| | | | | | | Presented By PhRMA | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen · Jun 12, 2022 | | Happy Sunday. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,176 words ... 4½ mins. Edited by Jennifer Koons. | | | | | | 1 big thing — Axios interview: Labor's big plans |  | | | Incoming AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler speaks at a voting-rights rally on Capitol Hill last year. Photo: Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via Reuters | | | | Liz Shuler — new leader of the AFL-CIO, and the first woman to hold the job — is zeroing in on the tech sector as one of organized labor's top targets. She also plans to shift more of the powerful group's resources to organizing, she told Axios' Jonathan Swan and Hans Nichols. - "The emerging workforce is people of color, is young people, is women, particularly women of color," Shuler said. "This is not your granddaddy's labor movement."
Shuler will be confirmed today as the group's president at its constitutional convention in Philadelphia, making her leader of 57 U.S. and international labor unions representing 12 million workers. - She has been running the AFL-CIO since the sudden death last summer of former president Richard Trumka.
- "We are looking to seize on this moment to show that the labor movement is wide open — that we are open to transformational change," she said in a joint interview with her deputy, Fred Redmond, the group's first Black secretary-treasurer.
Why it matters: The two want to build on unprecedented union victories at Amazon and Starbucks, and reallocate resources toward organizing and pare back AFL-CIO leadership — a shift from Trumka's approach. Between the lines: Redmond mentioned "tech workers" as one target. But the leaders were cagey about naming specific companies. - "We can't say who because we don't want, obviously, the companies to be notified," said Shuler.
Zoom out: Shuler and Redmond need to harness the energy and enthusiasm of the biggest wave of union organizing campaigns and strikes in decades. - They know this moment won't last: Democrats control Congress at least through November ... Joe Biden is the most pro-labor president in recent times ... and workers are feeling emboldened.
Trumka was a skilled political player. But as The New York Times reported, the rate of union membership fell by about 1.5 points during his tenure, to under 11%. - Shuler indicated the group will put a significantly heavier emphasis on organizing at a moment when workers, including Amazon's Christian Small, are notching up stunning victories, electrifying labor activists everywhere.
Read the full story. |     | | | | | | 2. 🇺🇦 Ukraine tide turns toward Russia | | A Ukrainian army field medic in a base camp in a wooded area of eastern Ukraine. He rotates into the battlefield, treating and evacuating wounded. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images Russia isn't close to victory in Ukraine. But in a notable momentum shift, its forces "appear to be making slow, methodical and bloody progress toward control of eastern Ukraine," the N.Y. Times reports (subscription): - Why it matters: The "heady early days of the war — when the Ukrainian underdog held off a deluded and inept aggressor and Mr. Putin's indiscriminate bombardment united the West in outrage — have begun to fade."
What's happening: Russia is picking off regional targets, Ukraine is running low on ammo and Western support is "fraying in the face of rising gas prices and galloping inflation," The Times says. | | | | | | | | 3. 🤖 America's robot summer | | These Uber Eats delivery robots are deployed in L.A. Photo: Serve Robotics We're encountering lots more robots in our daily lives — delivering our food, pouring our drinks, mowing our lawns, Jennifer A. Kingson writes in Axios What's Next. - Why it matters: As brainy machines take over tasks as diverse as chopping vegetables, driving trucks and assisting the elderly, the human labor force will see major shifts in what jobs are needed.
The number of labor-saving robots on the market is exploding, due to improvements in AI and lower development costs. People have grown accustomed to some of them (Roomba vacuums), but others stun us: 👀 What we're watching: Robots are poised to make a particularly big difference in caring for the elderly. - Robotic home-monitoring systems will detect if an older person falls — and summon help.
- A robot health care worker "could take care of us, tell a story ... take our pulse and blood pressure," says Professor Lionel Robert Jr., a roboticist at the University of Michigan.
🔮 What's next: Robots under development will be able to empty the dishwasher, fold laundry — and collect your child's toys off the floor. | | | | | | | | A message from PhRMA | | Voters want Congress to address health insurance | | |  | | | | Many Americans reject so-called government "negotiation" once they learn it could sacrifice access, choice and innovation. The story: Respondents find health care coverage costs unreasonable and a top priority health care issue for policymakers to address today. Read more in the new survey. | | | | | | 4. 📷 1,000 words | | Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images In Austin yesterday, Linda Hello, 68, comforts her granddaughter, Eisley Miller, 11, during a March for Our Lives rally at the Texas Capitol. - The youth-led group, founded after the Parkland high-school shooting in 2018, yesterday hosted marches and rallies in 450+ cities around the world to urge elected officials to prioritize gun safety.
Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Tens of thousands rallied on the National Mall. - Above, David Hogg — a survivor of the Parkland killings, and a founder of March for Our Lives — hugs Manuel Oliver, father of Joaquin Oliver, one of the Parkland victims.
See videos from around the country. | | | | | | | | 5. 😱 How inflation took us by surprise |  Data: University of Michigan (consumers), Cleveland Fed, Federal Reserve Economic Data. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals Americans are notoriously pessimistic when it comes to inflation — surveys of where consumers expect inflation to be in a year's time generally show levels a point or two above the broad market consensus. - But this time, it rose much higher than even the pessimists had predicted, Axios chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon notes.
Share this graphic. | | | | | | | | 6. U-Haul was packed with white supremacists | | Authorities arrest members of the white supremacist Patriot Front in Idaho yesterday. Photo: AP Authorities arrested 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front near an Idaho pride event yesterday after they were found packed into the back of a U-Haul truck with riot gear, AP reports. - The men were standing in the truck wearing khakis, navy-blue shirts and beige hats with white balaclavas covering their faces when Coeur d'Alene police stopped the U-Haul.
The truck was stopped near a Coeur d'Alene Pride in the Park event. - "They came to riot downtown," Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said.
Police found riot gear, a smoke grenade, shin guards and shields inside the van. The men wore arm patches and logos on their hats that identified them as members of Patriot Front. - All 31 were charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor.
Police learned about the U-Haul from a tipster, who said it "looked like a little army was loading up" in the parking lot of a hotel. - Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia, Arkansas — and one from Idaho.
Share this story. | | | | | | | | 7. 🏇 Sentence of the day | | Belmont Stakes winner Mo Donegal, with jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., is paraded in the winner's circle yesterday at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. Photo: Eduardo Munoz/AP Capacity at yesterday's Belmont Stakes was capped at 50,000 and the attendance was 46,103 — far short of the grounds record of 120,139, set in 2004, AP's Jake Seiner writes: Still, fans crammed into cars on the Long Island Rail Road and breathed life into the 117-year-old track with floral headwear, pastel suits and the unmistakable musk of booze and cigars. | | | | | | | | 8. 🐦 Tweet du jour | | Via Twitter Aurelia End, AFP White House correspondent, tweeted this pic of Air Force One carrying President Biden over New Mexico wildfires yesterday. | | | | | | | | A message from PhRMA | | Insured Americans face barriers to care | | |  | | | | Nearly half of insured Americans who take prescription medicines encounter barriers that delay or limit their access to medicines. Learn more about the abusive insurance practices that can stand between patients and the care they need in PhRMA's new report. | | | | 📬 Invite your friends to sign up here to get their daily essentials — Axios AM, PM and Finish Line. |  | It's called Smart Brevity®. Over 200 orgs use it — in a tool called Axios HQ — to drive productivity with clearer workplace communications. | | | |
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