(Change to Win issued the following news release on December 14.)
DETROIT — After a thorough review of his record, the Change to Win Leadership Council unanimously passed a resolution yesterday opposing the nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court.
Alito’s views, often written as dissenting opinions that were rejected by his colleagues on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, include severely restricting a worker’s ability to combat discrimination in the workplace, limiting the government’s ability to act on behalf of working families, and curtailing the rights of immigrants.
“Alito’s workplace would be one where worker rights would be severely curtailed,” said Anna Burger, Chair of Change to Win. “Alito’s judicial record indicates he would side with those who would deny workers a real voice on the job. Change to Win stands for worker rights that Alito would oppose and we will work with our allies to stop him from ascending to the Supreme Court.”
President Bush’s nomination of Alito, the Change to Win Executive Committee resolution reads, “presents the country with a stark choice about the kind of justice we desire.” After reviewing Alito’s stridently conservative judicial ideology that would undermine important federal protections for workers, it describes his views as “outside of the judicial mainstream,” and concludes, “America’s working families deserve and demand a Supreme Court justice who will protect our rights. Samuel Alito would not be such a justice.”
Change to Win, a new labor federation of unions representing nearly six million workers, is devoted to empowering the tens of millions of American workers who struggle to make ends meet and whose voice has been silenced by global corporations and their representatives in Washington.
The Change to Win Federation includes the Laborers’ International Union of North America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, UNITE HERE!, the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, and the United Farm Workers.