Pat Gallagher, with United Steelworkers, joined America’s Work Force on Nov. 21 to discuss endorsing candidates in the next election.
Gallagher addressed an issue in the United States of people giving their support to candidates without researching others or understanding their favoring candidates position on certain issues. He talked about political focus groups that aimed to gather information on what people really want to see from candidates and what kind of action they would like to see be made. Gallagher said that the focus groups help them gather a better understanding of what people actually want and will be able to target their needs more efficiently. Ending his interview on AWF, Gallagher discussed the Democratic National Convention.
John Washington, contributing writer for the Nation magazine talked about methods the government is using that assists in separating families. There is a database that holds records of anybody who has committed a crime, no matter the size, and the government using it to target immigrants of Hispanic descent. In an extreme effort on the push of tracking down illegal immigrants, people are being tracked down and separated from their families. Washington also talked about detention centers holding children for longer than they are allowed to, making it even harder for families who are detained at the border to reunite with each other.
Steinberg said that her organization aims to combat mass incarceration by reforming the pretrial system in the United States. She talked about how many offenders from low income and over policed neighborhoods are unable to afford their bail and how they could not go to work before their trials as a result, causing them to miss out on potential wages. Bail Project offers bail assistance to low-income Americans and their goal is to show that bail is not necessary to ensure certain offenders return to court for their trials. Since bail is returned at the end of a case, she said that donations to their organization could be used to help make bail for two to three other people per year, maximizing the impact of the money.
Pat Gallagher, United Steelworkers District 1 director spoke with AWF on Oct. 17 about the steel tariffs that the United States imposed on China. Gallagher said that he believes that there were positive effects from the tariffs and that it gave the United States time to recover from China dumping steel into the market. He also talked about the United Steelworkers international executive board meeting in Cleveland.
Siegal spoke about Timothy Faust’s new book Health Justice Now: Single Payer and What Comes Next, which covers single-payer healthcare. In his book, he talked about what needs to be done in order for a single-payer model to be successful in the United States. According to Siegal, the spending that would be needed to fund a single-payer model is already being spent in other areas, so the argument that it is not affordable for the U.S. is untrue. He said that the U.S. most certainly could afford to adapt the single-payer health care model, but it would need to be done correctly. Lastly, Siegal spoke about an HIV outbreak in Scott County, Indiana. Compounding the issue of opioid addiction plaguing the county, there is also an HIV epidemic occurring in the area because people are sharing needles that they are using to inject their drugs.
Pat Gallagher, president of the North Coast Labor Federation spoke with AWF on Sept. 19 about the United Steel Workers international executive board meeting. He said that these board meetings involve reviewing the quality of conditions at plants that their workers work at and evaluate what they are doing well and what could be done better. The purpose of these meetings is to make sure everything is up to standard and that the work accurately represents the union’s image.
