We're still upset that The Ed Show is being booted to the weekend. Ed Schultz the most vocal pro-labor voice on national TV (that may be why he's getting moved).
Credo has a petition up that you can sign to keep The Ed Show in its primetime weekday slot. It says,
Ed Schultz has been one of few in the media who supports working class people. With his prominent voice on prime-time MSNBC television we as class warriors have had an ally on television for not only our values but our friends and colleagues.
Ed rises above the typical Beltway insider politics to deliver hard hitting news that gets to the heart of the issue. He speaks for the every day working guy, those gathered around the TV at the fire station house, the educator who is grading papers while listening, and the every day activist like you and me who tune in each night.
Join me in demanding our true class war hero Ed Schultz stays on weeknights on MSNBC.
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Concord reaches contract with largest union eliminating furlough days Contra Costa Times ...the tug-of-war between the city and its largest union has ended with a deal eliminating a controversial furlough program and restoring pay for city workers for the first time since the economy plummeted. The city council unanimously approved the contract with 150 city workers represented by Teamsters Local 856... Teamsters declare impasse with Hernando County Tampa Bay Times ...The Hernando County administration and the Teamsters Union representatives tried on Thursday to reach an agreement about how much weight seniority should carry when making hiring decisions. They couldn't...
Ed Schultz, who has been a good friend to Teamsters and the entire labor movement, is being shoved aside at MSNBC. “The Ed Show” is being relegated to weekends.
This sharp-elbow knock of Ed from his primetime slot at 8 p.m. Eastern is bad news for working people. No one covers our issues and concerns better than Ed. In fact, no one on TV but Ed really covers them at all.
We love Ed because he gets it. He cuts through the bull with his plain talk. He doesn’t try to one-up with charts, graphs, footnotes and brainy intellect. Rather, he invites us to his kitchen table for a nightly chat. His passion for improving the lives of the middle class is contagious.
If you don't agree with MSNBC's decision, you can call NBC Universal at 212.664.4444, or email Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC. at phil.griffin@nbcuni.com.
Remember that Ed walks the talk too. He gave a great speech at our last Unity conference and donated $20,000 to the James R. Hoffa Memorial Scholarship Fund. He frequently hosts Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa to talk about our issues.
But now, working people’s voices will only be heard on weekends. That’s not good. Ed has been instrumental in bringing light to the war on workers being waged across the country and that attention has made a difference.
Five days after Job-killer Gov. Scott Walker dropped his anti-union bomb on Wisconsin on Feb. 11, 2011, Schultz began covering the protest. Sourcewatch tells us:
MSNBC’s Ed Schultz kicked off media coverage of the Wisconsin protests by spending his show's hour focusing on the unprecedented people power being demonstrated in Wisconsin. Schultz said that this is a fight for the "soul of America."
He later brought his show to Madison, camping out in the cold with the angry protesters. Many Wisconsinites believe the 14 state senators would never have left the state had it not been for The Ed Show.
Last night, Ed scored an interview with Scott Prouty, the bartender who videotaped the now-famous video in which Mitt Romney trashed 47 percent of Americans at a fund-raiser.
Prouty is a bartender who worked the event and brought a camera in case staff got a chance afterward to take photos with Romney, as had occurred when Bill Clinton once visited. He was moved by Romney’s remarks about conditions at a Chinese factory. But he was prompted to release the tape because he was taken aback by the way Romney treated workers at the event, those 47 percenters.
The service industry worker was also miffed by the way Romney addressed the staff at the event, asking as soon as he arrived for them to move things along.
Prouty had actually tended bar at a previous Romney event and served the candidate a Diet Coke with lemon. “He took it and turned and didn’t say anything,” Prouty told the Huffington Post. “He took it out of my hand and turned his back without a ‘thank you’ or anything else.”
He’s hoping to work with pro-labor organizations in the future; and he’s a man of greater empathy than Mitt Romney. It was all good television.
Prouty hadn't spoken to anyone in the media before. Here's why he chose The Ed Show:
In his live interview with Schultz, he said: “I thank you for speaking out for workers all across America. That’s the reason I’m here today is because you have a voice that — I think we need more voices like yourself.”
My boss, Jim Hoffa, has a great idea: Make corporations sign a pledge of allegiance to American workers. Make them promise not to close any more factories.
Hoffa went on The Ed Show last night and said it's time to embarass these corporate titans into reinvesting in America. He thinks if a CEO is named to a White House panel to create jobs, he should at least promise not to send any more jobs overseas. Hoffa said,
If you want to be part of the solution, let's start keeping jobs in America, let's start bringing jobs back.
President Obama recently named Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, to his new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Less than half of GE’s workers are in the U.S. and less than half of its revenues come from its operations in the U.S. Oh, and GE, which runs a huge shadow bank called GE Capital, got a gigantic taxpayer bailout as a result of the financial crisis.
The company has closed 29 plants in the U.S. It used to employ 16,000 workers at its aviation plant in Lynn, Mass. It sent some of those jobs overseas, to places like Thailand and Canada. Now there are only 3,500 GE jobs in Lynn, and GE is sharing sophisticated jet technology with China. So maybe Jeff Immelt can start solving the jobs problem by being the first person to sign the Corporate Pledge of Allegiance.
You may have heard that Keith Olbermann left MSNBC abruptly last week. His replacement is Ed Schultz, one of the rare television commentators who talks about the plight of working people.
It will still be called "The Ed Show." My boss, Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa, will be the very first guest in the new time slot. Hoffa will be on MSNBC at 10:00 p.m. (EST) to discuss Ed Schultz's favorite topic -- the plight of working families.
