Acuff: We Can’t Wait for Change—We Have to Make It Happen
America is ready for change—but the interests that benefit from the status quo are fighting with all of their ample resources to prevent the change we demanded, fought for and voted for in 2008. The closer we get to the policies working families need, the more these interests are threatened—and the harder we need to fight.
At Huffington Post, the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff looks at the opportunities and challenges of this unique moment, and why we need to step up and be “warriors for justice”:
Those who’ve prosecuted and benefited from the 30-year financial assault on America’s working families refuse to let go, to give up what they’ve come to see as theirs—the insurance companies, the union busters, the ABC, the Comcasts, the Wal-Marts, Wall St., and manipulators of our finances, the Radical Rightwing, including Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove and Dick Armey and the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute.
Health Care Reform Backers Out in Force as Support for Public Option Remains High
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While TV news reports continue to focus on the loud, angry and sometimes just plain bizarre antics of health care reform opponents, union members are mobilizing to counter the big lies, at town hall meetings and forums around the country.
Just yesterday, some 100 union members brought their voices to a Clovis, N.M., town hall meeting with Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D) as did another 100 at Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder’s Little Rock, Ark., meeting. More than two dozen union members met AFSCME’s Highway to Health Care tour bus when it pulled into Shreveport, La., yesterday.
Over the weekend, hundreds of people in Rutland, Vt., carrying red placards and wearing T-shirts stating “Healthcare Is a Human Right, took part in a health care town hall, shifting the debate 180 degrees from a similar event less than two months ago. The members of the Vermont Workers’ Center/Jobs with Justice made sure lawmakers at the town hall heard their voices this time, a sharp contrast with the 200-person “Tea Party” event pushed by extremist radio shows weeks before.
Netroots Nation: Eye on Employee Free Choice
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If you’d like to follow this session live, we’ll be covering it on Twitter ( http://twitter.com/aflcio ).
Thursday kicks off the second annual Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh.
And at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, we’ll be discussing one of the most critical changes that progressives are fighting for, both online and off—the Employee Free Choice Act.
Here are the folks who will weigh in at the afternoon panel, “The Secret Plan to Defeat the Right Forever,” on why labor law reform like the Employee Free Choice Act must be a top progressive priority:
- Stewart Acuff, special assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO. A longtime organizer and the former director of organizing for the AFL-CIO, Acuff has traveled the country in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Jake McIntyre, a front page writer at Daily Kos and assistant to the secretary-treasurer of the Bricklayers (BAC).
- Tanya Tarr, director of legislative and political mobilization for the Texas AFT and a specialist on union voter turnout.
- Elana Levin of Workers United, a writer with a long record in collaboration between the union movement and the progressive netroots.
Netroots Nation: Panels to Watch on Workers’ Issues
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Breaking: AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka will speak at Netroots Nation on Saturday, Aug. 15.
It’s only a few days until the second annual Netroots Nation conference, where progressive bloggers and activists from across the country will meet to discuss the issues facing our country.
Here are some sessions we’ll be attending that focus on workers and the economy:
- Bloggers and Blue Collar Workers Unite: You Have Nothing to Lose But Wall-Street Domination: Thursday, 10:30 a.m. United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard and our own Tula Connell will be among those discussing how bloggers can join in the fight to protect working people from corporate control.
- How to Work with Unions in Your District: Thursday, 3 p.m. Find out how unions and bloggers can partner on campaigns and events with the AFL-CIO’s Eddie Vale, AFSCME’s Blaine Rummel and other activists.
Netroots Nation: Why the Fight for Employee Free Choice Matters
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We’re getting excited this week for the second annual Netroots Nation conference, where more than 1,000 progressive bloggers and activists will meet face to face. We’ll discuss issues key to the future of our nation—including building a stronger, fairer economy by restoring the freedom to form unions and bargain.
Thursday afternoon’s panel, “The Secret Plan to Defeat the Right Forever,” offers an up-close look at why labor law reform like the Employee Free Choice Act is critical to a bigger, stronger empowered middle class and progressive movement.
The AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff, a longtime organizer who has traveled the country working on the Employee Free Choice Act campaign, will talk about what union members and their allies are doing to fight for new labor laws that will restore the freedom to form unions to workers.
Highlights from Saturday’s Arkansas Rallies
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More than 1,500 union members across Arkansas rallied in 100-degree heat this Saturday, asking their senators to support the Employee Free Choice Act and give workers the freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. Here are some highlights from press coverage of the event.
Arkansas state Rep. Jim Nickles was among the hundreds who joined the rally at the State Capitol and told Little Rock’s KATV he strongly supported the Employee Free Choice Act:
This is an attempt to make it to where [workers] can form unions and they can bargain…with employers.
Labor laws brought us minimum wage, brought us pension plans, brought us health insurance…all have been eroded in the past 20 years.
Employee Free Choice: Snippets from Op-Eds Around the Nation
Here are a few highlights from newspapers around the country that make the case for why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.
In Maine, Bill Murphy, director of the University of Maine’s Labor Education Program, writes a great op-ed in the Bangor Daily News explaining how our current labor laws are broken and how the Employee Free Choice Act can fix the system for workers:
The central legal principle of the National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA, is to provide workers in the private sector with the democratic right to organize unions in the workplace…. However, for large numbers of workers, the rights established under this law no longer exist, because of willful employer violations and a lack of adequate statutory enforcement.
For all too many workers, the right to obtain justice on the job through unionization has been either denied or delayed. Enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act will enable workers and their organizations to remedy this injustice.
24-Hour Vigil Highlights Busy Week of Action for Employee Free Choice
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| Louisiana union members are among the thousands who are rallying in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. |
Supporters of the freedom to form unions and bargain, including faith and civil rights groups as well as union members, are holding a 24-hour vigil outside Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s office to encourage her to support the Employee Free Choice Act.
This vigil, which began last night, is one of more than 200 grassroots events across the nation this week in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. With rallies, roundtables, phone banks and worksite visits, workers are encouraging members of Congress back in their home districts this week to vote in support of workers and a fairer, stronger economy. Senators across the country have received tens of thousands of letters and phone calls from union members and allies, and that momentum is building this week.
Acuff Debates Chamber Honcho as Employee Free Choice Gains Momentum
As part of the national campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act, the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff has been traveling the country to get out the message and help unions mobilize. On his recent trip to Indiana, he got a chance to debate with one of the bill’s most prominent opponents—Randel Johnson, a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—at the Indiana University law school. It was a great opportunity to explain why we need new law to protect workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain.
Acuff tells the powerful story of rising worker productivity that hasn’t been matched by improvements in wages. Instead, workers face rising heath care costs and economic insecurity, which have led to unsustainable debt, the collapse of purchasing power and, ultimately, the current economic crisis. What happened, Acuff asks, to cause this imbalance?
There has been a systematic, strategic assault on workers, on unions and on the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. We’re the only democracy in the world today where workers do not have the fundamental freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.
They have the freedom, guaranteed in the law, if they’re willing to risk their car, their house, their livelihood and their job. Last year more than 29,000 workers were retaliated against or fired for trying to exercise that legally protected union activity. Our law has no teeth: 40 percent of all the workers who jump through all the hoops to form a union will never get a first contract, will never get the fruit of collective bargaining.
24/7 Action in the Field for Employee Free Choice
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| North Florida union members protest a meeting of an anti-union group in Jacksonville. |
As the Employee Free Choice Act gets closer to reality, the anti-worker disinformation campaign grows louder with corporate front groups throwing everything they have against workers. Across the country, union members and their allies are pushing back and letting the corporate titans know they won’t back down when it comes to the freedom to form unions.
In Wisconsin, union members converged in Milwaukee to protest an appearance by Karl Rove, the former Bush administration political enforcer who is traveling the country telling corporate executives to fight the Employee Free Choice Act. And in Florida, union members gathered in Jacksonville outside a meeting of an anti-union corporate group, the “Center for a Union-Free Workplace Environment,” to protest their opposition to workers’ freedom to bargain for a better life.
