(The Waterloo Courier published the following story by Joel Palmer on its website on August 14.)
WATERLOO, Iowa — A high-ranking officer with the AFL-CIO challenged union representatives at the Iowa Federation of Labor Convention Wednesday to ratchet up their efforts to “remove George W. Bush and his allies from office.”
Richard L. Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO since 1995, called the president the “most unfair man who has ever occupied the White House,” hours before delegates heard the views of six of the Democratic candidates trying to unseat Bush next November.
Trumka said the initial sadness that followed the Republican Bush’s election to the White House in 2000 has been replaced with anger. He wants the organized labor movement to channel those feelings into building the largest voting initiative in organized labor’s history.
“Without union members in strong resistance, the wealthy, the corporations and the conservative ideologues would pull us even further to the right and create a perverted system where greed overwhelms need, where dollars replace ballots, where monopoly overwhelms competition and censorship replaces debate,” said Trumka.
Organized labor accounted for 26 percent of the vote in 2000 and Trumka said after his speech that labor’s goal should be to increase that to 33 percent. He said one of the keys is to spend more money recruiting members.
“It is time to stand together, to fight together, to vote together, to organize together and to win together,” he said.
Trumka blamed free trade policies like NAFTA, supported by members of both political parties, for rising unemployment, the loss of manufacturing jobs and the movement of jobs to overseas plants.
“We need a president that says you need to keep jobs here,” he said. “We can’t continue to have a $480 million trade deficit and still keep the economy growing.”
Trumka applauded the labor movement for winning $70 million in severance pay for laid off workers at Enron and WorldCom, for persuading the Securities and Exchange Commission to require mutual fund companies to disclose proxy votes and for asking the SEC to allow worker pension funds to nominate company board directors.
“We’ve done a good job of keeping the heat on corporations that abuse shareholders and employees, renege on paying their fair share of taxes by incorporating offshore and pay their executives outrageous salaries,” he said.