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Georgia Runoffs Are Ground Zero for Workers and Their Allies

“We are facing two crucial runoff elections that will decide the difference between a pro-worker majority and an anti-union majority in the U.S. Senate,” the AFL-CIO said in setting up links for state feds, local central labor councils, and local and national unions to phone bank from around the U.S. for unionists to call Georgians. AFSCME, the Coalition for Labor Union Women, the Communications Workers, and the Alliance for Retired Americans are also running phone banks, among others. “Control of the U.S. Senate is still up for grabs,” said AFSCME President Lee Saunders.

Coalition of Labor Union Women: Relaunch of Text Banking ‘Snappy Hour’

The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) has relaunched its text banking “Snappy Hour” events, where union members will be texting potential voters in Georgia and encouraging them to vote. The next event will be held Dec. 11. There will be two shifts, one from 5–7 p.m. ET and another from 8–10 p.m. ET.

Culinary Workers Union Take Credit For Biden's Win In Nevada

NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with Geoconda Arguello Kline, the secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Union Local 226 in Las Vegas, about the union's reaction to the election results.

Listen to the segment on NPR.

What a Biden Victory Will Mean for the American Workforce

With Joe Biden about to enter the Oval Office, the American workplace is going to look much different. The former vice president and U.S. senator has four decades of relationships with union leaders behind him, setting him up to potentially be the most labor-friendly president the U.S. has ever had. Biden, who won the endorsement of almost every major union in the country, has made labor reform a fundamental part of his program and is widely expected to name at least one union leader to his Cabinet.

Organized Labor Helped Boost Biden In Critical Battlegrounds

Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO labor federation, told reporters on a call Thursday that his union members came out overwhelmingly in favor of Biden. The AFL-CIO conducted a poll of 1,000 members on Nov. 2 and 3 and found that they preferred Biden to Trump 58% to 37%. Trumka said that was about four points better than Hillary Clinton did in a similar poll of federation members around the 2016 election. “In Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Joe Biden’s firewall was union-made,” Trumka said. “We did not want an excuse not to go out on the doors,” D.

Trump Is the Anti-Worker President

Trump’s OSHA sports a woefully anemic force of just 750 federal inspectors for the entire country (1,815 total when you include state inspectors)—meaning it would take an astounding 165 years for them to inspect every American workplace, an all-time high, according to a report by the AFL-CIO. That’s one safety inspector for every 79,262 workers.

Read the full article in Common Dreams.

Vote for Joe Biden, the Working Person's Friend

Will Trump’s Broken Promises to Working-Class Voters Cost Him the Election?

Last December, Bob Kemper, the grievance chairman of United Steelworkers Local 1299, was summoned to a conference room at Great Lakes Works, a U.S. Steel plant just south of Detroit. A cohort of senior managers told Kemper and three other union officers that the automotive industry, which buys almost all of the plant’s steel, was cutting its car production. With reduced demand for its product, most of Great Lakes would be “indefinitely idled.” Kemper knew this meant that members were getting laid off, but the terminology was unfamiliar.

Paid for by AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Treasury Fund, 815 16th St. NW, Washington, DC 20006. Richard L. Trumka, President. Not authorized by any candidate or by any candidate's committee.