November 2024 Election Endorsements

Everett Kelly is national president for AFGE.

Half a century after Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, labor advocates say the agency in charge of enforcing the landmark law is failing to protect American workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, affecting more than 7.4 million Americans, with more than 210,000 deaths in the United States, the national AFL-CIO released its annual Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect

“The AFL-CIO is joining this lawsuit to force the Trump administration to do what it should have done months ago — protect American workers by dramatically increasing the supply of the PPE they need to work safely during this pandemic,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a news release.

The GOP Trump administration’s massive job safety and health deregulation and its lack of enforcement have worsened the toll of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., the AFL-CIO says.

The complaint is another sign of the frustration over the treatment of workers under the Trump administration, and it places the United States in the realm of potential wrongdoing typically occupied by less-developed and less-democratic countries.

When the Supreme Court’s new term opens today, public attention will be focused on the furious and hypocritical effort of President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to ram through Judge Amy Coney Barrett as a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the v

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued a strong warning to Donald Trump Friday that the nation’s workers are ready to stop any attempt by the administration to trash the U.S. constitution.

Members of the United Steelworkers (USW) at a steel factory in Columbus, Ohio, had hope when the Trump administration promised to protect their jobs. Fred Silvia, president of USW Local 9309, said: “Initially, we felt the tariffs were going to help us.

Given the multiple crises facing American this year, 2020 has felt like “an absolute gut punch.” But organized labor was meant for difficult times like these, and by joining together with each other to weather these crises and tackle the problems that caused them, we will win.

This election year, America faces interlocking crises—a global health crisis, economic collapse, and systemic racism. Even as we live in fear of disease and economic ruin, we have had to watch the on-camera murders of unarmed Black people by officers who have sworn to protect and serve us.

Rev. William Barber, who heads the nonprofit Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign, joined Richard Trumka, president of the country’s largest federation of unions, at the church to announce a formal partnership to work for social, racial and economic justice.