We are the people we’ve been waiting for

We are One Nation, born from many, determined to build a more united America – with jobs, justice and education for all.

We are young people, frustrated that society seems willing to spend more locking up our bodies than educating our minds, yet still we find ways to succeed and shine.

We are students and newly-returned veterans – persevering in the face of mounting debt – determined not to be the first generation to end up worse off than our parents.

We are baby boomers and seniors – who saw hope killed in 1968 and will not let the dream of a united America be taken from us again.

We are conservatives and moderates, progressives and liberals, non-believers and people of deep faith, united by escalating assaults on our reason, our environment, and our rights.

We are workers of every age, faith, race, sex, nationality, gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and ability – who have suffered discrimination but never stopped loving our neighbors, or our nation.

We are American Indians and Alaska Natives – citizens of Native nations – who maintain our cultures, protect our sovereignty, and strength America’s economy.

We are the new immigrants, raising our children in the torchlight of the Statue of Liberty, while confronting the shadows that are bigotry and mass deportations.

We are the native born.  We inherited the divided legacies of settlers and American Indians, black slaves and white and Asian indentured servants. And yet, in this moment of shared suffering, we rejoice in newfound friendships and new alliances.

We are people who got thrown out – thrown out of our jobs, schools, houses, farms and small businesses – while Wall Street’s wrongdoers got bailed out. We are families who pray every day – for peace and prosperity; for deliverance from foreclosures; for good jobs to come back to urban and rural America.

We are unemployed workers – forced to watch hopes for bold action dashed – because some Senators threaten filibusters, and other would-be champions fold in fear.

And yet, we are the majority – fueled by hope, not hate. We have the pride, power and determination to keep ourselves – and our country – moving up and out of the valley greed created.

And most importantly – from ensuring women are treated fairly at work, to expanding health care coverage for millions– we have been victorious whenever we worked together. We have proven the only thing we need to succeed is each other.

And so, on 10-2-10, we come back together – to march.

“I believe that workers can change the South and, by doing so, change the country. If only I could get the leaders of the union movement to believe it, too.”

By MaryBe McMillan, Secretary-Treasurer

Forty-seven years after the 1963 March on Washington, the union movement and our allies are preparing for our own march in October. Under the banner of One Nation Working Together, union members, civil rights activists and other concerned citizens will rally in support of good jobs, a quality education for every child, immigration reform and workers’ freedom to form a union. Our rallying cry is that we must reverse the dangerous trend toward greater income inequality and finally create an economy that works for all.

To achieve that goal and to become a truly united nation working together, leaders of the One Nation coalition partners—particularly our nation’s labor leaders—could learn a valuable lesson from that earlier march on Washington: The road to justice and equality must go through the South.

During the 1963 march, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. eloquently illustrated this point when he said:

“Let freedom ring from the mountains of New York…Pennsylvania….Colorado….California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia….from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee….from every hill and molehill of Mississippi….let freedom ring.”

Civil rights leaders knew the only way to win freedom for people of color everywhere was to win it first in the most difficult place—the segregated South. That’s why community activists boycotted buses in Montgomery, college students staged sit-ins in Greensboro and sanitation workers walked out in Memphis. Dr. King and other leaders understood that if they could change policies in the heart of Jim Crow, then they could change laws nationally. And they did.

More than four decades later, national labor leaders should heed Dr. King’s prophetic words. If we want to strengthen the rights of workers everywhere, then we must organize workers in the South.

The southern United States is the center for exploitation of workers of all colors. Employees in the South have the lowest wages, the fewest worker protections and the least union representation. And nowhere are the harmful effects of globalization and flawed trade deals more evident than in the South.

My hometown of Hickory, N.C., has lost more jobs due to trade than just about anywhere else in the country. Laid-off workers there can receive free tuition for re-training at the local community college. But many question the point. The furniture factories and hosiery mills are all boarded up, casualties of NAFTA and CAFTA. Why enroll in training if you’ll just end up working at Wal-Mart or the local mall?

One would think that workers in Hickory and other southern towns have been shortchanged for so long that they would stand up and demand that elected officials finally look out for their interests. But instead, the South keeps re-electing policymakers who support trade deals that harm workers, who oppose wage protections and who vote time and again against workers’ interests. Keep in mind that these votes hurt all workers, not just Southerners.

If we want a more worker-friendly Congress, then workers in the South need to believe that change is possible. That’s hard to do in places like Hickory, where there is no voice to counter what folks hear on talk radio. There is no union organizing workers. There is no central labor council mobilizing people for collective action. There are no canvassers from Working America talking to folks about taking our country back from the CEOs and Big Banks. Unions have largely chosen not to invest in the South, and as a result, there is no labor movement in many areas to challenge the status quo.

I have heard national labor leaders say that we are at a critical moment in our movement, and that to grow, we must convince the public that we are the voice for all workers. If that’s true, then we must win the hearts and minds of workers in my hometown and small towns across the South. Because if we don’t, we will see the violent union-busting and repressive laws of the South spread throughout the country.

The good news is, with the will and the resources, we can change the South. Thanks to an influx of resources in 2008, North Carolina elected a pro-worker U.S. senator, and our state went “blue” in the presidential election for the first time since 1976.

Workers at the world’s largest pork slaughterhouse, Smithfield Packing Co. in Tar Heel, N.C., felt so empowered by our electoral victories that one month later, in December 2008, they finally won their union after 16 long years of struggle. The workers, the majority of whom are people of color, had a slogan leading up to the union election: “We won the White House so we can win the hog house.” And they did.

That victory was possible because 1) a union was willing to make a long-term investment in organizing and 2) the workers believed that change was possible. We could have many more victories like the one at Smithfield. But first, national labor leaders have to invest in organizing campaigns throughout the South.

During the 1963 march, Dr. King outlined his dream of racial equality. I too have a dream—a dream that one day, even in North Carolina, the least unionized state in the country, all workers will have good jobs and the freedom to organize and bargain collectively.

I believe that dream can come true. I believe that workers can change the South and, by doing so, change the country. If only I could get the leaders of the union movement to believe it, too.

North Carolina has received $2.2 billion from the Recovery Act as of June 30, 2010.

$400 Million for education from “Race to the Top”

North Carolina won big in President Obama’s Race to the Top Fund, securing a $400 million grant that will, in part, pay for continued implementation of Gov. Bev Perdue’s Career and College: Ready, Set, Go! initiative, she announced this week:

“North Carolina’s children today are one step closer to being guaranteed the best public education possible – something every child deserves. This grant will give us the resources to more aggressively implement our plan to ensure that all of our children graduate ready for a career, college or technical training.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed by Congress and signed into law last year included $4.35 billion for the Race to the Top Fund, a competitive grant program for the states designed to reward those which demonstrate success in raising student achievement and come up with the best plans for education reform – plans that can serve as a model for other states.

“I thank Sec. [of Education Arnie] Duncan for recognizing North Carolina’s ability to lead in education reform, and I thank everyone who worked so hard to make this possible,” said Perdue.

Our state was one of nine and the District of Columbia to win grants in the second phase of Race to the Top. President Obama has requested $1.35 billion in his next budget to continue the successful program, saying only the countries that lead the way in education will lead the world:

“There are any number of actions that we can take to enhance our nation’s competitiveness and secure a better future for our people, but few of them will make as much of a difference as improving the way we educate our sons and daughters.”

$250 Million for expanding broadband

Last week, Gov. Perdue announced that North Carolina has been awarded an additional $115 million in Recovery Act grants to expand broadband Internet access in our state. All together in just this year, North Carolina has received $250 million in grants from President Obama’s economic stimulus plan for bringing high-speed Internet to our rural communities.

“Increasing broadband access will create new jobs up front and provide a boost for local economies to create even more jobs and a better quality of life in the near future,” said Gov. Perdue. “These improvements are especially important in rural and underserved areas of North Carolina.”

“We need high speed Internet for our homes, schools, hospitals, and workplaces,” says Speed Matters, a project of the Communications Workers of America, which advocates for affordable high speed Internet access for Americans:

“But most U.S. Internet connections are far too slow to send and receive large files for medical monitoring, to run a home-based business, or for multi-media distance learning. America is falling behind our industrialized peers at a time when we should be growing our competitiveness with the rest of the world.”

Download and upload speeds in the United States – the nation that invented the Internet – rank (PDF) 28th in the world, and North Carolina falls below the national average. Many remote or rural areas of our state still don’t have broadband. Thanks to investments being made because of the Recovery Act, we’re beginning to change that.

Putting America back to work

In the middle of the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, obstructionists in Congress have blocked bill after bill to create jobs and get us back on our feet. Here in NC, we’re hard at work making sure all of our union brothers and sisters know whether our members of Congress have been working and voting for us or for Wall Street. We can be proud of some Representatives who have been on our side, but Sen. Richard Burr has really let us down.

But there’s an even bigger movement nationwide to hold members of Congress accountable for their records—and we’re part of it. It’s called ONE NATION, a broad and diverse coalition that has come together to build a future of shared prosperity, not stubborn unemployment and a lost generation, and to reverse the dangerous economic course America has been on.

ONE NATION includes our union, the AFL-CIO and civil, human rights, faith, environmental and other progressive allies, united to call for:

• An economy that works for all;
• Good jobs, fair jobs, safe jobs and more jobs;
• Wall Street reform;
• Quality education for every child;
• Reform of our broken immigration system;
• And restoring workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.

Pulling America back together

On Oct. 2, tens of thousands of working people, young people, retirees, civil rights activists and many others will come together for a rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. On the same day—exactly one month before the fall elections—the union movement will hold its biggest labor walk ever, taking our message door-to-door in targeted states around the country. Together we will show the obstructionists in Congress that we are many and diverse, strong and united—and we will fight together for the American Dream and for good jobs now.

We urge you to be part of this national surge of strength to improve life for working families. We are asking all unions to recruit members to march on Washington on 10/2/10. Information on buses will be announced soon, Sign up now by calling or emailing our office or going to http://www.onenationworkingtogether.org/.

Gender pay gap is their own fault

This week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce chose the 75th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – which gave women the right to vote – to blame women for the fact that they get paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. In a post titled “Equality, Suffrage, and a Fetish for Money”, Sr. Director of Communications Brad Peck, writing for the Chamber’s official blog, ChamberPost, said:

“Most of the current “pay gap” is the result of individual choice rather than discrimination.”

The Chamber is opposed to federal legislation – The Paycheck Fairness Act – that would address the pay gap by requiring companies to justify pay discrepancies based on only bona fide factors such as education, training, and experience – provided these are related to the job and a business necessity. The Act would prohibit retaliation by employers for people asserting their legal rights and would make businesses that engage in sex discrimination liable in civil court.

But to the Chamber, women can close the pay gap all by themselves if they would just pick higher paying jobs and wealthier husbands:

“It is true that culturally speaking women are more likely to have to make the tough choices about work-life balance. But as we all seek to fit our values into a dynamic 24/7 economy, let’s not overlook the obvious, immediate, power-of-the-individual solution: choosing the right place to work and choosing the right partner at home.”

Doubt won’t close this gap

The Chamber spokesperson used scare quotes around the words pay gap – as if it wasn’t real or to be taken seriously. Not only is women getting paid less than men a reality, it’s true even when they have the same jobs. Zaid Jilani at Think Progress notes:

While it’s true that women sometimes migrate into fields that have lower pay, what Peck ignores is that even within the same occupation, women are paid less. For example, data collected by the Census Bureau in 2007 shows that “female secretaries…earn just 83.4% as much as male ones” and female truck drivers “earn just 76.5% of the weekly pay of their male counterparts.” A report put out this year by the University of Minnesota finds that women in that state are “are paid $11,000 dollars less each year than men with the same jobs.” A 2007 American Association of University Women report compared men and women with similar “hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors normally associated with pay” and found that “college-educated women still earn less than their male peers earn“; the report concludes that workplace discrimination is the culprit in the wage gap.

It is important to note that this pay inequity is so pervasive that it even affects people who undergo a sex change. In 2008, researchers Kristen Schilt and Matthew Wiswall examined the wages over their lifetimes of people before and after a sex change operation. Even “when controlling for factors like education, men who transitioned to women earned, on average, 32% less after the surgery. Women who became men, on the other hand, earned 1.5% more.”

Fight for equal pay “a Scrooge-like fetish for money”

People fighting for equal pay for equal work, the Chamber says, are consumed by “a Scrooge-like fetish for money.” Essentially, if you’re concerned about the negative effects of women earning 23 cents less than every dollar men earn, you’re just being greedy.

Putting aside the laughable idea that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce should be lecturing anybody about being greedy, it fits with the Chamber’s long history of hating women, says FDL’s Michael Whitney:

In case you were wondering if this was a one-off incident, rest assured: the US Chamber of Commerce really hates women.

• 1977: US Chamber opposes amendment to Civil Rights Act that would ban discrimination against pregnant women.
• 1978: US Chamber says pregnancy is a “voluntary” condition in its opposition to Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
• 1987: Family Medical Leave Act “sets a dangerous precedent,” according to the US Chamber.
• 1998: US Chamber opposes Equal Pay Act because “work experience does tend to create greater wage gaps.”
• 2007: US Chamber opposes Lilly Ledbetter’s court case for equal pay because “tear-stained testimony” prejudices against a defendant. Opposed the bill in Congress to right the wrongs against Ledbetter in 2008 and 2009 as well.
• 2007: Chamber official pledges “all out war” against Family Medical Leave Act, and in 2010 made it a “priority” to fight in Congress.
• Monday: US Chamber again cites pregnancy as a “voluntary choice.”

On the side of teachers, firefighters, public safety officers…

Last week, Congress passed and the President quickly signed into law a bill that will save literally hundreds of thousands of American jobs. The law provides $16 billion in Medicaid funding assistance and $10 billion for teachers’ jobs. Failure to pass this bill would have meant state and local governments – which cannot operate a budget deficit and are still reeling from massive shortfalls since Wall Street nearly triggered a second Great Depression in 2008 – would have been forced into a new round of layoffs.

In North Carolina alone, some 5,700 public school teachers will be in class instead of in unemployment lines because of this law. Our economic recovery depends on fixing the jobs crisis. In signing this bill into law, President Obama and Democrats in Congress prevailed against a nearly unanimous Republican opposition, which seems determined to make the crisis worse.

On the side of Wall Street and outsourcing…

This law was fully funded, in part by closing a corporate tax loophole that rewarded multi-national corporations for exporting our jobs. Republican allies of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the Senate had filibustered the bill for months to protect this tax break for outsourcing.

After the Senate overcame Republican obstruction to pass the bill and send it to the House for final consideration, House Republican leader, John Boehner attacked – without irony – closing the outsourcing loophole as a “job killing tax hike” and derided the teachers, firefighters, and police officers whose jobs would be saved as “liberal special interests.”

The House passed the bill by a vote of 247-161. Not one Republican from North Carolina voted for this bill. AFL-CIO President, Richard Trumka, released a statement:

“With today’s vote, House Republicans showed they value Wall Street and tax cuts for the rich over teachers, police and firefighters.  This is yet another example in the laundry list of anti-jobs votes they’ve taken.  They voted ‘no’ even though the Congressional Budget Office estimated this measure will reduce the deficit by $1.4 billion.

“This bill reduces the deficit by closing tax loopholes that reward companies for sending American jobs overseas.  So not only did these Republicans vote against saving jobs in America — they voted to keep encouraging corporations to outsource jobs during this recession. [...]

“Come November working people will remember who stood for jobs and who stood in the way.”

We will, indeed, remember in November.

Click to watch video of President Obama’s speech.

Renews pledge to support EFCA, continue fighting for workers

President Obama addressed the leadership of the AFL-CIO at the recent Executive Council meeting in Washington, DC. Touting the major legislative accomplishments of his administration – health reform and Wall Street reform chief among them – the President reminded union leaders that under his administration, we now have an ally in the White House instead of an administration with “a profound animosity toward the notion of unions.”

Indeed, the first act of Congress the newly-sworn-in President Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a workers’ rights law to ensure you have the right to protection under the 1964 Civil Rights Act each time you are the victim of pay discrimination by your employer.

Obama’s Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, herself the daughter of trade unionists, has restored the Department of Labor to its role as guardian of workers’ rights, protector of health and safety, and enforcer of wage and hour laws – much to the dismay of business and employer groups who had a willing pawn in Bush’s “Anti-Labor” Department chief, Elaine Chao.

Remembering who drove the car into the ditch

The President told union leaders it’s up to us to remind our members over the next three months that the upcoming election is a choice between going forward or going in reverse. The same people who are asking voters in November for the keys to the car are the ones who drove it into the ditch in the first place:

“You’ve got these folks who drove America’s economy into a ditch, and for the last 20 months, we put on our boots and we got into the mud and we’ve been shoving that car out of the ditch inch by inch, and they’ve been standing on the side the whole time watching, telling us, no, you’re not pushing hard enough, you’re not doing it the right way — not lifting a finger to help.   And now we’ve finally got that car up on the blacktop there, about to drive, and they say they want the keys back.  (Laughter.)  Well, you can’t have the keys, because you don’t know how to drive.  (Laughter.)  You don’t know how to drive.  (Laughter.)  You’re not going to get the keys back.  (Applause.)  You’re not going to get them back.

“Somebody pointed out to me that when you’re in a car and you want to go forward, you put it in “D.”  (Laughter.)  You want to go back in the ditch, you put it on “R.”  (Laughter.)  So I just want everybody to think about that.  (Applause.)”

You can read the transcript of President Obama’s remarks to the AFL-CIO Executive Council by clicking here.

James Andrews with President Barack Obama.

A new voice for state/local movement

Last Wednesday, August 4, 2010, the AFL-CIO Executive Council – the top governing body of the National AFL-CIO – elected five new members, including our own NC State AFL-CIO President, James Andrews, who will take one of two seats newly created to promote diversity and give greater voice to state and local labor leaders (see press release below).

James’ election speaks well of his leadership and the good work of our state federation. Congratulations, James!

Contact: Eddie Vale 202-637-5018

AFL-CIO EXECUTIVE COUNCIL ELECTS FIVE NEW MEMBERS Council also thanks 3 departing members for service to the Labor Movement

(Washington, August 4) – Today the AFL-CIO Executive Council elected five new members to the council. The Executive Council also voted to add two seats to the council for the purpose of promoting and establishing diversity as well as giving a greater role to state and local labor leaders. The council is meeting this week in Washington to discuss plans for a major push in the fall elections, the response to the jobs crisis and strategies for organizing and outreach to young workers.

President Obama will address the council today.

The new members of the Executive Council include: Bob King, the newly elected UAW President; General Holiefield, UAW Vice President; Lee Saunders, the newly elected Secretary-Treasurer of AFSCME; James Andrews, President of the North Carolina AFL-CIO; and Maria Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO Executive Council is made up of the AFL-CIO President, Secretary-Treasurer, Executive Vice President, and 53 vice presidents.

The Council also thanked departing members – former UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and former UAN President Ann Converso for their service to working people.

“The new members of the Executive Council represent workers in all professions across the country who are working to make their workplaces and communities better,” said AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka. “I look forward to working with our new members who bring great experience, energy and new ideas to the AFL-CIO Executive Council and thank our departing members for their service to the labor movement.”