Political Action Update

August 23, 2006 

2006 Labor Day Events

Celebrate Labor Day at an Event in Your Area

Burlington—Des Moines/Henry County Labor Council, AFL-CIO

Monday, September 4, Labor Day Picnic 4:00, Forty & Eight Park (behind Community Field on Mt. Pleasant Road) $5 - Individuals, $10 - Families (food, beverages and door prizes)

Cedar Rapids—Hawkeye Labor Council, AFL-CIO

Monday, September 4, Labor Day Picnic 11:30 - 3:30, Hawkeye Downs, Cedar Rapids (free beer, brats, hot dogs, pop, raffle prizes and fun for all ages)

Clinton—Clinton Labor Congress, AFL-CIO

Sunday, September 3, Labor Day Weekend Picnic 12:00 - 4:00, Eagle Point Lodge (food & drinks, clowns, Keystone Kops)

Des Moines—South Central Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO

Monday, September 4, Solidarity Fest 2006, Iowa State Fairgrounds (4-H Building) Parade 11:00 (follows Grand Ave. from State Capitol to the Fairgrounds, free shuttle from 4-H Bldg. to parade)  Laborfest 12:00 - 2:00 (free hotdogs & refreshments, free rides & prizes)

Dubuque—Dubuque Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO

Monday, September 4, Labor Day Parade 9:30, beginning at 15th & Main

Iowa City—Iowa City Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO

Monday, September 4, Labor Day Picnic 12:00, Iowa City Park, Shelter #2 (table service, brats, burgers, veggie burgers provided, please bring a covered dish or something else to share)

Keokuk—Lee County Labor Council, AFL-CIO

Monday, September 4, Parade 11:00, Lunch & Bar-B-Q 11:30, Labor Temple, 301 Blondeau, Keokuk (dance and drawings following lunch)

Mason City—North Iowa Nine Labor Council, AFL-CIO

Monday, September 4, Labor Day Picnic 11:00 - 4:00, Mason City East Park, Shelter House #2

Quad Cities—Quad City Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO

Monday, September 4, Labor Day Parade 11:00, Picnic following parade 12:00, Illiniwek Park north of Hampton, Illinois (parade line-up location: 1100 13th Avenue, East Moline—John Deere Harvester Works parking lot)

Sioux City—Northwest Iowa Labor Council, AFL-CIO

Monday, September 4, Labor Day Picnic 11:30, Riverside Park, Shelter #5 (free food and beverages, games for kids, speakers)

 2006 Political Facts of Life

By John J. Sweeney

No political voodoo or magic polling or hocus-pocus spin doctoring will win Election 2006 for working families.

It’s a lot simpler than that.

The key to victory is voter turnout.

And the key to turnout is you.

Historically, voter turnout is pretty low when we’re not electing a president.  We can’t afford for voters to stay home this year. We need you to mobilize and turn out educated union household voters and Working America members who know where their congressional, state and local candidates stand on the issues that affect the lives of working families every day.  We’ll do the research and provide the materials, but it’s you who will take the fight to the streets.

Between now and November 7, we will be relentless in inviting you, encouraging you, urging you to volunteer for neighborhood walks, phone banks, leafleting and whatever else it takes to make sure our nearly 13 million union households and Working America voters know which candidates support working families and get to the polls to vote in their own best interest.

As wages stagnate, health coverage costs soar beyond reach, pensions disappear, gas prices hit higher and higher records, we stumble so deep in debt we can’t see our way out and Iraq careens toward civil war, President Bush and his allies chant their mantra: Stay the course.

We know that course is taking America in the wrong direction—the wrong direction for working families, for our children and for our country.

If you want change, volunteer. If you want affordable health care, volunteer. If you want retirement security, a minimum wage increase, protection for our freedom to form unions, safe jobs, good jobs, volunteer. If you want America to be respected again in the world and working family values to be respected here at home, volunteer.

A few hours of your time a week will make a difference. No magic, no voodoo, just a modest amount of what my mother would have called “elbow grease”―your work.

Our future is at stake. And right now, you can commit to shaping that future.

Between now and November 7, I’ll see you on the streets.

Old Problems, New Solutions 

by Jared Bernstein

Today, there is a palpable sense among the public that our leaders are not up to the challenges they face. This is most clear in the foreign policy arena, but you see it on the economy as well. A recent New York Times/CBS poll revealed that for the first time since they started asking the question in the early 1980s, fewer than half of the adults surveyed expect their children’s living standards to surpass their own.

Stop and ponder this for a second.  America’s workers are working harder and smarter than ever before, and we’ve got the productivity numbers to prove it.  But we’re growing more pessimistic about our kids’ future.

Something is awfully wrong with this picture, and I believe the YOYOs are at the root of it.

YOYO is the acronym for “you’re on your own,” the philosophy that drives much of today’s politics and policy. It’s the idea that the best way to solve the economic challenges we face, from Social Security to health care to globalization and inequality, is a tax cut, a private account and a pat—if not a shove—on the back as individuals are pushed to fend for themselves in the private market, supposedly tapping the power of competitive forces to deal with these daunting forces.

What’s lost amid all this rampant, hyper-individualism is the sense of WITT (“we’re in this together”), the notion that there are problems—like those just cited—that are too large for individuals to face down on their own. Each of these challenges is much more effectively addressed by pooling risk, not shifting it to individuals.

Conservatives have been pummeling progressives on these issues for decades, arguing with tremendous conviction—but without convincing evidence—that any steps toward the WITT agenda will kill the golden goose of growth.  Whether it’s universal health care, a higher minimum wage, greater union power, or a pause in trade agreements while we build the policy structure to offset the downsides of globalization, the YOYOs have only one message: “Sounds nice, but sorry…can’t go there.”

This Labor Day, their arguments ring especially hollow.  The gap between productivity and working-family incomes is too large to ignore, and politicians do so at their peril.  Be prepared to hear a lot more about these problems as coming election cycles gear up.

Which leaves us with the critical question: What, precisely, will those who want our support propose to do to close the gap?  You’ll recognize the YOYOs easily enough: They bemoan the problem, and their solutions will be a) patience, b) privatization, c) tax cuts for investors, and d) more education (the opportunities are there; you’re just not smart enough to take advantage of them).

The WITTs will support the education agenda, because it’s critical for equalizing opportunity.  But they won’t stop there.  They’ll recognize that the time has come to construct the architecture needed to start actively shaping economic outcomes, not passively accepting them.  They will speak of universal health care (listen for “Medicare for All”) and replacing the labor demand sapped by globalization by actively creating more quality job opportunities through full employment initiatives and investment in public infrastructure, including energy independence.  They will support a rational fiscal policy that stresses a measured role for government, not one based on starving the public sector of the revenues it needs to do its job. 

There lies the continuum on which we should judge those who seek our support. At one end lies YOYO’ism. Been there, done that, and the pendulum has already begun its swing.  The question is how far toward the other end—toward the WITT agenda—will it swing. That, ultimately, is up to us.

Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), is the author of All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy.

On  Labor Day, Fight Back

This Labor Day, it’s crystal clear that too many Americans work too hard for too little.  Productivity is soaring but wages are stagnant.  Forty-four million Americans don’t have health care and our children may just be the first generation to be worse off than their parents.  We’ve lost 3 million good manufacturing jobs in the past five years alone.  And we’ve lost 21,800 of those jobs right here in Iowa.  Productivity is up, but people’s standard of living is dropping.  Median household income dropped $1451 from 2000 to 2004 in Iowa.  People who live and work in the richest country in the world often must hold several jobs—and still can’t make ends meet.

How did we get here?  Big Business has abandoned the American value of fair reward for hard work and our elected leaders are letting it happen.  Washington, D.C. isn’t listening to working people.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We can make America work for working people by voting for candidates this November who represent our interests—not the interests of corporate America.  And we must support workers who are trying to form unions—after all, unions are the best anti-poverty device in our nation’s history.  This is our country.  Let’s take it back.

How did  your legislator vote?

Find out at:

www.iowaaflcio.org

Open the site and scroll down to 2006 Iowa Legislative Voting Records.  Then click on either Iowa House or Iowa Senate to access voting records.