Free Republic

Barack Obama was meeting with union leaders at the White House Tuesday morning, part of an effort to retain organized labor’s support going into the 2012 election. A meeting with the AFL-CIO Executive Committee at 9:15 a.m. was the first item listed on Obama’s public schedule for Tuesday. The meeting is closed to the press.

Incensed at reports that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) may be nearing agreement on a debt-ceiling deal that would involve cuts to federal entitlement programs but no immediate provisions to raise taxes, labor and liberal groups are urging their members to rally against such a plan. On Friday, a coalition of national groups including MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the AFL-CIO organized an “emergency call-in day,” urging members in an e-mail to contact Democratic members of Congress and tell them to “keep their promises to reject any debt deal that slashes programs...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama's rocky relationship with unions took a few more lumps Wednesday as labor groups pounded both a deficit-cutting proposal he embraced as well as the White House's praise of Walmart. AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka started by hammering the Gang of Six proposal released Tuesday that would cut the deficit by $3.7 trillion over 10 years, in part by limiting popular middle class deductions for home mortgages, health insurance and retirement savings -- a plan Obama hailed Tuesday. "Both parties keep telling us that deficit reduction requires 'tough choices' and 'shared sacrifice' and 'taking on sacred cows,'" Trumka...

Shonda Sheen of Yellow Springs, Ohio, was laid off in December 2009 and is about to run out of unemployment benefits. Because of state budget cuts, she also could soon lose the health care nurse who helps care for her mother who has dementia. At the last job she applied for, she was told 450 others had also applied for the same position.Sheen and Bob Stein, a 60-year-old former salesman who has been out of work since May 2010, are two of the 14 million Americans who are unemployed—and their story is not being told in the midst of the debate...

The idea of such a bank has been around since the 1990s but has never gained significant attention until now. In March a bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate that gained the support of the US Chamber of Commerce, America’s leading business lobby, and the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest labor federation — two groups on opposite sides of most debates. The BUILD Act, proposed by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Kay Hutchinson, R-Texas, and Mark Warner, D-Va., would create a national infrastructure bank that would provide loans and loan guarantees to encourage private investment in upgrading America’s infrastructure. There are...

Bills strengthening the hand of public employee unions in bargaining for pay, pensions and working conditions are moving through the Legislature, usually on party-line votes with Democrats in support and Republicans opposed. The new governor, Jerry Brown, dismayed fellow Democrats last week by vetoing a bill making it easier for farm workers to unionize in the private sector. Now he is likely to receive a number of bills pushed by powerful public employee unions. Having a Democrat in the governor’s office, who relied on union contributions as he defeated a self-funded Republican who set a spending record, gives labor leaders...

Well, according to AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka, only the American “labor movement” is all about the “real” American Dream. I guess that means the rest of us haven’t got a clue. Opening with Van Jones’ “American Dream” mantra, Trumka announced his pledge of 12 million union laborers and their families to support Van Jones’ “Rebuild the Dream” movement. Trumka then goes on to explain that the real American Dream is not about a few of us having a lot, but about all of us having a “fair portion.” “The American Dream is not that a few of us will get...

Well, the vote is in, and the TSA has chosen the AFL-CIO, the largest federal employee union in the country, to represent them in collective bargaining negotiations with the government. The union will represent a total of 44,000 workers at the Transportation Security Administration. The Blaze/AP reports: Federal officials tallying the votes say AFGE, [a branch of the AFL-CIO], received 8,903 votes, while National Treasury Employees Union got 8,447 votes. The runoff was held after neither union received more than 50 percent of votes during the first election earlier this year. The vote came after TSA head John Pistole agreed...

Public-sector unions in Wisconsin are having a hard time hiding their rage over the most recent round in the state's fiscal war. Last Tuesday, June 14, by a 4-3 margin, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld a new law curbing collective bargaining rights for most state and local employees, part of a larger budget bill. The decision overturns a permanent injunction issued May 26 by Dane County (Madison) Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi blocking the law on grounds that Senate Republicans violated the state Open Meetings Law. Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug LaFollette announced he will publish the measure on June 28,...

Today’s Republican-led congressional field hearing in North Charleston could feature some high-powered spectators from the other side of the aisle. U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and at least two other well-known Democratic lawmakers were spotted this morning arriving at Charleston International Airport around 10 a.m. from Washington, D.C. Lafe Solomon, the chief attorney for the NLRB who has been summoned to testify in today’s proceedings, also was seen getting off the same plane by a reporter from The Post and Courier who was boarding a flight. Solomon has filed lawsuit against Boeing Co. over union discrimination, which is...

Madison - One day after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered the reinstatement of collective-bargaining legislation that potentially affects thousands of public-sector employees, a coalition of unions filed suit in federal court seeking to block it.The Wisconsin State AFL-CIO on Wednesday joined a number of other unions seeking to halt Gov. Scott Walker's controversial collective bargaining legislation.The groups include the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 24, AFSCME Council 40, AFSCME Council 48, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), the Wisconsin State Employees Union, The Wisconsin State AFL-CIO and the Service...

Senate leaders and labor officials have made it painfully clear they do not want you to know about the sweet deals given to college dropout Stephen Iannazzi, the taxpayer-funded $88,112-a-year “special assistant” to Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio. Indeed, it appears they may be engaged in some kind of sub-rosa program to silence questions. Stephen is the son of Donald Iannazzi, the business manager for Local 1033, the Laborers International Union affiliate that employs 30-year-old lawyer Charles Ruggerio. Charles is the son of Senator Ruggerio. Donald received an annual salary of $212,658, plus $53,212 in “other compensation,” in 2009, according...

> Trumka said he’d like to see the U.S. become more like a European nation that provides pensions and health care for all its citizens. He said he is accustomed to criticism and doesn’t mind if conservatives call that socialism. “Being called a socialist is a step up for me,” he said. >

While speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on May 20, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that the U.S. electoral process has been broken by the Supreme Court with its ruling in the Citizens United campaign finance case. But an inconvenient truth for Trumka lies in readily-available campaign finance records. According to OpenSecrets.org's list of the top 140 donors from 1989 to 2010, 12 out of the top 15 donate overwhelmingly to Democrats. As a matter of fact, a majority of those who give the most donations are unions such as the SEIU, American Federation of Teachers, and...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that the U.S. electoral process has been broken by the Supreme Court with its ruling in the Citizens United campaign finance case. Trumka, speaking at a National Press Club luncheon on Friday said the Supreme Court had helped to break the American electoral system by ruling that corporations were covered by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Citizens United vs. the FEC lifted restrictions on companies, unions, and other organizations, allowing them to make independent expenditures in political campaigns.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka accused House Speaker John Boehner of blackmailing America for withholding his vote to raise the debt ceiling unless there are drastic spending cuts. "Now we see Speaker Boehner and his colleagues engaged in a new round of blackmail with a ransom note that reads: 'Cut Medicare, dismantle the government, destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs to fund more tax cuts for the rich, or we will cause the United States to default on its debts'," Trumka said in a speech at the National Press Club on Friday.

The nation’s top labor leader on Friday said President Obama has allowed talk of attacking federal deficits to overrun his message on jobs and economic growth, while hitting Fox News for being anti-union. “I think he made a strategic blunder whenever he confused his stimulus/jobs agenda” by letting deficits dominate the conversation, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said of Mr. Obama in response to questions at the National Press Club. The unions have long been a critical component of the Democratic Party base, but Mr. Trumka’s remarks suggested the umbrella labor group could take a more independent stance in 2012. Mr....

The nation's largest labor federation is weighing whether to pull political support from congressional Democrats who aren't doing enough to back labor unions. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is expected to issue the warning in a speech Friday at the National Press Club. Trumka said the role of unions is not to build the power of any political party, but to improve the lives of working families. He promised that unions would spend the summer holding leaders in Congress and the states accountable "It doesn't matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside," Trumka said....

Enter Nick Berardino, the AFL-CIO’s General Manager of the Orange County Employees Union; the stereotypical “thug” that speaks of his Italian heritage and jokes about showing up at Orange County Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh’s home’s when upset with him, “and I don’t want to go there to deliver cannoli and a little bit of wine.” Mr. Berardino it seems, not only likes to joke about these physical taunts but apparently likes to “intercept” other people’s email in an effort to know all the covert moves of his opponents. That’s what he told an audience recently - “We have intercepted...

(CNSNews.com) – In a recent letter to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, a bipartisan group of 44 lawmakers urged the Obama administration not to reinstate a cross-border program involving Mexican trucks. The lawmakers cited cost, safety and security concerns as reasons for not reviving the U.S. Department of Transportation’s proposed program. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.) are leading the bi-partisan effort, which includes 13 Republicans and 31 Democrats. “We have concerns that this proposed program could impact the safety and may create a security breach along our southern border,” the lawmakers wrote in a...