Union leader promises to fight states over worker rights

AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka lashed out at politicians in Wisconsin, Ohio and a dozen other states who he said "are trying to take away workers' right to organize and bargain for a better life," at a May 20 National Press Club luncheon.

He promised to fight back.

"Budget proposals unveiled in Washington and state capitals across our country this year revealed a despicable canvas of cruelty," Trumka said.

Trumka criticized a litany of states. For instance, he cited legislation in
Michigan that would require foster children to purchase second-hand clothes with their $79 annual support.

"In Maine, the governor thinks more children should go to work," Trumka said. "In North Carolina, the legislature thinks we should balance the state budget on the backs of autistic children. In New York, a billionaire mayor proposes to fire 5,000 teachers rather than tax the bonuses of the Wall Street executives who brought down the American economy."

In his wide-ranging speech, he promised that organized labor will provide all the financial and grass-roots support it can to help candidates in the next elections "who help us," whether they are Democrats or Republicans.

Trumka, 62, who grew up in Pennsylvania where his father and grandfather were coal miners and union activists, said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will sign next week legislation requiring state-issued IDs to vote.

He said the move will affect 23 percent of elderly Wisconsinites, 59 percent of Latinas, 55 percent of African-American men overall and 78 percent of African-American men between 18 and 24 years old.

In a pre-luncheon interview, Trumka said that the AFL-CIO will vigorously promote a recall effort to remove Walker from office.

"In state after state, politicians are attacking voting rights by imposing ID requirements, shortening early voting periods, blocking young people from voting because they're too 'liberal' and even levying criminal penalties and fines for breaking arbitrary rules in the voter registration process," he said.

Asked how he would handle the federal deficit, Trumka asserted that the more important shortfall was in employment.

"This is one of the richest nations on the face of the Earth," he said. "What we have is a deficit of jobs. Eleven million workers have lost their jobs."

Getting them back to work would fix any fiscal deficit, according to Trumka.

Trumka, who has a law degree from Villanova, also said that 80 percent of Americans support a surtax on millionaires.

He denounced the Republican threat not to raise the federal debt ceiling without massive cuts in spending.

"That's like someone who owes $50,000 (saying) if it goes to $51,000, 'I won't pay'," Trumka said.

He said the AFL-CIO will fight any effort to cut Medicare or Social Security by raising the retirement age.

"America's economic fate depends on us coming together to educate our children, to invest in our infrastructure, to face the threat of climate change and to reverse the yawning economic inequality that threatens our future," Trumka said.

When asked what he thinks of the job President Barack Obama is doing, Trumka said he has done some things well but declined to give him a grade.

He said he strongly opposes Obama's push for approval of a free trade agreement with Colombia. Trumka described the South American nation as "a country where 51 trade unionists were killed last year."

Questioned about the current media climate, Trumka lamented the loss of much investigative journalism, saying the country depends upon the protection it gets from the press. Commenting on Fox News in particular, he said the network is mostly entertainment but that it has "some good journalists."