WASHINGTON, D.C. — Calling congressional inaction on behalf of working families “shameful” and “disgusting,” AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said the 13 million member union federation will drive a “working families economic agenda,” as the AFL-CIO Executive Council voted to recommend a beefed-up political fund to frame issues and mobilize union members and their families for the fall elections.
“It has become painfully clear,” Sweeney said, “that even in a struggling economy — with high unemployment and the dramatic example of the most deceit-driven corporate failure in history before us — working families are still not a priority for the Bush Administration or the Republican Congress.”
The labor Federation’s “Agenda for America,” which was endorsed by the AFL-CIO Executive Council here today, calls for creating more good jobs by investing tax dollars in schools, roads, bridges and airports and improving the lives of workers through education, job training and raising the minimum wage. It also includes keeping good jobs at home by reforming trade rules, reindustrializing the U.S. economy, and redoubling efforts at worker protections in the global economy. The labor federation will also push to strengthen Social Security and private pensions, to make high quality, affordable health care available to everyone, and to hold corporations more accountable for their actions.
Sweeney said the Federation’s Executive Council voted to ask its General Board, which is composed of representatives of all 66 AFL-CIO unions, to meet May 22 in New York City to add per capita payments from its affiliates of four cents per member per month to fund its highly-successful membership program on a permanent basis. The AFL-CIO currently finances its membership political efforts through a mixture of dues and voluntary contributions; the new measure will insure the funding on a continuing basis, without relying on raising voluntary funds in each election cycle. The funds raise will be used to further strengthen past voter education and mobilization. None of the funds go to candidates or political parties.
Gerald McEntee — president of AFSCME, the giant public employee union, and chair of the AFL-CIO’s political action committee — said that labor’s 2002 membership political program “dedicates resources for the biggest ever mid-term mobilization and an all out grassroots campaign.”
McEntee said unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO began pooling resources in the 1996 election cycle and did so again for the 1998 and 2000 elections. He said that as a result, 4.8 million more union household members turned out to vote in 2000 than in 1992. Union household members represented 26 percent of the vote in 2000, up from 19 percent in 1992. He said the AFL-CIO program also resulted in 2539 union members now holding elective office and that the labor movement’s goal is now to elect 5,000 union members.
“The political playing field increasingly favors corporations and the very rich,” McEntee said, noting that the corporate cash gap has widened from 9-1 over unions in 1992 to 15-1 in 2000. “The AFL-CIO neutralizes big business by running the nation’s strongest network of grassroots political activists.”
Sweeney said the policies of the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress for neglect working families.
“We saw it in the aftermath of September 11th, when workers got lip service while the airlines got bailouts — it was shameful,” Sweeney said.
“We saw it in the fast track vote, when working people’s interests were traded for pork and political favors — it was disgusting.”
“And we see it in the continuing debate over an economic stimulus bill, where members of Congress who are trying to provide unemployment benefits and health care to workers have been repeatedly blocked by a Republican majority that wants to give more tax breaks to business and the wealthy instead.”