UPDATED: AFL-CIO president’s lecture at U of M canceled

February 3, 2014 by
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (right) will speak in Minneapolis Feb. 20.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (right) will speak in Minneapolis Feb. 20.

UPDATED 02/20/14 – AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s lecture scheduled for tonight at the University of Minnesota has been canceled as a result of the weather.

“President Trumka’s flight into Minneapolis has been canceled due to the bad weather systems across the country,” said Kent Love-Ramirez, director of communications for the U’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. “We apologize and hope to be able to re-schedule this event in the future.”

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AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will appear Feb. 20 in Minneapolis as part of a series of events produced by the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs to mark the 50th anniversary of passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Trumka, who leads the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, will give a lecture entitled “Free At Last? On the 100th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, Where Will We Be?”

The speech, scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. in the Cowles Auditorium, 301 19th Ave. S., is free and open to the public. Click here to register.

The Humphrey School announced the event today:

Half a century ago, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, fundamentally changed America. King championed the workers’ cause, and his words and impassioned work led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, examines the connection between labor rights and civil rights. Trumka, a third-generation coal miner, argues for policy efforts to better ensure the right to vote, to guarantee unemployment insurance and a higher minimum wage, and changes in criminal justice to reduce levels of incarceration.

Trumka’s election to president of the AFL-CIO followed 15 years of service as the organization’s secretary-treasurer and capped his rise to leadership from humble beginnings in a small mining community in southwest Pennsylvania. As a young boy troubled by how mine workers were treated during the 1960s, Trumka told his grandfather he could grow up to be a lawyer and “stand up for workers’ rights.” He was elected president of the AFL-CIO by acclamation in 2009 and re-elected by delegates in 2013.

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AFL-CIO calls consumer boycott of Crystal Sugar

October 24, 2012 by

It’s finally official: The AFL-CIO has endorsed a nationwide consumer boycott of American Crystal Sugar products in response to the company’s 15-month lockout of 1,300 workers at facilities in Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota.

The boycott, which began Oct. 15,  is part of the broader labor movement’s continued support for locked-out members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union at Crystal Sugar, where management has blocked workers from their jobs, denying them of their incomes and healthcare benefits.

In addition to bags of sugar labeled Crystal Sugar, the boycott extends to several brands that sell Crystal’s product under a different label, including “Market Pantry” sugar sold in Target stores. The easiest way to avoid buying Crystal Sugar is to buy cane sugar instead, like the C&H label.

Click here for more information about the boycott, and to sign a petition pledging your support.

The national labor movement endorses boycotts cautiously and only in instances of grave injustice, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka noted.

“The 12 million union families of the AFL-CIO are proud to stand with the courageous locked-out workers who are responsible for American Crystal Sugar’s profitability and previously strong reputation,” Trumka said. “As we saw with the lock out of the NFL referees, locking out skilled workers who do important, unglamorous work hurts not only the workers, but the bottom line. We hope that this boycott will encourage Crystal Sugar to finally respect its workers, who worked so hard every day to make Crystal Sugar a highly profitable industry leader.”

Trumka added that Crystal Sugar CEO Dave Berg, after rewarding himself with a 50 percent pay increase for his union workers’ productivity, has obviously “decided to try to break the workers’ union.”

Supporters are asked to call Berg at 218-236-4400 and let him know they are not buying Crystal Sugar products until he ends the lockout and bargains a fair contract with workers.

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