SEARCH
America’s Workers Get a Chance to Meet Barack Obama
 |
|
Work hard, play by the rules, and the American Dream will be yours. Not so anymore for America’s workers, as MIT Management professor Thomas Kochan points out from Denver. Kochan, who is blogging from the Democratic National Convention, writes on The Huffington Post that the
question of what it will take to renew the American Dream for working families will be front and center as Democrats meet at their convention next week. Indeed, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have made “Renewing the American Dream” the theme of their domestic policy platform and vision for the future.
Many working families are just getting to know Sen. Barack Obama, and the convention offers a great chance to do so. Kochan, who is co-director of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research, writes:
Those of us who have been working on labor and employment issues in the campaign know that Senator Obama is committed to a comprehensive, detailed, forward-looking action plan. It starts by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act to restore workers’ ability to join a union and get a collective bargaining agreement and by ensuring all working parents have access to paid sick leave and supporting state-level initiatives to provide paid family leave. It builds on his plan for jumpstarting the economy by investing in renewable energies and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure with good-paying, sustainable jobs. It complements his plan to provide affordable, high-quality health care coverage to all America by engaging and working in partnership with our nation’s health care workforce and provider organizations.
Read Kochan’s full post here and stop by the Labor and Employment Relations Association site where Kochan regularly blogs. Get lots of facts on how Obama supports working family issues here.
____________________________________
Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
 |
Become a Fan on Facebook |  |
Follow Us on Twitter |  |
Subscribe to YouTube |  |
Subscribe to Blog RSS | ||||
2 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Renewing the American dream means recreating one that encompasses all working people globally. We cannot remain in our bubble ignoring the unfair labor practices of multinational corporations WHICH AFFECT THE AMERICAN WORKER. For instance, the exploitation of labor South of the Border bring migrant workers to the U.S. who are then criminalized for seeking to WORK and take care of their families.
As corporations have risen in power since the late 1800′s (Lincoln warned about their possible excessive power!), the bottom line at ANY cost has replaced moral integrity and fair pay.
To “Renew the American Dream”, we have to 1) decide who we are morally (if we believe in the quaint piece of paper, the Constitution), 2) strip corporations of legal privileges above and beyond that of individuals, and 3) publicly finance elections so that a true variety of IDEAS are shared and not campaigning based on marketing and money from COROPRATIONS – there’s that word again. In my humble opinion, maybe for the short ride, Obama may make us smile through our pain, but since he has received huge campaign donations from the financial industry and GE, which owns the military contractor Raytheon, I don’t have much HOPE for CHANGE from those quarters.
But if he can protect and build unions, well. rah rah for him.
If you are interested in reading more articles from Thomas Kochan, MIT, he blogs regularly at LERA Commons, the blogsite for the Labor and Employment Relations Association. You can this at: http://lerablog.org.