Electrical Workers Latest to Make Aggressive Growth for Working People

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/09/15/electrical-workers-latest-to-make-aggressive-growth-for-working-people-top-priority/



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Electrical Workers Latest to Make Aggressive Growth for Working People Top Priority

America’s working people are energized, focused and determined to change the policies that have sapped their pocketbooks and taken away their rights. At national conventions this summer, unions such as AFSCME, Communications Workers of America (CWA), Iron Workers and UAW committed millions of dollars to strengthen the voice of working families in the workplace and at the ballot box.

This week, delegates to the Electrical Workers (IBEW) convention in Cleveland signaled their strong support for an aggressive growth strategy through an overwhelming voice vote in favor of a $3 a month increase in its per capita tax by adding $1 a month in each of 2007, 2009 and 2011 to provide the resources for the program.

The per capita increase will pay for an ambitious industrial organizing program proposed by IBEW President Edwin Hill, who was re-elected to a five-year term. The program will pull together all IBEW locals in a regional area into multi-industry organizing councils and hire a corps of skilled organizers.

Hill said growing the union is essential to regaining America:

As long as our votes count in this democracy, we can fight for sane policies and demand a government that works for everybody, not just the highest bidders. Our ability to organize goes hand in hand with the need to mobilize. We need to mobilize our members to join in organized labor’s campaigns to reach out to unrepresented workers who share our economic interests.

Lou Dobbs, anchor and managing editor of CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” fired up the IBEW delegates when he said:

Our Constitution begins with the words, “We, the people,” not we the elitists, we the corporatists, we the free-trade-at-any-price. Democracy is fundamentally about us, the people.

We’re losing sight of that. We are at a stage in our national life in which corporate America has come to dominate every major facet of our economy and our society. Whether you’re a Democrat or you’re a Republican or you’re an Independent, please let us agree on one thing: We must have countervailing influences to dominant political power in this nation in order for this great democracy to work.

FULL story at link above.

[Greyhound]

1. When are they going to make a move to the unconstitutional "right-to-work"

states? Most of their workers are here now and they have no representation at all.

Please?!? :hurts:

[brentspeak]

2. Lou Dobbs, a self-proclaimed "lifelong Republican" is more of a Democrat

than many Democrats in Congress today.

Kick out the neolibs and neocons, and bring back the working-family's Democrats and Eisenhower Republicans of yesteryear.