IBEW Local 557 joins Tradesman list

IBEW Local 557 of Saginaw is the latest to join the growing roster of local unions subscribing to The Building Tradesman. Local 557’s neighbor, Bay City IBEW Local 692, started subscribing in August.

We send out a hearty welcome to the members of Local 557.

By way of introduction, The Building Tradesman was established in 1952 as the official publication of the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council and is one of the oldest labor publications in the state. Our paper won first place in 2009 in the “general excellence” category in the  International Labor Communications Association’s annual publication contest, topping all labor papers in the nation.

We serve more than 50 building trades unions around the state, and mail about 43,000 copies of each edition, every other week.

Occupy Wall Street spirit spreading

(PAI) – Unions from New York to Los Angeles eagerly jumped aboard the student-started month-old “Occupy Wall Street” crusade, which featured a mass march of thousands of people down to New York’s Foley Square on Oct. 5 and allied protests in more than 60 other cities nationwide.

Several Michigan cities have been “occupied,” with more scheduled in the future. For more information, search on Facebook under “Occupy Michigan.”

Said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: “We support the protesters in their determination to hold Wall Street accountable and create good jobs. We are proud that on Wall Street, bus drivers, painters, nurses and utility workers are joining students and homeowners, the unemployed and the underemployed to call for fundamental change.

He added: Workers nationwide “are turning out in parks, congregations and union halls to express their frustration and anger about our staggering wealth gap, the lack of work for people who want to work and the corrupting of our politics by business and financial elites.                 “The people who do the work to keep our great country running are being robbed not only of income, but of a voice. It is time for all of us – the 99 percent – to be heard.”

A statement from the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department said it has taken “no official stance on this grassroots phenomenon, we do however sympathize with what the protesters are saying. Which is fundamentally that we know that our nation and our economy are being manipulated by a powerful cabal of wealthy special interests, corporate bosses, bankers, lobbyists and self-serving politicians.” We know the game is rigged and that change can only come about through concerted, grassroots activism.”