LABOR'S HIGH HOPES

LABOR'S HIGH HOPES
By Dick Meister

These are days of high hopes for U.S. unions in their drive to broadly
expand union ranks and the rights and rewards of all American workers
through political action.

Chalk it up to the extraordinary union efforts that were highly instrumental
in Democrats winning control of Congress in last year’s midterm elections.
That and the certainty that labor is eager, willing and able to campaign as
hard for the Democratic candidate in next year’s presidential election –
whoever he or she may be -- and for other Democratic candidates at the
national, state and local levels.

Among the most important of the candidates are Democrats who’ll be
attempting to win control of state legislatures in anticipation of
redistricting after 2010, when they could redraw state and congressional
district lines to favor election of more pro-labor candidates.

The unions’ midterm campaign was by far the most extensive, most expensive
and most successful political campaign in labor history. Unions spent more
than $66 million, and put more than 100,000 members to work registering and
turning out voters, distributing leaflets, staging rallies and contacting
some 13 million voters directly.

One-fourth of all voters were union members, and they favored Democratic
candidates over their Republican opponents by a margin of three- to- one.
The Democratic majority in congressional races was 6.8 million votes, and
union households provided 5.6 million or 80 percent of that margin.

But though winning a congressional majority, Democrats fell short of the
numbers needed to overcome presidential vetoes and Republican filibusters
threatened against major pro-labor measures. Labor and the Democrats are
determined to remedy that next year with what promises to be another
exceptional election campaign.

Labor did win some important victories this year, notably the first minimum
wage increase in a decade. But union and Democratic leaders already are
laying the groundwork for a drive to have it increased again, to $9.50 an
hour in 2009, when the newly-approved minimum will reach $7.25.

Above all, labor will be seeking enactment of the long-pending Employee Free
Choice Act that was passed by the House this year, but kept from Senate
approval by a GOP filibuster. The act would greatly increase penalties on
the many employers who illegally discipline workers who seek union rights
and would otherwise make it easier for workers to unionize and thus bargain
for higher pay, better health care, pensions and other benefits.

Not incidentally, it also would lead to a substantial increase in union
membership and in labor’s already considerable political clout.

The rest of labor’s long and ambitious wish list deals with a wide variety
of issues that are of great importance to most people, whether they be union
members or not. The AFL-CIO, for instance, is demanding that Congress:

• Provide everyone affordable health care, in part by allowing Medicare to
negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for cheaper prescription drugs.

• Guarantee decent retirement benefits to all workers and truly equal pay to
women workers.

• Repeal a federal regulation that allows employers to deny union rights to
workers by classifying them as supervisors and extend union rights to all
federal employees and to all firefighters and police.

• Tighten and intensify enforcement of job safety regulations in mines and
other workplaces, revitalize manufacturing and require greater corporate
accountability while limiting the lavish pay and pensions of CEOs.

• Ban the awarding of federal contracts to companies that outsource jobs and
instead reward companies that provide jobs in this country, create an
immigration system that fully protects the rights of foreign and domestic
workers alike, and approve fair trade laws that penalize countries that
violate workers’ rights and other human rights and endanger the environment.

• Withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq quickly and develop an effective plan to
fight the war on terror.

• Increase college student loans, revise President Bush’s No Child Left
Behind law and otherwise strive to give “a world-class education” to every
child.

Many, if not most, of labor’s wishes have at least the promise of support
from many, if not most, congressional Democrats and Democratic presidential
candidates. That alone, no matter how many of their wishes will or will not
come true, is enough to make this a happy time for American unions.

Copyright © 2007 Dick Meister

Story ID:	2794
Written by:	Dick Meister (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Musings, Essays and Such
Location:	Washington DC USA
Year:	2007