Time to Change the Game for Airline and Railroad Workers
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In this cross-post from the Huffington Post, Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department, describes why the deck is stacked against airline and railroad workers when it comes to union elections.
The deck is stacked against airline and railroad workers when it comes to union elections. That’s why airline CEOs are working so hard to defend current election procedures that count all workers who sit out elections as “no” votes.
Americans are accustomed to elections where a simple majority of those voting decides the outcome—whether they’re voting for PTA president or U.S. senator. Not so for airline and railroad workers—who must first ensure that turnout exceeds 50 percent. How can we justify imposing higher turnout standards on airline and railroad union elections than we do in elections for the highest office of our land? We can’t.
Violent Repression Continues in Honduras
In the wake of the June 28 coup in Honduras that forcibly deposed and expelled President Manuel Zelaya, thousands of trade unionists—following the call of the three national labor centrals (CUTH, CTH and the CGT)—joined tens of thousands in nonviolent protests, demanding the immediate restoration of democracy in their country.
In response, the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti directed the military and police to violently repress the legitimate protests. National and international human rights organizations report widespread human rights violations by state security forces, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, severe beatings, sexual violence, imprisonment and torture, and killings of Zelaya’s supporters.
Following the president’s return to the capital city of Tegucigalpa on Sept. 21, the situation deteriorated rapidly. The de facto government stepped up its offensive against democratic civil society organizations, including the trade union movement. A report by Honduran Radio Progreso confirmed the killing of a trade unionist from the National Agrarian Institute shortly after Zelaya’s return. Three members of the teachers union—Felix Murillo Lopez, Roger Vallejo and Martin Florencio Rivera—were killed while mobilizing trade union opposition to the coup.
Know-Nothing Newt
Grandstanding is a favorite pastime of the former speaker of the House, Republican Newt Gingrich. Truth, however, has never played a big role in his self-trumpeting.
In a recent Politico column, Gingrich advances a laundry list of falsehoods about the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s the latest grab at public attention in his angling for a place in the 2012 elections.
First, he pushes the lie that the Employee Free Choice Act takes away the secret ballot process for workers deciding whether to form a union. The Employee Free Choice Act does not take away the secret ballot. It gives to workers the right to use an already legal process for deciding on unionization—a streamlined process called majority sign-up, or card check.
The bill adds choice for workers, who will decide which process to use. The Employee Free Choice Act is an amendment to existing federal labor law that makes no change whatsoever in the current election procedures.
Retired Americans’ Letter to Editor Program Continues in 2009
Alliance for Retired Americans President George Kourpias encourages union retirees to contact their local newspapers about key issues—and get a union-made Retirees with the Write Stuff free pen.
In 2008, all of you who are members of the Alliance for Retired Americans took action on the issues, asking tough questions of candidates and policymakers, unafraid to tell others in your community what was on your mind.
And because of you we achieved a great victory on Election Day. We will have many new faces in public office, from the White House down to our city and town halls. This is a historic opportunity to advance a pro-retiree agenda at all levels of government, one that improves the quality of life for millions of seniors.
That’s why the Alliance for Retired Americans’ letter to the editor program, Retirees with the Write Stuff, is continuing through 2009. The Letters to the Editor page is often the most widely read section of a local newspaper, and January is a good time to share your retiree perspective on the events of 2008 and what you hope to see in the coming year.
Inauguration Day: Party with a Program
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| ‘Lynn for Obama’ volunteers get ready to knock on New Hampshire doors in October as part of the effort to elect Barack Obama president of the United States. |
At our November local union meeting, our vice president, Alex Brown, posed the question: What do you hope for from the Obama presidency? There were a dozen answers, but they boiled down to “bring the jobs back,” “health care” and “bring our soldiers home.”
If hope was results, this would already be the greatest presidency of all time. I admit it—I’ve wasted too much of my time parsing lists of possible Barack Obama appointees and pestering people in Washington I think might know something about who might get which job.
The appointments Obama is making look like the ultimate Bill Clinton comeback. I was happy to work for Clinton over Dole. But President Clinton also brought us the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the “end of welfare as we know it” and the repeal of Roosevelt’s Glass-Stegall Act, which prevented the banks from participating in some of the worst financial speculation. Clinton announced that “the era of Big Government is over.” Each of these acts was a rejection of the New Deal and an accommodation to the neo-liberal policies of free trade, privatization and deregulation. We went from Nixon’s “We’re all Keynesians” to an unspoken, “We’re all neo-liberals.” This is not what I had in mind when I spent my weekends tracking down undecided voters in New Hampshire.
