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2008 in Review: Workers Sign Up with AFL-CIO Unions |
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Here’s the third part in our series taking a look back at 2008. Check out Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
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May-June
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Union members knocked on the first of what would be 10 million of union voters’ doors around the country to talk with them about the key working family issues in the 2008 elections. In the late spring and early summer, we focused on John McCain’s record on health care and the economy.
Along with door-to-door walks, union members mobilized through phone banks, labor council meetings, political training, worksite leafleting and public events.
As union volunteers talked with union members about McCain plans to tax their health care benefits, other union activists were shadowing McCain’s every stop, demanding real health care solutions answers and not just Band-Aid solutions.
McCain highlighted his out-of-touch views of the economy when he claimed the “fundamentals of the economy are strong.” But facts trumped his rosy outlook. The May jump in the unemployment was the biggest in 20 years, and job losses continued to accelerate.
Workers continued to turn to unions for a chance to bargain for a better life. For the most part, the mechanics, teachers, journalists, meter readers and other workers had to overcome employers’ anti-union campaigns and endure the threats, intimidation and other tactics the Employee Free Choice Act would ban. But they fought back and won their voice at work with AFT, the Air Line Pilots (ALPA), Electrical Workers (IBEW), Machinists (IAM), Communications Workers (CWA) and the Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).
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In Atlantic City, thousands of casino workers, their union brothers and sisters, elected officials and community supporters from the East Coast, New England and the Midwest filled the streets in a march and rally to demand that casino owners stop stalling and negotiate with the workers’ union. Beginning in March 2007, more than 5,000 casino workers voted to join the UAW, but casino owners continued to stall contract talks.
In Las Vegas, more than 6,000 construction workers walked off the job, demanding improved job safety at the MGM Mirage’s City Center project, where six workers had been killed in 18 months. Two days later, contractors met their demands.
At the National Labor College (NLC), 90 union members received their college degrees—76 bachelor of arts degrees and 14 master’s degrees—at the college’s 10th annual commencement.
In other headlines from May and June:
House Passes, Bush Wants to Veto Unemployment Measure
Senate Ignores Bush Veto Threat, Approves Extended Jobless Aid
GAO Upholds Boeing’s Protest of Air Tanker Deal
Report Says Crandall Canyon Managers Should Face Charges
‘Independent Contractor’—Another Word for Employer Free Ride
Air Traffic Controllers Exhausted, Overworked under Bush’s FAA
Burger King Agrees to Better Wages, Conditions for Tomato Workers
One Year Today Since Supreme Court Ruled Pay Discrimination OK
Report: Union Membership Helps Low-Wage Workers Move Up the Ladder
Arrests of Zimbabwe Union Leaders a Flagrant Violation of Human Rights
Massachusetts AFL-CIO Program Awards $1million in Scholarships
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