\n<\/p>\n
Nearly 1,000 \u201cworker over billionaire\u201d protests are being planned in all 50 states starting this weekend as part of a Labor Day week of action organized by labor unions and advocacy groups in opposition to the Trump administration\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n
The actions include marches and rallies in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, a Labor Day parade in New York City, rallies in Palmer, Alaska, Freeport, Maine, and a planned protest at the state capitol in Honolulu, Hawaii.<\/p>\n
The protests are organized by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, and dozens of partner organizations, including Public Citizen, Indivisible, Democracy Forward, MoveOn and Patriotic Millionaires.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is about organic, grassroots organizing, and we intentionally wanted it to be outside of Washington DC, because that\u2019s where the impacts are being felt,\u201d Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it\u2019s teachers or nurses or construction workers, they\u2019re all determined to stand up and fight back, because they\u2019re experiencing the cuts, they\u2019re experiencing the change in policies, they\u2019re experiencing the attacks of this White House on their unions, and so they\u2019re determined to make their voices heard and mobilize to fight forward regardless of what\u2019s happening around us, no matter the obstacles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the policies being protested are the Trump administration\u2019s attempts to rescind collective bargaining rights from 1 million federal workers, the largest single act of union busting in US history, a cut to minimum wage requirements for federal contractors from $17.75 an hour to $13.30 an hour, a proposed rule to eliminate federal minimum wage and overtime protections for 3.7 million childcare and home care workers, and the rescission of a minimum wage requirement for disabled workers.<\/p>\n
The actions come as public support for labor unions remains strong. A national poll conducted by the AFL-CIO and David Binder Research found trust in labor unions is at 55% \u2013 larger than the 36% of respondents who said they trusted the Democratic party and the 35% of respondents who said they trusted the Republican party.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are waking up to the fact we don\u2019t have to just sit back and take it and the labor movement is the place to go to channel that activism, to build what\u2019s next and we\u2019re putting forward a vision for what the economy can be,\u201d added Shuler.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people see tanks rolling into Washington DC, when we were promised lower costs, they\u2019re like, this makes no sense,\u201d said Shuler. \u201cWe\u2019re getting billionaires standing up at the front row of the inauguration, basically taking over agencies, our economy and our country. So I think that no matter what party you belong to, that is a unifying thing that everybody wants, the freedom, fairness and security that all working people deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe billionaire agenda, the corruption we\u2019re seeing, is changing the way government is functioning. It\u2019s leading to real-time and impactful ramifications for regular people,\u201d said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen. \u201cThe gutting of Medicaid, all the firings we\u2019ve seen of federal workers, the ravaging of families through Ice raids. It\u2019s just all coming together to cause people to stand up and say, \u2018we are the people of this country. It is workers over billionaires.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Gilbert noted they currently have 984 events scheduled, with the aim to reach over 1,000 by Labor Day, a mass organizing effort that has been weeks in the making.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been standing together over and over again to talk about the authoritarian slide that this administration is ushering in in our country. We expect a lot of energy this weekend. This is really just the beginning of an ongoing fight against what\u2019s being taken away from regular people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nearly 1,000 \u201cworker over billionaire\u201d protests are being planned in all 50 states starting this weekend as part of a Labor Day week of action organized by labor unions and advocacy groups in opposition to the Trump administration\u2019s policies. The actions include marches and rallies in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, a Labor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[5586,3400,131,864,2377,10719,3233],"class_list":{"0":"post-18373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-actions","9":"tag-billionaire","10":"tag-day","11":"tag-labor","12":"tag-planned","13":"tag-unions","14":"tag-worker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}