News

AFSCME-backed bill would help child care providers with food costs

AFSCME supports a proposal in Congress to ease the financial burden on child care professionals who provide meals and snacks.

AFSCME President Lee Saunders joins signing ceremony of historic infrastructure bill

AFSCME President Lee Saunders on Monday joined President Joe Biden and members of his administration, as well as a bipartisan group of lawmakers, for the signing ceremony of the historic Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Congress has finally passed an infrastructure bill. Build Back Better should be next.

The House of Representatives has passed President Joe Biden’s transformational bipartisan infrastructure plan, which Biden will soon sign into law. The passage earned praise from AFSCME President Lee Saunders, who, in a statement, said, “We are turning a corner.”

Union 411: How and why we organize

As solidarity actions and strikes sweep the nation, workers are making history by organizing their workplaces for the first time.

When workers belong to a union, they have a unified voice to create safer, stronger and healthier workplaces. Organizing is our most effective tool to determine workplace dignity, hours, working conditions and quality of life. Workers aren’t stuck with dangerous workplace conditions with poor wages and benefits. They can improve them, together.

Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act Introduced

The Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act was introduced today in the House of Representatives by Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.). The bill, which currently has 144 cosponsors, would set a minimum nationwide standard of collective bargaining rights that states must provide. It would empower workers to join together for a voice on the job not only to improve working conditions but to improve the communities in which they work.

The union difference: Greatest wealth gains are for Black and Hispanic union households

We’ve said it before: Life is better in a union. 

Workers who belong to unions make more money than their nonunion counterparts. They have better health care insurance and retirement plans, more job security and safer working conditions. They’re happier.

Report: Cultural institutions took federal money but still let go of workers

Some of the nation’s largest cultural institutions accepted more than $1.6 billion in federal help to weather the coronavirus pandemic, but continued to let go of workers – even though the assistance was meant to shore up payrolls and keep workers on the job, according to a report released by AFSCME Cultural Workers United.

AFSCME members honored during Community Change event

Photo portrait of Mr. Alpha Bufford

Alpha Bufford.

AFSCME supports lowering drug prices to help millions of Americans

When Fran Krugen’s late husband was first diagnosed with diabetes, his insulin cost about $35 a bottle.

But Krugen, an AFSCME retiree from Arizona, will never forget the day when she and her husband went to the drug store to pick up his insulin and the pharmacist told them it now cost $900 a bottle.

“This was medication he needed to live, and we had insurance,” she said at a press briefing earlier this month. “We looked at each other and had to ask ourselves: Do we make the house payment? Do we buy food? Or do we pay for his medication?”