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USW: Palin Rhetoric Embraces Unions, Yet She Backs McCain’s Anti-Worker Agenda |
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Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin can’t have it both ways. She should either denounce Sen. John McCain’s anti-worker policies or stop bragging about her husband’s union membership, says United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard.
When McCain introduced Palin as his running mate, he boasted that her husband, Todd, was a USW member. Palin later has said that her family had no health insurance until she and Todd got union jobs. Yet Palin supports the agenda of McCain, who has opposed practically every pro-worker issue to come up for more than two decades.
In two blogs on Huffington Post, Gerard, exposes and denounces McCain’s cynical manipulation of the union issue. Click here to read Gerard’s post, “Joe Six-Pack Demands Answers from Anti-Union McCain & Co.,” and here for “Sarah Palin, Explain Yourself, or Stop Using the USW as a Prop.”
What doesn’t make sense is for the anti-union McCain campaign to be boasting about the benefits of union membership. Like many Republicans, McCain has made it clear that he feels about unions the way an Alaskan aerial hunter does about wolves—best when dead.
Like the leaders of the AFL-CIO and presidents of many affiliated unions, Gerard is traveling the country to let union members know that this could be the most pivotal election of our time. Gerard and union leaders are telling union members that we cannot afford four more years of the Republican policies that have destroyed our economy and devastated our communities.
And they are pointing out McCain’s record of anti-worker positions:
- McCain has condemned unions as “serious excesses” and said government workers are “crippled by the fine print of the latest union contract.”
- McCain helped block the Employee Free Choice Act, which would level the playing field and give workers options on how to choose a union.
- McCain voted to block a bill that would have protected American strikers against companies hiring permanent replacements—a safeguard for workers that is normal in other industrialized nations.
- McCain has jeopardized workers’ retirement security by championing Bush’s privatization scheme for Social Security.
- McCain has voted for every American-job-killing free trade deal, without regard to human rights or environmental standards.
Despite his long anti-worker record, McCain is cynically trying to portray himself as a friend of working Americans, Gerard points out:
Suddenly, when he needs the middle-class vote, John S. McCain is trying to convert himself into John L. Lewis. It’s like his position on regulation. He was Mr. Deregulation until Wall Street collapsed. Now, he’s all for it.
Gerard says it’s one thing for Palin to acknowledge that her family was without health insurance until she and Todd joined unions. But the McCain health insurance plan, which she supports, would tax workers’ union-negotiated employer health care plans, which would cost a typical two-wage earner family $1,119 in higher taxes by 2013 and $2,809 in higher taxes by 2018, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP) Action Fund.
In fact, Newsweek economics correspondent Jane Bryant Quinn writes that if McCain’s health care plan was put into effect, it would drop 20 million people from employer coverage and throw them into the shark tank of the private insurance world and “will raise your costs without changing the game.”
Gerard says:
All of this makes it particularly disconcerting for McCain’s emissary to publicly celebrate the fact that her union card provided her family with health insurance. Palin needs to announce whether she disagrees with McCain or whether she espouses the McPain plan to tax health care. Joe Sixpack wants to know.
Gerard wants the real Sarah Palin to stand up.
Inquiring minds want to know, Ms. Palin. Where do you stand on Employee Free Choice? Where do you stand on privatization of Social Security? Where do you stand on job-killing free trade?
Are you with McCain—and against workers—on these issues? If so, you need to stop using your husband’s membership in the USW as a prop, because then his union card cannot possibly cover up your or John McCain’s worker-savaging positions.
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A vote for McCain is a vote to continue top-down policy making. The upper 10% in this nation use their Republican surrogates in Congress to dictate policies and programs that affect the bottom 90%.
Something is haywire. It’s completely upside down! 90% is an overwhelming super majority. Why aren’t we calling the shots? Why is it that the wealthiest 10% in our country have so much power?
It is indeed time for change. It is time for America’s working class families to take our nation back. That won’t happen if McCain is elected. McCain has supported nearly every one of Bush’s failed policies, and there is no reason to believe he’ll suddenly change course if he becomes president. In fact, his 26 years in Congress offer irrefutable evidence to the contrary!
Working stiffs need to vote in their own best interests for a change. When they do, they will vote in the best interests of their families and friends too.
Obama and Biden will champion the cause of working men and women. McCain will continue supporting the richest 10% at the expense of the rest of us.
Take the recent economic crisis. It is the result of unregulated corporate greed. After the crisis is resolved, the rich will still be rich. The losers will be working men and women. And guess what? McCain has been a long time supporter of deregulation. Electing him would be like hiring fox to guard your chickens.
Vote for Obama and Biden. Vote for Democratic candidates who are running for Congress. With our support they’ll get the job done. They’ll return America to we the people.
Palin is the worst kind of politician. She will ’support’ anything that will gain her support and votes. I don’t think she’s in favor of supporting unions or the EFCA any more than she would support a woman’s right to chose. She was fortunate that she and her husband had health insurance, thanks to his union, which she haughtily talks about; yet if they had health insurance from another means, the subject would never come up. There are too many questions about her policies that she has NOT been specific about. Can she give an honest, straightforward answer about anything she believes in? I doubt it. It becomes increasingly clear why she was picked as the running mate, and I do not believe McCain had much to do about it. She is the perfect decoy, and will be the perfect patsy.