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Workers Say Obama/Trumka Labor Day Visit Will Energize Voters
Milwaukee AFT Local 2169 member Ashleigh Lund says she hopes that President Obama’s Labor Day appearance with AFL-CIO President AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka at the annual Laborfest
can spur people to get to the voting booths in support of worker friendly candidates this November…I am excited because this shows me that the rights of workers are still important to Obama.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis will Join Obama and Trumka the Milwaukee Area Labor Council’s Laborfest that draws thousands of working families. Fellow AFT Local 2169 member Sagar Tolani says that
Obama spending his Labor Day with people from the community really lets me know that he understands the issues workers are currently facing.
Milwaukee is just one stop on a busy Labor Day weekend schedule for Trumka and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker will travel to Ohio, Michigan, Florida and California calling for good jobs and a strong, middle class economy and boosting Labor 2010’s get-out-the-vote efforts for November’s midterm elections.
Sunday, Trumka will join Ohio Gov. Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) at the Lorain Labor Day Festival near Cleveland. Shuler will take part in Labor in the Pulpit services in Los Angeles while Holt Baker will join worshippers in North Miami Lakes, Fla.
On Labor Day Shuler will attend the Los Angeles County Labor Federation’s Labor Day breakfast before heading to Sacramento, where she will be joined gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown at the at the Sacramento Central Labor Council’s picnic. Later she will take part in the Alameda Central Labor Council’s Labor Day barbeque in Oakland.
Holt Baker will be in Detroit Monday for the Motor City’s 50,000-strong Labor Day Parade.
Karen Hickey, Wisconsin AFL-CIO political field communications assistant, contributed to this report.
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Obama and the Democrats last attack upon working people, organized and unorganized, is the destruction of Social Security!
Trumka is not only giving Obama and the Democrats an ultimatum to stop the destruction of Social Security, but Trumka is again embracing the Democrats and Obama!
By ending the wars, nationalizing the oil industry, raising taxes on the wealthiest individuals and corporations, etc.etc. funds could be generated to create millions of vitally needed public sector jobs. Schools could be re-opened, teachers re-hired,
and the environment (destroyed by oil and coal industries) restored, etc.
This recent article from the World Socialist Web Site on yet another rally by organized labor to support the Democratic Party.
Read the full article here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/jobs-a31.shtml
Jesse Jackson, UAW hustle votes for Democrats at Detroit “jobs” march
By Shannon Jones
31 August 2010
The “Rebuild America: Jobs, Justice and Peace” march held in Detroit August 28, had nothing to do with rebuilding the devastated city, creating jobs, or achieving peace.
The event, called by UAW President Bob King and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, was little more than a campaign rally for the Democratic Party, which has overseen wholesale job and wage cuts in Detroit and nationally while escalating military violence around the world.
…
The appearance of SEIU President Henry alongside King on the platform is a signal that the rival bureaucratic factions, the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Coalition, are putting aside their unprincipled differences to gear up for an intense election campaign on behalf of the Democrats.
In 2005 the SEIU and several other unions left the AFL-CIO to form Change to Win. Recently the SEIU has made overtures towards a rapprochement, negotiating an agreement to pool financial resources to support “pro-union candidates”, i.e. Democrats, in the midterm elections, funded by $88 million in union dues taken from their “members.”
Notable for his absence from the speakers list was Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, a sponsor of the event. Organizers evidently felt his appearance might be risky given widespread anger over his attacks on city workers and teachers.
Speakers made no mention of the policies of the Obama administration, which have patently failed to ease the jobs crisis. Indeed, there was hardly a reference to Obama. The typical speech consisted of a rhetorical jab at Wall Street, an invocation of God and American nationalism, followed by the inevitable call to get out the vote in November.
…
In fact, Obama has explicitly and repeatedly rejected any measures by the government to create jobs, declaring that job creation is the role of the private sector. In the face of record long-term unemployment and with one out of six Americans either unemployed or underemployed, Obama’s incessant invocation of “recovery” is reminiscent of President Herbert Hoover’s promises at the beginning of the Great Depression that “prosperity is just around the corner.”
To the extent the administration has a “jobs plan,” it is to boost exports by driving down the wages of US workers toward Third World levels.
…
A genuine struggle for jobs requires that the working class break from the Democratic Party and the two party system and establish its own political party. This requires a struggle against all those middle class apologists for the Democratic Party that seek to sow illusions that this party of Wall Street can be pressured to act in the interests of working people.
The militant traditions of working class struggle must be revived. This will not take place through the existing unions, which function as arms of corporate management in the factories and workplaces. Workers must build new, mass organizations based on intransigent opposition to the capitalist system.