Archive for November, 2006
The Nov. 7 Winning Game Plan: Workers Talking to Workers
How did they do it? How did union members turn the country around Nov. 7?
Since the beginning of the year, 250,000 union members reached an unprecedented 13.4 million voters in 32 states. In Minnesota, where Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate, signed up 24,000 new members between April and September, activists turned around the state’s 1st Congressional District, where anti-worker Republican candidate Gil Gutknecht was a shoe-in to win, and elected Democrat Tim Walz.
Despite the Media Hype, Thousands WERE Disenfranchised Nov. 7
Despite media reports that everything went well on Election Day, the reality on the ground was that thousands of people were disenfranchised because electronic voting machines failed or poll workers weren’t trained well enough. As a result, voters stood for hours in long lines and in some cases, votes were not recorded at all.
Lots to Say
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| Newly elected Sen. Jon Tester of Montana (center) with (from left) AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson. | |
Working families’ months-long get-out-the-vote mobilization paid off big time Nov. 7, returning to the Senate and the House lawmakers who back an agenda that includes affordable health care, quality education, fair trade and family-supporting jobs.
Got news? Send it to blognews@aflcio.org.
Writing after the elections, one reader from Arizona summed it up as simply as did that famous Republican-turned-Democrat Abraham Lincoln who originally coined the phrase:
You can fool some of the people all of the time.
You can fool all of the people some of the time.
But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
Good job.
‘America Has Spoken: No One Who Works Should Live in Poverty’
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| Sen. Edward Kennedy, longtime champion of a minimum wage boost, speaks with union members and community activists on Capitol Hill. |
When voters decided it was time to change the nation’s direction and give Democrats the majority in the Senate and House, they also paved the way for the first increase in the federal minimum wage in a decade.
Says Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.):
America has spoken, and the new Congress will listen. If there’s one message from this election that emerged loud and clear on a domestic issue, it’s raise the minimum wage. No one who works for a living should have to live in poverty!
Racism Is Alive and Well in the Republican Party
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| AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Bill Lucy | |
William Lucy, AFSCME’s secretary-treasurer and president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, sends us this blog post on the outcome of the Nov. 7 elections.
The Republican National Committee constantly argues the political tent is big and there is room for all.
At a meeting a little over a year ago, its chairman, Ken Mehlman, even apologized for his party’s past history of discrimination, racism and its practice of excluding minorities in general and African Americans in particular. In July of this year, President George W. Bush made essentially the same argument—that people should give the national Republican Party an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment on a range of issues important to African Americans.
Air Traffic Controllers: Short Staffing Contributes to Another Fatal Crash
Air traffic controllers have been warning that the contract unilaterally imposed by the Bush Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over the Labor Day weekend contained new rules that pose real and potentially dangerous consequences for the safety of airline passengers and crews.
Now the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) has expressed concern that FAA cutbacks contributed to the crash last month of a twin-engine plane, on approach to the airport in Lawrenceville, Ill. Air controllers had voiced the same concern with respect to an earlier fatal crash this year in Indiana.
Coal Miners Struggle for Basic Benefits After a Life in the Mines
Peabody Energy is the world’s largest private coal company and operates 33 mines in the United States. Once nearly fully unionized, the company has systematically closed its union mines and replaced them with nonunion operations.
But in recent years, thousands of nonunion miners have turned to the Mine Workers (UMWA) for help in gaining a voice at work. In December 2005, workers at 19 Peabody mines in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia launched the Justice at Peabody campaign.
Bush Sees No Need to Rein in Unfair Trade, Currency Manipulation
Meetings are well and good. The question is: What happens next? Now that President Bush finally has met with CEOs of the nation’s Big Three automakers, he needs to take action, say Democratic members of Congress.
While Bush agreed with the auto leaders that skyrocketing health care costs must be reined in, he did not agree to rein in unfair trade practices and currency manipulation by Asian competitors, the executives say.
ILO: Bush Violated Airport Screeners’ Basic Rights
The Bush administration violated the “fundamental” rights of 56,000 airport screeners when it prohibited the workers from achieving union representation and engaging in collective bargaining in 2003, the International Labor Organization (ILO) ruled in a decision responding to a complaint filed by the AFGE.
Federal Judge Dismisses Another Lawsuit Against Card-Checks
A Republican federal judge has said what union folks knew all along: There is nothing illegal about workers forming a union through majority sign-up.
U.S. District Judge Graham C. Mullen, who was appointed by the first President Bush, last week dismissed the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s lawsuit against the UAW and Freightliner. The lawsuit challenged UAW’s card-check agreement with Freightliner and, by extension, all card-check agreements. Under majority sign-up or card-check, an employer agrees to recognize the union if a majority of eligible workers indicate a preference for a union by signing authorization cards.
