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Labor Day Message from Barack Obama |
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“It’s time you had a partner in the White House,” presidential candidate Barack Obama says in a video Labor Day message to America’s working families. Promising to end tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas, to sign the Employee Free Choice Act and to deliver tax relief to 95 percent of working families, Obama says:
America was built by its laborers, but today our workers are struggling just to get by in an economy that no longer works for them. That’s why we can’t afford four more years of the failed George Bush economic policies—policies that Sen. McCain has proudly embraced and promises to continue.
It’s time we had a president who will stand up for working men and women by building an economy that rewards not just wealth, but work and the workers who create it. It’s time you had a partner in the White House who knows that the struggles facing working families can’t be solved by spending billions of dollars on more tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs, and that hardworking families need immediate relief….
It’s time you had a president who honors organized labor—who’s walked on picket lines; who doesn’t choke on the word “union”; who lets our unions do what they do best and organize our workers; and who will finally make the Employee Free Choice Act the law of the land.
That is the choice in this election. We can choose to remain on the path that has abandoned workers and gotten our economy in so much trouble, or we can reclaim the idea that in America, opportunity is open to anyone who’s willing to work for it.
Obama is scheduled to rally for workers today in Detroit—along with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney—and Milwaukee. Check out Obama’s Labor Day video message here. (It’s a large file and may take a few minutes to download—be patient. It’s worth it.)
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.
4 Comments
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Legislatively (re)impose a fair and balanced labor market:
First, double the minimum wage to $13/hr over three years (a dollar every six months?) – and – legally guarantee inflation adjustments for incomes under $100,000.
Doubling the minimum wage could potentially add an average 50% more pay to below 50 percentile earnings ($13/hr being today’s 35 percentile wage) – accompanied by only (an easily computed) 3% * direct price increases plus perhaps (?) 3% more after other wages are pushed up – a minimum wage-force multiplier.
Next, legislatively introduce French-Canadian style (lite) sector-wide labor agreements to the US labor market (airline and supermarket employees would kill for sector-wide contracts) – and – legally mandate union certification and re-certification elections (every four years?) at every work place (periodic re-certification could clean up the most common objections to unions: entrenched, complacent or even corrupt leaderships).
Top 10 percentile incomes enjoy 40 percent of the take these days (up from 27.5% in 1973) – plenty of headroom there for the mid 50-90 percentile to rake back more missing share points through higher labor prices – a collective bargaining-force multiplier.
Finally, (at least temporarily?) hike marginal tax rates (75% over $500,000, $1,000,000?). Folks earning 2500% more than folks doing the same work 25-35 years ago will not return all the way to earth through 12.5-25% price increases – erode a force multiplier.
America’s lower 90 percentile earners never think to impose legislative hegemony to recoup the 12.5% ** income share they have lost to top 3 percentile since 1973 – their unemployed force multiplier.
* http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/3-cost-of-gdp-output-and-inflation.html
** http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/income-share.html
Denis Drew
Chicago
ddrew2u@sbcglobal.net
http://www.ontodayspage.blogspot.com
The choice for America’s workers – especially those of us in organized labor – is clear: Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Over the years, John McCain has shown his disdain for those of us who turn the wheels of industry, who transport goods, who toil in the service sector, who teach our children, who tend our sick, and who do all the other jobs that are essential to a free society.
In 2007 Joh McCain voted with workers 0% (zero percent) of the time. During his entire career in Congress he only voted with workers 16% of the time.
His V.P. pick, Sarah Palin, has no Congressional voting record. Her support/opposition of various issues mirror those of McCain.
Barack Obama voted with labor 100% in 2007, and has a 98% lifetime vote.
Joe Biden voted with us 100% in 2007, and 85% over his lifetime.
Our choice is clear: Obama & Biden. They both support the Employee Free Choice Act. McCain/Palin oppose it!
Any worker who votes for an enemy of labor has lost his/her way. There is no middle ground. You’re either with your fellow workers or you’re not.
Some may exclaim, “this is a free country and I can vote for whomever I choose”. Correct. Every worker has the “right” to vote for enemies of labor. The central question is this: why would anyone exercise that dubious “right”?
At the end of the day, should McCain be elected and after your health care benefits are taxed, your pensions lost, your job shipped offshore, your Social Security privatized, and the rest of his anti-worker programs have been implemented, look in the mirror.
Your destitution – and the plight of your children and other loved ones – will be of your own doing.
Yup, we can vote for whomever we choose. We can vote for those who support us or you (not me) can vote for those who have spent a lifetime picking your pocket.
Anyone worker who supports McCain/Palin is not only stabbing their fellow workers in the back, they are also stabbing themselves and their loved ones in the back!
OBAMA/BIDEN IN ‘08 !!!!
Senator Obama ought to give some notice to both Kucinich and Nader. Each of the latter has given sharp definition to our deep seated problems; each has given sharp definiton to the treatment of those problems. But most important because it is both relevant and rare, Each has addressed the logical connection between problems well-understood and their treatment.
Mr. Obama has, for example, identified, rightly, I think, pollution and global warming as related problems. Now given a general defintion of each, how does “clean coal” and “nuclear energy” provide relief (from the sort of difficulty identified by an educated understanding of the issue?)
How does his ‘health’ program connect into the elements that we have identified as broken throughout the current system?
How does his “exist responsibly” connect to the
innumerable falsehoods that brought us into Iraq?
I find the smiling and cheerful face surrounding the Senator’s run incoherent as to the tasks before us. There is no acknowledgement in the Senator’s voice of the depth of what has befallen us, of what we have allowed to come to pass. There is no acknowledgement that our poblems stem from what lies deep in our attitudes about ourselves and about others. There is not a hint of what will be demanded of us, of our social programs, from those to whom we owe a fortune–as our bankers have demanded from other peoples and nations who were in their debt through international monitary fundings. So how come all the cheer?
Apparently, because Obama is not Bush.
I find nothing in the Senator;s words, nor in the faces of those who cackle in his support, of a recognition of his limits, of our limits. It is more of the same unlimited horizon, unlimited power, and a return to yesteryear.
John M. Giannone
To John G., I ask , what is your alternative? I have never heard anything from McCain or his party, about the problems facing low and middleclass working people. We can’t return to yesteryear, but we certainly can improve on then, and what we have had for eight years,and now.
Thank you