Working Families Need an Interim Senator for Massachusetts
Robert J. Haynes, president, Massachusetts AFL-CIO, writes that the state’s working families need two voices in the Senate during the upcoming weeks of debate on critical issues like health care.
Like the labor heroes we remembered on Labor Day, Ted Kennedy didn’t believe that the American dream was only reserved for the powerful and privileged. While Massachusetts workers lost our biggest voice and best champion for the little guy, we should not have to go without two U.S. senators for months on end. Working families cannot wait that long for full representation; not ever, but certainly not in these times with such monumental challenges facing our nation.
Kennedy believed it was wrong for people to have to risk their lives unnecessarily at work, to be stripped of their pensions, denied health care, or impoverished by the recklessness of banks. He believed a father with an ill child shouldn’t have to choose between being with that child and keeping his job. Now his lion’s voice has fallen silent, too soon.
