President Sweeney Tells Union Members: "Get Ready to Fight"
Every day I hear from working family activists who are ready and
eager to fight for what we believe is best about America. They
are not discouraged by the start of President Bush's second
term, even though he and his allies in Congress attack our jobs,
paychecks, health care, retirement security and basic rights. In
fact, they are more revved up than ever.
Everywhere around the country, working people are telling me
they won't allow our country to be hijacked by an agenda based
on corrupt principles. We have a vision of what this country
should be, they say, and we are not giving it up.
The president was re-elected by the narrowest of margins. He has
not won a mandate for his proposed assaults on basic security,
basic decency and our basic values. We won't accept his effort
to privatize Social Security, cut taxes for the wealthy and
raise them for workers, slash investment in schools and health
care, roll back environmental protections, free corporations
from accountability and pack the courts with ideologues intent
on turning back the rights of women and others.
I believe America will reject his agenda designed to benefit the
wealthy, corporate special interests and right-wing extremists
at the expense of working families.
But it's going to be a battle. Let me tell you what's coming.
Social Security: We are going to stop President Bush's plan to
privatize Social Security that would cut benefits drastically,
make retirement less rather than more secure and saddle our
children with $2 trillion in debt in the first 10 years alone.
You've already made a difference by getting more than 500,000
copies of the Petition to Protect Social Security to lawmakers
and urging investment companies like Charles Schwab to drop
support for privatization. In the coming weeks we will do much
more together as the fight for Social Security heats up.
Good Jobs: Together we're going to turn around the trend of
rewarding companies for exporting good U.S. jobs and hold
corporations accountable for the Wal-Marting of jobs and
benefits. No more trade agreements that sell out America to the
lowest bidder. No more sweetheart deals for rich companies that
pay so little and offer such lousy benefits their workers end up
on Medicaid. We need jobs that pay living wages and provide
family health care coverage and secure retirement benefits.
We're through taking a backseat to corporate greed and the
politicians who coddle it.
Freedom to Choose a Union: U.S. and international law promise us
the basic right to choose for ourselves whether to join together
with coworkers to bargain with our employers for safe jobs,
decent working conditions and the best way to get work done.
Today that's an empty promise because employers routinely
harass, intimidate and even fire workers who try to form unions.
Our labor laws are too weak and our government, led by the most
anti-union administration in modern times, fails to enforce even
those inadequate protections. Together we're going to blow the
whistle on worker abuses--we're going to take the fight for
workers' freedom to form unions and bargain to the boardroom,
city hall, the state house and the U.S. Capitol and say in our
loudest voices: "No more!"
Again and again over the coming months we are going work
together for what we believe in--we're going to rally, picket,
phone and fax, e-mail and talk to everyone we know to enlist a
powerful army in the fight for working families. It's going to
take determination, nonstop commitment and unlimited energy.
It's going to take every one of us. And it's going to succeed.
I'm not ready to give up on what I know America can be and
should be and will be. I know you are not either. I look forward
to our work together.
In solidarity,
John Sweeney
AFL-CIO President
Jan. 26, 2005
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