Play Ball!

by Mike Hall, Apr 17, 2011

With Major League Baseball’s 2011 season under way, our friends at the Alliance for American Manufacturing remind us that the all-American pastime still features some Made-in-USA sports gear.

Rawlings has been making baseball gloves since 1887. Despite diversifying overseas, Rawlings’ pro model and custom gloves are still made in Washington, Mo.

You can do what the pros do and have your glove tailor-made to your exact specifications at Rawlings’ Missouri factory.

You can’t have a ball game without a bat, so get a good grip on a Louisville Slugger. The wooden bats are crafted by members of the United Steelworkers (USW) at the company’s home in Louisville, Ky. The aluminum bats are produced in Ontario, Calif., by members of the Teamsters (IBT).

Chance Encounter Takes Shuler to Fox News

Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer

by Mike Hall, Apr 16, 2011

Opportunity can strike at the strangest of times and places. For AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, who believes in getting the union movement’s message out to audiences that normally don’t hear it, that opportunity came on a recent flight from Washington, D.C., to Detroit when Republican pollster/strategist and Fox News regular Frank Luntz sat right down in the middle seat next to her.

Because of that encounter, Shuler will be talking about teachers, firefighters, baggage handlers, nurses and other workers and their unions with Luntz on Sunday on Fox News prime time at 9 p.m. EDT.

Just minutes before the plane’s doors closed, Luntz, who had been bumped from his first-class seat, came down the aisle and pointed to the dreaded middle seat, says Shuler.

I thought, “I know this guy.” And after he got settled, we introduced ourselves and I said, “I’m Liz and I work for the AFL-CIO.” When he asked me what I did for the AFL-CIO and I told him I was the secretary-treasurer, he was kind of taken aback.

Shuler says they began talking during the bumpy flight—he’s a bit of a white knuckler—and Luntz outlined what he thought— from a conservative’s view—the labor movement was doing wrong and why it was losing some public support. Shuler countered with examples of worker successes and union innovations. That’s when he offered Shuler an appearance on his show.

We talk to ourselves a lot. We really need to be reaching out to audiences we normally don’t talk to and besides a lot of our members do watch Fox. This is an opportunity to reach some people who may have tuned us out and may even be pretty hostile.

In the segment taped earlier this week, Shuler appears in a modified town hall setting in front of some 30 audience members, divided about equally between people who voted for President Obama in 2008 and those who backed Sen. John McCain (R). They ask questions and then respond to Shuler’s answers via electronic devices that register their level of agreement or disagreement.