AFL-CIO Executive Council Backs Universal Health Care, Political Mobilization and More

by Mike Hall, Aug 7, 2007

The Rev. Jesse Jackson joins Rose Ann DeMoro, CNA/NNOC executive director, at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Chicago. DeMoro was elected to the council today.

Before heading to Chicago’s Solider Field for tonight’s AFL-CIO Presidential Candidates Forum, members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council outlined the next steps in the battle to win quality health care for all Americans, developed plans to mobilize a force of 1,000 activists as part of “An Economy That Works for All” and called for a rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure.

Also during this morning’s session, the council approved statements on important reforms to the nation’s trade policy to bring about trade agreement based on fairness and democratic principles, advancing the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act and expanding access to higher education. (Full council statements are available here.)

On Labor Day, the AFL-CIO union movement will kick off a renewed campaign to win health care reform that protects hard-won union benefits and extends health care coverage to all Americans. The council says the campaign’s goal

will be to win universal, quality health care for all of America by making the 2008 elections a mandate on health care reform and electing a president and Congress pledged to that end.

We will do this by engaging with unions to mobilize a massive working families army and helping to build a broad progressive alliance committed to establishing high-quality health care for all.

Elements of the AFL-CIO health care reform campaign will include:

• Education of union members and their families about the necessity for federal action to preserve their hard-won benefits;
• Mobilization of union members to participate in the 2008 elections and demand that candidates for federal office support comprehensive health care reform;
• Recruiting employers to support health care reform;
• Linking national health care reform to the important reform work at the state level;
• Working with progressive organizations to establish a broad alliance for reform.

Faced with stagnating wages, mounting economic insecurity, soaring health care costs and shrinking retirement benefits, America’s workers and their families are finding it tougher and tougher to maintain their livings standards. As part of the AFL-CIO’s “An Economy That Works for All” campaign, the council approved a plan to train 1,000 activists during the next three months to take the battle for economic justice to union members in their communities, workplaces and union halls.

Our goal is to build workers’ power by informing and mobilizing union members around a common analysis of the economic problems facing America’s working families, and a critique of the Corporate Agenda and the set of policies that is undermining the bargaining power of workers and their unions. Finally, we will lay out a proactive alternative Working Families Agenda that will balance power and rebuild an economy that works for all. Union members need to understand that these problems can be addressed and that our political leaders must commit to implementing policies that support workers and their families—setting the stage for tens of thousands of union members to become active in the 2008 elections.

The education will focus on three key policies in the Working Families Agenda: 1) Restoring workers’ freedom to form and join unions by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act; 2) Solving America’s health care crisis; and 3) Protecting good jobs through trade and industrial policies that support the creation of good jobs in America.

With the images of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis fresh and the disaster of crumbling levees that flooded New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina still vivid, the council says it is time for a major national effort to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.  

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