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Calling on All Working Americans to Stand Up and Fight
The news is out: The Wall Street bankers we bailed out are giving themselves 2009 cash bonuses of a half million dollars on average—not including stocks. Compare that with the $32,390 annual median wage for regular workers, and you find a formula for outrage.
The people who tanked our economy, took $700 billion in taxpayer money and refused to make job-creating loans are getting rewards that range into the millions.
Not bad for a year in which Main Street lost 4 million jobs.
No wonder people are mad.
When Wall Street needs help, elected leaders respond with bold and swift action. When Main Street cries for help, we get gridlock. No health care reform, no financial reform, no labor law reform, and a slow, timid effort on job creation.
The anger out there is well-deserved. Workers are hurting. We haven’t seen so much militant sentiment demanding job creation and basic fairness since hundreds of thousands of people came to Washington for the March for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
The Senate election in Massachusetts last week signaled a working class revolt—against business as usual and against politics as usual.
An AFL-CIO poll taken election night showed just how fed up people are— they want results, and aren’t seeing any.
Four out of five voters said their most important issue was strengthening the economy and creating more jobs. Controlling health care costs was next on their list, with 54 percent citing that as the main determinant of their vote.
And they said Democrats have not overreached on jobs, the economy and health care—they have under-reached.
Forty-seven percent said their concern about Democrats is that they haven’t succeeded in making needed change, while only 32 percent said they made too many changes too quickly. Even voters for Scott Brown were more concerned about a lack of change (50 percent) than about making too many changes too quickly (43 percent).
Contrary to what we’re hearing from the corporate media, the Massachusetts election wasn’t a referendum on health care reform (Brown actually lost among the 59 percent of voters who picked health care as one of their top two priorities). But it did send a clear message that voters rejected attacks on the middle class like the proposed excise tax on health care benefits. Voters who thought their health care would be taxed voted by 64 percent for Brown, while those who did not think so voted by 54 percent to 40 percent for Coakley.
The election was no endorsement of the Republican agenda either—in fact, 58 percent of voters disapprove of the job being done by congressional Republicans.
Here’s what one grassroots union leader learned from his experience in the Massachusetts race:
A year ago, the Democrats crowed that the Republicans were “irrelevant.” Today, the Republicans think the Democrats are mortally wounded. Both are wrong. In our non-ideological party landscape, in hard times whoever strikes the best pose of wounded underdog wins. The same anger that elected Obama was hijacked to elect Scott Brown: “We want change!”
There was no outpouring for a right-wing agenda in Massachusetts. Brown only received 50,000 votes more than McCain. But Coakley received 850,000 fewer votes than Obama. The Republican base remained energized. The Democratic base and independent supporters stayed home.
Unless elected leaders and candidates deliver on job creation and the economy, they’re going to join the growing numbers of jobless Americans.
Members of Congress from both parties need to heed the wake-up call from Massachusetts and start taxing Wall Street wealth to create millions of good jobs fast. To get elected in 2010, they’re going to have to PROVE they’ll create the jobs we need in an economy we need with the health care we need—and those who made the mess should pay the bill. Voters have heard too much talk already.
America’s union movement is leading a broad uprising of working people ready to make sure elected leaders and candidates get the message and don’t forget. Don’t just watch for us in the streets—join us.
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6 Comments
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“Calling on All Working Americans to Stand Up and Fight”
For what, Mr. Trumka?
“Trumka To Senate Dems: Pass New Health Care Bill Through Reconciliation”
Despite everything that has happened with so-called in Congress, after all the bribery by lobbyists (6 for every 1 legislator), after seeing that Obama got 3 times the campaign contributions than McCain from “health care” industry lobbyists,
etc.etc. Mr. Trumka STILL DOES NOT STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR SINGLE-PAYER ‘MEDICARE FOR ALL” HEALTH CARE LEGISLATION!!
The delegates to the AFL-CIO CONVENTION in Pittsburgh STOOD UP UNANIMOUSLY for “single-payer” Medicare-for-All!
Why doesn’t Mr. Trumka STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR THE NEEDS OF WORKING PEOPLE???? INSTEAD MR. TRUMKA SUPPORTS OBAMA’S CORPORATE SPONSORED “HEALTH CARE REFORM” DESIGNED TO FURTHER ENRICH HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY CORPORATIONS!!!
Over 500 plus union locals have STOOD UP AND VOTED IN SUPPORT OF SINGLE-PAYER “MEDICARE FOR ALL”!
Why doesn’t Mr. Trumka STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR THE NEEDS OF WORKING PEOPLE INSTEAD OF CORPORATE PROFIT?
Why doesn’t Mr. Trumka STAND UP AND FIGHT TO DUMP THE DEMOCRATS AND ISSUE A CALL FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY THAT WOULD REPRESENT THE ECONOMIC INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE????
The time is now, Mr. Trumka, to send a shock wave to the gangsters running this country!
Send a shock wave of hope to working people that organized labor is at last going to STAND UP AND FIGHT for the needs of all working people.
Announce that the AFL-CIO, in accordance with the expressed wishes and needs of it’s members, and on behalf of all working people, that the the AFL-CIO now supports only “single-payer” Medicare-for-All!
Send a shock wave to both Republicans and Democrats, that the AFL-CIO is now a call for a founding convention of a new political party that represents only the economic interests of working people, and excludes all corporate bribes and corporate agendas.
THE MERE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THIS NEW STRATEGY WOULD BLOW AWAY MOST OF THE CORRUPTION THAT IS NOW ENTRENCHED IN WASHINGTON.
IF MR. TRUMKA OR OTHER LABOR LEADER COULD STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR WORKING PEOPLE, THAT LEADER WOULD BE THE WINNING CANDIDATE IN THE 2012 ELECTION!
STAND UP AND FIGHT, MR. TRUMKA, TO BRING ABOUT THE CHANGES NEEDED BY WORKING AMERICA THAT CON-MAN OBAMA AND THE CORRUPTED DEMOCRATS WILL NEVER SUPPORT BECAUSE THEY ARE PAID OFF!
CORPORATE GREED AND LUST FOR POWER KNOWS NO LIMITS!!
THOSE WHO DO NOT LEARN FROM LABOR’S HISTORY are domed to repeat it!
The CEO, owner of the Western Union Telegraph and the Union Pacific Railroad, a corporation, Jay Gould who was Quoted : “I can hire half the working class to kill the other half.” Had a poem or song written about Him.
Jay Gould’s Modest Wants
“My wants are few; I scorn to be
A querulous refiner;
I want only America
And a mortgage deed of China;
And if a kind fate threw Europe in,
And Africa and Asia
And a few islands of the sea,
I’d ask no other treasure.
Give me but these—they are enough
To suit my notion—
And I’ll give up to other men
All land beneath the ocean.”
From “Labors Untold Story” by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America UE Press, copyright 1955, page 73.
Yes we are all mad at what has happened this last year. The politicians that have taken organized labor’s money year after year and tell us they are standing up for us have let us down once again!
They have screwed up health care and now have blown the opportunity to pass EFCA. Why wasn’t EFCA the first thing passed? It could of been done and over with and more people would have the opportunity to join a union.
Organized labor needs to stand up to our so called political friends that tell us they are standing with us, take our money then don’t do anything to help us and like suckers we let it happen every election.
Yes it is time for all of us to stand up as one, rank and file, but especially our national leaders. A real Labor Party sounds pretty good.
Waiting for a national figure in the Labor Movement to call for breaking with the Democrats to form an independent mass Labor Party is obviously going to take forever, no matter how absolutely necessary that step is being seen by more and more of the rest of us. Labor is the big lazy stupid bull in the pasture that still thinks he is a wild animal to be reckoned with and not the domesticated beast that he is. The only way we can move forward now is to call a national march for jobs and against war. We must storm the Bastille, whether it is DC or Wall St. To talk about jobs while ignoring the wars’ disastrous effects is utopian and phony. Once we have a campaign to mobilize our ranks we will find that we have a lot more folks to talk with about our ideas than just each other, and we will find our more progressive union reps to be more in number and less timid. Its time to put on our marching shoes on and hit the streets while our fat diabetic asses still can.
Plain and simple this country is in historic times . Big banks and corperations are pushing the workin man and women to the brink . The path we are on will make us no more than they slaves of the past. I say we all !!!!!!!! all go to washington and we dont leave till we get what we want jobs , healthcare reform an economy that works for the folks that support it . We the people working class people Union and Non have all the power to shape our future. Now we need to organize one and all get off the couch and computer and go FIGHT for it.