted its calls for tax cuts and construction spending and questioned Republicans for not supporting it. He said he did not know why the GOP was in opposition “other than the fact I proposed it.”

But Democrats have not been rushing to support the effort either, even in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate, which is set to take its first votes on the plan tonight, a month after the president forwarded it. Mr. Obama has been barnstorming the country to try to whip up popular support for his plan and left the city for a similar event tonight in Orlando, Fla., before traveling next to Detroit.

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Banks, Economy, Steelworkers, Youth and students

Steelworkers in Solidarity with Wall Street Protests

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USW Supports the

‘Occupy Wall Street‘

Protest Movement

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Leo W. Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers (USW), North America’s largest industrial union with 1.2 million active and retired members, today issued the following statement in support of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement:

“The United Steelworkers (USW) union stands in solidarity with and strongly supports Occupy Wall Street. The brave men and women, many of them young people without jobs, who have been demonstrating around-the-clock for nearly two weeks in New York City are speaking out for the many in our world. We are fed up with the corporate greed, corruption and arrogance that have inflicted pain on far too many for far too long.

Our union has been standing up and fighting these captains of finance who promote Wall Street over Main Street. We know firsthand the devastation caused by a global economy where workers, their families, the environment and our futures are sacrificed so that a privileged few can make more money on everyone’s labor but their own.

Wall Street and its counterparts on Bay Street (Toronto), The City (London) and across the world tanked our economy in 2008. They caused a crisis that we’re still suffering from – record job losses, home foreclosures, cuts to schools, public services, police, fire and so much more. They’ve gambled with our pension funds and our futures for far too long.

They should have gone to jail. Instead, they got bailed out, while we got left out. And now they want us to go down the same path.

The Occupy Wall Street movement represents what most Americans believe: Enough is enough! It’s time to hold those who caused our economic crisis accountable, to ensure they don’t get away with it again, and to demand that everyone pay their fair share. It’s time to stand and fight for the creation of real wealth by focusing on making real things and creating family- and community-supporting jobs.

The USW is proud to join with the brothers and sisters of the Occupy Wall Street movement as we continue this important fight for a more just economy and a brighter tomorrow.”

The United Steelworkers is the largest industrial union in North America and has 850,000 members in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean. It represents workers employed in metals, rubber, chemicals, paper, oil refining, atomic energy, airline, health care, public sector and the service sector. For more info: http://www.usw.org .

Contact: Connie Mabin, USW, 412-562-2616 or cmabin@usw.org

SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/usw-supports-the-occupy-wall-street-protest-movement-2011-09-30