LAS VEGAS–Stagnation of workers’ wages and declining benefits for the last 40 years, with the Great Recession piled on top of that, has left U.S. workers “confused, angry, frustrated and scared,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says. Speaking to the Steelworkers convention in Las Vegas in mid-August, Trumka added that bleak prospects for the workers’ children only add to those woes.  […]

WASHINGTON –AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has a blunt warning for the nation’s politicians, regardless of party: Pass an infrastructure bill this year, to create jobs and help the economy, or suffer at the polls in the fall. Trumka delivered that message May 15 before a large crowd in front of the AFL-CIO building, massed for a rally as part of […]

CHICAGO –The AFL-CIO stepped forward to publicly proclaim its membership in a wide-ranging coalition of progressive groups, the Democracy Alliance, even as that coalition turns its attention from grant-making for progressive causes to electoral politics. The alliance, founded in 1995, welcomed federation President Richard Trumka to its April 29 meeting in Chicago.  The alliance requires member groups to pay a […]

WASHINGTON –Declaring presidential “fast-track” trade authority dead, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is challenging Democratic President Barack Obama to construct a new pro-worker U.S. trade policy, as part of larger pro-worker economic policy. In a major speech on fast-track and trade, and in Q&A afterwards, Trumka called the president’s trade plan “dead on arrival” in the U.S. Senate because then-Senate Finance […]

WASHINGTON –AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and a top group that fights for female workers are praising Democratic President Barack Obama’s plan to expand eligibility for overtime pay to millions of workers nationwide. And Larry Hanley, the Amalgamated Transit Union president, agrees.  But he says Obama should bring in other workers, too – especially those inter-city bus drivers now not covered […]

WASHINGTON—Government workers’ union leaders and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka slammed the federal budget deal top lawmakers reached on Dec. 10, saying it unfairly hits the nation’s 2 million federal workers – who have borne the brunt of prior budget cuts. And Trumka hit Congress for refusing to ask those who have gained the most from the slow economic recovery – […]

WASHINGTON —Union leaders lauded Nelson Mandela as one of the world’s greatest fighters for human rights and democracy after the longtime South African liberation leader – and his nation’s first president after the fall of apartheid – died Dec. 5 at age 95. “President Nelson Mandela gave more than 60 years of his life fighting for the rights of South […]

WASHINGTON—Achieving the American Dream “is still elusive” for millions of U.S. workers – low-paid and middle class, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says. In a wide-ranging interview/breakfast with selected reporters, hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, the 64-year-old leader said the fed will spend its convention in September in Los Angeles in intensive sessions with unionists and their progressive allies figuring […]

Thank you to Wendi Caporicci, secretary of AFSA and 40-year veteran of the Oakland Unified School District, for taking some pictures of of this ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 18 as educators, the AFL-CIO and the Clinton Initiative celebrate their collaboration to create jobs. The AFL-CIO also announced the energy efficiency retrofit their headquarters in Washington D.C. will undergo.

WASHINGTON (PAI)—Two unions, the Transport Workers and the Machinists, representing workers at American Airlines and US Airways, which plan to merge, have solved one big snag the proposed combined companies foisted on them, seniority. But the president of Machinists District 142 is objecting to the merger, saying US Airways is ignoring contract negotiations with its own mechanics in favor of […]