By Doug Cunningham

Thousands of workers are still dying on the job each year in the U.S. and in some cases employers are paying as little as $750 in each death. The AFL-CIO’s annual report on death and injuries on the job says in 2006, the latest year for which numbers are available, more than 5800 workers were killed on the job. There’s an increase in the number of Latino workers being killed at work. The AFL-CIO says inspections and enforcement of workplace safety rules has seriously diminished under the Bush administration.

By Doug Cunningham

The AFL-CIO and six Guatemalan unions are filing a first-of-its kind complaint alleging violations of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Filed with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Trade and Labor Affairs, the complaint details five specific cases where the Guatemalan government has failed to protect workers' labor rights. The AFL-CIO says violence against union activists, including murder and rape, have actually escalated since the Central American Free Trade Agreement was implemented.

By Doug Cunningham

Tales from the nation's healthcare crisis front gathered in an AFL-CIO healthcare survey vividly illustrate the tragedies and hardships of a broken U.S. health care system. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

[Sweeney]: "The survey results paint a devastating picture of a health care system that costs too much, covers too little, leaves too many behind, and is getting worse."

Heather Booth heads the AFL-CIO’s health care reform effort aimed at achieving reform in 2009 around basic principles that include providing quality health care to all with controlled costs and a public alternative to private insurance.

By Doug Cunningham

The AFL-CIO's Karen Ackerman says the labor federation's "McCain Revealed" campaign will shine a bright light on Sen. John McCain’s real economic record on working family issues.

[Ackerman]: "We will expose Senator McCain’s record on economic pictures, complete his profile to include his unwavering support of George Bush’s failed economic agenda, and call on him to adopt instead working families policies that offer a clean break from that agenda."

By Doug Cunningham

AFL-CIO Organizing Director, Stewart Acuff says what working people really need to rise above these hard economic times is a restoration of real union collective bargaining rights. Acuff says people are hungry for fundamental economic change that truly restores opportunities to achieve the American Dream. Acuff says eroded union rights is a big reason that American workers are in this economic crisis.

[Acuff]: "And that is the real economic crisis facing the country today. That’s why the economy is so soft. That’s why we’re headed into a recession, and that’s why we have this huge inequality and this huge gap between the rich and the rest of us.

By Doug Cunningham

Six National Education Association chapters of the California Teachers Association are directly affiliating with the AFL-CIO. It’s part of a groundbreaking pact between the AFL-CIO and the independent NEA that allows local chapters of the NEA to directly affiliate with the AFL-CIO. Over ten thousand NEA members are in the AFL-CIO as a result.

By Doug Cunningham

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney is delivering an important address to the UN Summit On Climate Risk today. Sweeney will call for green jobs and greater awareness of global warming's impact on working people around the world. Sweeney will join Al Gore and a diverse group of interests to discuss what needs to happen to stop the accelerated impact of global warming. Sweeney says global prosperity cannot be achieved and maintained unless we secure a stable climate and sustainable energy.

By Doug Cunningham

The U.S. Senate passed an economic stimulus plan Thursday without any extension of unemployment benefits and without any new heating assistance for the poor. The package did extend tax rebate checks of $300 to retirees and disabled veterans. Taxpayers will get $600 checks, couples $1200. The AFL-CIO says denying the jobless an extension of benefits show Republicans believe working people should fend for themselves in an economy stacked against them.

By Doug Cunningham

[Booth]: “There’s at a minimum 18,000 people a year who die because they didn’t have health insurance.”

Heather Booth, director of the AFL-CIO’s campaign for universal health care coverage. The campaign is building a million-person army of activists to make universal health care a focus of the 2008 presidential election in an effort to secure universal health care coverage in the U.S. by 2009.

[Booth 2]: “Our focus in this AFL-CIO health care reform campaign is to build together that kind of army with educating and engaging our members, inoculating them against some of these lies and false statements that are gonna be said, and then in organizing, organizing, organizing.”

By Doug Cunningham

World stock markets nose-dived Monday in reaction to U.S. recession fears. The AFL-CIO is urging quick Congressional action on an economic stimulus package. And while the labor federation says it’s encouraging that Bush recognizes a substantial stimulus is needed, the Bush plan isn’t likely to benefit working families to provide them the boost they need to weather a recession. Instead of a focus on tax relief, the AFL-CIO wants to see spending stimulus, including an extension of unemployment benefits, increased food stamp payments, more fiscal relief to state and local governments, and investments in ready-to-go school, bridge and sewage construction projects. On top of that, the AFL-CIO says tax rebates targeted to middle- and low-income taxpayers is also needed to help working families weather the recession.

By Doug Cunningham

In Memphis the AFL-CIO is part of a several day long conference around King Day called "Labor and Civil Rights: 40 years of Keeping The Dream and The Movement Alive”. Nearly a thousand people are coming together between now and Monday to commemorate Dr. King’s work and the labor-civil rights alliance. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Reverend Al Sharpton will be among the speakers. Donations of computer equipment and school supplies will be given to Memphis students.

By Doug Cunningham

[Sweeney]: “In an age of rampant global corporate outlaws the world's workers must forge new alliances to defend their democratic freedom to come together in unions to improve their lives."

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney at the Council of Global Unions conference in Washington, D.C. U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy says workers in the U.S. and around the world have to find a winning strategy to combat the global corporate assault on workers rights.

[Kennedy]: “It is time to stop this global assault on labor rights. It is time to put the brakes on a global economy that creates a boom for business and a bust for labor."

AFL-CIO Organizing Director, Stewart Acuff says unions and worker federations from 63 nations are gathering in Maryland and Washington, D.C. to combat the global assault on workers' rights.

[Acuff]: “We have to confront the politics and the policies that in some ways are driving the assault, as well as confront the multinational corporations that are actually carrying out the assault. So we have to deal with both. We’re not comin’ together to talk about organizing strategy. We're comin' together to talk abut the assault coming from corrupt corporate culture and multinational corporations and right-wing policies and politics and what we can do in a collective fashion to push back against it and to confront it.”

By Doug Cunningham

AFL-CIO President, John Sweeney says after sitting idly by for months while countless Americans saw their home ownership dreams slip away the Bush administration is now doing too little too late to address the crisis. Sweeny says a moratorium on sub-prime mortgage foreclosures for at least 6-12 months is needed; not just a limited freeze on some interest rates. Without such a moratorium on foreclosures so loans can restructured, Sweeney says the record wave of foreclosures will crush the economy. The AFL-CIO says housing markets must be stabilized to prevent cascading defaults throughout the economy.

By Doug Cunningham

The AFL-CIO will be on Capitol Hill today urging Congress to restore fairness and transparency to a home mortgage market that’s poised to trigger a full-blown economic crisis. The labor federation says it will be offering sweeping recommendations to curb the mortgage crisis, save homes and halt the economic slide. The Afl-CIO says it’s a bold plan that would keep millions of Americans in the homes they’ve worked so hard to own.

By Doug Cunningham

A Securities and Exchange Commission ruling on Wednesday attacked the rights of shareholders to nominate corporate directors. AFL-CIO President, John Sweeney says at a time when the need for strong, independent corporate directors is more critical than ever, the SEC has taken away an important shareholder right to have a voice in corporate governance issues. The SEC, Sweeney says, should be moving aggressively to protect investors, not to take away their rights.

By Doug Cunningham

AFL-CIO Vice-President Arlene Holt Baker is joining striking Kentucky nurses today and she won't show up empty handed. She’s bringing a $20,000 check from the AFL-CIO to help provide emergency financial support for the hundreds of nurses striking Appalachian Regional Healthcare. The nurses in Kentucky and West Virginia have been on strike since October 1st against seven hospitals over staffing and patient care issues. The nurses want higher staffing levels maintained and higher patient care standards. Holt Baker will join the nurses in Lexington, Kentucky today to prese

By Doug Cunningham

Hundreds of workers led by the AFL-CIO rallied in Washington, D.C. at the National Labor Relations Board Thursday protesting the board’s recent anti-worker decisions. Fred Azcarate, Director of "Voice At Work", was one of the protesters.

[Azcarate]: "A bunch of decisions that make it harder for workers to organize through majority sign-up, decisions that take away the workers' rights who are illegally fired for back pay – that makes our bad labor laws even worse.”

By Doug Cunningham

[Sweeney]: “Hundreds of thousands of working families mobilized to change the state's direction and oust anti-worker governor Ernie Fletcher."

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Steve Beshear, the labor-backed candidate for Kentucky governor, beat the incumbent Republican by a landslide and union voters provided that overwhelming margin of victory.

[Sweeney2]: “Candidates who don't have working people's best interests had better watch out, because I've never seen our members this enthusiastic and ready for change. And they want an America that works for working people."

By Doug Cunningham

Eight hundred nurses are in the second month of a strike at Appalachian Regional Healthcare in Kentucky and West Virginia. The hospitals were founded by John L. Lewis but now use union-busting tactics. Collective Bargaining Director Richard Bank says the AFL-CIO is strongly supporting the nurses as they strike for better staffing for patients.

[Bank]: “Staffing is a very central issue here. These nurses feel that the staffing ratios are inadequate to ensure proper patient care. And there's also an issue of mandatory overtime. The combination of inadequate staffing ratios plus mandatory overtime puts quality patent care at risk. This is a critically important strike because nurses are the front line of health care in this country. And these nurses are standing up for the communities they serve and they're being punished for it."