Last night on the PBS News Hour they had a discussion with the new AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka
On a separate page from the transcript and video/audio links of the discussion they have a short video of a round-table meeting of the lobbyist of the AFL-CIO with Trumka talkin ‘bluedogs’ and ‘public option’.
Inside the AFL-CIO’s Health Care Lobbying Efforts
The discussion, about ten and a half minutes long, can be found here Labor’s ‘Bulldog’ Trumka Challenged by Dwindling Ranks, Public Perception
As AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka works to protect organized labor from the excesses of big business, he faces dwindling ranks, splits among union groups, and diminished public support. Paul Solman reports.
Where you can read the transcript, .listen to an audio feed or watch on a video feed, the video I’m placing below.
RICHARD TRUMKA, president, AFL-CIO: The American labor movement is right here with you today. We will stand shoulder to shoulder with you for as long as it takes and with whatever it takes.
PAUL SOLMAN: New AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka at a recent protest of teacher layoffs in Washington, D.C.
RICHARD TRUMKA: And it is time that we win together!
PAUL SOLMAN: As the new head of the labor movement, Trumka needs to move workers old and new, and reverse a decades-long thinning of the ranks. Compounding the problem, divisions within the movement itself.
Service Employees International Union head Andy Stern, seen here in his trademark purple shirt, formed a rival federation just four years ago. In the late ’60s, age 19, Trumka followed his father, who died of black lung disease, and grandfather down into the coal mines of Pennsylvania.
But college and law degrees took him to the United Mine Workers. In 1982, he became its aggressive president…>>>Rest Found Here
With what was forecast by many occurring, the collapse of the economics we’ve allowed ourselves to be pushed into and follow these last couple of decades, it’s past time that workers, who actually do the work and keep the economy running, once again build the organizations needed to keep fighting those who place their own personal wealth and power over country and our required economy of growth and job creation, real capitalism.
The best, and what brought worker advancement in middle class wages, benefits, safety, workplace respect, quality products, growth in industries, and much more are by organizing in workers unions. We’ve already lost much of what was fought for by our Gran Parents and Parents, we’ve allowed ourselves to be controlled by the corporations and those that get into bed with them, our politicians.
Instead of advancing a workers needs, they spend their wages for their comfort and better life, those who control have continually added corporate perks to their executives portfolio, written off in corporate tax fillings, are reaping huge amounts of compensation they neither earn nor have a need for and benefits of kings, everything is taken care of for them, they care more for investors, who do nothing within the company or corporation, then they do for those who actually do the work needed.
One group I would like to see lead in this organizing, as they to search for jobs scarce for everyone now, are the returning soldiers of our failed policies of occupying others. They have what can’t be taught in our higher education industry, they know how important it is to work together in units, in organization with each other to not only try and accomplish huge tasks but save each others lives. They understand a chain of command mentality, instilled to help keep everyone in that working together mode taking care of problems that might occur and getting the same information at the same time to accomplish the goals set forth.
This country and it’s economy needs the level playing field of those who perform the work and those who just oversea the organization within a company or a corporation, each sharing in the prosperity they create together.