AFL-CIO Targets Texas

The President of the AFL-CIO Richard Trumka said Thursday that they could possibly target Texas in 2014 to organize and get more workers active in unions.

He noted that they were taking on states where immigration is a key issue. If the immigration battle is won it could This bring approximately 11 million workers to the table to demand workers rights.

Trumka told Politco,

“We've seen cases where workers work for a while and then get stiffed for wages,” he said. “Latinos that have a labor union make more than those without [a labor union]in same job and industry.”

See what else Trumka said about Rick Perry below the jump.  If these kinds of union efforts could even marginally increase Latino turnout in Texas, it could move the needle even more than is predicted by demographics alone. Yet Texans already have a lot of jobs, at least according to our governor.

In response to Governor Perry's assertions that the job growth in Texas is a result of a lack of governmental regulation, Trumka told Politico,

“If you look at the quality of those jobs and the education, it's just not true,” he said. “If you leave employers to own their devices, work sites get pretty nasty.”

“[Texas] can't say, 'We don't let anything happen,' because they do,” Trumka said. “Laissez-faire work environments result in high cases of incidents and fatalities, and they have gone beyond the field of credibility in making that argument.”

If the AFL-CIO were to come to Texas in 2014, it would create an unprecedented push in Texas to turn it blue.