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September 4, 2006
LABOR MUST BE MORE AGGRESSIVE
FIGHTING FOR WORKERS
By Edward Gorham
President
Maine AFL-CIO
For more than 120 years we have taken notice of working men and women
at least once a year. But too often we forget that the Labor Days of
decades ago were not only days on which organized labor had picnics,
concerts and games but also that these were the days on which labor
organized, marched, spoke and pressed for gains for workers and working
families – gains such as the eight hour day, the 40-hour week, safe work
places, the right to organize and the prohibition of child labor in the
mines and mills.
First Labor Day
On September 5, 1882 more than 10,000 workers assembled in New York
City to participate in the nation’s first Labor Day parade.
But, as the Library of Congress tells us, “For many decades Labor
Day was used by workers not only to celebrate their accomplishments, but
also to air their grievances and discuss strategies for securing better
working conditions and salaries.”
Facing the most anti-labor national administration in a century and
facing a crisis in our economy and a crisis in the continued loss of
millions of jobs, it is high time to again revive the Labor Day tradition
of solidarity, action and protest.
Organized labor in the closing days of Congress, before its
summer recess, was able to help block a Senate move to greatly lower the
estate tax. Cynical Republicans in the House had linked a long overdue
increase in the national minimum wage to cuts in the estate tax to help
the nation’s billionaires.
For organized labor this is a key issue to understand as we move
toward the November elections because it makes clear the basic “help the
rich” and “vastly reward the super rich” principles of the Republican
Party and the Bush Administration. It makes clear the great power of the
super-rich, as well as the big corporations, to access and use the mass
media to distort issues for their own benefit.
Anti-Labor
Administration
But this is far from being the only issue that
makes it imperative that labor work harder than ever before to break the
Republican strangle hold on Congress.
I am sure now, after nearly six years, that we all realize that the
current Bush Administration is the most anti-labor administration in more
than 100 years. The actions of this administration and its endless
failures to act in everything from hurricane Katrina to prescription drug
pricing and protection of American jobs have had a devastating national
impact.
The evidence shows that trade imbalances in manufacturing have
accounted for 59% of the decline in manufacturing employment since 1998.
The manufacturing sector lost more than three million jobs between
1998 and 2003, with 2.7 million lost since the immediate pre-recession
year of 2000.
It is important to remember that currently, manufacturing is more
productive, has larger employment spill-over effects, pays higher wages,
and provides more benefits than other sectors of the economy.
Huge Decline
Manufacturing has experienced an unprecedented
decline. Specifically, employment in manufacturing dropped for 42
consecutive months resulting in the loss of more than 3 million jobs. Even
in recent months job creation has barely been high enough to meet the
150,000 or more jobs that must be added monthly – just to keep even with
the increasing size of the American workforce.
The decline in manufacturing jobs explains the bulk of the overall
employment loss during the recent recession and so called recovery.
Multinational corporations are transferring jobs to countries where
workers earn low wages and have few or no protections. And small U.S.
businesses are laying off workers or shutting their doors because they
can’t meet foreign competitors’ prices.
The loss of good manufacturing jobs has ripped apart communities and
permanently lowered living standards for families throughout the United
States.
Broken Promises
When George Bush ran for President he promised the nation four
million new jobs. After nearly six years in office what we have actually
gotten is a loss of millions of jobs – particularly in manufacturing –
undoubtedly one of many reasons that his “approval rating” now hovers
between 30 and 35 percent and shows signs of falling even further.
Maine has been hit particularly hard by the job losses afflicting
the manufacturing sector with a loss of more than 17,000 manufacturing
jobs – a higher workforce percentage job loss than any other state.
But this is not the only impact of the disastrous Bush policies:
· There are about 127 million
working people in the country but 7.6 million of them are forced to hold
two jobs to just get by.
· About 38 million of these
jobs are only part time.
· There are some 35 million
year-around full-time jobs that don’t pay enough to support a family.
· In retail trade there are
about 19 million workers who earn less than $10,000 a year, mostly with no
benefits.
· There are more than a million
bank tellers and clerks who earn an average of $8.19 an hour.
We hear a lot of Republican talk about too many workers in big
government but, in truth, not counting military defense-related jobs, only
two of every hundred workers hold federal jobs and only one in eight of
them work in or near Washington, D. C.
Bottom Falling
Out
Working Americans, in Maine and the nation, see the
bottom falling out of their basic way of life—and it’s been falling out
fast in the last five and a half years under the policies of President
Bush. Americans see work being devalued. They see good jobs with health
care and pensions becoming rare. They see forces lined up to give more and
more power to corporate interests that are driving job standards down.
Family and worker income is stagnant or dropping in terms of “real”
inflation-adjusted dollars and the Bush policies have added millions more
Americans to the list of those in poverty and those without health
insurance.
Wealthy Come
First
President Bush has placed corporate interests and tax cuts for the
wealthy before the interests of working families. This administration has
featured: radical changes in the bankruptcy laws, cutting the right to
overtime pay, weakening OSHA and job safety regulations, huge federal
deficits (going from multi-trillion dollar surpluses under President
Clinton to the present more than $7 trillion in debt), refusal to let the
government bargain for lower drug prices (a policy which benefits big drug
companies and costs taxpayers and seniors millions of dollars), and many
other similar destructive policies and actions – including an all out but
failed attempt to destroy Social Security.
To put it most simply Bush has spent almost six years in a
completely unprecedented administration and Republican Party attack on the
American middle class and more specifically on workers, unions and working
families.
Action Is Needed
For organized labor on Labor Day and every day there
is only one appropriate response to this erosion of the American Dream –
this attack on the middle class.
Today fully 50 percent of workers in our country would join a union
if they had a fair chance. But too many employers continue to routinely
deny their workers the basic freedom to improve their lives through
forming unions - - that’s why the Employee Free Choice Act is so
important. It’s a measure pending in Congress that would allow workers to
have a union once a majority sign cards or petitions saying they want one,
and would replace the lengthy and flawed National Labor Relations Board
election process.
The polls show that on November 7 we do have an excellent chance to
fashion a better Congress. In July, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found
that "by an almost 3-to-1 margin" Americans felt that America was heading
in the wrong direction, and they wanted Democrats to take control of
Congress in 2006 (AP, 7/14/06).
We need basic changes in the nation’s labor laws and to get them we
need to work in the elections this fall to break Republican control of
Congress. I urge all union brothers and sisters, as well as everyone who
wishes to see this national recover from the doldrums and prosper again,
to fight to achieve this goal.
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