SethDMichaels

On Wall Street today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling for tough new regulations on the financial industry and a new approach to making the U.S. economy work for working people.

The AFL-CIO’s new leadership team isn’t wasting a second. Hours after the close of the AFL-CIO 26th Constitutional Convention, they’re riding the momentum of this week’s high-energy union gathering with a listening tour across the country.

And they’re starting in Ohio, the center of recent political battles and heart of the tough questions the nation faces about our economic future.

Something bad happened in the past 10 years to young workers in this country: Since 1999, more of them now have lower-paying jobs, if they can get a job at all; health care is a rare luxury and retirement security is something for their parents, not them. In fact, many—younger than 35—still live at home with their parents because they can’t afford to be on their own.

Trumka is laying out a fundamental proposition: When it comes time for millions of union members to mobilize, educate other union members and get out the vote, they’ll work on behalf of candidates who support real health care reform that provides quality, affordable health care to all and gives people the opportunity to choose a public health coverage plan alongside private options.

America’s whacked out radical rightwing has not given up on their agenda to create greater and greater income and wealth inequality, to make the country’s public policy a captive of the bizarre free market ideas of novelist Ayn Rand, and to continue to have our health care determined exclusively by insurance corporations for their own profit while 50 million of us lack healthcare and its cost continues to drag down our economy.

We’re getting excited this week for the second annual Netroots Nation conference, where more than 1,000 progressive bloggers and activists will meet face to face. We’ll discuss issues key to the future of our nation—including building a stronger, fairer economy by restoring the freedom to form unions and bargain.

Members of Congress soon will cast votes that show us where they stand on the Employee Free Choice Act…We’ve come along way from where we were several years ago.

On Saturday, July 11, we made history in Arkansas. We–civil rights and community leaders, local elected officials, and union activists and leaders–1500 of us–held the largest-ever demonstration in Arkansas to demand that Sen. Blanche Lincoln vote for and support the Employee Free Choice Act.

The misleading attacks by Big Business on the Employee Free Choice Act now are aimed at the provision that would guarantee that workers can get a fair first contract. Their scare tactics are not only misleading, they’re hypocritical.

Ask Shannon Hilt, who’s seen our broken system for forming unions firsthand, and she’ll tell you that there’s no question: Workers need the Employee Free Choice Act.

Hilt spent three years as a field examiner for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), overseeing the elections process and investigating unfair practices.