Tag: labor union
Top Democratic Candidates Pitch To Union Voters

Top Democratic Candidates Pitch To Union Voters

Bernie Sanders lives 1,100 miles away in Vermont but, sharing a stage with three union leaders and four bales of hay at a racetrack amid Iowa cornfields, he couldn’t have been more at home.

“Let me thank you all for being here, my union brothers and sisters,” the Vermont senator bellowed, as some in the audience leapt to their feet, hollered and waved Sanders 2020 signs.

With his deeply progressive platform and unapologetic calls for a political revolution from the bottom up, Sanders’ natural constituency has long been working Americans. In 2016, he managed to appeal to many local labor groups and the rank-and-file of national unions, even as their leadership often backed the more-establishment Democratic primary choice in Hillary Clinton.

With 2020’s first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses less than three months away , Sanders is counting on his message to again resonate with union members — but has even stiffer competition this time to win them over.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is promising “big structural change” within the existing political system that can buoy everyday Americans at the expense of the rich. Former Vice President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has longstanding relationships with many powerful unions and is betting his personal charisma can woo them, even if his more-moderate proposals may not energize all of their members.

“It might come down to between Joe, Bernie and Elizabeth,” Lon Kammeyer, a 70-year-old from Waterloo, Iowa, who is the community organizer for the Amalgamated Transit Union and was a fan of Sanders’ in 2016. He now says he won’t decide who to support this cycle until his union votes on a formal endorsement.

“What they all need to do,” Kammeyer said, “They need to speak out for unions.”

With an economy dominated by agriculture, Iowa is rarely associated with unions as much as states like Michigan, built for decades on manufacturing. About 8% of Iowa’s workforce belong to unions, less than the national average, but membership increased in 2018 as compared to the previous year for the first time since 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And Democrats see an opportunity to make inroads since the Republican-led Legislature in 2017 voted to reduce collective-bargaining rights for many public employees.

That “awakened people who may have been taking their wages and benefits for granted about how vulnerable they now are,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of Service Employees International Union.

Many of the country’s largest unions have yet to make 2020 endorsements, though Warren secured the support of the Working Families Party, the labor-aligned progressive group that backed Sanders in 2016. Biden began his presidential campaign with the International Association of Fire Fighters choosing him.

The push to appeal to labor was on display this weekend at a Cedar Rapids fish fry hosted by Rep. Abby Finkenauer, the second-youngest woman ever elected to Congress and a union favorite in her eastern Iowa district. This swath of the state includes many counties that supported Barack Obama but swung to Donald Trump in 2016.

Inside a Hawkeye Downs expo hall thick with the odor of cooking walleye, top Democrats took the stage one-by-one, trying to win over a heavily union crowd. Sanders proclaimed himself the most pro-labor member of Congress, and, in a nod to his surroundings, proclaimed, “I come from one of the most rural states in America and we have nothing to be ashamed about in rural America.”

Biden, too, said he was one of the most pro-union members of Congress during his long Senate career, telling the crowd, “I know I’ve been criticized at the front end: ‘Joe’s too pro-union,'” to which some Sanders supporters shook their heads.

Still, fire fighters were out in force for the former vice president, especially when Biden said that unions help workers retain basic decency against wealthy interests determined to roll over them: “You are the ones who keep the barbarians from the gate, man.”

Then there was Warren, who tells audiences all over the country that her brother, a retired crane operator, owes a solid pension to his union membership.

“Unions built America’s middle class,” Warren told the fish fry crowd in another line she uses frequently. “Unions will rebuild America’s middle class.”

Henry, the service employee union president, said that, nationally, there were more 2018 strikes and lockouts than during any year since 1986. Sanders, Biden, Warren and other Democratic presidential hopefuls have joined picket lines — including demonstrating with United Auto Workers at a General Motors plant in suburban Detroit and with Chicago teachers .

“This is an entirely different moment in the presidential campaign because we’re seeing candidates respond to the demands of workers and how are they going to fix an economy that, when you work for a living, you can’t even feed your family,” Henry said.

The Sanders campaign says it has used its contacts list to send hundreds of thousands of emails and texts urging supporters to attend union-led strikes around the country, as well to back protests of employees at companies like Amazon.

On one of the race’s key issues, health care, Sanders and Warren support universal insurance coverage under a “Medicare for All” plan. But both have included caveats to protect existing health coverage that was collectively bargained. Biden supports a “public option” to compete alongside private insurance.

Teresa Glover, 49 and from Dubuque, Iowa, listened to all the candidates attending the fish fry, but said she’s long since settled on Warren despite her husband, who works in insurance, potentially losing his job if Medicare for All becomes a reality.

“She seems genuinely happy and excited to be applying for the job,” Glover said of Warren seeking the presidency.

Kammeyer, the community organizer who walked the fish fry with a jacket emblazoned with the nickname “Mr. Union,” said he has had a chance to meet top Democratic presidential candidates at various, small meetings at union halls around Iowa.

“Biden will walk up to you on the street and talk to you,” Kammeyer said, noting that Sanders and Warren are similarly approachable. “But 45 (Trump)? If he died, I wouldn’t tinkle on his grave. I don’t want to wait in line that long.”

IMAGE: Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Pretending To Care About Union Members, Trump Feeds Fatcats

Pretending To Care About Union Members, Trump Feeds Fatcats

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Donald Trump: billionaire of the people. When he ran for office, he said, “The American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.”

And how’s that working out for the American worker? Not very well, actually, not very well. When it comes down to picking sides—standing up for workers’ rights or lining the pockets of CEOs and shareholders—Trump aligned himself and his policies with the fat cats. This cost workers money and safety. The truth is that American corporations got a president who protected them and fought for them.

The proof is in Trump’s legislation, regulation and secretary selections. The most recent example is Trump’s Twitter appointment of Eugene Scalia as Secretary of Labor. This is the department specifically designated to “foster, promote, and develop the welfare of wage earners, job seekers, and retirees.” Scalia, though, has made his fortune over decades by fighting to ensure that the big guys—corporations—don’t, in fact, have to abide by regulations intended to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the little guys—wage earners, job seekers, and retirees.

That is who Trump chose to protect wage earners—a corporatist so egregious that when former President George W. Bush wanted Scalia as Labor Department solicitor, Bush had to give him a recess appointment because Republicans in the Senate balked at approving him.

This isn’t a glitch. It’s a pattern. Although Trump is fond of surrounding himself with union members and asserting that they love him, he doesn’t really like unions, especially ones that challenge him or dare to question his lies. Remember how he personally attacked steelworker Chuck Jones who exposed Trump and Pence for claiming to save 1,100 jobs at Carrier when they really preserved only about half that many—and then only after a grant of $7 million from the taxpayers of Indiana?

A president who supported organized labor would oppose free riders who won’t pay their fair share but still want all the benefits of union membership. A president who supported unions would not issue executive orders crippling unions representing federal workers. A president who supported unions would not delay or eliminate health and safety regulations designed to protect workers from sickness and death.

That’s not Donald Trump. He supported Mark Janus, an Illinois government employee who wanted everything for nothing. Janus was fine with collecting the higher wages that the labor union representing him secured for workers, but Janus didn’t want to contribute one red cent for that representation.

So with right-wing corporate billionaires picking up the tab for him, Janus took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered unions to provide workers like Janus with essentially a free lunch. That is, the court said unions must represent freeloaders like him, but those workers don’t have to pay anything for all they get—no dues, no fees, nothing.

Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The whole point of Janus’ and the billionaires’ court crusade was to bankrupt and try to kill unions. And Trump was on their side.

If Trump really were the billionaire of the people, he’d have stood with the union. That’s who Trump promised that he would protect, the organization of average people trying to earn an honest living and standing up to big government and big corporations.

But he didn’t.

That was in June of last year. Just last week, Trump went to court seeking enforcement of his executive orders restricting unions representing federal workers and enabling him to quickly fire workers. The unions contend Trump does not have this authority. This is not settled in court yet, but Trump is asking a judge to let him impose the orders before it is.

That sounds like a president using all of the power of big government to step on the tens of thousands of little guys who do the grueling work, day after day, to ensure the federal government serves the American people reasonably well.

There’s even more. So much more.

  • Trump slow-walked implementation of silica and beryllium exposure safeguards intended to save workers’ lives and delayed a rule requiring mine operators to identify potential hazards before workers begin their shifts.
  • He helped thwart an attempt to extend overtime pay to 4 million workers.
  • Trump blocked a rule that would have made it harder for corporations that violate labor laws to get federal contracts.
  • Trump lifted not one finger to help those crushed by a starvation $7.25 minimum wage not raised in a decade.

And then there are his labor secretary choices. First he wanted Andy Puzder, CEO of the restaurant corporation that owns Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., an opponent of raising the minimum wage who said he preferred machines to humans. Puzder withdrew, and Alexander Acosta took over until he was forced to resign last month as a result of the unconscionable plea deal he gave an accused molester a decade ago when Acosta was a federal prosecutor.

Now the interim secretary is Patrick Pizzella, who lobbied for years to prevent Congress from extending minimum wage requirements to the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the United States, where workers were paid as little as $1 an hour but the corporate bosses got to mark the merchandise produced there as Made in America. I guess that’s how you Make America Great Again, huh?

Now, Trump has picked Scalia, son of the late, anti-worker Supreme Court justice. This is the guy who killed a proposed ergonomics rule to protect workers against injuries from repetitive motions, denigrating the research as “junk science” and “quackery.”

This is the guy who argued that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an agency of the Labor Department, had no authority to regulate worker safety at SeaWorld after a 12,300-pound orca that had killed twice before attacked and drowned a trainer in front of hundreds of horrified children.

This is the guy who stopped the fiduciary rule that would have required brokers to act in clients’ best interest rather than brokers’ personal financial benefit by forbidding brokers from recommending investments that paid brokers big commissions but provided clients with low returns. This corrupt practice costs workers and retirees about $17 billion a year.

This is the guy who persuaded an appeals court to force card dealers in Las Vegas to split the tips they earn with their supervisors.

This guy is among the lawyers representing a petroleum producers’ trade association that is suing to overturn a California regulation calling for worker participation to improve refinery safety. The state passed the legislation after a refinery fire in Richmond, California, sent 15,000 nearby residents to hospitals and doctor’s offices for treatment, mostly for breathing problems. The lawsuit was filed in July, just days before an explosion and fire at an Exxon Mobil refinery in Texas that injured 37 people.

Scalia is a corporate shill. And he’d be reporting to Trump, whose slavish support of corporate bosses over working Americans has revealed he’s nothing more than a poser in a red MAGA baseball cap.

Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

IMAGE: A United Steelworkers member on a picket line near Canton, Ohio. REUTERS/Tim Reid