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Trumka: Specter Must Earn Labor’s Support |
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ABC’s ”Top Line” featured a great interview today with AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka. Discussing Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch last week from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, Trumka said the union movement would not support him in next year’s elections if he votes against the Employee Free Choice Act.
Specter has said the move to the Democratic Party does not change his opposition to the legislation to level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions. Said Trumka:
If a candidate isn’t good for workers, we won’t be there. If they are good for workers, we will be there regardless of their party. I mean, we supported Arlen Specter—and he was a Republican—because he was good for what was happening. He was good for our members at that time.
Click here to read more about today’s interview and see the video.
3 Comments
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I have spoken with dozens of union activists, Democratic Party leaders and members of the progressive community in Pennsylvania over the past week. All of them echo the statement made by Trumka!
If Specter does not start voting for the Employee Free Choice Act and the vast majority of Obama’s worker-friendly agenda, he will not be the 2010 Senate Democratic nominee from Pennsylvania.
Certainly we can find someone in PA who will run as an independent, Green, Socialist or get a Labor Party on the ballot. Spectre’s switch just shows how close the Democrats and Republicans are. He will extract some concessions form the Democrats and move them even closer to the right wing, just like Bayh and Feinstein. Trumka could move to PA, work to get a Labor Party on the ballot and win in a landslide.
Sen Arlen Spector has been a staunch supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act since its’ introduction in the 108th Congress. Obviously corporate lobbyists are pressuring him and he’s chosen to publicly change positions on the bill. Sen Spector is doing two things simultaneously: being the 60th vote to PASS the Employee Free Choice Act and being an obstacle to the bills’ passage. His political savvy is dragging all of us, organized and organized alike, into this bloodless battle for our lives. Specter knows we are fat (literally) and complacent. After supporting Obama with our time, talents and money we’ve returned to political apathy thinking Our part is over and the politicians will work things out. Specter is pushing real politics in our faces. We need to stand up and fight again and again and again. Our battles for good, safe jobs; dignity at work and freedom from reprisal are ongoing.
Specter is giving us the opportunity to take up the fight as educated, determined, steel willed American patriots. He is teaching us how citizen representative government operates. And we are learning. The Employee Free Choice Act is now in the news in every paper in the USA. It is being debated on PBS, Fox, CSPAN and MSNBC. Billboards, on-lin and print media are making, “me and my friends”, everyone working, retired and unemployed aware of the power of this amendment to change our lives. CHANGE is a strange word, it means different from what is now.
We don’t know what its like to do together what we can’t do alone. We don’t know what it will be like when “me and my friends” sit down, put our heads together and talk to our bosses about what we want. And, expect our company to make changes that we want. We want to know what results to expect! and we can’t ! Nobody can tell us what we can accomplish together because we haven’t tried. No politician can give us anything we won’t fight for together. Sen Spector is too seasoned a politician to “give” us this bill if we don’t know what to do with it. What we must do with the Employee Free Choice Act is organize. If we can’t organize to pass the bill will we be able to organize after it is passed? The EFCA does not give us unions; it gives us an easier way to organize. Another way to say me and my friends is to say my union. TRY SAYING IT–MY UNION. I HAVE MY UNION CARD. I’M GOING TO THE UNION HALL.