Thread: Real state of the union - working class in big trouble

http://www.denverpost.com/guestcommentary/ci_4915813

Congress must help our working class
By Steve Adams and John Sweeney
DenverPost.com
Article Launched:12/31/2006 01:00:00 AM MST

As the housing market and sky-high CEO year-end bonuses make current business headlines, let's not lose sight of the major theme of 2006: It was a rocky time for most working families. Health care continued to be chipped away. Jobs and retirements disappeared. College was less affordable. Eye-popping gas prices crowded out other necessities.

In fact, the wheels of commerce have nearly rusted shut for working people. They've found it harder and harder to afford a middle-class life, while leaders in Washington, D.C., looked the other way and attended to the needs of big business.

Since President Bush took office, hundreds of billions in corporate tax cuts were signed, sealed and delivered by the Republican-led Congress - a Congress that, despite its "pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps" rhetoric, has logged fewer days in office than the infamous "Do-Nothing Congress" of 1948.

Working families took a big step in the right direction on Election Day 2006 when we said "enough." On Nov. 7, working-class voters fired the Do-Nothing 109th Congress and reminded our representatives that they work for us.

Working men and women mobilized to bring elected leaders into office who understand our concerns, and now we're organizing to support their efforts for a new direction in 2007.

A top priority for working families is raising the minimum wage. For 10 years, the minimum wage has been stuck at a pitiful $5.15 and Congress has done nothing. Prices have skyrocketed. Now President Bush says he wants to saddle any minimum-wage increase with even more business tax cuts. It's way past time for a-no-strings-attached federal minimum wage of $7.25.

At a time when working people are struggling to keep a toehold on the middle class, the single best anti-poverty device in our nation is a union card. In fact, over half of people who don't already have a union say they would join one tomorrow if given the chance - but too few people ever get that chance since employers routinely harass, intimidate and even illegally fire workers who try to form unions.

Legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act would restore workers' freedom to make their own decision to form a union and limit employers' ability to run roughshod over workers' rights.

For too long, working-family issues like quality health care and education, retirement security and good jobs have been on the chopping block. We are now in the fight of our lives to get our country back on track.

The United States has some of the best health care in the world. Yet close to 47 million Americans can't afford to go to the doctor. In Colorado alone, 788,000 people don't have health care. One of the first orders of business of our new Congress must be to look for real solutions to the health care crisis in our country. To provide affordable health care for our seniors, we must begin to allow the government to negotiate directly with drug companies to lower prescription drug prices for Medicare.

Our representatives must stop rewarding companies for sending jobs oversees. The loopholes are so big the cars now being manufactured in China could drive through them. In the last five years, Colorado has lost 40,000 good, family-supporting manufacturing jobs. Congress needs to pass laws to reward companies for keeping good jobs in the United States, not sending them away.

With an annual trade deficit of nearly $800 billion, we must come up with balanced trade policies that don't punish workers. No single action will get us out of the hole we're in, but we can start by rejecting the failed trade policies of the past and charting a new course - one that puts human rights, good jobs and sustainable development at the center of our trade policy.

To prepare America's workforce for the next generation, we must invest in cutting-edge education, training, infrastructure and research to give American workers and producers the tools to compete successfully in the global economy.

America's workers deserve a secure, dignified retirement. Let's write new plans to provide real retirement security for America's greatest generation, starting with reforming corporate bankruptcy laws that enable companies to dump their obligations to employees and retirees.

Finally, we need a plan to bring the troops home from Iraq as soon as possible. Our sons and daughters are dying without an exit strategy and without viable options.

America hasn't been working the way it should. On Election Day, working families tightened the screws and called for an overhaul. We look forward to a Congress that will fight for a well-oiled America that works for all of American working families.

John Sweeney is president of the national AFL-CIO. Steve Adams is the organization's Colorado president.

John Sweeney better get a clue too. Unions better change.

In my area, they were always striking. They finally "striked" themselves out of work...plants closed forever, they are now rotting ruins that have never been torn down.

The Unions care only about Union dues, the companies care only about their bottom line, and the workers are the one's that are given the shaft, by both sides.

I think we have lost something we will never get back...pride in the work force, pride in the products we made, pride in a job well done, and pride in our own Country.