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Labor 2006: ‘Bring Back Power for Working People’ |
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Tuesday, 28 February 2006 |
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Steve Smith from the AFL-CIO Media Affairs Department is in San Diego where members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council are holding their spring meeting. He sends us this report. If you’re a corporate CEO, things have been pretty darn good the past several years (unless, of course, your name is Ken Lay or Jeff Skilling). It’s been like an extended party, with a very exclusive guest list—the rich and the filthy rich. But, unfortunately for you, every party has to end.
The AFL-CIO today unveiled its plan to mobilize working families in 2006 as part of an unprecedented effort to engage working people in their workplaces, shop floors and neighborhoods. In other words: Get ready to turn off the lights corporate America because the party’s just about over.
Workers are fed up and they’re ready to put a stop to business as usual on Capitol Hill and restore a much-needed balance in a time of corporate excess and vanishing accountability, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said today.
“We will educate our members on where the candidates stand on working people’s issues, such as health care, jobs, pensions and workers’ freedom to form unions,” said Sweeney today at a press briefing in San Diego.
With dozens of governor, Senate, House and state legislative races, 2006 represents a real opportunity for working families to take back control from the anti-worker majority currently in power. To make sure this happens, the AFL-CIO’s Labor 2006 political program will focus primarily on: Building upon our historic grassroots mobilizing efforts of 2004 and 2005 and dramatically expanding the reach of our member-to-member program to educate and activate more union members to vote; Increasing AFL-CIO union voter registration for the 2006 mid-term elections by 10 percent; Deepening our activist base by recruiting and training more than 100,000 regular union volunteers in addition to hundreds of thousands of other activists; Linking politics and organizing by asking all endorsed candidates to provide support for organizing and contract negotiations. “The AFL-CIO is committed to twin strategies to bring back power for working people,” Sweeney said. “We must help more workers form unions, and we must help working people win back power in Washington, their state Houses and at all levels of government. These goals are fundamentally intertwined and equally important.” Sweeney said AFL-CIO expects to spend $40 million, none of which goes to political contributions. It’s all going to be used to educate and mobilize 11.4 million members of union households in 21 targeted states, including members of the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate, Working America. |
