The AFL-CIO launched a major ad campaign in Virginia this week, airing statewide television and radio ads promoting the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. The advertising campaign is aligned with a national week of action, from April 26 to May 1, mobilizing working people to demand Senate passage of the landmark worker rights bill. “We’re taking nothing for granted,” said AFL-CIO spokesperson Kalina Newman. “The PRO Act is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to give working people a stronger voice on the job. We’re making sure the Senate hears us loud and clear by reminding Virginians of what they already know: It shouldn’t be this hard just to get by.” The TV ad features a number of MWC and NoVA Labor affiliates and the radio ad features a personal testimonial from United Steelworkers (USW) member Sederick Wilson. The Solidarity Center is launching a new, partner-informed, inclusive strategic plan to support workers and their unions around the world to address impacts and drive solutions for an accelerating climate crisis. “The Solidarity Center recognizes that workers and their communities—especially in the global south—are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. We are committed to directing resources and attention toward people-centered climate policy and legislative advocacy by our partners and allies in their respective countries,” says Shawna-Bader Blau, Solidarity Center executive director. The Solidarity Center’s strategic plan includes using collective bargaining to advance cleaner, safer and more sustainable operations across sectors and developing worker-driven climate solutions. Find out more at Solidarity Center. Solidarity Center initiatives to advance climate justice include a convening of palm oil unions from Colombia, Honduras, Indonesia and Malaysia, with environmental partners, to support implementation of a strategic plan by labor leaders from those countries that addresses issues with common actors and challenges within the supply chain, and pursues advocacy avenues for worker protection demands and engagement in policymaking on climate-change mitigation measures. photo: Oscar Durand / Solidarity Center “We have come here through toil and weary marches, through storms and tempests, over mountains, and amid the trials of poverty and distress, to lay our grievances at the doors of our National Legislature.”
This week’s Labor History Today podcast: Mourn for the dead, fight like hell for the living! Last week’s show: Ludlow: My name is Louis Tikas. Coxey’s Army of 500 unemployed civil war veterans reaches Washington, DC - 1894 photo: Coxey's Army approaches DC When their demand that only union men be employed was refused, members of the Western Federation of Miners dynamited and destroyed the $250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill Company at Wardner, Idaho - 1899 |