WASHINGTON, D.C. — One month ago I spoke before a crowd of working men and women on Wall Street, standing across from the New York Stock Exchange, and called for corporations to be accountable to the American people.
In the crowd, laid-off Enron and Worldcom workers stood side by side construction workers who had just completed the grueling Ground Zero clean-up and garment workers who have seen the jobs of former co-workers shipped overseas. Although they are from very different backgrounds, these workers are equally emblematic of the challenges facing working Americans on Labor Day 2002. Together and separately they represent the root values of America – commitment to family, country, neighbors, work, faith and decency. These workers are truly America’s working heroes.
Yet this Labor Day, in the shadow of the anniversary of September 11 and corporate scandals, America is not honoring these heroes’ priorities – decent jobs, affordable, quality health care and secure retirements. Instead, unemployment stands at an eight year high, wages are stagnant and more than 40 million Americans have no health care coverage at all. Good-paying manufacturing jobs that built our middle class are disappearing. And people who lose their jobs are out of work longer than before.
You’d think this situation would set off alarm bells on Capitol Hill. Yet a majority in Congress refused to add a guaranteed prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Social Security and workers’ retirement are under attack. And the House and Senate just voted to send more jobs overseas with Fast Track trade legislation that protects corporate interests but fails to protect workers’ rights and human rights.
Meanwhile, trust in corporations has plummeted right along with retirement accounts and college savings. America understands that big corporations and the lawmakers they support have created a system of in’s and out’s in the nation’s regulatory laws that make it easier for corporations to hide losses while still looking pretty to Wall Street investors. Some of the new laws will help, but they are only a start.
And corporate wrongdoing doesn’t stop with Wall Street manipulations: CEOs routinely lay off workers, cut health and retirement benefits, slash pay or shut down U.S. plants altogether, frequently just to boost quarterly reports and short-term profits.
That’s why unions are escalating our work to hold corporations accountable — holding town hall meetings; pushing new laws, regulations and shareholder proposals; working to rein in CEO pay; providing direct help to workers hurt by corporate scandals; monitoring elected officials who prop up malfeasance – and most of all, helping workers organize together to gain a voice at work.
New research, in fact, shows that more Americans than ever say they would vote for a union if they could. Fifty-four percent of working Americans who could form a union say they would do so if given the chance — up a full eight percentage points from 1996. The research also shows that 66 percent of workers said they have little or no trust that employers will treat workers fairly.
Americans’ growing loss of faith in corporations has fueled their interest in forming unions. Doctors, janitors, musicians, home health aides, meat packers, nurses, immigrant roofers, and graduate employees are among some of the workers who have come together in unions this year.
More than 30 million workers say they would like to form a union, but too few ever get that chance because employers routinely violate workers’ freedom to choose a union. A quarter illegally fire workers, and more than 90 percent use mandatory closed door meetings to “change the minds” of workers on unions, according to congressionally funded research by Cornell’s Dr. Kate Bronfenbrenner.
And even as workers keep our nation secure in thousands of ways — as bag screeners, security guards, firefighters, and nurses — the Bush Administration is trying to keep workers from having a voice through a union in the new Homeland Security department and stalling on bargaining rights for airport screeners. Such attacks are outrageous.
It’s high time for America to treat its heroes with respect. Starting this Labor Day, let’s make sure working people have their voices heard and their futures secured — and CEOs and big corporations can just take a back seat.