On April 4th, the IELC held a congressional roundtable with representatives from across the Inland Empire, including Reps. Norma Torres, Mark Takano, Raul Ruiz, and Pete Aguilar, in order to discuss how we can fight back against the Trump Administration’s regressive policies and how Democrats can better reach and uplift working families.
Over 30 unions showed up to represent Inland Empire workers and their families. We must remember that working people, union members, are the hardest hit by discriminatory administrative policies.
Continuing these type of meetings and conversations will be essential to changing our circumstances. We’re living in a moment where federal workers have had their unions, and many of their jobs, terminated. The NLRB, Social Security, and Medicaid are under attack. Government officials are violently separating working immigrant families, while tariffs are driving up the prices of their essentials. We need pro-Labor legislation passed on a national level – starting with the Protect America’s Workforce Act – which would reverse Trump’s Executive Order that ended collective bargaining rights for close to a million federal workers.
Which is why we have ensured all our democratic Congressional representatives are supporting this bill, and through our collective efforts, Rep. Raul Ruiz and Rep. Norma Torres have both signed on as co-sponsors!
In order to enact real change, we need to continue the fight to unseat anti-labor politicians, like CA-41 Rep. Ken Calvert. We will continue our aim of flipping seats and winning labor protections in the upcoming elections. We are dedicated to fighting against injustice to restore and expand protections for workers in the face of the most anti-labor administration yet.
The work continues
Another way we will advance our region’s needs is through state and local policy change. The IELC will be present at this year’s Joint Legislative Conference with the California Labor Federation & the State Building and Construction Trades Council, where we will be meeting with state legislators to advocate for our sponsored legislation, including the California Right to Organize Act (AB 288)
This bill creates a state right to organize for workers who can no longer get relief at the NLRB, whether due to legal changes, lack of a quorum, or failure to act in a timely manner. Under this bill, if the NLRB fails to act, workers can petition PERB to provide faster collective bargaining remedies like union recognition or an order to bargain. Learn more here.
