Dec.10 Kicks Off Workers' Rights Actions Across Sectors

International Human Rights Day this year, Dec. 10, will be the start of labor's campaign to build a "stewards army" of activists who will take up the fight for workers' rights — restoring organizing and collective bargaining rights for all workers. 

A two-day summit on building the stewards army across every state and sector is being sponsored by the AFL-CIO on Dec. 8 and 9 in Washington, D.C., with participants and other activists breaking for a noon demonstration on Dec. 8 on Capitol Hill to press Congress for action on the Employee Free Choice Act. 

Labor also will use Dec. 10 to kick off a week of actions to support 15,000 USW members who have been on strike against Goodyear since Oct. 5, and to mobilize newspaper workers and supporters in the fight to keep quality jobs and quality journalism.

USW members are fighting back against the company's demands to eliminate retiree health care and shut three more U.S. plants, along with its plans to import more tires from China. The AFL-CIO has called for a nationwide Day of Action by all unions and labor organizations to protest Goodyear's assault on economic security and the basic rights of working families.

Labor also will mount a campaign at stores that sell Goodyear products. CWA President Larry Cohen and IUE-CWA Industrial Division President Jim Clark named Steve Lykins, skilled trades director for the IUE-CWA Conference Board, to coordinate CWA's efforts. CWA District 4 Vice President Seth Rosen will coordinate actions around Goodyear's Akron, Ohio headquarters and throughout the state.

TNG-CWA members are organizing actions at newspapers nationwide on Dec. 11, as newspaper industry workers stand together against a continuing wave of job cuts that hurt quality journalism. More than 44,000 news industry employees have lost their jobs between 2001 and June 2006, said TNG-CWA President Linda Foley, with more job cuts announced every day. "This means fewer journalists, fewer diverse media voices, less news and a public that is under-informed," she said.

Dec. 10, 1948 was designated as International Human Rights Day to mark the efforts by the United Nations and Eleanor Roosevelt, herself a TNG member, to include workers' rights as human rights.