Mich. labor leader: to pass labor agenda, we have to pass health reform

“We can pass a labor supported agenda in Congress, but first we must get health care with a public option. We will get this if you mobilize your members to go to the town hall meetings and show support and write our representatives urging them to pass health care reform,” said Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, speaking to 75 union leaders at the Causeway Bay Hotel in Lansing, Michigan on Tuesday, August 25. “Then we can get Employee Free Choice and bank regulation so the banks and other financial institutions and the Wall Street crowd are stopped from the speculation that got us into this mess.”

The meeting was an AFL-CIO Community Services Seminar to discuss how to out reach to laid off workers about the various services and training programs available to them. Among the new features are an outreach to laid off workers by establishing unemployed clubs that include job fairs, food banks, resume writing, networking, opportunities for training, and helping out in organizing drives. The attendees included union brothers and sisters from AFSCME, United Steelworkers, UAW, Utility Workers, Operating Engineers, CWA and UFCW from various communities in the lower peninsula of the state of Michigan.

-- Jim Ryan, Detroit