Sue Ledbetter, Labor 2008 state director for Wisconsin, reports on a labor council meeting in Milwaukee.

This month, the Milwaukee Area Labor Council’s monthly delegate meeting featured a special economic forum panel discussion introduced by council Secretary-Treasurer Sheila Cochran: “Wrong Directions for the Economy.”

This meeting is part of the AFL-CIO’s nationwide economic education and political mobilization efforts. With disappearing jobs and rising energy prices, working families are feeling the squeeze, and the economy is sure to figure prominently in this fall’s election. Union members are attending local meetings to get the facts they need for effective political outreach and carrying out union voter mobilization and education efforts through door-to-door walks around the country.

The panel featured four presenters: 

• Michael Rosen, AFT Local 212 president and economics professor at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
• Jack Norman, research director for the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future. Norman helped organize his workplace with The Newspaper Guild-CWA as a business reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
• Sangita Nayak, organizer for 9to5, National Association of Working Women. Nayak was involved in the recent paid sick days campaign in Milwaukee.
• Sachin Cheda of the Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition.  

Rosen said although the nation has seen economic growth, the benefits are unevenly distributed, making the economy seriously out of balance:

The real problem in the economy is that even when it has been growing over the last several years, it hasn’t been growing for you, me or us. Union power ensured that as our output increased we received some of the benefits.

The fractured economy provides more proof that working people need the Employee Free Choice Act so they can form unions and collectively bargain, Rosen says.

Union power insured that as our output increased, as we produced more, we received some of the benefits of that production.

 

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