Op-Ed in Burlington Free Press, August 26, 2003
By James Haslam
The main reason people need unions is to have a voice about their working conditions. As the saying suggests, "united we bargain, divided we beg."
Organizing a union is the only way for workers to wrench fairness from the corporate system. As Labor Day approaches, more and more workers are realizing the value of union membership. In Vermont, from the nurses at Fletcher Allen, to UVM's faculty, to the co-op workers at City Market and Hunger Mountain, thousands of workers are organizing unions.
The Fletcher Allen RNs recently demonstrated how forming a union works, and how union members can make real changes at work. After several unsuccessful attempts where management spent millions on anti-union campaigns, last Oct. 4, the RNs voted two to one to unionize.
Since poor working conditions and short staffing in health care can lead to people dying, AFT Local 5221 could then discuss and take initiative on things they wanted changed. So they negotiated a contract that, among other things, insisted upon safe "nurse-to-patient staffing ratios" - contract language that can save patients' lives. They also helped lead a statewide Patient Safety Act, which calls for the same for all our state's hospitals. The lesson is that, being organized, they were able to accomplish things that they would not be able to do as individuals.
This is also an example of unions creating a more just society. When only the employer class organizes, into chambers of commerce, business and industry associations, and PACs, corporate interests control public policy. But when workers organize, they can change public policy so it serves working class families, not just the rich.
When you see the bumper sticker, "The Labor Movement: The Folks That Brought You the Weekend," remember that it was union activists who fought to win Social Security, paid sick leave, vacations, and holidays, work place health and safety laws, public education, the eight-hour day, the 40-hour week, protection from discrimination and more. It has always been a fight to push forward social reforms, but only in struggle is victory possible.
Layoffs result when corporate executives put profit above public good. Workers at IBM are now organizing a union, Alliance@IBM with the Communication Workers of America (CWA). They have given their lives to IBM yet now they're being dumped, and rich executives are dictating their lay-off conditions. Verizon too wants to move jobs, eliminate and contract out work. But in contrast to IBM, Verizon employees (CWA members and those in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) are currently negotiating to keep their jobs. The fact that these workers have a union contract and can actively protect their livelihood, instead of being at the mercy of management's whims, is important for Vermont.
Since workers are consumers, their jobs are vital to all local commerce. With free trade policies and corporate globalization leading to the loss of good jobs, the 500-plus Verizon jobs represent some of the last good jobs in Vermont. Workers' collective interests often extend to greater community interests.
Labor Day is the time to honor the contribution workers have made in society. It's a time to celebrate our struggles and victories to improve our lives and our communities.
On Saturday Aug. 30, unionized nurses, Verizon workers, and hundreds of other workers with their families will gather for the 3rd Annual Labor Parade and Picnic in Burlington. The parade starts at 11 a.m. at H.O. Wheeler School and ends at Roosevelt Park, where there will be music, speakers, and free food (prepared with volunteer union labor). It's time to celebrate Vermont's exciting labor movement, and help put the "move" in the movement.
James Haslam is director of the Vermont Workers' Center, a nonprofit workers' rights organization based in Montpelier.
Unions work for everyone
Vermont Workers and Communities Fight for Healthcare Justice
By James Haslam, Director, Vermont Workers' Center
Published in Labor Notes, August 2003
For the nurses of Vermont’s largest hospital, Fletcher Allen, three times was not the charm. The more than 1,200 registered nurses of the hospital had tried unsuccessfully to form a union three times over the previous decade in the face of management’s aggressive union-busting tactics.
On their fourth try, with the help of the Vermont Workers’ Center / Jobs with Justice and the AFL-CIO, the nurses had an unprecedented level of community support. This helped to tip the scales in their favor. In the latest and most dramatic victory in the Workers’ Center’s Justice for Healthcare Workers Campaign, the Fletcher Allen nurses, organized as new members of United Professions of Vermont/American Federation of Teachers Local 5221, won their contract campaign.
The proposed new agreement includes a ban on floating, a ban on mandatory overtime (which will ensure that nurses are not forced to work grueling back-to-back shifts) and staffing ratios, based on the California ratios with an additional mechanism which gives nurses the ability to change ratios and control over the Hospital's staffing budget -- which makes it among the best agreements in the country in terms of staffing language.
BUILDING COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY
The groundswell of public support for the nurses’ historic victory represents the culmination of years of Workers’ Center community mobilization around a series of union struggles. In 1998, the United Nurses & Allied Professionals Local 5109 went on strike at Copley Hospital. It was big news in a small Vermont community.
The Workers’ Center helped by doing a tremendous amount of leafleting, phonebanking, writing letters to the editor, coordinating rides for community members to our picket line, calling the hospital CEO, and attending a huge rally. They used similar mobilization tactics later that same year, when nurses at Rutland Regional Medical Center organized a union, Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 6, and had to withstand an anti-union decertification drive after not getting their first contract. With the community’s help, the union defeated the decertification drive and got their first contract.
When workers at Berlin Health and Rehabilitation Center (BH&RC) in central Vermont organized with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) in 2000 to become the first unionized private nursing home in the state, the Workers’ Center put its muscle behind their struggle. Adding to the challenge was the hiring, by the corporation that ran BH&RC, of the notorious union-busting law firm Jackson Lewis. The UE and the Workers’ Center fought the Jackson Lewis anti-union campaign by organizing an Appeal to Fairness petition that called on the company to end the campaign and respect the workers’ right to organize. Religious leaders, politicians, and hundreds of community members heeded the call to sign the petition.
The Appeal to Fairness was delivered to the BH&RC administration by a community delegation. Just as important, it was also given to all the nursing home workers, so they knew their community was behind them. The workers prevailed and formed a union, UE Local 254, and entered into 19 arduous months of bargaining to win a first contract.
To support the workers through this struggle, the Workers’ Center formed a community support committee that organized candlelight vigils, rallies, targeted parades, and informational pickets at BH&RC and its sister facilities throughout the state.
Community delegations were sent to the U.S. headquarters of the corporation that owns BH&RC and a stockholders meeting in Toronto, and also made several visits to the nursing home itself. With the tremendous commitment of a core group of leaders from the organizing committee at this nursing home (which sees approximately 70% annual worker turnover) supported by intense, organized community pressure, the workers were able to achieve their purpose and more.
Not only did the BH&RC workers get their contract in January 2002, but the state of Vermont, responding to all the attention generated by this campaign (which focused on the need for decent working conditions and adequate staffing in nursing homes) implemented the first ever staffing rules for Vermont nursing homes.
LARGER CAMPAIGN
During this time of community organizing around the BH&RC workers, the Workers’ Center realized that short-staffing and poverty wages were prevalent in all other nursing homes in the state as well. And with five or more unions representing healthcare workers in Vermont, something needed to be done to bring them all together to work in common struggle. From these realizations, the “Justice for Healthcare Workers” campaign was born.
The campaign has been successful because it has enabled Vermont’s five health care unions, along with community activists from all over the state, to work together towards a common goal. It has also framed the various healthcare worker struggles throughout the state as one big struggle, in the broader context of healthcare reform and as a social justice cause.
The Workers’ Center also sees the Fletcher Allen campaign as a groundbreaking victory in healthcare that creates the potential for fixing a broken healthcare system in Vermont. It has held rallies, forums, workshops and public education events around the need for universal healthcare access. As healthcare workers organize and unite their struggles, they can help lead the fight for worker justice and quality, and affordable healthcare for all. With eight of twelve Vermont hospitals, all nursing homes but one and thousands of other healthcare workers unorganized, we look forward to building off these recent victories to win many more for both the labor and healthcare justice movements!
Victory at Fletcher Allen Healthcare
The Fletcher Allen nurses reached a tentative agreement, moments before the rally this Saturday, June 21st (see their news release below)!
Congratulations to all of the Fletcher Allen nurses! You were incredibly strong, committed and united through this whole struggle - and with this strength you've accomplished great things!
The nurses will vote on the settlement in the coming days, but what they've won in this settlement is nothing short of historic. It is a huge victory for the nurses at Fletcher Allen, of course, but also for all Vermont nurses, as Fletcher Allen sets the standard for the state. It's a big win for all Vermonters, who will benefit from the improved quality patient care that nurses will be able to provide. And it's even bigger than that, for the triumph at Fletcher Allen is one for nurses throughout the country (they are the first hospital in the country to have a ban on mandatory overtime and one of ten who have won nurse-to-patient staffing ratios).
In Vermont, this is a gigantic victory for all Vermont workers, as it is the type of win that puts the "move" in the labor movement. Through the Justice For Healthcare Workers Campaign, we will continue to work with the Fletcher Allen nurses and other VT healthcare local unions to help healthcare workers throughout the state organize for their rights. We want to thank all of you who helped the Fletcher Allen nurses in this struggle for justice and quality patient care. I would love to mention names, but there are literally thousands of people who got involved in many ways.
I would like to share one message we received just before the settlement from someone involved in the Justice For Healthcare Workers Campaign:
"I'm unfortunately unable to attend the rally but I'll be there in spirit. We have an outpost of Fletcher Allen in our hospital here in Rutland (Dialysis Center). The chief of surgery asked me today, a full-time O.R. nurse, if there were a picket line in Rutland would I cross it to come to work. The emphatic answer is 'NO' "
---- in solidarity, Tisa Farrow, RN (Rutland Regional Medical Center Chief Steward, OPEIU, local 6, AFL-CIO).
Thanks to Tisa and so many others whose solidarity and support really made a difference!
James Haslam
Vermont Workers' Center, Director
NURSES CHEER SETTLEMENT OF A FAIR CONTRACT
Rally Celebrates the Beginning of a New Day at Fletcher Allen
On Saturday, an estimated 600 community members, local leaders, and nurses gathered together outside of the hospital to celebrate the long-desired settlement of a fair contract with the Fletcher Allen nurses' union.
"We are ecstatic at what we were able to achieve in these negotiations," said Jen Henry, RN, a member of the Bargaining Team. "Today, we can say that it is truly a new day at Fletcher Allen."
Settlement came in the early afternoon on Saturday, just a few hours before the rally, and after three days of informational picketing by the nurses drew an overwhelmingly positive community response. The nurses had been engaged in contract talks with the administration since December. The contract agreement was approved by the Bargaining Team at approximately one in the afternoon on Saturday after a round-the-clock bargaining session, and is expected to be approved by the full union membership in a final vote that will take place on a date in the near future that is yet to be determined.
"This contract will bring Fletcher Allen a long way towards becoming a world-class hospital," said Barbara Segal, RN, co-chair of the Bargaining Team. "We are incredibly happy for our patients, who can expect great things because of this."
Key changes to past Fletcher Allen policy in the contract include:
* Safe nurse-to-patient ratios, which will greatly improve the time that nurses have to spend with each patient;
* A ban on mandatory overtime, which will ensure that nurses are not forced to work grueling back-to-back shifts;
* often regardless of whether or not they had the correct certifications to perform all the necessary duties on that second unit; and
* An economic package that will improve the hospital's ability to recruit and retain qualified nurses in a time when a shortage of qualified nurses has created a highly competitive job market across the country.
"This day has been a long time in coming," said Steve Chamberlin, RN, co-chair of the Bargaining Team. "Finally, we nurses at Fletcher Allen will have the tools that we need to provide the quality and safety in care that our patients deserve. We congratulate the administration in coming to an agreement with us that is good for the patients, the nurses, and the community."
MORE INFO: Contact VT Workers: Center 802-229-0009 or the Fletcher Allen Nurses' Union, UPV/AFT Local 5221 at 802-657-4040. To learn more about the Justice For Healthcare Workers Campaign, email info@workerscenter.org
Universal Healthcare Now!
June 2003, Op-Ed in Rutland Herald and Times Argus
By Sue Lucas, RN, President of United Nurses & Allied Professionals Local 5109 at Copley Hospital
As someone whose job is to heal people when they are sick and keep them healthy, my heart aches because our healthcare system is not working. We need a universal health care system that covers everybody, not one which is becoming too expensive for most of us.
Simply put, our health care system is in a crisis state. We all know some of the obvious reasons, but as a Registered Nurse, I am acutely aware of the damaging working conditions which are actually forcing good, caring medical personnel out of the industry, making a bad situation all that much worse. I take pride in the level of care I can give those patients I am responsible for, and who are sick and in need. But all too often, systematic short staffing compromises our ability to provide the quality of care we were trained to do.
And I know of the growing number of people who are sick or hurt that don’t even make it in to see us! There are over 40 million people in the United States who do not have health insurance of any kind. There are tens of millions more who are underinsured. For those of us who do have health insurance, premiums are escalating rapidly, with employers increasingly passing the costs on to workers. Employers are seeking to insulate their profits from the health care crisis by forcing their workers to pick up the tab. According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, employee premium contributions for single coverage grew by almost 27 percent on average and for family coverage by 16 percent from 2001 to 2002, when total premiums for job-based coverage grew by 12.7 percent.
The problems are both local and national. Last November, Fairbanks Scales in St. Johnsbury provoked a two-week strike by demanding drastic increases in workers' contributions towards health insurance premiums. In January, workers at General Electric struck for 2 days over the issue of health insurance - the first nationwide strike at GE since 1969. But, while companies like GE and Verizon are hugely profitable and could easily afford to absorb increased health insurance costs, many smaller, non-profit and public employers with limited budgets are caught between the rock of increasing costs and the hard place of workers who simply cannot afford to contribute any more out of their own pockets.
In our beautiful state, the state programs that act as band-aids on our broken health care system - VHAP and Dr. Dynasaur - are threatened because of the government budget crisis. As premium contributions and co-pays for these programs rise, their beneficiaries - most of whom are children - will forego needed preventative care. From my work, I see firsthand that people who do without preventative care are more likely to end up in the emergency room. This drives up the total costs for the system. And they don’t come in for sniffles.
We need universal coverage of health care. Not only because health care is a basic right that should be available to everyone, but also because it makes financial sense. The General Accounting Office in 1991 stated that, "If the United States were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer with the authority to oversee the healthcare system, the savings in administrative costs would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."
The movement to fix the health care system and develop one which is universal is growing. Ohio Congressman and Presidential Candidate, Dennis Kucinich, has introduced a universal healthcare plan. Locally, last September, over a thousand Vermonters flooded Montpelier for a universal health care rally called Prescription For Change. A new coalition - the Coalition for Vermont Universal Healthcare System – is working to bring more groups in Vermont together to make a new healthcare system happen.
Seeing the ills of the current approach first hand, day in and day out, health care workers are also organizing to fix the current system and move to one which treats people as patients, not consumers. In the face of the corrupt and misguided administration at Vermont’s largest medical institution, the RNs at Fletcher Allen Health Care have formed a union and are now bargaining a contract which will prioritize quality patient care over profits. (Community members are invited to join them as they rally for a fair contract at Fletcher Allen’s main entrance on Colchester Avenue on June 21st at 3:30 P.M.) We nurses have also begun a Justice for Healthcare Workers campaign with the Vermont Workers’ Center. Our goal is to unite healthcare workers across the state in an effort to pass quality patient care legislation and support healthcare workers’ ability to organize unions across the state.
On June 5th, the workers at GE, Verizon, and other workplaces throughout New England are holding a Health Care for All Action Day and will wear stickers saying “Health Care For All: No Cuts in Benefits or Services.” As part of this action day, the factory workers who are members of UE Local 234 and work at Fairbanks Scales in St. Johnsbury will work with other community groups to hold a vigil for universal healthcare at 4 P.M. A movement of workers, the uninsured, seniors, small business owners and health care providers is beginning to build strength. We need to stand together to demand a solution to fix a broken system and provide affordable quality healthcare for us all.
Sue Lucas, RN is the president of United Nurses & Allied Professionals Local 5109 at Copley Hospital and helps coordinate the Justice For Healthcare Workers Campaign of the Vermont Workers’ Center. With questions or comments call 802-229-0009 or email info [at] workerscenter [dot] org.
Livable Wage Rally Speech
From Livable Wage March and Rally, April 12, 2003
By Cindy Bubrouski
Hello! I'm Cindy Bubrouski. I'm an Instructional Assistant at Montpelier High School and have worked in that district for six years. I am also the president and chief negotiator of our VTNEA local, the Montpelier Educational Support Staff Association.
Instructional Assistants (or paraprofessionals) perform a wide variety of educational support services, from providing individual and small group instruction, to personal care. Every day, we do our best to educate students who are cognitively, physically, emotionally, or behaviorally challenged. Many of us are trained in facilitative communication, or have received specialized training to teach reading and writing. Many of us assist classroom teachers, and many of us provide direct instruction. All of us know how challenging our jobs are.
Historically, school districts have seen fit to devalue our work. For too long we have been an invisible workforce, the "orphans" of the school districts. Paraprofessionals across the state have been caught up in a web of low wages, and nonexistent or unaffordable healthcare benefits. We have seen our job responsibilities continue to grow, but not our wages and benefits.
Most school districts still offer starting wages more than $3.00 an hour BELOW the State of Vermont's Joint Fiscal Office's newest 2003 Livable Wage figure of $11.58 an hour. Keep in mind, that figure represents a single person working a full-year, and receiving employer- assisted health benefits. Most paras are not offered affordable health benefits, and are forced to rely on Vermont's public assistance services. This is a disgrace, and a slap in the face to hardworking, dedicated educators. Who ends up paying for the benefits that school districts withhold from their paraprofessionals? We all do!
A 1995 Occupational Wages report, from the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce, illustrates how paraprofessional hourly wages have not kept pace with inflation. The average wage for a "teacher's aide" in 1995 was $8.60. That was almost 8 years ago! Now I ask you, how many of your school districts still pay their paras that $8.60 (or less) as a starting wage? It's shameful! Paraprofessionals deserve a livable wage that provides for the basic necessities!
What can we do? Friends, first of all, if your district's paras aren't organized, form an association and get on board with VTNEA! It is time to head to the collective bargaining table with your school board! If you are already organized, remember this above all else when you begin bargaining, START WITH THE LIVABLE WAGE AS YOUR BASE! $11.58! Know that what you settle for will not only effect your district's paraprofessionals, but will reverberate with every paraprofessional statewide. Stay strong. Begin and continue Livable Wage campaigns in your districts. Support one another. We are all in this together. As long as one paraprofessional earns a poverty wage, we are ALL the poorer for it! Vermont's school support staff deserve a respectable, livable wage!
Thank you.
Cindy Bubrouski is president of the Montpelier Educational Support Staff Association
The Livable Wage Battle Hymn
(to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic")
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the day
When we won't just work for peanuts
We will work for decent pay
So it's time to stop complaining
And draw action from our rage
In the fight for a livable wage
CHORUS:
Come, let's join the great big chorus
No one else will do it for us
And we know we'll win the day
In our fight for decent pay
Cause the union makes us strong
We know our work is valuable
Our bosses know it too
And the workers who we stand beside
Depend on what we do
In our jobs and our communities
We're just like super glue
Cause the union makes us strong
CHORUS
Well they say the times are tough out there
That taxes are too high
But we also pay those taxes
And watch health bills go sky-high
We're not asking for a free lunch
But we want our piece of pie
And the union makes us strong
CHORUS
(sung at April 12, 2003 Livable Wage March in Burlington)
Vermonters Need Livable Wages and a Fair Economy
April, 2003 Op-Ed in Burlington Free Press
By James Haslam, Director, Vermont Workers' Center
Vermont's working people are facing the greatest economic crisis in recent memory. Workers in Vermont and around the country are working harder, longer, and more productively than ever before, and yet we are being laid-off by profitable companies, asked to shoulder the costs and risks of health care, and watching our retirement savings being ripped off by unscrupulous corporate criminals. And while failing corporations like the airlines get bailed out with public money, laid-off workers whose unemployment benefits have run out see only cuts to the social programs that help us heat our homes, afford our rent, and feed our children.
In the midst of all these problems, working people need for our political and community leaders to stand up and confront this recession with programs and policies that make the lives of workers better, not worse. We need economic stimulus that puts money in the pockets of workers, who will spend it and boost the local economy, rather than the pockets of the very wealthiest members of our society. We need a universal health care system which covers everyone rather than continued attempts to shift the costs and risks of health care onto workers. And we need an adequate social safety net so that economic downturns do not push workers into bankruptcy, homelessness and despair.
During the Great Depression, workers, seniors and religious leaders stood up to demand that the government confront the economic crisis. The resulting legislation - Social Security, the Fair Labor Standards Act (which created the minimum wage), and the National Labor Relations Act (which legalized collective bargaining) - combined with public works spending, came to be known as the New Deal. The New Deal eased the immediate crisis by putting money in workers' pockets, pushed the country toward recovery, and insured that recovery, when in came, benefited working people.
Now is the time for working people and community members to mobilize to demand change. We need to support workers in the K-12 schools, at our nursing homes, hospitals, universities and grocery stores, who are standing up for livable wages. We need to insist that our political leaders work towards a fair economy by creating livable wage jobs, guaranteeing health care for all, and preserving an adequate social safety net. Come to the March for Livable Wages and a Fair Economy in Burlington on April 12th, because united, we can make our economy a fair economy for all.
Vermont Workers' Center Resolution Against the War
Adopted at 1/18/03 Steering Committee Meeting
WHEREAS, the Vermont Workers' Center has, in its mission, already resolved to fight for economic justice for all workers; and,
WHEREAS, the burdens and dangers of war would fall disproportionately on working people, the poor, and people of color, both at home and abroad; and
WHEREAS, we have no quarrel with the working-class in Iraq who will suffer most, having already suffered long under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and sanctions; and
WHEREAS, under the ongoing war on terrorism, corporate interests received taxpayer bailouts and tax cuts, yet ordinary workers face serious economic problems that are not addressed; job losses, falling wages, health-care insecurity, pension and 401k losses; and
WHEREAS, the war will dramatically increase military spending. Vermont's share is estimated now at $143 million. The cost of the war necessitates cuts in essential services; education, housing, social security, unemployment benefits, healthcare, transportation, clean water and air, all at a time when our tax dollars could be used for retraining and jobs, and to plug local deficits caused by tax cuts.
WHEREAS, the war covers for corporate corruption and union-busting; the federal government's use of Taft-Hartley against the ILWU, the privatization of public jobs (AFGE) under the Homeland Security Act, and other offenses to the right of workers to protest, organize, and strike; and
WHEREAS, workers responded to 9/11 with heroism, and have always responded with the public at heart. The USA PATRIOT act and similar measures invade privacy and expand government's ability to detain workers based on mere suspicion, to conduct telephone and internet surveillance and secret searches, and to define people engaged in political protest as "domestic terrorists". The TIA and TIPS programs will further scrutinize our economic and personal lives; and
WHEREAS, all of Vermont's Congressmen voted against this war, and the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney expressed concern about the motives for this war and its domestic components; and
WHEREAS, fear increases racism, and U.S. citizens feel no more secure after war in Afghanistan; and,
WHEREAS, there is no credible evidence linking Iraq to the 9/11 attacks; and
WHEREAS, we value the lives of our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, who will have to fight in this war, more than control of Middle East oil; and,
WHEREAS, "pre-emptive", "unilateral" policies do not represent the necessary global perspective; genuine security will be achieved only by fighting world-wide for social and economic justice, therefore:
BE IT HEREBY RESOLVED that the Vermont Workers' Center publicly opposes the war on Iraq; and we urge supportive members and affiliates to get involved in local efforts to stop this war.
Labor Statement Against the War
At Montpelier Antiwar Rally, January 18, 2003
By Jonathan Kissam
Good afternoon.
I bring greeting on behalf of the national executive board of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE). UE was the first national union to denounce this war, back in September, but we have been joined by many others in the trade union movement, including the 1.3-million member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and dozens if not hundreds of local and regional labor organizations. Just last Saturday, over 100 trade unionists representing more than 2 million workers gathered in Chicago to found U.S. Labor Against the War. And just this morning, the Vermont Workers Center, a labor-community coalition including many Vermont unions such as the Vermont State Employees Association, the United Nurses and Allied Professionals at Copley Hospital, the Alliance@IBM and the Washington-Orange County Central Labor Council, passed a resolution against the war.
The mission of the labor movement is to fight for justice for working people. This war is a threat to the lives, the economic well-being, and the civil liberties of workers, both here and in Iraq, so we in the labor movement must speak out against it.
This war is a threat to our lives. The history of warfare is for the most part the history of some rich guy getting into an argument with some other rich guy about some stuff - land, oil - and then large numbers of working people have to go fight other working people who we really have no quarrel with. This war clearly fits the pattern - it's one unelected oil tycoon wanting to grab oil from another unelected oil tycoon. As UE has unequivocally stated, no one, not a single American and not a single Iraqi, should die to boost the profits of oil and military corporations.
This war is a threat to our economic well-being. Over the past year, we have witnessed a tidal wave of corporate corruption, as the con artists and kleptomaniacs in charge of corporations like Enron have looted their employee's retirement funds, laid off tens of thousands of workers, and rewarded themselves richly with stock options, golden parachutes, and the ill-gotten gains of insider trading. Meanwhile, Bush has skillfully used the threat of war with Iraq to distract the American public from this corporate malfeasance, and to prevent any meaningful reform. Furthermore, the costs of this war will preclude the federal spending we so desperately need for infrastructure and schools, and for rebuilding our manufacturing base -- investments that would provide real economic stimulus and put people back to work. And this war will push the economy even further into recession, while war spending draws money away from our already inadequate social safety net. It is criminal that in the richest country on earth, twelve percent of the population, including twelve million children, live in poverty, and it is doubly criminal that Bush is proposing to divert resources away from social spending to pay for an unjust war.
This war is a threat to our freedom. The assault on civil liberties is an integral part of this war, and part of that assault is a vicious attack on trade union rights. When workers being merged into the new Department of Homeland Security were excluding from collective bargaining rights and civil service protections, we were told that it was justified in the name of "national security." Last week, workers at the Transportation Security Administration were told, in effect, that the clause in the UN Declaration of Human Rights guaranteeing all workers the right to collective bargaining does not apply to them, again in the name of "national security." And last November, also citing "national security," the Bush administration used an injunction to force the west coast longshore workers to work essentially under government supervision, stripping workers in this highly dangerous industry of their rights to take collective action to protect their own safety, life and limb. Despite all this, there is hope. If we stand together, we can stop this war. If we stand together, we can build a peaceful and just tomorrow.
No War on Iraq!
Fight for a Fair Economy!
Defend Our Civil Liberties!
Thank you.
Jonathan Kissam is Secretary-Treasurer of District 2 of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE)