To tackle our nation’s ongoing jobs crisis, the AFL-CIO has put forth a five-point plan to put people back to work and restore our economy. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka presented this five-part plan at the White House Jobs Summit last week.

      To tackle our nation’s ongoing jobs crisis, the AFL-CIO has put forth a five-point plan to put people back to work and restore our economy. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka presented this five-part plan at the White House Jobs Summit last week.

Some 7,000 Detroit public school teachers, members of AFT, will receive a 1 percent raise in the third year of a contract agreement reached last week—and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,200 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work. NEGOTIATIONS AFT, Detroit Public Schools: The Detroit Federation of Teachers (AFT) reached a tentative agreement last week on a three-year contract with Detroit Public Schools. The 7,000 teachers will receive a 1 percent wage increase in the third year of the contract, which runs through June 2012. Employees may be eligible for an additional 2 percent increase, depending on school enrollment and state aid.

Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council and co-chair of the AFL-CIO Energy Task Force, is in Copenhagen, Denmark, to ensure that labor’s input helps shape a global climate treaty. This report follows up on his first blog from Copenhagen here. Security is tight at the United Nations climate change conference. And security is only expected to get tighter as the conference gears up for the major ministerial meeting next week capped by the heads of state meeting on Dec.18, which President Obama will attend.

We’re continuing our campaign for real health care reform with a new AFL-CIO TV ad that sends a clear message: “Pass Health Care. Don’t Tax Health Benefits.” The ad, which started running in key markets around the country over the weekend, emphasizes that taxing benefits will lead companies to cut benefits and will shift cost burdens to families that can’t afford it. It urges Congress to pass health care reform all Americans can afford.

    After his bus driver shift, ATU Local 1181 member Jorge Munoz feeds the hungry in Queens seven days a week.         There are two things the hungry, jobless and likely homeless men and women in Jackson Heights, Queens, N.Y., can count on every night. Jorge Munoz, a school bus driver and Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1181 member, will be there at 73rd Street and Roosevelt Avenue, and he will be there with hot food, coffee and hot chocolate. 

       Despite programs intended to ensure children have enough to eat in and out of school, teachers across the nation report they are witnessing a growing number of hungry students—which affects their ability to concentrate and learn, according to a new survey.

  This week, the grassroots movement for health care reform centered on working family roundtables where dozens of participants in key states testified about the need to fix the nation’s broken health care system. 

    Working America and union members held roundtable discussions of the jobs crisis in Albuquerque and other cities across the country.         While top leaders from government, business and labor gathered yesterday at the White House, grassroots union members and struggling families held their own job summits across the country.

      The nation’s unemployment rate moved from 10.2 percent to 10 percent in November, with 15.4 million American workers unemployed, according to U.S. Department of Labor data released this morning. But when both unemployed and underemployed workers are counted, there still are some 26 million people without jobs or full-time work. At the start of the recession in December 2007, there were 7.5 million jobless workers and the unemployment rate was 4.9 percent