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Last WEEK IN LABOR, The Struggle Continues |
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Monday, 17 December 2007 |
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The AFL-CIO reported this month that since Bush has been in office, 5 million Americans have slipped out of the “middle class” into poverty and 8.5 million people have lost their health insurance. During his tenure, median household income for working families has gone down by $2,500, over 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost and 3 million workers have lost their pensions.
Wages and salaries are now at their lowest share of the GDP since 1929, and the wealthiest 1 percent earn far more than the bottom 50 percent. All of this coincides with an explosion of modern technology and a workforce that is more productive than at any time in U.S. history. On Dec. 6 John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, issued a statement on the Bush administration’s mortgage rate freeze plan. “After sitting idly by for months while countless Americans saw their dreams slip away,” Sweeney said, “the Bush administration has put forth a plan to deal with the subprime mortgage crisis that is both too little and too late.” The federation’s president said that the Bush plan covers only a small fraction of mortgages at risk and that “this is not the time to pick and choose who deserves help and who doesn’t. We need a moratorium on subprime mortgage foreclosures for at least six to 12 months — enough time to restructure the loans in question.” Sweeney said this would “dam the flood of Americans losing their homes and life savings” and “that’s the kind of bold leadership we need.” He said that otherwise the wave of foreclosures “is going to crush our economy.” Sweeney said that the mortgage industry and government must create a structured program providing for the replacement of teaser rate loans with conventional 30-year mortgages at the teaser rate. The Bush administration and anti-labor governments all around the world were the target of labor leaders from all over the globe who gathered in Silver Spring, Md., Dec. 10-11. The purpose of the gathering was to launch a fightback by labor against those who are attacking the right of workers anywhere in the global economy to form unions. The AFL-CIO hosted the conference, which brought together 200 trade union leaders from the United States and 63 countries. Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen, who chairs the AFL-CIO Committee on Organizing, said, “Today the United States has the lowest collective bargaining coverage of any democratic country by far.” On Dec. 11, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) joined with the union leaders to express support for the proposition that the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively is crucial to the survival of human rights and democracy around the world. On the same day union leaders lobbied members of Congress for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. |
