AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Wins A Third 4-Year Term
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who was re-elected to a third term Sunday night in St. Louis, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 4, 2017.
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Alex Brandon/AP
AFL-CIO members, meeting in St. Louis, voted Sunday night to give Richard Trumka another term as president. He has been in the position since 2009.
Trumka ran unopposed as did Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre.
Bloomberg News reports Trumka has another four years to try to reverse the fortunes of the embattled labor movement.
“While Trumka’s re-election proved easy, it takes place at time U.S. unionization is at record lows and the Supreme Court is considering a case that could shrink the membership even further by banning mandatory public-sector union fees.
“Trumka has pursued a restructuring of the AFL-CIO this year, dismissing dozens of staff and dissolving departments in a move he said would tighten the group’s focus on mounting campaigns, passing legislation and stimulating growth.”
I am humbled and honored for the opportunity to serve the working families of the AFL-CIO for another four years #AFLCIO17
— Richard L. Trumka (@RichardTrumka) October 22, 2017
The re-election was held at the start of the AFL-CIO’s four-day, quadrennial convention.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Following the election, crafting a “Workers’ Bill of Rights” will be a primary focus of the event, Mr. Trumka said. “The aim is to give politicians a clear view on union priorities, including the need for better wages and rethought trade agreements. It would establish a litmus test to determine if the AFL-CIO will support candidates in the 2018 and 2020 elections, regardless of party.
“People that support that Workers’ Bill of Rights will get our support,” Mr. Trumka told reporters Sunday. “Those that don’t—we’re sorry. We’re going to use our resources and our power to help people get elected that support the needs of workers.”
Looking ahead to the 2018 mid-term elections, NPR National Political Correspondent Don Gonyea reported that Trumka said unions have learned lessons from the 2016 election.
“Labor endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton. According to exit polls, she carried union households, but by just 9 percentage points. Compare that with President Barack Obama’s 18-point margin among labor voters four years earlier. The shift certainly helped Donald Trump secure victory in closely contested battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“Turning that around in the next year’s midterm elections will require aggressive outreach to union voters. Personal contact is always the key, according to Trumka, but he also acknowledged his organization didn’t make the case well enough — or often enough — last year.
“As for the appeal of Trump among the rank-and-file membership, Trumka said, “My members, just like most Americans, are angry that the system isn’t working for them. That it keeps moving them further and further behind,” adding, “while the country is the richest country on the face of the earth.”
“He said they were willing to take a risk on Trump because he promised to shake up the system.
Every two years the AFL-CIO mounts an expensive get-out-the-vote and informational effort on behalf of the candidates it endorses.
Houston Astros Advance To The World Series For The Second Time In History
The Houston Astros head to the World Series to face the Los Angeles Dodgers. Brian Smith of the Houston Chronicle speaks about what the Astros’ entry into the baseball world series might mean for the city in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
LAKSHMI SINGH, HOST:
It’s been nearly two months since Hurricane Harvey brought record rainfall and flooding to Houston, Texas. The city faces a long road of recovery. But this week, Houstonians have reason to celebrate because their baseball team is in the World Series, and they needed this. Last night, the Astros routed the Yankees in game seven to win the American League pennant and advance to the big show for only the second time in club history.
Starting Tuesday, the Astros will face the L.A. Dodgers, who won the National League Championship Series. To hear more, we’re joined now by Brian Smith. He’s a columnist for the Houston Chronicle, and he joins us from his home in Houston. Brian Smith, thank you so much for speaking with us.
BRIAN SMITH: Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.
SINGH: The Astros have only been to the World Series once before in their 56-year history. Give us a sense of how big of a deal this is – not only for the Astros, but for the city.
SMITH: This is about so much more than baseball for the city of Houston. This is about Houstonians. This is about a city that was ravaged, and destroyed and in chaos during Hurricane Harvey just two months ago. And they couldn’t play baseball at Minute Maid Park. They actually had to replace the outfield. When the Astros returned after playing some home games in St. Petersburg, Fla., and spending a little time in the Dallas area while Harvey was going on, and everyone across the country is watching on television, they finally returned to Minute Maid to play again, they had an old-fashioned double header against the Mets on September 2.
And manager A.J. Hinch, who’s now in the World Series for the first time in his career, gave a pre-game speech on the Jumbotron and said, you know, Houston, this is for you. And basically, the rest of the season has been the Astros being a great baseball team that was World Series caliber. We’re playing for much more than that. And to have the Astros, who have never won a World Series game in their history and, now, be in the World Series about two months after Harvey said so much about this team. And there’s no question about it. The entire city has fallen in love with this team. And now, they really have something to be proud of with the Astros in the World Series.
SINGH: Because it’s – also sounds like making it to the World Series gives the people of Houston that much more resolve to keep going when it seems like everything else is a struggle and hopeless.
SMITH: It really does. And I’ve had friends affected by it. And I’ll never forget – a couple of days after Harvey started to subside, and we visited one of them, and they had, you know, floodwater in their house. They woke up to it. And one of the family members – the first thing he really wanted to talk about was the Astros. How are the Astros doing, you know? I mean, they’re dealing with unthinkable chaos and destruction in their lives, and the one thing you can keep up with – and it’s baseball. It’s every day. You know, Houston is doing well two months later. You can drive around. You can walk around. You’d have no idea. But then, you go into a neighborhood, and they’re going to be dealing with this for years.
So it’s a very lovable, energetic, thrilling team. They’re a very diverse team just like the city of Houston. So this entire city has followed this team. They fall in love with them. But at the same time, it’s an even bigger picture than that. This is a franchise and a city that really doesn’t win anything. I mean, Houston hasn’t won a major pro sports title since 1995. So simply getting in the World Series means so much to the city and this fan base. But I could easily see taking this to six or seven games and maybe shocking baseball and winning the World Series.
SINGH: What do you think a win in the World Series would actually mean for the people of Houston this year?
SMITH: For Houston to actually be able to have a championship in this city what would be about three months after Hurricane Harvey, that’s Hollywood, that’s storybook. They’re four wins away from it. And honestly, if it happens, they will go national – international. But they have the potential to really get into America’s hearts if they can pull this off.
SINGH: Brian Smith is a sports columnist for the Houston Chronicle in Houston, Texas. He spoke with us from his home there. Brian Smith, thank you again for joining us.
SMITH: Thank you.
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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Fact Check: President Trump's Comments On ACA's Subsidies
NPR’s Melissa Block talks to Sarah Kliff, Vox senior policy correspondent, to fact check Trump’s claim that subsidies for insurance companies are “bailouts” and “a windfall” for those companies.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And now we’re going to truth squad some of President Trump’s latest claims about health care – in particular, what he’s said about his decision to stop paying for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The president has called those subsidies bailouts to insurance companies, a windfall. Sarah Kliff joins us for a fact check. She covers health care policy for vox.com. Sarah, good morning.
SARAH KLIFF: Good morning.
BLOCK: And first, why don’t you give us a quick review of just how these cost-sharing reduction subsidies work?
KLIFF: Yeah, so these are subsidies for low-income Americans who buy Obamacare to help make their co-payments and deductibles a little bit lower, to make it a little easier to go to the doctor. And these payments have – will continue to be paid by insurance companies, even though the government will not finance them. It is just coming out of insurance companies’ own pockets at this point.
BLOCK: So basically, if they get reimbursed by the federal government, that is a wash? They’re getting just made up for what they already paid out?
KLIFF: Yeah, so the federal government, you know, makes these payments each month, and insurance companies, in turn, help lower the co-payments and deductibles of their low-income consumers. What President Trump is changing is he’s not going to make those payments, so insurance companies have no one on the back end, you know, sending them the payment to make up for that spending.
BLOCK: OK. So when President Trump calls those payments a gift to insurance companies, are they a gift?
KLIFF: I would disagree that they are a gift. You know, for one thing, they are going not necessarily to the insurance companies. They’re ultimately going to low-income Americans to help them afford their co-payments and afford their deductibles. So, you know, on that level, they don’t seem like a bailout or a gift to the insurance companies. They are required by the law. The law requires these subsidies to be made. So they’re really – you know, I see them as part of the Affordable Care Act and not necessarily a bailout.
BLOCK: The president has also said, Sarah, that the insurance companies, in his words, made a fortune with Obamacare. Is that true? What do the numbers show?
KLIFF: The numbers are a lot more mixed. The best data on this probably comes from the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, which looks at quarterly margins – so how much insurance companies have each quarter leftover after paying out all those claims. In 2014 and 2015, insurance companies had a quarterly margin of just about $20 a person. That’s not a ton of money. It’s gone up as the Obamacare markets have stabilized.
In 2016, it was about $90 a person, so it’s definitely getting better. But the insurance markets – you know, I’ve covered them since they launched. And they’ve really been a very rocky experience for insurance companies financially. They didn’t know how to price at first. People were sicker than they expected. It’s only in the past year that insurance companies have made decent profits there, but I think of them as a mixed bag when it comes to financial performance.
BLOCK: Decent profits, which raises the question – if the insurance companies are losing the federal payments, they began compensating by jacking up the premiums for other people – right? – raising those premiums a lot – in some cases by double digits. Couldn’t the insurance companies just absorb the costs themselves, cut into their profits but not pass it along to consumers?
KLIFF: Yeah, so one of the things I’ve learned as a health care reporter is insurance companies tend to have relatively low profit margins, usually in the 3 to 4 percent range. So there definitely is some space. But one of the things that surprised me a little bit is state regulators often are the ones saying, you have to make those increases. They’re really worried that insurance companies might get hit with a big claim and not have enough money to pay for it.
So they want to make sure that insurance companies are getting enough revenue from their premiums to cover that loss, to make sure they can actually pay out claims. The worst-case scenario for a state regulator is to have an insurance company that just can’t pay its medical bills for patients.
BLOCK: That’s Sarah Kliff. She’s a senior policy correspondent for vox.com and host of the podcast The Impact, which covers health care policy. Sarah, thanks so much for being with us.
KLIFF: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
