Posted: Wednesday, 11 May 2011

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka brought a message of solidarity to CLC delegates meeting in Vancouver – a message of renewed, global effort to organize and re-organize working people the world over. But first of all, he took time to thank Canada’s unions for their solidarity. “You were at our side in Wisconsin, in Indiana and Ohio when we called. You kept your promise of solidarity. For that, your brothers and sister to the south say thank you and we will stand beside you whenever you call, for as long as you need us.”

Trumka described the growing gap between the super rich and a quickly eroding middle class across America, where the top 10% of income earners took 100% of the wage gains over the past decade, leaving millions of working families struggling to make ends meet. Trumka also brought news of successful new organizing efforts in New York to bring the city’s taxi drivers back into the labour movement. He also spoke of the success of Domestic Workers United, which recently secured passage of a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in the New York legislature.

Echoing the words of many speakers to the Convention, Trumka concluded by calling on union activists to reinvent the movement with new strategies and modern tactics in order to take on today’s global corporations and win prosperity for working people everywhere.