SEIU: “Our demand is simple: stop taking our tax dollars and squandering them away on billion dollar bonuses and massive lobbying campaigns against financial reform.”
http://www.seiu.org/2009/10/you-werent-on-the-guest-list.php
Category Archives: labor
PA AFL-CIO Pres. Bill George to Cong. Jason Altmire – Vote right on healthcare or don’t come back
by Randy Shannon
October 23, 2009
Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Bill George, a former USW Local 1211 officer and an open hearth worker at Aliquippa’s former Jones &Laughlin Steel, accepted the Beaver-Lawrence Labor Council’s honor of induction into the Labor Council Hall of Fame.
Labor Council Legislative Liason Charlie Hamilton also received a Labor Hall of Fame Award. Mr. Hamilton is a retired but dues paying member of the NALC Branch 84 and a former worker at Babcock and Wilcox. Mr. Hamilton talked about the union history of several generations of his family, and union activism as a way of life.
Michael Moore and Nurses Lead AFL-CIO March for Single Payer
Pittsburgh First-Hand G20 Reports: Day Three
Photo: PDA’s Randy Shannon with banner, center, next Michael McPhearson of Vets for Peace with Rick Kimbrough, right.
10,000 Marchers Beat Back
The Steel City’s ‘State of Siege’
By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue
Nearly 10,000 protesters marched through the streets of Pittsburgh on the last day of the G20 this Sept. 25 afternoon, delivering a powerful message for global justice that was expressed with a brilliantly colored display of unity, militancy and diversity.
Peace and justice groups demanded an end to wars and occupations and healthcare for all, trade union contingents demanded green jobs and fair trade, women and people of color raised the banners of equality and empowerment, and young people called for a sustainable and liberated future in a new world.
“Will we make any difference?” Rick Kimbrough asked me a few hours earlier as we headed down a parkway heavily secured with police cars at every exit on our way into town. Kimbrough is an old high school friend, an African American steelworker with 37 years in a huge Beaver County mill that’s now shutdown and gone, Jones and Laughlin Steel. When I asked him to join me the day before, he was fired up to go already, until he heard a nephew had taken a bullet as a bystander in a senseless street fight. When he heard his nephew would do OK, he called back, ready to ride in with me and join the United Steel Workers contingent in ‘the People’s March’ at the close of the G20 sessions. Continue reading Pittsburgh First-Hand G20 Reports: Day Three
Pittsburgh G20 First-Hand Report Diaries: Day Two
Photo: USW Blue-Green Rally at G20 for Green Jobs, Clean Energy
Union Teach-Ins, a Nobel Laureate
Ninja Turtles and Steel City Rockers
By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue
One of the first things you see entering Pittsburgh from the Fort Pitt Bridge is that the United Steel Workers, headquartered in this working-class town, are determined to deliver a strong message to the G20 bigwigs.
“Jobs, Good Jobs, Greens Jobs Now!’ declared the huge five-story-tall banner draped from the top of the even taller USW headquarters building that faces the Golden Triangle and its hotels. Despite squads of militarized police, some in their Ninja turtle outfits, no one anywhere near the downtown area can miss it.
Today I’m headed for the day-long ‘Teach-In on Human Rights, Global Justice and the G20’ organized by the USW at their 4th floor conference center. Later in the afternoon on this gray, drizzly and humid Sept 23 day, I plan to hear Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz speak in the low-income Hill District, and attend a labor-environmentalist rally and concert featuring local politicians and rockers. Continue reading Pittsburgh G20 First-Hand Report Diaries: Day Two
AFL-CIO Pres. Rich Trumka Challenges G-20 Leaders to Respect Workers and Environment
by Seth Michaels, Sep 24, 2009
AFL-CIO Blog
Last night in Pittsburgh, at an event featuring former Vice President Al Gore and a broad coalition of environmental and union leaders, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka challenged the global heads of state attending the G-20 conference to build a new economic order that protects the dignity of workers and the planet.
The world cannot afford to continue with a globalization that works only for the very richest and leaves workers and the communities they live in behind, Trumka said. While the G-20 leaders meet, unions are issuing a declaration that calls for global action for good jobs:
Together, the labor movement and the environmental movement are a fighting force for change. This is our time—time to let the powers gathered here this week know exactly what we want, and exactly what we won’t stand for. We want a clean energy economy that creates good jobs, and we want a safe and healthy planet.
We need a new economic order that demands respect for both workers and the planet…globalization that benefits only the rich, the assault on workers and the planet and the devastation it breeds, has got to go.
Trumka noted that Pittsburgh wasn’t revitalized by the type of globalization that exports jobs—Pittsburgh’s growth came despite, not because of, the big banks and global corporations. In the real economy, Trumka said, it takes workers with good, safe jobs to build a lasting prosperity. We can’t go back to business, to the unfair economic system that caused our financial crisis, he said.
Trumka laid out a program of regulation of the finance industry, major public investment in clean energy and transportation, controls on carbon emissions and the freedom for all workers to form a union.
First-Hand Report: Demanding Jobs at the G20
Pittsburgh Diaries: Day One
March for Jobs in ‘The Hill’
By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue
The ‘G20’ is a big deal in Pittsburgh, with multiple stories in the local press and TV, even though many everyday citizens are wondering what it’s really all about and whether it’s worth all the fuss and expense.
“I know all the big shots from around the world are coming, I see that on the news” my dad told me last week. “But what do they actually do behind all those guards and closed doors?”
It’s a good question. The ‘big shots,’ of course, are all the top political and economic leaders of the world’s nineteen largest economies, with the European Union added to make twenty. And lots of people would love to be a fly on the wall when they start wrangling over who’s really to blame for the latest financial meltdown and how to recover from it.
I told my dad, for starters, that they’re cooking up schemes to have the rest of us pay off the gambling debts of Wall Street speculators while they ship more jobs overseas. That’s why the unions are going to be in streets, along with the environmental people, the antiwar movement, and everyone else. He’s dubious that it will do any good, but I told him I’ll be in the thick of it, and I’d let him know what happens.
Continue reading First-Hand Report: Demanding Jobs at the G20
AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Single-Payer National Health Care
AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Medicare for All
September 16, 2009, Pittsburgh, PA
In a historic vote that adds the nation’s leading voice of American workers to a broad national campaign, the AFL-CIO voted unanimously at its national convention here today to endorse the enactment of single-payer, universal healthcare for all Americans.
The resolution was sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and the Alameda County (California) Central Labor Council.
In urging its support, CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro, an AFL-CIO National Vice-President, noted the recent death of Crystal Lee Sutton, the real-life union organizer from the film Norma Rae who died last week after a long battle with cancer, exacerbated by her own three-year fight with her insurance company.
Continue reading AFL-CIO Convention Endorses Single-Payer National Health Care
Contending Views at the Beaver County Court House – Progressives Push Back Tea Party
‘Healthcare Not Warfare’ Vigil
Meets the 912 Tea Bagger Rally
By Carl Davidson and Tina Shannon
Beaver County Blue
Things were different than usual in front of the Beaver County Courthouse at 1:00 pm this Saturday September 12th. For one thing, a well-used car, festooned with the message “Support Health Care Reform!” was parked across the street. A Beaver County Transit bus driver and his family had arrived at 11:30 to park it there.
“We knew you’d be here,” his Dad said. “We showed up early so we’d get a good parking spot. We wanted it to be here for you.”
So when some 200 right wing ‘Teabaggers’ showed up for their anti-Health Care and anti-Obama protest at the Beaver County Court House, they found that their message wasn’t unchallenged. Directly across the street were over sixty people with a large ‘Bring the Troops Home Now!’ banner and dozens of placards declaring ‘Healthcare Not Warfare!’ and ‘Honk for Peace!’
The Teabaggers were newcomers to this venue, stirred up by a steady drumbeat from the Fox News network and its over-the-top racist commentator Glenn Beck. Their anxiety over the economic crisis had been stoked into a divisive politics of fear and resentment by the far right wing of the Republican Party.
The vigil for peace and healthcare, on the other hand, had been at this spot every Saturday for the last six years, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan got underway. Sponsored by Beaver County Peace Links and the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America, their ‘Honk for Peace’ signs and other placards linking ending the war to health care and supporting the troops had become a well-known and popular fixture to county residents. Continue reading Contending Views at the Beaver County Court House – Progressives Push Back Tea Party
Over 70 Labor Organizations Call on AFL-CIO Convention to Endorse HR 676 – National Healthcare Act
Pittsburgh, PA. More than seventy labor organizations have submitted resolutions to the AFL-CIO Convention calling for the labor federation to endorse HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).
Resolutions were submitted by five national and international unions including the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), the International Alliance of Theatrical & Stage Employees (IATSE), the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), California School Employees Association (CSEA), and the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers (IFPTE).
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 
