SEARCH
Holt Baker: We Have Historic Opportunity for Real Change |
The United States is on the brink of making historic changes in its leadership, and the union movement is a key part of the drive to move the country in a new direction. Speaking before the annual meeting of the Lawyers Coordinating Committee (LCC), an organization of the nation’s labor lawyers, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told participants, “Something very special is going on in America.”
We’ve seen it in the upsurge of voter registration during the Democratic primaries. We’ve seen it in impressive voter turnouts in state after state.
People are not just angry and frustrated and upset at the direction of our country. They’ve moved on past that into a determination like we haven’t seen since the days of Dr. (Martin Luther) King and Bobby Kennedy—a determination to take back the reins of power and turn our country around. And we’re not talking about a left turn or a right turn, we are talking about a U-turn.
Speaking at the two-day meeting in Seattle, Holt Baker said working people have been shut out of the nation’s decision making.
To change our country, workers must organize for power. And we need more than organization. My hope is that we truly blossom into a much stronger movement. There is a difference between an organization and a movement. In an organization, you make the calls to turn people out to a meeting. In a movement, you make the calls to find a bigger hall than the one you had booked.
A key goal of the union movement must be to ensure that the nation does not have four more years of President George W. Bush’s anti-worker policies, she said. But creating change will require a unified union movement.
We will need all our strength as a movement to make sure we get the change our members will vote for, and not just the same mush of Wall Street policies with excuses and flattery. We have to seize this historic opportunity and not let it slip away.
During the meeting, the lawyers discussed issues such as revitalizing the National Labor Relations Board, workers’ safety and immigration, while mapping strategies to build diversity in the union movement and ensuring voting rights protection in the 2008 election.
The AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee was founded to better the conditions of working men and women and their families by enhancing the quality of legal representation that is available to the AFL-CIO and the national, international and local unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The LCC is made up of more than 1,700 union-side labor lawyers in more than 500 firms and union legal departments nationwide.
1 Comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
The US needs to follow the strategy of Norwegian workers: They have a “Workers Party” of strong pro-union people, voted in by a strong coalition of union members, that controls about 1/3 of the Norwegian government. The Viking spirit lives on, and as a result, Norwegians have better working conditions, a more family-friendly country, medical coverage for everyone and free education that extends through college or vocational school. (And they pay about the same taxes we do!)
We don’t have a Worker’s Party as such, but our unions banded together can put a tremendous pressure on government for worker-friendly administration and an end to the anti-worker, pro-corporate climate we live in. Our unions know who could do an excellent job in NLRB, OSHA, MSHA, etc. and with the combined union power, could get these people in key positions. The AFL-CIO is doing a great job at keeping issues in the public eye, the question is will union members and families be willing to make the effort? United we can win, divided we fail……..again.