Portside

Many have praised the recent AFL-CIO convention for the delegates' efforts to fundamentally change organized labor's direction and strategy. The hope is that a reinvigorated labor movement will reverse the decline in union power and forge a broad coalition that can effectively fight the rising tide of wealth and income inequality and the growing impoverishment of the working-class. The following article from the AFL-CIO's online blog highlights ten new initiatives.

Many union leaders have come to the conclusion that the Affordable Care Act contains provisions that may seriously undermine collectively bargained health insurance plans covering millions of their members. In addition, union leaders are angry over the Obama administration's willingness to relax rules for employer mandated coverage while ignoring the threat posed to full-time workers by making a 30 hour work week the threshold for mandatory insurance coverage.

“We are a small part of the 150 million Americans who work for a living,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in his keynote address Monday at the labor federation's convention in Los Angeles. “We cannot win economic justice only for ourselves, for union members alone. It would not be right and it’s not possible. All working people will rise together, or we will keep falling together.”