As the 2016 presidential battle begins to roll down the campaign trail toward Election Day 18 months from now, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on Tuesday challenged candidates to take a stand for the nation’s working people. Noting the skepticism and cynicism many voters feel, Trumka said that nearly two generations of national leaders have either “taken steps that worsened inequality or fiddled around the edges, trying to raise wages in an economy fundamentally built to lower wages.” In a speech from the AFL-CIO headquarters in downtown Washington, Trumka said that “The labor movement's doors are open to any candidate who is serious about transforming our economy with high and rising wages.” Read more and check out a video of the speech at dclabor.org
On today's labor calendar; the AFL-CIO will host an International Workers Day Kick-Off this afternoon at 2pm focused on the “Stop Bad Trade Deals” theme. The program includes music from Son Cosita Seria, videos and snacks. And tonight at 7p check out the Town Hall on Immigration Reform at Bell Multicultural High School; Go to dclabor.org and click on calendar for complete details. In today's labor history, an explosion on this date in 1927 at the Everettville mine in Everettville, West Virginia killed 109 miners, many of whom lie in unmarked graves to this day. In 2012, the Obama administration’s National Labor Relations Board implemented new rules to speed up unionization elections. The new rules are largely seen as a counter to employer manipulation of the law to prevent workers from unionizing. Today's labor quote is by Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, responding last year to the coal mine explosion and fire in Turkey, which killed more than 300 miners in that country’s worst-ever mine disaster: “The magnitude of this tragedy is appalling. I see where the media is calling this an industrial ‘accident,’ but a disaster on this scale is no accident. This mine was clearly a bomb waiting to go off. It has been nearly a century since we have seen disasters on this scale in the United States or Canada. Through strong laws and regulations, we have been able to develop workplace protections that keep our miners safe from the kinds of conditions that must have existed in that Turkish mine. What we have done here isn’t magical. It can be and has been applied elsewhere in the world.”
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