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AFL-CIO Launches Union Veterans Council |
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The AFL-CIO today is launching the Union Veterans Council, bringing together veterans and members of military families to hold our leaders accountable on the issues that matter most.
The launch of the Union Veterans Council will help mobilize the more than 2.1 million union members who are veterans to get involved in the 2008 elections and fight for the health and education benefits they deserve. These veterans will speak out to advocate policies like a fully funded Veterans Affairs (VA) and the recently passed 21st Century GI Bill.
The Union Veterans Council kicks off today in Dayton,
In addition to the Dayton event, union veterans are meeting at roundtable events in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Denver and Charleston, W. Va. Union veterans will launch their own state-level veterans councils and discuss plans to elect pro-working family leaders who will support veterans. Union veterans will take the lead in comparing the records of the presidential nominees, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
The AFL-CIO also is launching a TV ad today featuring Jim Wasser, a Vietnam-era veteran and retired Electrical Workers (IBEW) member. In the ad, Wasser speaks about McCain, whose military service is honorable but whose Senate voting record hasn’t supported veterans and their families. The ad will run in communities around the country hard-hit by the nation’s economic crisis.
In the ad, Wasser praises McCain’s military service and discusses his concerns about McCain’s political agenda.
Every vet respects John McCain’s war record. It’s his record in the Senate that I have a problem with.
Wasser says McCain supports continuing to spend billions in Iraq, yet he repeatedly voted against increased funding for veterans health care.
People should let McCain know that his agenda is not what we need. Not now.
Around the country, union veterans will be critical in electing a president and Congress that respect their service and look out for working families. The Union Veterans Council will make sure these veterans are educated and energized this fall.
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This is excellent! I applaud your effort…We in Pennsylvania need everyone to understand that anti union forces are trying to defeat Obama and go on to pass legislation that will prevent strikes by teachers and get townships and Boroughs to refuse to honor the prevailing wage regulations. We hop e the State Afl-CIO will do something about this.
I personally believe that it is time that unions recognize their veteran members. We should use union veterans to confront McCain at EVERY Town Hall meetings he has. These things are staged and we need to expose him and confront him when he tell the american people that he has fought for veterans and that he is receiving the support of All Veteran organizations. We need to expose the Republicans for the hypocrites they are.
Being raised on a farm, I started working since I was 10 years old plus going to school in my early years. As a WW11 veteran, I left for the war at age 17, returned to the States at age 20, a seasoned combat veteran. Through the years, I have been messed over many times by false promises of employers and government. Now I am under the VA medical care in my latter years. We need union and political protection in order to achieve security for the younger set. I am leary of my hero John McCain’s outlook for veterans and working families. Free trade agreements lose American jobs PERIOD.
The following veterans group tracks John McCain’s voting record concerning our veterans. His lack of support for their medical care is appalling. He even voted against more time at home between tours. He opposed the new GI bill for vets because he feels it may discourage re-enlistments rather than discourage high tech jobs being given to Halliburton employees that our troops want and desire to increase their skills and future. He didn’t even show up for the vote. He runs on a platform of being a vet, yet doesn’t support them.
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/9559
Thank you
This is a wonderful effort on the part of the AFL-CIO. As host of Democratic Talk Radio and a labor activist, I would like to invite spokepersons from this organization to be guests on my radio show.
Whatever ones traditional party or political view as a nation we have a set of difficult problems to solve from the mortgage crisis, job loss, war entanglements, oil prices, global warming, failure to find bin laden, 3 trillion dollar defecit, etc. Solving these problems will require a president to have superior intelligence.
Sen McCain graduated 895 out of 899 students at the Naval Academy. In other words he was almost at the bottom of his class. Honesty, experience, heroism, and bipartisan ability, all McCain atrtributes, wont be enough to make up for the disaster created by Bush’s lack of intelligence.
Experience wont help either. We haven’t had a depression since 1929. We’ve never had to buy 70% of our oil from countries that are opposed to our cultural experience and have used their profits to attack us. We’ve never had to buy our manufactured goods from other countries since our Revolutioinary War. And we haven’t had global warming since the Neanderthal.
Simply put, our best hope is someone smart enough to work his way through an Ivy League Law School and brilliant enough to be editor of the Law Review.