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Sticking to a here-and-now solution to coronavirus-caused joblessness, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka proposed the federal government guarantee paid employment – by actually shelling out the money – for all workers. Employers would be a pass-through, nothing more. In a 13-minute speech posted on the federation’s Facebook page, Trumka said that with unemployment at highs unseen since the Great Depression and with the future clouded by millions of jobless people, now is not the time for partisan politics. Instead he declared, lawmakers should unite, as some already have, behind federal subsidies straight into workers’ pockets, and not to CEOs or Wall Street. Trumka also warned, as public health specialists have, against reopening the economy too soon. Right-wing pressure has forced some states to yield and start reopening businesses, even without enough coronavirus testing, a lack Trumka pointed out. Doing so, he declared, could put us right back down again. “If we reopen before we’re ready, if we reopen because we’re impatient, if you send workers into unsafe workplaces, if you send consumers into an unsafe community, we’ll be reopening an economic wound that will make it much harder to heal down the road."

Note: This letter was sent to Representatives John Katko (NY-24) and Elise Stefanik (NY-21), requesting they co-sponsor H.R. 6431 - Made in America Emergency Preparedness Act. The letter to Rep. Katko was co-signed by the Greater Syracuse Labor Council.

Entertainment workplaces need more time and data to prepare and change the way show business works.

The United States now has more than a million reported coronavirus cases, by far the most of any country in the world. The health of our nation, physically and economically, depends on the safety of our workers.

As Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO,wrote in a public letter to the U.S.

Stand Behind our Healthcare Heroes

Statement of Samantha DeRiso, President, Central New York Labor Council