Tim Fernholz sees Richard Trumka getting tough with uncooperative Democrats:
Unless you are among the 27 percent of American workers who don’t get Monday off, you’re probably looking forward to next week’s Labor Day holiday, with its barbecues and back-to-school sales. But organized labor — which earned us the holiday in a political sop after soldiers and U.S. marshals killed striking workers in 1894 — sees no respite in the day as it fights an uphill battle for tangible political victories in Washington.
“Labor Day marks the start of the fall, the period when we get down to business,” promised AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker at the labor coalition’s annual pre-Labor Day press conference yesterday. The event promoted a new study the coalition commissioned on young workers, who are doing worse now than they were 10 years ago: Nearly one-third of workers under 35 live with their parents; 31 percent are uninsured, up from 24 percent a decade ago; and 51 percent lack a retirement plan, an increase in 10 percent since 1999.
