Evergreene Digest A Journal of Progress for the Rest of Us

     

If you could ask AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka one question, what would it be?

Now’s your chance.

On the one-year anniversary of their election, the AFL-CIO’s top leadership team, Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, will respond to your questions in a live Web chat on Thursday, Sept. 16, at 4 p.m. EDT at www.aflcio.org.

Submit your question now, in text form or by video, to www.aflcio.org/askofficers. Read and recommend other questions, get your friends to recommend yours and encourage them to submit questions, too.

The AFL-CIO leadership team will discuss our union movement, America’s jobs and economic crisis, the 2010 elections, AFL-CIO leadership, legislation, corporate greed and more—whatever is on your mind. They won’t be able to answer every one of the questions, but they’ll be online for at least 45 minutes and will respond to as many as possible.

Submit your question now to www.aflcio.org/askofficers.

Visit www.aflcio.org/askofficers to recommend questions. And then stop back here to watch the webcast live and comment in our live chat tool: Thursday, Sept. 16, at 4 p.m. EDT.

The United Steelworkers (USW) today filed a comprehensive trade case under Section 301 of the trade law claiming China has used hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, performance requirements, preferential practices and other trade-illegal activities to dominate the renewable energy market.

The 5,800-page petition, filed with the U.S. Trade Representative, identifies five major areas where China’s protectionist and predatory practices helped develop their green energy sector at the expense of production and job creation here in the United States. The actions violate the terms China agreed to when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the petition says. Under federal trade law, the Obama administration has 45 days from the date of filing to determine whether to accept the petition for further action.

“Green jobs are key to our future,” said USW President Leo Gerard.

Right now, China is taking every possible step—many of them illegal under international trade laws—to ensure that it will control that sector. America can’t afford to cede more of its manufacturing base to China.
 
It’s a national priority to reduce our dependence on foreign energy supplies. But if all we do is exchange our dependence on foreign oil for a dependence on Chinese alternative and renewable energy production equipment, we will have traded away our nation’s energy, economic and job security.

In a telephone press conference this morning, Gerard said the violations have helped Chinese companies expand their share of the world market for wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear power plants and other clean energy equipment, at the expense of jobs in the United States and elsewhere.

USW Vice President Tom Conway told reporters:

America has to stand up for itself at some point and say these were the agreements we made and we expect you to live by them. People don’t understand that [imports] in renewable goods from China in the period 2001–2007 into the U.S. have increased by sevenfold.

We’ve been told we’ve lost manufacturing jobs in the past ands we can’t bring them back in the past. These are good high-tech jobs that can build a foundation in America and bring back some research and development.  

 “It is time for the U.S. government to put an end to the unfair trade practices by countries like China that undermine the push for good jobs and clean energy investment,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.  

The AFL-CIO applauds the action by the United Steelworkers in filing a comprehensive clean energy trade case against the Chinese government. The predatory trade practices of the Chinese government have consistently violated the rules they promised to follow upon joining the World Trade Organization. Their actions have directly led to massive outsourcing and unrelenting trade deficits that have cost millions of American workers their jobs. 

Click here to read more or to download  a copy of the executive summary.

    New Orleans Saints Player Rep Jon Stinchcomb sports a “Save Avondale Shipyard” tee shirt at the NFL Players Live! event.        

On the football field they are the Super Bowl champions, but earlier this week, the New Orleans Saints showed they are workers’ champions, too.

At the NFL Players Live community event in the Crescent City, the NFL players joined with the Teamsters, Feed the Children and School of the Legends, the NFL’s online football social community, to distribute food to local families in need.

As part of the program, many of the players wore “Save Avondale Shipyard” t-shirts to show their support for the workers at Avondale shipyard, which is set to close in 2013, putting nearly 5,000 people out of jobs.

About 40 Avondale workers also showed up to help the players distribute food.

What are working families looking for in a candidate this fall? Let Machinists (IAM) President Tom Buffenbarger explain. Speaking to members of IAM, Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) and other Washington state unions at rally for Sen. Patty Murray in Seattle, he said:

Our candidates are the type of candidates who bring the one word we want to hear to a campaign. What word is that brothers?

A booming chorus of “JOBS!!” was the answer.

Buffenbarger said Murray has a solid jobs track record, especially in preserving and attracting aerospace jobs—like the Air Force’s new air tanker—-to Washington State.

If it were not for Patty, brothers and sisters, Europeans would be building the tanker today.  She has been relentless. She continually looks for ways to invest in Washington state aerospace jobs.

Murray, who is running against millionaire real estate developer Dino Rossi, noted that just before Congress left town, lawmakers approved a jobs bill that saves or create nearly a million jobs for teachers, public employees, police officers, firefighters and others. The bill, says Murray, is

fully paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes for multi national corporations who ship your jobs overseas. I thought then who in the world would support extending corporate tax loopholes over education for our kids.

Well I found him his name is Dino Rossi.

Follow the IUPAT’s “It’s About the Jobs” Bus Tour” here. For more on Labor 2010 in Washington State, click here. Thanks to Kathy Cummings Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) communications director for the video.

    Some 3,000 union members from four states rallied last month in support of locked-out Honeywell workers.        

This past weekend, just one day after the federal government allowed Honeywell to start up core production at its uranium enrichment facility in Metropolis, Ill., with replacement workers, an explosion rocked the plant. No one was reported injured, but local union officials say the plant has not been in production since the blast.

For the past two months, union workers, members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669, have been locked out of the plant after contract negotiations broke down over Honeywell’s demand that workers give up their retiree health care coverage and pension plans. Other issues include management demands to eliminate seniority, contract out about 20 percent of the work at the plant and make changes in overtime pay.

Local 7-669 President Darrell Lillie says negotiations will not resume until Oct. 11. In the meantime, the workers are running a 24/7 picket line. Last month, 3,000 people from four states rallied in support of the locked-out Metropolis workers.

Safety is important at any worksite, but especially at the Metropolis plant. This facility is the only one in the United States that can convert uranium into the extremely deadly UF6, which is used in nuclear reactors. Since it is the only conversion plant of its kind in the country, it is critical that workers in the plant be familiar with that plant.

Lillie says it takes many years to learn the skills needed at the plant and the conversion process is hard to troubleshoot if something goes wrong.

Honeywell CEO David Cote, a member of President Obama’s deficit commission, locked out the 230 workers on June 28, even though they offered to continue working under the terms of their expired contract. Honeywell had proposed eliminating retiree health care and increasing workers’ out-of-pocket health care maximums to $8,500 a year.

In a letter to President Obama, the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) asked the president to remove Cote from the commission.

Attention, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada and all you other Republican congressional candidates flopping around on the far right banks of the mainstream! Phasing out, privatizing or otherwise eliminating Social Security does not sit well with the vast majority of the voting public.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 68 percent of voters are “uncomfortable” with candidates who espouse such notions. Uncomfortable is putting it nicely. It’s downright painful to listen to U.S. Senate wannabes and other Republican hopefuls “babble into the vapors” about phasing out Social Security (turnabout’s fair play, Alan Simpson!).

Of course, Simpson, as co-chair of the federal budget deficit commission, is one of the leading howlers baying about the coming demise of Social Security (check out its real long-term health here) and the need to raise the retirement age and make other painful cuts. You might say he is one of the biggest enablers of phase-out crowd.

Thanks to Bill Scheer at the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) for highlighting the poll.

     

As world famous soccer announcer Andres Cantor would say,  “Goooooooal!” We just got word that the Women’s Professional Soccer Players Union (WPSPU) won recognition today through majority sign-up certified by an arbitrator.

The more than 150 players make up the seven teams in Women’s Professional Soccer  (WPS) that is now in its second season with teams in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hayward in  Southern California, Philadelphia, Piscataway, N.J., and Washington, D.C.  It is the highest level of professional soccer for women in North America.

     

With just one month to go before the World Day for Decent Work, Oct. 7, trade unions across the world are stepping up pressure for decent jobs and social justice. And bloggers can play a big role in spreading the message.

 Bloggers Unite has set up a special World Day for Decent Work site here and is asking bloggers to submit blogs on or before Oct. 7 about events in their areas. Blogs about the hundreds of events planned for Oct. 7 around the world will show world leaders how determined workers are to get decent jobs with good pay, safe working conditions and benefits. Take part by signing up today to submit blogs to Bloggers Unite here. 

Organized by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), World Day for Decent Work is a day for mobilization around the world: one day when all the trade unions in the world stand up for decent work, at home and abroad.

“Working people are still paying a heavy price for the world economic crisis, as the banking and finance sector returns to business as usual,” says ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.

This year’s World Day for Decent Work will be a peak moment in the global trade union movement’s action for fundamental reform of the global economy. We will be holding political leaders to account on jobs, financial regulation and quality public services, and governments would be well advised to heed the trade union call.

There’s plenty to blog about. Yesterday, millions of workers in India took to the streets in a national strike against national and state government employment and industrial relations policies. In France, unions organized national rallies and strike actions to protest major changes to retirement and pensions proposed by the Sarkozy government. And in the United States, corporate greed at the expense of workers at Mott’s and the efforts by America’s unions to push for job creation are just some of what’s going on here.  

Trade unions across Europe are planning a massive demonstration in Brussels, the capital of the European Union, on Sept. 29 to protest austerity measures. Some 100,000 demonstrators will join the march. The same day a general strike will take place in Spain and protests are also planned in the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Portugal. Massive protests across Germany are being organized by the ITUC affiliate DGB in the coming weeks over government finance, employment and social security policies.

The ITUC also launched a special interactive website for the World Day for Decent Work, with information from last year’s events and updates on this year’s actions. Organizations planning events can upload their information onto the multi-language site, which also features a Twitter feed, video and photo galleries and other interactive functions. It also will contain information on the main themes for the 2010 events.

     

Illinois AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Tim Drea knows what it’s like to be unemployed—he’s experienced it himself, as a laid-off coal miner.  He knows, too, how important it is to keep jobless union members involved in the union movement and the fight for working family-friendly policies. That fact turned out to be the answer to a little mystery that presented itself recently to Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate.

Working America staff was mystified when a stack of membership registrations arrived in the mail from the Illinois AFL-CIO. Although Working America had sent membership cards to many state federations and central labor councils around the country in 2009 as part of our effort to organize jobless workers through the Unemployment Lifeline, these registrations did not use those cards. Working America was not engaged in an active organizing drive on the ground in Illinois. How did the state federation there sign up so many people?

Turns out that under Drea’s leadership, the Illinois AFL-CIO handed out fliers at dislocated worker workshops and at the local workforce investment centers, where dislocated and laid-off workers go for resources and assistance. Through its Member Assistance Program and the Peer Outreach Program, Illinois AFL-CIO staff designed a flier and sign-up form that got straight to the point. They then went out and held thousands of conversations with jobless workers and ultimately registered more than 2,000 new Working America members.  Those new members now have the ongoing opportunity—and will get reminders—to participate in the union movement and hear what important legislation is being debated that will affect them.

Secretary-Treasurer Drea told Working America Program Director Maggie Priebe that the effort came about as the Illinois AFL-CIO watched the repeated battles to renew unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits play out.  Those battles have been a constant reminder of the vast number of long-term unemployed workers—and, all too often, of the contempt elected Republicans have for working people who have been victims of a recession spurred by financial policies those same Republicans promoted.

People who’ve worked their whole lives, who have gone from being optimistic about their prospects to being desperate to settle for any job, at a fraction of what they used to make, and still can’t find work. So many of those people feel left behind, by their old employers, by the economy, by the government.

But the AFL-CIO isn’t leaving those people behind—and today, an additional 2,000 of them know that the Illinois AFL-CIO and Working America are with them, fighting for something better for working people.

Photojournalist David Bacon has captured the pride and determination in the faces of hotel workers at the downtown Hilton in San Francisco who have spent the past few weeks in a dawn to dusk picket line.

The workers, who chant to guests, “Don’t check in, check out!” are demanding that the hotel’s owners negotiate a new contract with their union, UNITEHERE! Local 2.

San Francisco’s largest hotels are demanding cuts in health and retirement benefits and increased workloads.

A typical San Francisco hotel worker earns $30,000 per year.

These are their faces—all races and ages, together on the picket line.

     

Most of us, especially the jobless among us, agree with Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), who yesterday said, “Jobs is Job One for this Congress.” But then there’s Sharron Angle.

The Tea Party/Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada says that if she unseats Sen. Harry Reid, she’s not going to be wasting her time worrying about putting Americans back to work. After all, she’ll have to get started on eliminating Social Security and Medicare. Here’s what she says about jobs and Congress:

As your senator, I’m not in the business of creating jobs….People ask me, what are you going to do to develop jobs in your state? Well, that’s not my job as a U.S. senator.

So, if elected, just what is her job? Well, a new ad from Reid points out that among other items on  her “to-do list” are protecting tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, opposing Wall Street reform (in fact, she says it doesn’t need any reform) and “other extreme ideas that will make thing worse.”

If she does win, maybe she won’t have time to free Wall Street from government oppression or throw a protective shield around job-exporting companies because she’ll be awfully darn busy protecting the nation from all the “domestic enemies” she says are serving in Congress. Maybe she can use Joe McCarthy’s old office.

      

People who desperately want to go back to work don’t want to hear the same old rhetoric from politicians this year—they want candidates to put politics aside and tell us all what they are going to do to get America working again.

Yesterday, the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) launched a coast-to-coast “It’s About The Jobs” bus tour to connect IUPAT members across the country with the candidates the union believes are the best hope to generate and bring back jobs.

 The bus, wrapped in IUPAT signature black and gold, began its monthlong trip in Seattle and will make its way across the country, winding through the West and Midwest and New York City, before ending its trip in Delaware.

IUPAT President James Williams says the bus tour will educate candidates about the need for jobs for all Americans and their families.

You can follow the IUPAT bus tour here and get regular updates from the road on Twitter @GoIUPAT. Speaking of Twitter, even the ‘It’s About Jobs!’ bus driver is getting in on the action. You can read his thoughts on tour events by following @JakeTheDriver. You also can watch videos from the campaign on the IUPAT YouTube channel,  www.youtube.com/goiupat, or their Facebook page.

 The stakes for working people in this election are high. The entire U.S. House of Representatives and 37 Senate seats are up for election—and along with the hundreds of state and local races, the outcomes will determine how well all of us can shape a pro-worker agenda. AFL-CIO unions are working hard as part of Labor 2010 to mobilize working families across the country to make jobs the number one issue in the campaigns and to make sure candidates commit to creating real jobs to put America back to work. For more information on Labor 2010, click here.

      

Open the door to the future or slam it shut? That’s the choice in this fall’s elections as a new AFSCME ad makes clear. While Republicans in Congress blocked Democratic efforts to advance job-creating bills, they voted to lay off hundreds of thousands of Americans—while taking care of CEOs by closing tax loopholes.

The  two-week ad is running in Michigan, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania to back Democratic candidates in those states now under attack, in part, because of their support for the jobs bill passed in August. The jobs bill provided states with $26 billion in emergency funding for vital services. The TV ad will be complemented by radio spots, Web ads, and this week, AFSCME is sending more than 300 staff to targeted districts around the country to engage in member education and get-out-the-vote drives.

Is the nation’s economy what we want now? No. Would it be far worse under Republican leadership? You betcha.

When AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker spoke Sunday at St. Margaret’s & San Francisco de Asis Episcopal Church in Miami Lakes, Fla., as part of Labor in the Pulpits, the service had just begun when a member of the choir slumped down in her chair and fell to the floor.

The service stopped while the clergy and members called 911 for emergency help. Within minutes, fire, police and emergency medical assistance arrived to give the woman medical care. Each one was a union public servant—the people whose jobs are in danger from state and local budget cuts.

After the medics left to take the woman to the hospital, the service resumed. The ministers led prayers for her swift recovery. 

Reflecting on the incident over the Labor Day holiday, Holt Baker said the situation showed that:

Prayer is good and it helps. But sometimes you also need public servants.

Dozens of newspaper, radio, TV and Internet media featured op-eds over Labor Day by union leaders on issues that workers care about—Social Security, jobs, young workers, immigration and job safety. While most columns ran in local media, several received national attention, including a piece on Social Security on AOL and job creation in the National Journal. A column written in Spanish on immigration appeared in several Latino publications and a column on workplace safety ran in newspapers in at least three states. Here are some samples. Click on the author’s name to read the full column.

Social Security: Wall Street and congressional Republicans are…pushing for Social Security benefit cuts, floating every idea from reducing the inflation adjustment to raising the retirement age.

 …if we truly want to fix what’s broken, let’s look ahead to designing an employer-based retirement system for future generations while strengthening Social Security. —AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka

Young workers: Are we raising a generation of kids who won’t be equipped to dream? How do we restore for them the promise of what America should and can be?

 We make the public investments that will put America back to work—rebuilding our infrastructure, jump-starting green energy technology and tackling the extreme problems of distressed communities. Workers with good safe jobs won’t need to bump younger workers off the escalator and out of summer jobs. This is the best way to bring our economy back to life, restore consumer demand and fix that broken escalator for America’s working people of all ages. —AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler

Job creation: Ultimately, our nation has to face a decision: Do we aspire for better for America’s families, or do we want to strip away the best of our nation to lower the common denominator? And are we okay with big corporations encouraging working people to form a circular firing squad when the target should be squarely on corporations themselves? —AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker

Workplace safety: We should remember that restoring the freedom of workers to organize unions also is an important piece of ensuring workplace safety, because there is no greater protection than empowered workers, on the job every day, looking out for each other. —Trumka and Georgia  AFL-CIO President Richard Ray. Similar pieces ran in several other states as well.

     

Putting people to work making things in America will be Democrats’ top priority when Congress returns Sept. 15, two House leaders said today. During a telephone press conference, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said House Democrats will present a series of bill in this Congress and the next to help revive manufacturing and to implement President Obama’s infrastructure rebuilding plan.

Rep. Xavier  Becerra (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said the Democrats want to put to rest the idea pushed by congressional Republicans that the only way to create jobs is to give tax breaks to the richest Americans.

We want to celebrate Labor Day. We want to make this a day for workers again by making products in America again. Jobs is Job One for this Congress and we’re going to continue to do this despite what the naysayers may say.

The  “Make It in America” initiative is a 17-bill package designed to help manufacturers recover from the Great Recession and the loss of 5.6 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade.

 The House Ways and Means Committee will hold important hearings soon on the issue of China’s manipulation of its currency. The AFL-CIO has been urging Congress to take quick, strong action to stop the unfair and illegal advantage against U.S. producers that China and other nations gain by undervaluing their currency.

 The AFL-CIO is backing S. 3134, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2010, which would give our government the tools and resolve it needs to address currency manipulation.

Another major bill that may come to the floor is H.R. 5893, the Investing in American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010. Introduced by Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin (D-Mich.), the bill would close loopholes that encourage companies to ship jobs overseas. The legislation would spur job creation here in the United States by extending successful Recovery Act provisions, including the Build America Bonds program to fund domestic infrastructure improvements and the Emergency Fund for Job Creation and Assistance program to help states immediately support job programs. 

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who joined in the conference call, told reporters “we desperately need decisive action from our leaders on both fiscal and monetary policy.”

It’s time for our leaders to show they are economic patriots. That’s what we’re looking for—economic patriotism. Leaders fighting to protect jobs, fighting unfair trade deals and putting us on a path to make things in America again. In short, to invest in America and American workers.

     

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group CEO Larry Young pocketed $6.5 million last year. But he thinks his employees at Mott’s applesauce plant in Williamson, N.Y., should make $20,000 a year. So, the corporate conglomerate has been trying to cut $1.50 an hour—$3,000 a year—from the salaries of the 350 skilled workers, while freezing pensions and health care.

But there’s no need to bring up CEO pay. Really. According to Dr. Pepper Snapple Senior Vice President Robert Callan:

Executive pay is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

Really. More from Callan in this great segment from PBS:

The Williamson employees have enjoyed wages that have exceeded 50 percent of the market for a very long time. The best example I can give you is one of our forklift drivers at the Williamson facility makes $20 an hour. Local market in the Williamson area a forklift driver will make about $9.90 an hour—about $20,000 a year.

The Dr. Pepper Snapple Group made $555 million in profits in 2009, another point that Thomas Culhane, a Mott’s forklift operator, says is not irrelevant:

I don’t think that’s fair that a multimillion-dollar company can tell us…you guys have to accept all these cuts, when they are making money hand over fist.

Workers at the Mott’s Williamson plant, who process half of the state’s apples into juice or sauce, have been on strike since May in opposition to the corporate-imposed $1.50 hourly pay cut. A pay cut that mostly likely will line the pockets of the Texas-based CEOs.

Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum says Mott’s, like most U.S. corporations, is keeping the profit.

It’s not been reinvested in new capital equipment. It’s not been used to help purchase new technology. So, this is the first time that we have ever had where basically all the gains in income went simply to corporate profits. 

Take action to support Mott’s workers. Go to www.NoBadApples.org and click on the Facebook Actions box.

And join others who are tweeting their support of the strikers to Mott’s. Sign up to follow Mott’s on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Motts.

Most people celebrate working people on Labor Day. But not the extremists on Fox News. There, hate-mongering never takes a day off.

Here are a few ugly examples of Fox from our friends at Media Matters for America:

• Tucker Carlson attacks autoworkers.
• Glenn Beck assails an 80-year-old labor activist because she spoke at a high school.
• Stuart Varney criticizes a union-backed Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would allow more shareholders of public companies to use proxy votes to nominate board members. 

Clearly Fox opposes opening up the election process to shareholders who have a financial stake in a company because it would mean less chance for corporate greed and mismanagement.

Meanwhile, the anti-worker crowd doesn’t like being called out by Media Matters. So what do they do—they resort to thuggish suggestions of violence, saying Media Matters employees should be “curb-stomped.”

More here.

While AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was in Milwaukee Labor Day with President Obama and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler traveled throughout California, taking part in three Labor Day celebrations. In Los Angeles, she told an enthusiastic crowd at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor ’s Labor Day breakfast:

There’s nothing wrong with good jobs in America. There’s nothing wrong with trade that creates jobs—instead of killing them.

At Detroit’s massive Labor Day parade and rally, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told the more than 50,000 participants we must use our votes to ensure that jobs are created:  

For the next 57 days [until the election], the labor movement is going to be hard core about politics—the politics of change and not the politics of “No.” What we’re working for is jobs—jobs and the future.

Before traveling to Milwaukee, Trumka joined Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) at the Lorain Labor Day Festival near Cleveland. Read Trumka’s remarks in Milwaukee here and in Ohio here.

After speaking in Los Angeles, Shuler also attended the Sacramento Central Labor Council’s picnic along with gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown. Later that day, she took part in the Alameda Labor Council’s Labor Day barbecue in Oakland. Shuler also took part in a Labor in the Pulpit service Sunday in Los Angeles, while Holt Baker spoke to worshippers in North Miami Lakes, Fla., on Sunday. Read Holt Baker’s remarks in Florida here.

 

  

Karen Hickey, Wisconsin AFL-CIO political field communications assistant, contributed to this story.

In a Labor Day address to more than 10,000 union members and their families in Milwaukee, President Obama announced a massive new job-creating road, rail, runway and air traffic control rebuilding project.

Speaking to the Milwaukee Area Labor Council’s annual LaborFest celebration, Obama said it was “the great American middle class that made our economy the envy of the world. It’s got to be that way again.”

It was folks like you, after all, who forged that middle class. It was working men and women who made the 20th century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today—the 40-hour workweek, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans, those cornerstones of middle class security that all bear the union label.

Joining Obama at the lakefront festivities were AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Labor Council Secretary Sheila Cochran and Wisconsin AFL-CIO President David Newby.

Trumka told the crowd, “Working women and men in Milwaukee—and all across our country—made America ‘No. 1’ in the world.  Now it’s time for America to make working people ‘No. 1!’”

It’s time for JOBS.  For economic patriotism.  I want to see the words “Made in America” again—because it’s time to start exporting the things we make, instead of jobs!

Obama said the massive rebuilding project will build on the investments already made under the Recovery Act, and

create jobs for American workers to strengthen our economy now, and increase our nation’s growth and productivity in the future.

According to the White House the plan would:

• Rebuild 150,000 miles of roads—renewing our commitment to the backbone of our transportation system;
• Construct and maintain 4,000 miles of rail—enough to go coast-to-coast;
• Rehabilitate or reconstruct 150 miles of runway—while putting in place a NextGen air traffic control system that will reduce travel time and delays.
• Create national infrastructure bank.

Click here for a fact sheet on the infrastructure plan.

Don Burmester, a member of Machinists Local 66 (IAM), said the emphasis on jobs is just the message he wanted to hear, and the message that needs to be sent in November.

We need to get regular people back to work. I’ve seen the other party put political games ahead of anything decent to make the president look bad.  We need to get the focus back on the economy and away from foolish political plays.

With just 57 days to go before the Nov. 2 election and with control of Congress at stake, Trumka said that Obama and Democratic leaders

share our vision of an America built on good jobs—and together, we’re going to get America back to work. It won’t be the bankers. It won’t be the Tea Partiers. It won’t be the Party of NO.

It’ll be you.  It’ll be us.  Together

For more on the AFL-CIO’s Labor 2010 mobilization, click here.

Obama said that Republican leaders, the same ones whose decade of failed and flawed policies shattered the economy, have yet to offer any new ideas and strategies.

When the leader of their campaign committee was asked on national television what Republicans would do if they took over Congress, he actually said they’d follow “the exact same agenda” as they did before I took office. The exact same agenda.

So basically, they’re betting that between now and November, you’ll come down with a case of amnesia. They think you’ll forget what their agenda did to this country. They think you’ll just believe that they’ve changed. These are the folks whose policies helped devastate our middle class and drive our economy into a ditch. And now they’re asking you for the keys back.

Click here for President Obama’s full remarks.

The day kicked off with a parade of more than 6,000 union members. The Milwaukee LaborFest, which dates back to 1965,  was just one of hundreds of Labor Day events that working people held across the nation to call for good jobs, a stronger middle class and high voter turn-out for November’s midterm elections. We’ll bring you a wrap up of Labor Day action tomorrow.