Tax Reform Should Increase Taxes for Wealthy: The Working People Weekly List

Every week, we bring you a roundup of the top news and commentary about issues and events important to working families. Here’s this week’s Working People Weekly List.

Retired Miners Lament Trump’s Silence on Imperiled Health Plan: “Donald J. Trump made coal miners a central metaphor of his presidential campaign, promising to ‘put our miners back to work’ and look after their interests in a way that the Obama administration did not. Now, three months into his presidency, comes a test of that promise. Unless Congress intervenes by late April, government-funded health benefits will abruptly lapse for more than 20,000 retired miners, concentrated in Trump states that include Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Many of the miners have serious health problems arising from their years in the mines.”

Six Questions for Labor’s Top Workplace Safety Expert: “Already we’ve seen the Trump administration repeal two important workplace safety rules. They’ve proposed the elimination of funding for worker safety and health training programs.”

AFL-CIO: Tax Reform Should Increase Taxes for Wealthy: “The AFL-CIO on Monday pressed its tax reform priorities, pushing back against concepts likely to be included in a Republican bill. ‘Big corporations and the wealthy must pay more in taxes than they pay now, so we can build an economy that works for all of us,’ the group said.”

The Human Cost Of Trump’s Rollback On Regulations: “After numerous efforts under other presidents failed, the Obama administration finally tightened the regulations covering silica last year, further restricting the amount of dust that employers can legally expose workers to. The tougher standards were 45 years in the making, the subject of in-depth scientific research and intense lobbying by business groups and safety experts. When the rules were finalized in March 2016, occupational health experts hailed them as a life-saving milestone. But now the enforcement of the rules has been delayed ― and the rules themselves could be in jeopardy.“

Unionized Scientists March in Protest of Attacks on Science and Jobs: “Of all the attacks on our civil society, the attacks on evidence-based science pose perhaps the greatest existential threat. Decisions being made about climate science and environmental protection at this critical time will shape the future of our planet.”

We Need Tax Reform That Works for Working People: “Tomorrow, Americans will fulfill our civic duty of paying taxes to a system that is far from perfect or fair. As Congress reportedly is working on a plan to reform it, the AFL-CIO has a simple framework for what a serious proposal should include and what should not be included. These are the standards we will judge it by…”

Joe Arpaio’s Infamous Arizona Tent City Closing: “By the time former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio lost his re-election bid in 2016, he was widely thought of as one of the worst sheriffs in the country, if not the worst. He was known for harsh anti-immigrant policies, accusations of racial profiling, misuse of funds and any number of other complaints—and the perfect symbol of everything wrong with his way of approaching law enforcement was Tent City.”