Posts Tagged “AFLCIO”

  • Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    So that’s what Republican Governor Walker is up to…..

    May 9 Recall Walker unity rally. Photo: Wisconsin AFLCIO

    I just had to post about this latest revelation from our colleagues in the US trade union movement. Scott Walker, the Republican Governor of Wisconsin, has started a firestorm by abolishing public sector workers’ collective bargaining rights. It has split the state and unions have run a fantastic campaign to recall him which we have covered before. Governor Walker claimed that he took this step to save the state money, a claim that unions always doubted. Now the truth is out, with a video of Governor Walker telling a billionaire funder that his plan is actually to turn Wisconsin into a ‘right-to-work’ (ie non-union) state.

    Yup, he really is just out to get unions. Good luck to the Wisconsin AFLCIO in their efforts to make sure he fails.

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    Posted on May 14th, 2012 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity

  • Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    TUC stands with US trade unionists reclaiming Wisconsin

    Wisconsin AFLCIO campaign poster

    A year ago today, Republican Governor of the mid-west US state of Wisconsin rammed through a law stripping public sector workers in Wisconsin of their rights to collective bargaining in an illegal meeting in the dead of the night. Tomorrow, trade unionists, their families and their communities will march in the state capital, Madison, demanding the recall of Governor Walker. Already they have collected twice the half a million signatures required to force a re-election (having removed a number of state legislators last summer through the same process). Now they are campaigning to kick him out of office and re-establish their bargaining rights.

    Wisconsin AFLCIO President Phil Neuenfeldt says that

    “by recalling Scott Walker we can return to a Wisconsin that is fair, a Wisconsin that honors justice and a Wisconsin that treats its workers with dignity and respect.”

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    Posted on March 9th, 2012 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity

  • Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Fiji: unions demand international action on union rights

    The TUC has joined with sister organisations in Australia, New Zealand and the USA to press our respective governments to take action over restrictions on union rights imposed by the military dictatorship that runs Fiji. These include restrictions on freedom of assembly, association and collective bargaining which have reduced workers’ rights and led to arrests and trials of Fiji’s trade unions.

    In a letter to the foreign ministers of the four countries – which are acting together over relations with Fiji – the TUC, ACTU, NZCTU and AFLCIO call for a series of measures including sanctions targeted on the leaders of the regime, reviewing trade preferences, and reconsidering the UN’s use of Fijian armed forces as peace-keepers.

    The TUC has asked the UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, to raise these matters with his opposite numbers in Europe, too.

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    Posted on March 7th, 2012 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity

  • Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Unions in France, USA, Zimbabwe back 7 March NHS rally

    The messages of global union solidarity for the Save our NHS rally on Wednesday keep flooding in. The latest national trade union centres to send us their messages are the CFDT in France, the AFLCIO in the USA and the ZCTU in Zimbabwe.

    The message from our Zimbabwean colleagues, to whom we have extended solidarity so many times in their struggle to survive, is particularly welcome because they demonstrate the essential point of solidarity when they write:

    “Your concerns as working people of Britain are also our concerns. Solidarity forever!”

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    Posted on March 4th, 2012 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity

  • Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    US unions growing in private sector

    The latest figures from the USA show that trade union membership is up over the last year, despite the difficult economic conditions, continuing anti-union activism by the Republicans, and – and this is perhaps the most interesting element of the statistics - a decline in the number of trade union members in the public sector. As well as the increase in union numbers in the private sector, union density in the public sector has gone up despite the number of members going down – a result of the reduction in public sector jobs.

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    Posted on January 27th, 2012 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity

  • Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Unions get a million to demand their state Governor leave office

    Handing in the million signature petition to recall Gov Walker. Photo: Wisconsin AFL-CIO

    Unions in Wisconsin, a year into their titanic battle with Republican Governor Scott Walker over the scrapping of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, were celebrating today as they handed in over a million signatures on a recall petition demanding a new election for the Governorship. Under Wisconsin law, they only needed 540,000, but the final count showed that over a million Wisconsin voters want Walker out. What’s really incredible about this is that there are only 3.2 million people registered to vote in the state, and at the last gubernatorial election, only just over a million voted for Governor Walker. The summer recall election – in a state that voted Democrat in 2008 but Republican in 2010 – will be a key indicator of how the Presidential election will go. At the same time, recall petitions on three Republican state senators were also handed in.

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    Posted on January 17th, 2012 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity

  • Owen Tudor Owen Tudor

    Indiana: the next battleground state for US unions

    Indiana State Capitol building. Photo Cindy Seigle.

    Following on from last year’s battles in Wisconsin and Ohio,  the latest key battleground state on union rights is Indiana (where a similar battle last spring was ended when state Democrats prevented a vote in the legislature by absenting themselves and denying the Republicans a quorum). State Republicans are seeking to introduce the same ”right to work” laws that exist in 22 other states of the USA (there’s a great explanation of the issue – and a map of which states have such laws - on the Bad for Indiana website) and hinder the trade union movement’s ability to bargain collectively over pay, or ensure decent health and safety laws.

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    Posted on January 7th, 2012 by Owen Tudor filed under: Global solidarity