Labor Union Blog

Diana Butsch

As the election rapidly approaches, union members are working hard to make sure that Sen. Barack Obama becomes the next president. On health care, jobs, retirement and the economy, Obama is proposing the solutions that will turn around America for all of its working families.

Diana Butsch of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), Bill Taylor of the Utility Workers (UWUA), Helena Lampropolous of AFSCME and Arthur Prouse of the Postal Workers (APWU) are just four of the millions of union members around the country who will be supporting Obama this fall.

For the seventh year in a row, the number of people in the United States who receive their health care coverage through employer-provided plans declined.

With the nation’s economic outlook growing increasingly bleak, those numbers are likely to slide even further, says Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Elise Gould:

The health care problem has reached a critical level. Bold new solutions need to be considered to address the growing crisis.

A new EPI report authored by Gould, The Erosion of Employer Sponsored Health Insurance, shows that since 2000 the percentage of U.S. workers with employer-sponsored insurance dropped form 68.3 percent to 62.9 percent. There were 4.1 million more uninsured workers in 2007 than in 2000.

Here’s a Happy 100th Anniversary shout out to the Oswego County (N.Y.) Labor Council. The council, with more than 30 unions and some 10,000 members, marked the anniversary last month.

Just this week, the Syracuse Post-Standard highlighted the council’s milestone and its fight to keep good jobs with good benefits in the central New York county.

This week, in the midst of Sen. John McCain’s misleading assaults on Sen. Barack Obama, his campaign let slip yet another revelation of exactly where their priorities are. One of McCain’s top advisers this week said that as president, McCain would cut $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid.

That’s “trillion.” With a “T.”

More than 10 years, McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin told the Wall Street Journal, McCain would pay for the high costs of his health care proposal by taking a hatchet to health care coverage for the elderly, people with disabilities and lower-income families. A Center for American Progress study finds that McCain’s plan would force big cuts in benefits or eligibility for these vulnerable populations.

McCain’s call for radical cuts to Medicare and Medicaid will undermine their vital role in our health care system, putting affordable health care out of reach for millions of seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families, and driving up the cost of health insurance for everyone else.

Are you a union member who wants to turn your energy and enthusiasm into votes? There are nearly 4,000 events around the country you can take part in between now and Election Day. With the AFL-CIO online event tool, you can find walks, phone banks and other events near you and sign up to get involved.

Also, check out the individual state pages on our Working Families Vote 2008 site to find out about early voting dates, key races and other important local information.

Through the AFL-CIO’s Labor 2008 political program, thousands of volunteers are educating and mobilizing millions of union voters to elect Sen. Barack Obama and other pro-working family candidates and turn around America.

Join us in making a difference by taking part in a union member-to-member walk, phone bank or leaflet. Click here to get the details in your area.

With the world’s financial markets in a deepening tailspin, the global union movement is calling on the world’s leading industrial nations to launch a major recovery plan to stabilize global capital markets, stave off the devastation of a global recession and get back on the track to create decent work.

In an open letter to the G7 finance ministers meeting in Washington, D.C., the leaders of three global workers’ organizations call for transparency in the recovery process and insist that governments look out for the public interest:

As large parts of the financial system are being supported by the public taxpayer, we insist that governments should take equity stakes and act as activist investors to protect the public interest and ensure that taxpayers are eventually reimbursed.

WIN Week In Review October 10-12, 2008

By Doug Cunningham

Most Americans are feeling the economic squeeze of higher prices and stagnating or falling wages. Add a bank meltdown ot that and you have families living in real distress. Professor Michael Zweig of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York the official poverty rate doesn’t begin to tell the real story.

[Zweig]: “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the only measure of economic distress that they have is the poverty level. That’s what they count. That’s what they measure. And by official government poverty standards the poverty rate is around 12.2 percent, 12.3 percent. What we have found is that if you look at a broader understanding of economic distress, it’s around 21 percent of the households in the United States. Almost double.”

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka joins members of IUE-CWA Local 755 in Dayton, Ohio, in handing out issues leaflets to union members.

With just 25 days to Election Day, you can feel the momentum building as working people and their unions go all out to reach every union member. From AFL-CIO President John Sweeney to the newest rank-and-file members, workers are spreading the word that the stakes in this election are huge for working people and we must take this opportunity to turn around America by electing leaders who support workers’ issues such as good jobs, affordable health care, retirement security and the Employee Free Choice Act.

You can see the enthusiasm and excitement at phone banks in local union halls—including AFL-CIO headquarters—and in community walks across the country, where union members by the hundreds of thousands are delivering the same message: The nation cannot afford another four years of Bush/McCain.

Dana Kennedy, communications director for the Arizona AFL-CIO, describes a recent rally in Phoenix where nearly 800 union members highlighted the struggles of working families and their fight to unionize. As Arizona AFL-CIO President Rebekah Friend said: “The Arizona Labor movement is united in making sure that we walk and talk to union members about the candidates that support working family.”

In one of the largest union rallies the state of Arizona has ever seen, more than 800 members from AEA, AFA-CWA, AFGE, AFT, APWU, ARA, ATU, BAC, BLE, BMWE, CWA, IAM, IATSE, IBEW, IBT, Iron Workers, IUEC, IUOE, IUPAT, LIUNA, NALC, NATCA, OPEIU, Plumbers and Pipe Fitters, SMWIA, UAW, UMWA, UNITE HERE and USW joined forces to commit to get Sen. Barack Obama and every pro-labor state legislator and congressional candidate elected Nov. 4.