ARNHEM, Holland–The labor movement must unite in a concerted worldwide drive to combat corporate greed and anti-worker politicians –- including Donald Trump -– who serve it, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler says. Shuler told the Dutch labor federation, FNV, meeting on May 10 in Arnhem, Holland, that corporate moguls and their firms “organized their production in ways that make it hard [...]

LAS VEGAS –Meet the new Miss USA…a union member. Kara McCullough, 25, a member of Treasury Employees Chapter 208, won the crown at the pageant in Las Vegas in early May, the union reports. She’s the second straight national winner who represented Washington, D.C. McCullough is also a skilled young woman with a demanding job: Members of Chapter 208 work [...]

MONTPELIER, Vt.—Veteran Letter Carrier Jill Charboneau, who got her union activism start by bringing NALC’s “Stamp Out Hunger” food drive to Vermont, has been elected president of the state labor council, the council and Vermont’s NALC association said. Charboneau, who retired from the Postal Service in 2014 after 31 years as a Letter Carrier, becomes one of a handful of [...]

WASHINGTON —The School Administrators (AFSA) and the National Education Association slammed the GOP Trump administration’s planned federal education budget cuts and its $400 million increase for taxpayer-paid vouchers for parents of private school students. The cuts would hurt low-income students in K-12 grades and in trying to afford college, say NEA President Lilly Eskelsen-Garcia, a pre-K teacher from Salt Lake [...]

WASHINGTON—The 213,000 members of the Letter Carriers will vote this summer on a proposed new 40-month contract with the Postal Service, featuring two raises and a pay upgrade for each carrier and for city carrier assistants, a narrower pay gap between CCAs and career carriers, and more opportunities for CCAs to become career carriers. On May 12, the union’s executive [...]

President Trump released his budget for Fiscal Year 2018 on May 23. AFSA President Diann Woodard released the following statement in response: “President Trump’s FY 2018 Budget request is a reverse Robin Hood Budget. It slashes and decimates programs for the most vulnerable Americans, while stuffing the pockets of the uber-wealthy,” “As school leaders, AFSA members are responsible for leading [...]

WASHINGTON–Over consumer, worker and Democratic objections, the key GOP-run House committee that writes banking legislation approved a deregulation bill to virtually dismantle all the protections Congress erected seven years ago after financiers’ finagling and manipulation of shady investments produced the Great Recession. The party-line 34-26 May 4 vote in the House Financial Services Committee sent the measure, HR10, to the [...]

STATEMENT OF PRINCIPALS’, EDUCATORS’ AND SCHOOL LEADERS’ GROUPS OPPOSING TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S PROPOSED FY18 APPROPRIATIONS CUTS: Washington, DC, May 23, 2017—”We adamantly oppose President Trump’s FY 2018 budget proposal to completely eliminate funding for Title II, Part A, the Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants program. Eliminating funding for this program, which was authorized in the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), will devastate state [...]

WASHINGTON —Republican President Donald Trump’s formal letter notifying lawmakers that he intends to renegotiate NAFTA, the jobs-losing 23-year-old U.S.-Mexico-Canada “free trade” pact, doesn’t go far enough, the AFL-CIO and its allies say. In particular, any new NAFTA must ensure Mexico not only lives up to international labor rights standards, but raises its wages to livable levels, congressional Democrats said. The [...]

A federal judge in Florida has ordered Spirit Airlines pilots, who were forced to strike due to management refusal to budge on low pay, back to work. “Under order of the court, you must immediately resume your normal working schedule,” the bargainers for the pilots, members of the Air Line Pilots Association, told their members. The court order also barred [...]