First Responders: The Working People Weekly List

Every week, we bring you a roundup of the top news and commentary about issues and events important to working families. Here’s this week’s Working People Weekly List.

In Devastated Southeast Texas, IBEW Members First Responders: “IBEW locals in the path of the storm, including areas around Corpus Christi, Houston and Galveston, were evacuated, Gonzales said. Some members and retirees have experienced property damage, but no deaths of members have been reported. Houston Local 66 Business Manager Greg Lucero says that crews with utility company CenterPoint Energy are already out working. ‘If they were able to report to work, they’re working,’ Lucero said of the approximately 1,500 utility members. ‘They’re probably sleeping in their trucks right now.'”

Texas Working People Step Up in Worst Storm Ever: “As Hurricane Harvey and its remnants bring unprecedented flooding and damage to a huge portion of Texas, working people in the state are going above and beyond their duties to help one another, Texas AFL-CIO President John Patrick said today.”

Many Americans to Spend Labor Day Doing Work for No Pay: “The AFL-CIO, one of the nation’s largest labor organizations and led by President Richard Trumka, also compared the status of union vs. nonunion workers—and as expected, those affiliated with labor came out ahead.”

AFL-CIO Leader Says Hope for Working with Trump Has Faded: “When Donald Trump moved into the White House in January, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka hoped that labor leaders like himself would find common ground with the new president. Several union officials from the building trades even met with Trump for a photo-op during his first week in the Oval Office. But seven months later, Trumka says there is little hope left that unions will have a fruitful relationship with Trump.”

Asian American, Pacific Islander Unionists Vow to Resist Trump: “AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre, the first AFL-CIO Ethiopian officer, spoke of his history as a refugee who walked 93 days to the Sudanese border to find freedom. He said his experience of risking everything to come here was shared by many other immigrants and refugees. Gebre called on delegates to ‘not abandon our spaces for the right wing to take’ and that ‘every day must be election day.'”

Still Striving for the Promised Land: “Fifty-four years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to proclaim his dream—of a nation where everyone is judged ‘not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.'”

Maine Lobstermen Tap into Union Network for Retail Sales: “A few months after buying a lobster pound and processing plant, Maine’s lobstering union is now tapping its connection to unions across the country to rack up online retail sales and reap greater financial returns for its members.”

AFL-CIO’s Rick Bloomingdale: At the Intersection of Politics, Labor: “When Richard ‘Rick’ Bloomingdale graduated from college with a political science degree in the mid-1970s, the economy was lackluster, so Bloomingdale, 64, now president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, kept his college job washing trucks for the city of Tucson, becoming a member of AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union.”