Support for Labor Unions Near Historic High as Trump Trashes Working Class

As Trump and Republican Congress pummel unions, the more people rise in support

Jon Queally for Common Dreams

Winning the long, tough strike at Butler Hospital showed
what strong unions can do

A new poll reveals that Americans continue to support organized labor at historic levels, even as the Trump administration and its Republican allies in Congress take a battering ram to union rights and the nation's working class.

Gallup's annual survey, released Thursday, shows more than two-thirds of people in the US (68%) approve of labor unions and the economic security and prosperity they provide working families. The popular support matches record-high numbers of recent years after a long decline from the 1960s through the early 2000s.

As Gallup notes:

When Gallup first measured Americans’ ratings of labor unions in 1936, 72% approved. Approval reached the record high, 75%, in 1953 and 1957 and ranged between 63% and 73% from 1958 through 1967. Then, from 1972 through 2016, approval was lower, with few readings over 60%, including the 48% all-time low recorded in 2009. This was the only time approval fell below the majority level. Since 2017, approval has been above 60%, the longest period at this level since the 1960s.

Putting American workers in harm’s way

Abolish OSHA? Again?

By Jordan Barab, Confined Space

Labor activists are alarmed, workers are afraid and the internet is abuzz after Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) has (yet again) introduced legislation to repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act and abolish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

But take a breath. I’m not very concerned about Biggs’ bill.

But I am very concerned about the fate of OSHA.

Why?

Read on…

Biggs’ introduced, H.R. 86, the “Nullify Occupational Safety and Health Administration Act” on January 3, 2025, the first day of the 119th Congress. The nickname is the “NOSHA Act”.  (Get it? No OSHA Act?)The entire text of the bill reads “The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 is repealed. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is abolished.”

Background

This is the third time Biggs has introduced this same bill. He keeps introducing it because he is incensed that that OSHA has been forced to crack down on Arizona’s state OSHA program for violating the OSHAct which requires OSHA state plan states to operate a program that is “at least as effective” as federal OSHA’s program.  Arizona’s previous Republican Governors, Jan Brewer and Doug Ducey, repeatedly resisted OSHA’s efforts to ensure that the state complied with the law.

During the Obama Administration,  federal OSHA started enforcing requirements that residential construction workers use fall protection for heights above 6 feet.  After OSHA’s fall protection standard was issued in the early 1990’s, residential construction was “temporarily” exempted for feasibility reasons. Fast forward 20 years, that exemption didn’t make sense (if it ever did), and the requirements were reinstated. Several states resisted enforcing those requirements, and Arizona actually passed a law refusing to comply. To force their compliance, federal OSHA launched a long administrative process to take over Arizona’s construction sector. On the eve of the federal takeover, the state relented and decided to protect residential construction workers.

During COVID, Arizona refused to adopt OSHA’s Emergency Temporary Standard protecting health care workers from COVID-19. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey criticized the standard as  a “federal threat to take authority away from Arizona and the other states as a ‘political stunt and desperate power grab’ that falls outside the normal public-comment process for changing regulations.”

Even the first Trump administration came down hard on Arizona for not following appropriate procedures and guidelines. OSHA accused the state of  allowing the Industrial Commission of Arizona to routinely and arbitrarily reduce the penalties recommended by Arizona OSHA inspectors.   OSHA ordered the state to stop reclassifying violations and directed the agency to determine criteria by which the ICA can approve citations or adjust penalties.

For those reasons and other failures, the Biden administration threatened to rescind the entire state plan, but relented when Democrat Katie Hobbs was elected Governor in 2022 and promised to improve the program.

Politicians may rail against the ‘deep state,’ but research shows federal workers are effective and committed, not subversive

Public workers are not the enemy

Jaime Kucinskas, Hamilton College and James L. Perry, Indiana University

A worker at the National Hurricane Center tracks weather
over the Gulf of Mexico. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

It’s common for political candidates to disparage “the government” even as they run for an office in which they would be part of, yes, running the government.

Often, what they’re referring to is what we, as scholars of the inner workings of democracy, call “the administrative state.” 

At times, these critics use a label of collective distrust and disapproval for government workers that sounds more sinister: “the deep state.”

Most people, however, don’t know what government workers do, why they do it or how the government selects them in the first place.

Our years of research about the people who work in the federal government finds that they care deeply about their work, aiding the public and pursuing the stability and integrity of government.

Most of them are devoted civil servants. Across hundreds of interviews and surveys of people who have made their careers in government, what stands out most to us is their commitment to civic duty without regard to partisan politics.

Magaziner Cosponsors Legislation to Expand Access to Affordable Childcare

Bill will also help parents to re-enter the workforce and ensure childcare providers are paid livable wages 

Representative Seth Magaziner (RI-02) announced that he has co-sponsored H.R. 2817, the Child Care for Working Families Act, to expand access to affordable childcare, help parents to re-enter the workforce, and ensure that childcare providers are paid livable wages.  

This legislation will ensure that working families pay no more than 7 percent of their income on child care, early childhood educators earn livable wages, and families have more child care options in their communities. 

The Child Care for Working Families Act would create three key programs: 

1. The Birth Through Five Child Care and Early Learning Program, a Federal-State Partnership, to ensure all working families have access to high-quality, affordable child care;
2. The Building an Affordable System for Early Education (BASE) Grants to ensure every State receives funding to support child care providers, increase worker pay, and improve access for families; and
3. The Universal Preschool Program to expand access to high-quality preschool programs. 

Looming Medicaid Tsunami

Overburdened Rhode Island DHS Faces Renewal Crisis

By Steve Ahlquist For UpRiseRI

With the end of the COVID emergency all states, including Rhode Island, must begin the process of annually renewing those who receive Medicaid benefits starting in April. 

Unfortunately, under the administrations of former Governor Gina Raimondo and present Governor Daniel McKee, the Department of Human Services (DHS) has experienced a dramatic shortage of workers, which may cause the 300,000+ people in need of Medicaid renewal long wait times, unnecessary stress, and possible gaps in medical coverage. 

An already overburdened DHS will be seeing an increase of 15,000 renewal applications per month, rising to 25,000 later in the year. With roughly half the renewals being passive, that is relatively automatic, it still leaves DHS with 7,000-12,500 renewals per month, on top of the regular work they already do.

On March 8, Stacy Smith told the Rhode Island House Finance Health and Human Services Subcommittee that DHS is unprepared for the “tsunami” of Medicaid renewals that will be starting in April. 

Smith is the President of Council 94 AFSCME/AFL-CIO Local 2882, representing 280 workers who make eligibility determinations for programs such as Medicaid, SNAP benefits [formerly food stamps], cash assistance, and child care.

“While things have improved slightly under the McKee administration, Director Brito’s leadership, and the General Assembly’s required reports on hiring, we are still desperately short staffed,” said Smith.

Speaker Joseph Shekarchi (Democrat, District 23, Warwick) held a Medicaid Renewal Information session for House members and reporters. Uprise RI asked Director Merolla-Brito about the 120 unfilled positions at DHS. 

Director Merolla-Britto countered that the most recent numbers she had indicated that there are 117 open positions throughout the entirety of DHS, and 75 open positions that affect field operations, including eligibility technicians.

An important lesson from Dr. King’s last campaign

Before he died, Martin Luther King, Jr. joined a campaign to unify working people of all races. Today, nothing could be more powerful.

By Jessicah Pierre 

As we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., it’s natural to remember his courageous advocacy for racial equity. But before he was assassinated, King had also begun to broaden his efforts to unify the around economic justice.

That’s worth remembering today.

In December 1967, King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and other conveners laid out their vision for the first Poor People’s Campaign. Seeing how poverty cut across race and geography, these leaders built the campaign into a multiracial effort including African Americans, white Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans aimed at alleviating poverty for all.

The goal was to lead a massive protest in Washington D.C. demanding that Congress prioritize a massive anti-poverty package that included, among other things, a commitment to full employment, a guaranteed annual income, and more low-income housing. And they wanted to pay for it by ending the Vietnam War.

“We believe the highest patriotism demands the ending of the war,” King said, “and the opening of a bloodless war to final victory over racism and poverty.” Assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968 while organizing Black sanitation workers, King never made it to the Poor People’s March, but thousands did protest in Washington to honor King’s memory and to pursue his vision.

That vision remains to be realized. Today, 140 million Americans — over 40 percent of us — remain poor or low-income. As in King’s day, Black and brown Americans are especially impacted, but so are millions of poor whites.

Our country may be polarized by party. But the truth is, we have more in common to fight for than what divides us.

What would he say to us today?

On this day, 43 years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King was shot down and killed on a motel balcony in Memphis, TN.

Dr. King was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers and their union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). The workers were on strike for recognition of their right to join a union.

Today, those rights are under full-scale attack from Republicans in Congress, Tea Party governors and anti-worker public officials even right here in Rhode Island.

A lot has changes in the years since Dr. King's assassination, but far too much has remained the same.



Author: Will Collette



Nice turn-out at Wisconsin solidarity rally

There was a nice turn-out of union members from both the public and private sector at the State House rotunda this afternoon.

The State House interior was awash in the various union colors and alive with signs of solidarity and support for embattled state workers in Wisconsin.

AFSCME, the union that took the lead in organizing this rally, was out in force. Lead speaker was Charlestown's own, Mike Downey, who is the President of AFSCME statewide.