News

AFL-CIO: Unions Aim to Roar in 2020

Despite its setbacks, or perhaps because of them, organized labor has an energy level that AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka says he hasn’t seen before in his 50 years with the movement.

Levy, Garibay Re-Elected to Top Texas AFL-CIO Offices

Vow of 'Bigger, Broader, Bolder' Labor Movement

The Government Shutdown Creates Headwinds for Airlines

The nation’s airlines are blaming the partial federal government shutdown for putting another dark cloud in their path, with few federal workers and contractors taking to the skies and stalled federal agency approvals causing delays in expansion plans, including Southwest Airlines’ much-anticipated service to Hawaii.

Labor Voices: GM Leaves Workers' Futures Uncertain

The focus of General Motors’ November announcement shutting down plants in Lordstown, Ohio; Hamtramck and Warren, Michigan; and Baltimore, Maryland shouldn’t be about money. It should be about people.

UAW GM members are dedicated and committed to making a great product, supporting the success of a company, and supporting a solid, prosperous community.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it's playing out. UAW GM members are facing the disruption of their families.

It’s Not a Shutdown, It’s a Lockout and a Shakedown of Federal Workers

Most media outlets continue to portray the federal “shutdown” as a political fight between a president who once said he would be proud to provoke a standoff and congressional leaders who have called the bully’s bluff. And it is that. But the story of President Trump facing off against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just scrapes the surface of what is really going on.

Los Angeles Teachers Have Approved a Contract to End Their Six-Day Strike

Teachers overwhelmingly approved a new contract Tuesday and planned to return to the classroom after a six-day strike over funding and staffing in the nation’s second-largest school district.

Although all votes hadn’t been counted, preliminary figures showed that a “vast supermajority” of some 30,000 educators voted in favor of the tentative deal, “therefore ending the strike and heading back to schools tomorrow,” said Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

A Manufactured Crisis

Eight hundred thousand workers. That is the number of government employees and contractors impacted by President Trump’s shutdown of the federal government. The average take home pay of impacted workers is around $500 per week, and any financial uncertainty is sure to cause stress and anxiety over how to make ends meet. Each day of this manufactured crisis, working families lose money for housing, healthcare and groceries — the essentials we need to get by.

‘Pay the Workers, Furlough Trump’: Federal Workers Rally for End to Shutdown

Furloughed federal employees and out-of-work contractors greeted one another Thursday with a sarcastic nickname that, on the 20th day of a partial government shutdown, captured their feeling of powerlessness: “Hello, fellow pawns.”

They shouted it to one another over the brutal wind and bitter cold on Thursday in downtown Washington, where hundreds gathered to demand government leaders put an end to the shutdown and allow them to get back to work.

Legislative Lowdown - Jan. 11, 2019

Today is Day 4 of the 140-day regular session of the 86thTexas Legislature.  

Rule Would Let Companies Deny Many Workers in Texas Employment Benefits

Texas AFL-CIO Opposes Workforce Commission Proposal That Could Convert Some Gig Economy Workers Into ‘Marketplace Contractors’

The Texas AFL-CIO has formally opposed a pending rule that would give employers who conduct business via digital networks blanket authority to deny basic employment benefits to employees simply by calling them “marketplace contractors.” 

The Texas Workforce Commission voted to publish the rule proposal in December and could enact it later this month.