The Tea Party Isn’t Union Friendly
Here’s what a commenter posted recently at the AFL-CIO Now blog:
I am a progressive democrat, former member of three unions and my run was heavily funded by unions. I was beaten by a right-wing Republican because rank-and-file union members voted for my opponent.
And:
Until union members stop drooling over Glenn Beck and his ilk, unions will continue to be rendered impotent.
What was it the immortal Pogo said? “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
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 Message of Massachusetts: Jobs
 |
|
| Leo W. Gerard |
Bill Clinton saw it clearly when he was running for president against Bush I. It became his mantra: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Clinton wanted to reform health insurance, too. But he understood that during a recession, the first priority is jobs.
Politicians and commentators continue to blather obtusely about the meaning of Senate candidate Martha Coakley’s loss in Massachusetts to a Republican in a heavily Democratic state. Like Coakley and her advisers, they have failed to see the obvious, failed to learn from Clinton’s victory:
It’s the economy, stupid.
Poll results show that Massachusetts voters punished Coakley—and Democrats—for neglecting the issue most vital to them: jobs. If politicians had studied earlier polls or attempted to actually get in touch with mainstream, Main Street Americans—or just listened to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s address at the National Press Club on Jan. 11—they’d have known to focus on jobs. The message of Massachusetts should be clear: If Democrats want to save their own jobs in the midterm elections this fall, they must create jobs now.
Hey, Democrats, Remember Us?
 |
| IUE-CWA Local 201 member Alex Reynoso protests a health benefit tax. |
“Jeff, you guys at the Union Hall aren’t listening to us! You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. We’re fighting the benefits tax, and now you’re telling us to vote for someone who will tax our benefits! The guys here are voting for Scotty Brown.”
That was just one of the calls and e-mails that I received during the week before the Senate vote in Massachusetts. An AFSCME delegate to our labor council calculated the impact of the Obama tax on union plans and e-mailed us all to “Vote Brown!”
For a year and a half, we campaigned against the tax on our health care benefits. We trudged through neighboring New Hampshire with fliers explaining that Sen. John McCain wanted to fund health care expansion by a benefits tax.
Conservative members of my local Executive Board were adamant in saying the outcome of our health care campaign would be a tax on working people to extend coverage to poor people. Recognizing a classic Republican “wedge issue,” we argued that those without insurance include our own children. We could win a plan to tax the wealthiest and cut into the blood money of the health care profiteers.
Ultimately, we were wrong. In the last week of the Coakley campaign, the papers were full of the story: “Obama Supports “Cadillac Tax.” Sen. John Kerry cited an MIT economist who said the tax would increase wages for grateful working stiffs. I can usually figure out which chalkboard equation the classical economists are fondling: Absent merely life itself, they present a circular logic that proves itself. But the MIT argument escaped me.
The Working Class Has Spoken. Will Democrats Listen?
Massachusetts voters sent a strong signal to Washington lawmakers Tuesday that they want results—and aren’t seeing any. Not on health care reform, not on job creation and not on fixing the nation’s economy.
Voters also sent another powerful message for Democrats: Ignore the working class at your peril.
Some 79 percent of voters polled on election night said the most important issue for them was electing a candidate who will strengthen the economy and create more jobs. Controlling health care costs was next on their list, with 54 percent citing that issue as the main determinant of their vote.
The poll, conducted by Hart Research Associates among 810 voters for the AFL-CIO on the night of the election, also found that although voters without a college degree favored Barack Obama by 21 percentage points in the 2008 election, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley lost that same group by a 20-point margin.
Health Care Reform Would Cure Many Ills—and More Health News
 |
|
A new study shows the connections between low income, poor health and overall inequality and how providing better access to quality health care—exactly what health care reform is all about—can improve more than just health.
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) explains:
“In their new book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett review the medical and sociological research that links inequality to poorer outcomes, not just in health but also for trust, political institutions, violence, social mobility and education.”
Trumka: Massachusetts Election Shows Need for Results in Washington
The American people are urgently expecting RESULTS from Washington. If elected officials want the support of working families, they need to fight to win legislation on jobs, health care and financial regulation. Americans need champions who will fight for their cause.
Scott Brown’s victory as the next senator from Massachusetts is a giant step backward for working families. Brown has already promised to be the 41st vote for the Republican party of NO on crucial improvements for working men and women.
Let’s just hope, as Jason Rosenbaum warns at the Seminal, that the Democrats don’t take the wrong lessons from this loss.
Senate Candidate Brown Refused Unions’ Invite to Discuss the Issues
Just what does Scott Brown think of Massachusetts working families and their unions? Not much, and apparently he wants to keep it secret, too.
According to Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes, Brown—unlike Martha Coakley, who is battling Brown for the Bay State’s U.S. Senate seat in today’s special election—wouldn’t even talk to Massachusetts unions as they were deciding last year whom to support.
Haynes reports that Brown
refused to fill out the AFL-CIO questionnaire or appear at the AFL-CIO candidates’ forum to tell workers directly what he stands for. As a candidate, Martha Coakley filled out our questionnaire and appeared at our candidates’ forum to speak directly to us about where she stands.
Working Families Getting out the Vote in Massachusetts Special Election
 |
|
Today, Massachusetts working families are going to the polls to help put Martha Coakley in the U.S. Senate in a special election.
The election day get-out-the-vote drive follows a long Martin Luther King Jr. weekend that saw thousands of union members working at phone banks in local union halls, knocking on doors of other union members and talking with their co-workers at jobs sites across the Bay State.
Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes says Coakley will continue the legacy of Ted Kennedy in fighting for working families.
This election is all about working families. That’s who the late Senator Kennedy spent his life fighting for.
Massachusetts Working Families Mount Big Push for Coakley
|
|
Massachusetts working families are on the phones, doorsteps and worksites–mobilizing a get-out-the-vote drive for Martha Coakley in today’s special election for the U.S. Senate.
Coakley, the Bay State’s attorney general, has a long record of supporting working families. As attorney general, she vigilantly enforced prevailing wage, overtime, employee misclassification, independent contractor and workplace discrimination laws. She has earned the support of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.
As a U.S. senator, Coakley says she will be a strong advocate for job creation and the Employee Free Choice Act. She vows to continue the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s legacy of fighting for working families.
Her opponent, Scott Brown, strongly opposes the Employee Free Choice Act. Like an echo from the Bush-Cheney days, Brown believes the answer to the economic crisis is to give more tax cuts to the wealthy.
