AFL-CIO

Campaigns

• Made in America. NOT.

  Hundreds of Olympians from the United States will be competing in the Summer Olympics in London at the end of this month. These athletes represent values that make America great: hard work, determination, pride in our country and the things we can accomplish as a nation. Unfortunately, the U.S. Olympic Committee seems to have forgotten some of those values. Instead of making sure the uniforms Olympians will be wearing during the opening ceremony are made here in America, the U.S. Olympic Committee decided to outfit them in Ralph Lauren uniforms made in China. More than 2.8 million jobs have been shipped to China since 2001. We have lost 6 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade. The failed policies that have encouraged companies like Ralph Lauren to create jobs overseas, not in America, have hurt working families and our communities. A number of well-known American clothing companies—from Brooks Brothers to Jones New York—can easily manufacture new uniforms in America, right now, in time for the Olympic games. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently said, “I think the Olympic committee should be ashamed of themselves. I think they should be embarrassed. I think they should take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile and burn them and start all over again.” If enough of us speak out, the U.S. Olympic committee will be forced start over and find a supplier to make our athletes' uniforms in America. But time’s running out.

  43,208 of 45,000 Signatures

  Created by Andy Richards
• I'm Standing with Hostess Workers

  Hostess workers are being scapegoated because they are standing up to corporate greed. Hostess' executives are now blaming workers for poor decisions they made that drove Hostess into the ground. What’s happening here is a classic Wall Street tactic—blame the little guy so that they can cover their greedy corporate policies that are gutting the middle class. Sign our pledge to stand with Hostess workers and against the tide of corporate greed wrecking our economy.

  19,782 of 20,000 Signatures

  Created by AFL-CIO
• Tell Big Banks to Be Transparent About Executive Payouts

  The AFL-CIO recently filed proposals to let big-bank shareholders demand greater transparency around golden parachute practices that make huge payouts available to executives who leave big banks for top posts in government. The banks reacted in panic and are working as we speak to persuade the Securities and Exchange Commission to step in, allowing them to keep their policies a secret and their shareholders in the dark. Wall Street executive, Antonio Weiss, was recently in line to receive a $20 million bonus from his investment-bank employer for agreeing to take a Treasury Department undersecretary position. Weiss, who eventually took an advisory job that did not require Senate confirmation, is only the latest in a series of would-be and actual public officials who have stood to benefit from these “golden parachute” deals. When bankers get large bonuses for taking government jobs, it sends a dangerous message about who is really calling the shots. If the big banks think these practices are defensible, they should let their shareholders know the facts and judge for themselves. Sign our petition and call for Wall Street to allow shareholders to vote on these practices.

  23,219 of 25,000 Signatures

  Created by Heather Slavkin Corzo, AFL-CIO
• Tell the SEC to Require Companies to Disclose CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratios

  Five years ago, Congress passed a law that included a rule requiring all publicly traded companies to disclose their CEO-to-worker pay ratio. But Wall Street and big corporations have lobbied hard to stop the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from enforcing this rule. It’s time to change that. Enter your name here to sign the petition telling the SEC it’s time to enforce the rule requiring companies to disclose their CEO-to-worker pay ratios.

  10,803 of 15,000 Signatures

  Created by Heather Slavkin Corzo, AFL-CIO
• Tell Metra: Ensure Workers Who Build Rail Cars Are Safe on the Job

  Metra, the commuter rail system in northeast Illinois, needs to take a stand for workers who build the rail cars they use every day—and there’s one simple thing it can do right now. Nippon Sharyo, Metra’s rail car manufacturer, recently fired Chicago worker Jenn Svenkerud after she complained about fall hazards on the job. Jenn’s complaints should not have been ignored by Nippon Sharyo, especially since Occupational Health and Safety Administration has conducted six different investigations and slapped Nippon Sharyo with more than $34,000 in fines for 11 different safety violations, including, you guessed it, employees exposed to fall hazards. We need Metra to hold contractors accountable when they don’t put workers’ safety first. Sign the petition now to tell members of the Metra Board of Directors to demand Nippon Sharyo reinstate Jenn Svenkerud and make the safety of workers who build Metra rail cars a priority.

  6,878 of 7,000 Signatures

  Created by Elizabeth Bunn, AFL-CIO
• Tell the Senate to Oppose Trump's Nominee for Labor Secretary

  There were many signs that President-elect Donald Trump would be a disaster for working families, but his choice for secretary of labor—fast food CEO Andrew Puzder—is truly horrifying. Puzder's anti-worker views are no secret. He opposes raising the minimum wage and doesn’t believe millions of working people should be paid for the overtime they've worked. He supports the practice of letting corporations hire temporary or contract workers to avoid bargaining with employees. Outside of his opposition to policies that would help millions of working people, Puzder has done everything he can to cut corners and shortchange the tens of thousands of hardworking people at Carl's Jr., Hardee's and the restaurants his company owns. He's called workers at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee's—workers who have made him rich—"unskilled" and said they "don’t produce enough economic value." More than half of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants that were investigated for wage and hour violations were found to have violated the law. He refused to pay his managers overtime they earned, saying paying them more would take away their "sense of ownership." He's talked about replacing workers with machines. Puzder's track record raises serious concerns about his qualifications. Sign the petition to tell members of the U.S. Senate to oppose his nomination for labor secretary.

  6,152 of 7,000 Signatures

  Created by Andy Richards, AFL-CIO
• 

  Don’t allow a repeat of Amazon’s union-busting tactics: Pass the PRO Act now!

  Amazon knew exactly what a unionization win by its Bessemer workers would mean: It would have paved the way for more organizing across the country and built power for the working class, who have been exploited to enrich the ultra wealthy time and time again. It’s why Amazon used every union-busting tactic in the book (and even pioneered new ones!) to stop the organizing effort. To prevent a few thousand workers from unionizing, one of the richest companies in the world: hired a Koch-backed anti-union consultant, sent up to 5 harassment texts a day to workers, forced employees to watch anti-union videos, changed the stoplight by the warehouse so organizers couldn’t hand out union flyers to drivers, offered $2,000 severance checks for workers to quit, retaliated against pro-union workers, collaborated with the USPS to put up a fake dropbox for the union votes—and more. These union-busting intimidation tactics aren’t isolated to Amazon—giant corporations have used these and more throughout history to fight back against working people organizing for living wages and better working conditions. If the PRO Act were law right now, Amazon wouldn’t have been allowed to engage in these sorts of repressive anti-organizing tactics, and would be held accountable for union-busting. But since it isn’t, there’s a real risk that other corporations will see what Amazon did in Bessemer and replicate it around the country. Thanks to union members who fought and died to build power for the working class, some workers have weekends off, an 8 hour work day is the norm instead of 12, and kids aren’t forced to work. Unions are good for workers: They protect workers from exploitation, they bring fairness into the workplace, they allow employees to have a say in the workplace policies that affect them, and they win fair wages and protections for all workers, including working mothers, Black, brown and disabled workers, as well as undocumented immigrant workers who are especially at risk for facing exploitation and unsafe working conditions on the job. Giant corporations and the ultra-wealthy, like Jeff Bezos, know that a unified working class will hold them accountable for their anti-worker tactics, abuses, exploitation, and greed. That’s why we need the PRO Act, which would allow the National Labor Relations Board to impose monetary penalties against employers who violate workers' rights, empower collective action and worker strikes, ensure that employees are not misclassified as independent contractors, and eliminate “right-to-work” laws, a relic of the Jim Crow era designed specifically to separate workers and undercut collective bargaining rights. Every Senator who cares about protecting working people from exploitation and intimidation by corporations like Amazon needs to co-sponsor the PRO Act immediately, so we don’t see a repeat of the shameful behavior by Amazon anywhere in the country ever again.

  22,573 of 25,000 Signatures

  Created by Jennifer Bates
• Right to Work Is Wrong for New Mexico

  Gov. Susana Martinez and extreme politicians in Santa Fe have made it clear they want to pass an unfair and unnecessary “right to work” bill this legislative session. This legislation would silence the professional voices of teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers and cut pay and benefits for all New Mexico workers. Thousands of working people have been speaking out against this dangerous proposal since last year. So you’d think our legislators would do the right thing and oppose right to work. But big corporations have been lobbying hard to get this bill passed. This bill could come up at any time, so we need to tell our legislators that right to work is wrong for working people in New Mexico. Sign the petition now!

  1,507 of 2,000 Signatures

  Created by Jon Hendry, New Mexico Federation of Labor
• Tell University Administrators to Stop Their Anti-Union Campaign

  In the 1990s, I helped organize my fellow teaching assistants at the University of California, Berkeley. At the time, we were facing huge workloads, low pay and insecure health care. It took several years but with support from the UAW we ended up getting university administrators to negotiate with us and created a better workplace as a result. Flash forward to today and tens of thousands of research assistants (RAs) and teaching assistants (TAs) are still facing the same things we were when I was at Berkeley. Many are paid so little they have to work additional jobs and rely on loans to make ends meet. The good news is they’re organizing and a recent National Labor Relations Board decision restored the rights of research and teaching assistants at private universities to come together in union and negotiate collectively. But administrators at Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and other prestigious private universities are doing everything they can to stop RAs and TAs from organizing. They submitted legal arguments against the right of RAs and TAs to form a union and, when they lost, set up anti-union websites to get RAs and TAs to vote against forming a union. This anti-union campaign is just another example of the greed we’re seeing at universities across the country. As tuition continues to skyrocket for students, administrators have raised their own salaries dramatically while shifting most of the critical teaching and research work to lower-paid, temporary workers, like TAs, RAs, adjuncts and postdocs. Sign the petition now to tell administrators at Columbia, Harvard, the New School and other prestigious private universities to stop with their anti-union campaign and allow research and teaching assistants to come together in union to create a better workplace.

  5,506 of 6,000 Signatures

  Created by Christian Sweeney, AFL-CIO
• Tell Gov. Dalrymple: Don’t Hurt Locked Out Workers

  After passing pay raises for themselves, right-wing legislators in Bismarck approved a bill to deny unemployment benefits to locked out workers. If signed into law by Gov. Jack Dalrymple, it will give greedy corporate CEOs even more incentive to lock out workers to drive down wages and benefits for all of us. While we don't think legislators are currently overpaid, it does speak to their priorities when they are giving themselves a pay raise while taking rights away from working people. Tell Gov. Dalrymple to stand up for North Dakota working families and veto HB 1112.

  452 of 500 Signatures

  Created by Tom Ricker, North Dakota AFL-CIO