Media Center

This year, for Women's History Month, we're taking a look at a group of leaders who are currently active making women's history across the labor movement. Check back daily for a new profile and meet some of the people working to improve not only their community, but also to improve conditions for working people across the country. Today's profile is Jessica Akers of the Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU).

Jessica Akers, the secretary-treasurer of OPEIU Local 105, made history in 2021 when she became the first woman and youngest person ever to be elected president of the Arkansas AFL-CIO.

The AFL-CIO condemns the violent invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military. We stand in solidarity with the workers and their families who are impacted by the devastation, and offer our condolences for lives that have been lost. 

We join the global labor movement and our allies in calling for an immediate end to President Vladimir Putin’s military aggression and we support extensive economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union, particularly those focused on Putin and his protectors. These sanctions should be strengthened, by excluding Russia from the SWIFT international banking system and by taking effective multilateral action against tax havens and financial secrecy laws that protect Putin and his enablers. We further call on all U.S.-based corporations doing business in Russia to publicly condemn Putin’s government while calling for an end to the attack on Ukraine. We stand ready to assist the Biden administration in its efforts to implement and strengthen these measures, and we call on global leaders to build toward re-establishing peace and democracy in Ukraine and the region.

In his address to Congress tonight, President Biden outlined the challenging path toward recovery his administration has carved since taking office in January 2021.

President Biden's American Rescue Plan is injecting $1.3 trillion worth of federal funding into local economies to repair or rebuild roads, bridges, water systems, airports, buses, trains and schools. These important projects will have positive ripple effects through our communities as good-paying union jobs are created in the process which, research shows, raises living standards for all workers in the area, both union and non-union.

But OPEIU members, like most working Americans, are concerned: how rising wages due to a tight labor market are being nullified by inflation, driven in no small part by corporate greed; about the growing wage and health inequities exacerbated by the lingering COVID-19 pandemic; how corporate America continues to get away with union-busting, tax-dodging and destroying the planet; and how to cope with the ongoing student debt crisis that threatens to derail economic growth if the payment pause is ended.

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