AFL-CIO Staff

AFL‑CIO President Richard Trumka (UMWA) spoke at the Missouri AFL‑CIO’s 29th Biennial Convention yesterday, rallying a packed audience of local union leaders and working Missourians in the fight against Prop. A. He recalled the charge that President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered to Americans in the midst of the Great Depression: “True patriotism urges us to build an even more substantial America where the good things of life may be shared by more of us.”

Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt 83 years ago yesterday, the National Labor Relations Act marked a critical step forward for working people’s right to join together in unions and bargain collectively. As Roosevelt said at the time, “By preventing practices which tend to destroy the independence of labor, it seeks, for every worker with its scope, that freedom of choice and action which is justly his.”

Nearly 100 union volunteers spent their Saturday painting the interior of an American Legion Post. The effort, led by the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, Union Veterans Committee and the Community Service Liaison, began after legionnaire Jim Heimann noticed his home post of more than two decades was beginning to look a little dingy. Heimann is a Vietnam Veteran who describes the Legion as a "place to be with other veterans who have gone through what you’ve gone through." Union Veterans couldn’t agree more with Hiemann, a gathering place for veterans is essential to the men and women who have served our country to maintain camaraderie.

In recent years, UNITE HERE members across North America have taken the lead in challenging sexual harassment and sexual violence in the hospitality industry. The union has put the issue at the forefront of its political agenda, in bargaining new contracts – and now, in its global campaigns.

Some time in the next few weeks, the Supreme Court will decide a case called Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, that threatens to take away the freedom of working people to join together and negotiate for better wages and working conditions. Corporate CEOs and their allies know that working people have a much stronger voice when we speak together, so they are pulling out all the stops to limit our ability to use that voice.