Kirk to Succeed Kennedy in U.S. Senate
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick today named Paul Kirk to serve as interim U.S. senator, filling the open seat left by the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Kirk, who served as an adviser to Sen. Kennedy as well as a chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is expected to be sworn in tomorrow afternoon. He will serve until a permanent replacement is elected in a special election, set for Jan. 19. The state legislature approved a bill allowing for the appointment of an interim senator this week, ensuring that Massachusetts will have its full congressional delegation during these critical months.
Massachusetts Will Appoint Interim Senator
Today, the process of ensuring that Massachusetts voters will get full representation in the U.S. Senate moved forward, as the Massachusetts Senate approved a bill allowing an interim appointment for the seat of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.
The bill, which would give Gov. Deval Patrick the authority to name a temporary appointee to the open seat, was passed by the State Senate, 24-16, following a 95-58 vote in favor of the bill in the State House. The bill will likely go to Patrick’s desk later this week, allowing him to name a successor to the Senate’s longtime champion of working families.
Massachusetts will hold a special election early next year to fill the remainder of Kennedy’s term, which runs through January 2013. The bill passed by the state legislature ensures that, between now and the special election, Massachusetts will have a full delegation of two senators.
Harkin: We Will Pass the Employee Free Choice Act
Today, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) gave a video message to the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention and said that he’s committed to passing the Employee Free Choice Act.
Harkin thanked former AFL-CIO President John Sweeney for his years of service and leadership and thanked union members for their hard work. Because of that work, Harkin said, we’re closer than ever to real health care reform and labor law reform. He’s been working hard meeting with key senators and says he’s confident we’ll be able to restore the freedom to form unions:
When you ask if we can pass the Employee Free Choice Act, the answer is three words: Yes. We. Can.
Harkin also offered a tribute to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and pledged to uphold his legacy as chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Late to the Game, Wyoming’s Enzi Seeks to Derail Labor Nomination
Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.)—who brags about blocking health care reform (more on that later)—now wants to block President Obama’s choice of Patricia Smith to be the top Department of Labor lawyer.
Earlier this week, Enzi apparently got around to reading the transcripts of Smith’s May 7 confirmation hearing for solicitor of labor. Now, some three-and-a-half months after sitting through the hearing and voicing no objections to Smith’s answers or nomination, he wants Obama to withdraw Smith’s name, reports BNA’s Daily Labor Report (subscription required).
Tributes to Sen. Edward Kennedy
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The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy has sparked tributes from around the globe, from those who knew him best in his home state of Massachusetts, to world leaders. We include some of these here, mindful that as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote:
Most Americans will never know how many things Ted Kennedy did to make their lives better, how many things he prevented that would have hurt them, and how tenaciously he fought on their behalf.
Be sure to stop by the Edward Kennedy tribute site at: www.tedkennedy.org/tributes.
* Ted Kennedy was not just a senator for Massachusetts; he was our senator—a senator for working people, for poor people, for the old and the vulnerable. For all those who needed a champion, he was our champion. He personified a sense of aspiration that has become America’s aspiration—to make things better, to make them more fair, to make our nation more compassionate and hopeful, to make life work for working men and women.
—AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
Filled with Hope for Kennedy’s Dream of Health Care Reform to Become Reality
Today the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the immigrant movement and the gay communities have lost a friend. Our friend and a great American hero, Sen. Ted Kennedy, has left us, but he has left us with the greatest legislation of our time that has helped move us closer to the promise of America.
Like so many of my generation, my life is full of memories of the Kennedy brothers, John, Bobby and Teddy. When I think about these brothers, I cannot help but return to that day 46 years ago when I stood with my mother in the parking lot across from the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas, as President Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy came out to the crowd anxiously awaiting to see them. When we left the parking lot that morning—my mother, to catch her bus so that she could get to her job as a domestic worker, and me, to my spelling class at I.M. Terrell Jr. High School—we would have never dreamed that, by the time my mother would be halfway through her domestic duties of that day and me through three class periods, President Kennedy would be assassinated in Dallas.
On that day, for my mother and our family, our spirits were darkened, and at that moment, the hope for the promise that President Kennedy symbolized was diminished. We mourned, we cried and we remembered the lessons of our faith; faith is the evidence of things hoped for and not yet seen. We would soon see the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Working Families Mourn the Loss of Sen. Edward Kennedy
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The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy today leaves a void in the lives of working families that will be hard to replace, if ever it can be. Kennedy fought throughout his life with one goal in mind: to improve the lives of working people. He championed civil rights for people of color and LGBT people; better education for literally millions of kids; immigration reform; women; workers’ rights; the freedom of workers to choose a union; and, of course, health care reform.
Kennedy wasn’t just a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act. He helped create it, and he was the first to introduce it in the Senate.
For some other senators, these issues were opinions. For Kennedy, they were a passion. (Kennedy’s Senate office has compiled the extensive list of his accomplishments here.)
In fact, there is a simple and beautiful pattern in these causes Kennedy made his own. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once wrote about another gifted politician Franklin Roosevelt, “he really did desire a better life for mankind.” That precisely explains Ted Kennedy.
He called health care reform “the cause of my life,” and as early as 1966, introduced his first health care bill. He had toured a community clinic at the Columbia Point housing project in Boston, and he was deeply impressed to see it bringing medical care to people who needed it. Typically for him, Kennedy noticed everything, including the rocking chairs set aside in special waiting rooms for nursing mothers.
The Employee Free Choice Act: From 2003 to Today
Members of Congress soon will cast votes that show us where they stand on the Employee Free Choice Act. As key senators engage in negotiations over the bill, supporters of workers’ freedom to form unions aren’t backing down on three key principles:
* Workers need to have a real choice to form a union and bargain for a better life, free from intimidation.
* We have to stop the endless delays and make sure workers can get a fair first contract.
* There have to be real penalties for violating the law.
Over the past few months, opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act have more than once declared the bill dead, but in fact we’re still working hard to to ensure labor law reform happens this year. We’ve come along way from where we were several years ago.
