Shuler: Modern labor movement means nobody gets left behind
On this Labor Day, new AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler lays out her vision for the modern labor movement, and all the changes we need in our workplaces and our society.
<meta name="description" content="Berry Craig is a professor emeritus of history at West KY Community College, and an author of seven books and co-author of two more. (Read the rest on the Contributors page.)">
Berry Craig is a professor emeritus of history at West KY Community College, and an author of seven books and co-author of two more. (Read the rest on the Contributors page.)
On this Labor Day, new AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler lays out her vision for the modern labor movement, and all the changes we need in our workplaces and our society.
“...From the response to Covid-19 among Republican officials — especially the opposition to lifesaving vaccines — it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the paranoid, anti-rational streak in American politics isn’t as bad as we thought; it’s much, much worse.”
COVID-19 has produced the Covidiot, which some internet websites define as “a person who acts like an irresponsible idiot during the COVID-19 pandemic, ignoring common sense, decency, science, and professional advice leading to the further spread of the virus and needless deaths of thousands.”
The poll also revealed that 59 percent favor vaccination requirements for teachers and 55 percent support compulsory vaccinations for eligible students 12 and older.
Mitch McConnell said he "fervently" opposes the "For the People Act." Old-time white supremacists like Sen. James Eastland (D-MS) would love McConnell's argument against the bill: the old "states' rights" smokescreen they used against civil rights legislation, passed to overturn Jim Crow laws.
When he says your freedom to not take simple precautions to protect lives is more important than your brother’s freedom to breathe, well, my God, how did we come to this?
"Richard Trumka was a friend and champion for working Americans," Congressman John Yarmuth, D-Louisville, posted on his Facebook page Thursday afternoon after he learned that the AFL-CIO president had died unexpectedly.
Bill Londrigan remembers AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka as "a great friend and supporter of the Kentucky labor movement" who "visited Kentucky on many occasions to support our work." Trumka, AFL-CIO president since 2009, died unexpectedly yesterday, reportedly [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/business/richard-trumka-dead.
“Richard Trumka lived and breathed union,” said Steve Earle, a UMWA veteran who knew the AFL-CIO president for more than 40 years. Trumka, UMWA president from 1982 to 1995, died unexpectedly today. He had just turned 72. “It’s a shock and a tremendous loss for the labor movement and
"Not all whites in the Jackson Purchase and elsewhere are racist; there are many concerned conservative Republicans who don’t like what they are seeing. Progressives need to look past labels and past disagreements and link up with them to make sure that our democratic experiment does not fail."
Today's Trumplican party is a throwback to the 1860s, with Rand Paul as example. Can Charles Booker overcome both Trumpism and Paul to win in 2022?
The covidiot pack in Congress includes Congressman Louie Gohmert and Sen. Marsha Blackburn. But the top dog in the covidiot pack is our own Senator Rand Paul, as he proved in his latest set-to with Dr. Fauci. (It didn’t go well for Rand.)
> “The labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the AFL-CIO convention in 1961. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is more proof, as if it were needed, that King’s
“The country’s been well served by elections run by state and local officials who could respond to state and local problems,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo), explaining his vote to block debate over the For the People Act. The legislation is designed to keep “state and local officers” from
I’ve yet to meet a Kentucky Democrat who won’t admit privately that Gov. Matt Bevin mostly beat himself going on two Novembers ago. Okay, I haven’t asked Gov. Andy Beshear. He probably has a different take on how Bevin ended up a one-term governor. “You catch more
“Those who apparently do not know history are doomed to make basic mistakes,” the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler recently wrote [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/29/greenes-ahistorical-claim-that-nazis-were-socialists/] of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. Greene had just called the Democrats Nazis. Kessler quoted [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/