AFL-CIO adds opposition to xenophobia to campaign issues. Racist xenophobia isn’t exactly a workplace issue, but the country’s top labor federation has added it to campaign issues this election.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre (himself a political refugee, at age 15 fleeing war-torn Ethiopia by walking through majority-Muslim Sudan on his way to the United States) called on progressives to publicize an open letter from more than 500 elected officials who pledged to stand against the xenophobia and hate unleashed in this year’s presidential race.

“It has been a difficult year, being a refugee, a black man and a labor leader,” mused Gebre. “We’re being attacked at every angle.”

But being attacked for one’s faith is particularly damaging to both workers and democracy, he added. And “that’s why the American labor movement is standing up against racism and xenophobia 100 percent.”

The federation is generating millions of phone calls and tens of thousands of activist engagements to discuss the issue with its members, their families, friends and allies.

The worst thing that could happen, Gebre warned, is that such prejudices “seep into the workplace.” Court rulings and federal findings bear that statement out, with instances of prejudice ranging from Abercrombie & Fitch refusing a job to an Islamic woman because she wore a hijab, to religious discrimination uncovered by the federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, which enforces civil rights.

Politicians’ tilt to elite, lack of help from recovery, lead to anger: panel said. The lack of wide economic benefits of the recovery from the Great Recession, politicians’ tilt to the elite and voters’ knowledge that Washington governmental gridlock hurts them at home have led to anger and mistrust in society and in this year’s political campaign, a panel of political analysts says.

As a result, many voters are intensely frustrated about the political system, adds Melinda Henneberger, a visiting fellow at Catholic University of America and former editor at Roll Call.

Joined by longtime commentator Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal Washington bureau chief Gerald Seib and Emma Green, senior associate editor for The Atlantic, Hennberger said, “I talk to many people who are quite well-educated and doing economically fine, but they feel – like Bernie, Trump and now Hillary are saying – that the system is rigged. They want to blow it up.”

Seib added, ”As the economic statistics have gotten better, people feel they haven’t gotten better for them, personally.”

Shields said, “If you lived through the savings and loan scandal [in 1989], it lost people $150 billion and 1,100 executives went to jail. The 2008 [Great Recession] cost people $13 trillion – and not a single three-piece-suit-wearing, Gucci-loafer-clad executive has done a perp walk!”

About 1 million Illinoisans now have paid leave. After the Cook County Board approved paid family and medical leave to some 441,000 low-paid workers there, it raised the total covered by such laws to more than 900,000 in northeastern Illinois alone.

“This victory signals tremendous Midwest momentum in response to growing nationwide demand for this common-sense policy,” said Debra Ness, director of the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Jobless RATE RISES SLIGHTLY. The U.S. unemployment rate rose slightly, by 0.1 percent, to 5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in the most recent data as of press time. Businesses claimed to create a net increase of 167,000 new jobs, and governments shed 11,000 jobs, a separate survey showed, but the number of unemployed rose by 90,000 in September to 7.94 million.

Economic Policy Institute employment specialist Elise Gould said the numbers understate the labor market, noting that if workers who are sidelined are included, “the unemployment rate would be 6.1 percent. There are nearly 2 million ‘missing workers,’ who would be working or looking for work if the labor market improved.”

BLS said factories lost 13,000 jobs in September, construction added 23,000 jobs; and low-paying service-sector jobs added 177,000 jobs. Government job losses were concentrated in local schools, which, seasonally adjusted, shed 14,300 jobs. Gould said the jobs report shows “the teacher gap – the gap between local public education employment and what is needed to keep up with the growth in the student population.”

News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper