afl-cio

"Even knowing what's happening in Japan, we have Republicans saying we have to cut regulatory spending on places like nuclear energy," says Mike Papantonio, who notes the similarities between the refusal to learn from BP and the refusal to learn, now, from a deepening disaster in Japan. From the shift of the risk of dangerous fuels onto the taxpayers to the glib "every energy type has its dangers" dismissals, Mike breaks down the problems with the ways we talk about disasters, energy policy, and why we don't seem to want to invest in clean, safe fuels like solar and wind. "There's going to have to be a new kind of union movement. It's got to be one that is much more rank and file, much more bottom up, the organization has to be in the workplace, and in order to go beyond legalistically bargaining wages, people have to take action in the place that they work," says David Newby of the AFL-CIO. Laura caught up with David this past weekend in Madison at the largest protests yet, afte Scott Walker forced through the bill to bust public employee unions. He talks about the prospects for a new kind of union movement, different from the one of the past 40 or 50 years. Communities of color, Monica Adams notes, "were already organizing, we already knew about the wrath of Walker, we knew how he was over Milwaukee, we knew that he'd have targeted attacks." It was only natural, then, for Monica and her colleague at Freedom Inc., Kabzuag Vaj, to be at the center of the organizing against Scott Walker's cuts. Monica and Kabzuag discuss the issues beyond just attacks on unions, Walker's SB 1070 clone bill that attacks immigrants, and much more. "We have to be thinking about the people who don't get mentioned by name, because those are going to be the ones who get impacted the most," Monica notes. Distributed by Tubemogul.

"I have received nothing but overwhelming support from my constituents, saying 'We love you but don't come home,'" says Lena Taylor, one of the fourteen Wisconsin state senators who left the state in order to delay a vote on Governor Scott Walker's "budget repair" bill, that would eliminate collective bargaining for state employees. Walker unveiled his budget yesterday, after driving protesters out of the taxpayer-owned capitol building, and Sen. Taylor is not thrilled with his ideas--and not intimidated by his threats. She joins us via phone from her undisclosed location to give us her thoughts on Walker's priorities. "We find that working people are desperate to be part of something bigger, they know their standard of living is declining, they are now finding inspiration from the demonstrations in Wisconsin, " says Karen Nussbaum of Working America, an AFL-CIO community affiliate that supports and organizes non-union working people. Karen joins Laura via Skype from Washington, D.C. to discuss the impact the labor protests in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and now Idaho are having on the people she works with, who are not union members but who understand the importance of unions to all workers in the US. Last Saturday, with the backdrop of 100,000 protestors, Laura caught up once again with Wisconsin State Assembly member Cory Mason in the Wisconsin State Capitol Building. They spoke about the dirty trick played on House Assembly members last Friday and Cory predicts the massive cuts to education and health care contained in Walker's state budget. Finally, the banks are back to profitability, but they've got yet another trick up their sleeve for getting a little more of your money. Laura discusses. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Welcome to the second day of our special coverage from the workers' protests in Madison, Wisconsin! ; Thanks again to our friends at The Uptake , Free Speech TV , and WORT FM in Madison for making this collaboration happen.The fight in Wisconsin has national implications, and national leaders have made the trip to Madison to express solidarity with the workers and join their struggle. Perhaps none more prominent than Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has been speaking to rallies, and led a march of students back to school today after several days off supporting their teachers.Rev. Jackson spoke with Laura about the need to support the rights of workers when they are under attack, and to remind everyone of the connections between the civil rights struggle and the struggle of working people everywhere."Wisconsin has a proud tradition in terms of labor, the environment, of people standing up to the power and money of big corporations," says Spencer Black, former chair of the Wisconsin State Assembly Natural Resources Committee.

Welcome to our first special one-hour episode from Madison, Wisconsin! Thanks to our friends at The Uptake , Free Speech TV , and WORT FM in Madison for making this collaboration happen."Unions realize that this is a threat to their very existence," says Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive , of Scott Walker's attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers. And some of the usual suspects are behind Walker's attack--from the Koch brothers to Republican ideologues. "These corporations want to get these people off the playing field," says John Nichols, of The Nation . Matt and John discuss the history behind this week's historic labor protests.If Scott Walker is allowed to gut public employees' right to collective bargaining, Sheila Cochran of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council points out, it will lower the floor for all Wisconsinites' wages and benefits. ; The unions in the state have long helped keep wages high and benefits, including health care, good for all of the state's workers, even as factories have closed and jobs gone overseas.The public sector remains the last bastion of union workers around the country, and Sheila and Diane Palmer of SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin discuss the impact the cuts will have on working families in Wisconsin and around the U.S."People understand this is a national struggle," says Mary Bottari of the situation in Wisconsin right now, and Mark Pocan, Wisconsin State Assemblyman from the 78th District, says "This has to be the spot where we stop it nationally."