Weekly Update: Convention Highlights

Convention Highlights

Take Action

The Senate Finance Committee, the last committee to present their healthcare proposal, is working on their bill as we speak. Health care is moving, and there is just one small group standing in the way of real reform. Did we say small? We meant huge. Like, insurance industry huge. But we think we can get more Oregonians to a rally against the insurance industry's status quo than they have lobbyists in Washington, D.C. To do that, we need your help!

Look for information from your union and on our website at the end of the week about next week's event!

AFL-CIO National Convention

New Leadership Team Elected

The convention delegates unanimously supported the AFL-CIO's new leadership team, electing Richard Trumka of the International Association of Mine Workers as our new president and Liz Shuler of the International Brotherhood and Electrical Workers as Secretary-Treasurer, and returning Arlene Holt-Baker, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees member, to her post as Executive Vice President for another term.

This new leadership team is committed to growing the labor movement at a time when we are the hope for the middle class to restore fairness to economy and for all working people to improve their lives.

Convention Highlights

The AFL-CIO flooded Pittsburgh with over 4000 convention delegates and guests this week. For all the details check out Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain's posts about the daily proceedings, and the videos and blogs from national leaders. For those of you who haven't been following the action here are some noteworthy highlights:

• President Obama spoke to the convention delegates about the current recession, reminding us that the problems did not start last year with the fall of the financial industries. The economy, he said, has been heading in an unsustainable direction for years - with the haves using what they were given to help themselves, and the middle class left behind with stagnant paychecks and shrinking purchasing power. He called on the labor movement to help rebuild the middle class, and affirmed his support for changes that would help make that possible - the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a long list of Executive Orders, changing tariff policies, and soon passing healthcare reform and the Employee Free Choice Act.

• Resolution 8, which President Tom Chamberlain helped develop, will strengthen our state federations and local bodies and make sure that the labor movement works better for and is more responsive to our members at every level.

• Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Byrd addressed the delegates yesterday on Resolution 10, supporting the growth of green-job industries, and again today when she offered the second nomination for Liz Shuler, the AFL-CIO's newly-elected Secretary-Treasurer.

• Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen, also chair of the AFL-CIO Organizing Committee, revealed a full-page ad targeting Senator Arlene Spector, paid for by the Chamber of Commerce, against the Employee Free Choice Act. The next day Senator Spector spoke, affirming his solid commitment, both now as a Democrat and through the many years he served as a Republican, to the labor movement. He also clarified that he supports labor law reform that gives workers a fair chance when the try to form a union, ensures that workers who do form a union get their first contract, and increases penalties for companies that break the law.

A January Election?!

A few conservative business groups and associations have spent the summer paying signature gatherers to try to collect enough signatures to refer two important tax-fairness measures to the voters. Next week we'll find out if they gathered enough signatures or not.

Faced with rapidly decreasing revenue that couldn't keep up with the need for important services like education, health care and public safety, and legislature decided to pass two tax fairness measures last Spring.

The first one raises the corporate minimum from its almost-80 year level of $10 (compared to the $3100 the average Oregon family pays). The second measure asks rich Oregonians who are still making over $250,000 per family even in this economic downturn to pay a little more so that services are available when Oregonians need them most.

If the measures qualify for the ballot the election will be held in January, so look for your ballots, and remember to vote "Yes for tax fairness!"