Free Republic

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told reporters today that unions were going to build a firewall to protect the Democrats’ House majority, and he presented numbers suggesting the Republican mountain to climb to the majority is indeed a steep one. By Trumka’s math, 75 Democratic House seats are in play, a number roughly in line with independent estimates. To secure a majority, the GOP needs to net 39 seats. Of the 75 in play, 37 are what Trumka calls “high union density” districts, from the suburbs of Chicago to the hard-scrabble working regions of Pennsylvania.

we need to fundamentally restructure our economy and re-establish popular control over the private corporations which have distorted our economy and hijacked our government. That’s a long-term job, but one we should start now.

Conservatives have the tea party – a strong grassroots movement that rose up to fight excessive spending and radical socialist programs in Washington. Mostly independent of each other, tea party organizations have been responsible for significant change in the political climate in America. They have emboldened conservative politicians and candidates while edging out others who have strayed from their ways. None of this is good news for liberals, so who will be coming to their aide? Unions! Big labor unions have always been the darling partner of liberals and their Democrat politicians. They are well organized, understand the importance of...

  Barack Obama, like any Democratic president, has serious IOUs to labor unions. And AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, more than any other labor leader, is one ally he can't afford to alienate. About the last thing Obama wants, especially as his party faces heavy losses in congressional elections this November, is the subject of Trumka's lengthy track record of aggression and corruption to come up. Major media, for the most part, have obliged him in the wake of the round of speeches yesterday at the Milwaukee Area Labor Council Laborfest, making little or mention of inconvenient facts. It isn't...

To mark Labor Day 2010, President Obama will join hands with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in Milwaukee and pose as champions of the working class. Bad move. Trumka's organizing record is a shameful reminder of the union movement's violent and corrupt foundations. The new Obama/AFL-CIO power alliance — underwritten with $40 million in hard-earned worker dues — is a midterm shotgun marriage of Beltway brass knuckles and Big Labor brawn. Trumka warmed up his rhetorical muscles this past week with full-frontal attacks on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He indignantly accused her of "getting close to calling for...

To mark Labor Day 2010, President Obama will join hands with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in Milwaukee and pose as champions of the working class. Bad move. Trumka's organizing record is a shameful reminder of the union movement's violent and corrupt foundations. The new Obama/AFL-CIO power alliance -- underwritten with $40 million in hard-earned worker dues -- is a midterm shotgun marriage of Beltway brass knuckles and Big Labor brawn. Trumka warmed up his rhetorical muscles this past week with full-frontal attacks on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He indignantly accused her of "getting close to calling for...

TIME's Katy Steinmetz files this report: Like a deserted wife who, years after the fact, still insists her husband is due home any day, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka seems a bit out of touch. Making the traditional Labor Day rounds, his assertions about what voters will be swayed by and how races will pan out this fall just don't jibe with the zeitgeist (or the poll numbers). Here are three examples of positions that might elicit a sidelong glance and puns about “da Nile.” 1. Trumka said yesterday at a press conference that “There will be no Speaker Boehner,” and...

“It is possible for us to get a financial tax around the world.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka declared this Labor Day a “defining” one for working people. The reason: It marks the two-month countdown to the pivotal fall’s elections. “We will either rebuild a fundamentally different economy that values hard work and a strong middle class—or turn back toward one that puts corporate interest before people,” Trumka said today at the AFL-CIO’s annual Labor Day briefing for reporters. That message of choice is the one the federation of 56 unions will spread nationwide this holiday weekend as its officers join thousands of workers at Labor Day events from Los Angeles to Florida. On...

President Obama will spend Labor Day alongside AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the union announced Monday. Obama, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Trumka will all participate in a Labor Day "celebration and rally" in Milwaukee on Monday, an appearance confirmed by the White House this afternoon, which separately announced the president would travel to Wisconsin for the Laborfest. The appearance is another recent sign of unity between Obama and Trumka — the pair had sometimes had an adversarial relationship over the past year on issues like stimulating the economy and healthcare reform. (Trumka had pushed for a heftier stimulus and...

Two years ago almost to the day, I was thrilled to meet with union members at the Alaska AFL-CIO Convention in Anchorage to sign important job-creation legislation related to the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. As a former card-carrying IBEW sister married to a proud former IBEW and later USW member, it was a great moment for all of us. Our Alaska union brothers and sisters helped build our state! Many of them risked their lives to complete our infrastructure, including the Trans-Alaska Pipeline that stretches over treacherous mountain ranges from the North Slope oil fields to Valdez. By signing that...

Two years ago almost to the day, I was thrilled to meet with union members at the Alaska AFL-CIO Convention in Anchorage to sign important job-creation legislation related to the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. As a former card-carrying IBEW sister married to a proud former IBEW and later USW member, it was a great moment for all of us. Our Alaska union brothers and sisters helped build our state! Many of them risked their lives to complete our infrastructure, including the Trans-Alaska Pipeline that stretches over treacherous mountain ranges from the North Slope oil fields to Valdez. By signing that...

AFL-CIO thug, Richard Trumka has compared Sarah Palin to Joseph McCarthy–and that’s supposed to be a bad thing. "AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, speaking to the Alaska AFL-CIO in Anchorage today, will take a swipe at Palin for her employment of the term ‘union thugs,’ according to prepared remarks." "Palin, he said, has come ‘close to calling for violence,” and will ‘go down in history like McCarthy.’" No she won’t. We now have the internet and citizen journalists. Palin won’t have to wait fifty years to be vindicated as the late senator did. Liberals, evidently, have not yet been brought up...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling Sarah Palin "almost a parody of herself" who will "go down in history like McCarthy" in a speech in Alaska today. When it comes to Palin, he plans to say, according to prepared remarks released this morning, "you just have to laugh -- but it's not really funny." "In this charged political environment, her kind of talk gets dangerous," Trumka will say at the Alaska AFL-CIO Biennial Convention. "'Don't retreat... reload' may seem clever, the kind of bull you hear all the time, but put it in context. She's using crosshairs to illustrate targeted...

Documents Detail Meetings with Union Officials, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Obamacare Czar Nancy-Ann Min DeParleContact Information:Press Office 202-646-5172, ext 305 Washington, DC -- August 25, 2010Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained new documents from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regarding closed-door health care meetings with Vice President Joe Biden, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Obamacare Czar Nancy-Ann Min DeParle and union officials. The following are highlights from the documents obtained by Judicial Watch...

During C-SPAN Newsmakers interview (8-8-10), AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka comments on the importance of the Employee Free Choice Act, saying "it's part of the solution to creating an economy that really does work for everybody." He also said he thinks EFCA will be back on the floor by the end of the year.

Trying to reclaim some of the excitement among unions who helped him win election in 2008, President Obama on Wednesday implored members of the AFL-CIO to be patient with the pace of the recovery and warned them they and the economy would suffer far worse under Republican rule. "I'm sure you're talking to a lot of your locals, I'm sure they're feeling like, 'Boy, change has not happened fast enough,' " he said. "I am happy as president of the United States to take responsibility for making decisions that are going to put us in a stronger position down the...

The AFL-CIO plans to spend more than $50 million over the next 90 days to help Democrats in congressional and gubernatorial races in 20-23 states. Its top target states are California, Illinois, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Trumka's comments kicked off a three-day training session for AFL-CIO state political directors and staffers who will coordinate the federation's massive get-out-the-vote effort leading up to the Nov. 2 elections. Obama will address the federation's executive council on Wednesday.

Anti-poverty advocates, business groups and unions all realize it’s now or never for Congress to move on restoring the estate tax. With the August recess looming, both sides of the debate are calling on lawmakers to act now on the tax. Lawmakers will return to Capitol Hill in the fall, hesitant to take a potentially toxic vote so close to the midterm elections on what could be termed a tax increase. The estate tax — which has lapsed since the beginning of the year — will return in 2011. It will be at its highest rate in 10 years, with...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Thursday that he sees unions as “unpredictable partners” to Democratic candidates in the coming 2010 midterm elections. Speaking at a forum hosted by the AFL-CIO and Working America, an affiliate of the labor federation, Trumka said the labor group is focusing more on supporting candidates that are right on the issues rather than on their party affiliation. “What we intend to do is to run on issues, less than run on people and party, and then support the people who support those issues,” Trumka said. Next Tuesday, primary day in Arkansas, is the biggest test...