UE Convention Resolutions
Independent
Rank-and-File Political Action
The end is in sight for the Bush administration, and not a minute too soon. The attacks on working people from big business, federal, and state government have assumed criminal proportions. A clear majority of the American people now regret that George Bush was ever allowed the opportunity to use fear-mongering, pandering on hot-button social issues, lies, and treachery to win the presidency not once, but twice.
A costly and destructive war on Iraq will be Bush’s legacy. His administration continues the policies of past administrations; transferring of wealth from working people to the rich, the destruction of critical public programs and infrastructure, an accelerated transfer of America’s industrial base to foreign countries, and continued broadside attacks on union members.
If working people do not stay alert and defend themselves in the political arena, then what we win at the bargaining table will be stolen away by our corporate-controlled government. Companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying on Capitol Hill to buy the votes needed to destroy organized labor, deny us living wages, and prevent us from being treated as human beings.
Attacks by the Bush and previous administrations include:
- Laws, regulations and court orders that ensure the dismantling of employment-based pensions and health insurance that workers fought to win over generations.
- Huge tax cuts for the rich paid for by slashing support for state and local programs that benefit working people, triggering the trickle-down effect of large increases in local sales and property taxes which fall heaviest on workers.
- An economic program that encourages record-setting foreign trade deficits, the rapid elimination of our jobs, and a falling standard of living for future generations of Americans.
- Privatization and contracting out schemes that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of family-supporting jobs, spawning a corporate crime wave of colossal proportions.
- A Supreme Court and federal judiciary packed with business-friendly appointees, combined with the elimination of corporate regulations, with every consumer a victim.
- A nasty political game played with the immigration issue, resulting in further desperation for already destitute immigrants, reduced bargaining strength for all workers, and extra profits for the corporations that willingly take advantage of the situation.
- A whole range of Labor Board and court rulings that have been combined with various Bush edicts to further hamstring labor unions in their attempts to organize workers, and a promised veto of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) which would restore the right to organize.
- And last but not least, the open sore of the Bush administration; the Iraq War. This illegal war has been used to justify many of these pro-corporate and anti-worker actions, including the huge run-up in gasoline prices that have gouged workers for the benefit of gigantic oil corporations. The war will imprison future generations of working Americans with trillions of dollars of debt since every single dollar spent on the war has been added to the federal budget deficit.
American public opinion, however, has reversed course. The results of the 2006 federal elections were, among other things, a resounding repudiation of the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress, and the perilous direction in which they have taken our nation. Many of the Democrats’ congressional victories were won by candidates who were most vocal in their attacks on Bush’s pro-corporate, anti-worker policies due to the grassroots rank-and-file work of labor, civil rights, environmental, and women’s organizations.
The political situation, however, remains unsettled. This is in large part due to the unreliability of the Democrats as a pro-worker party, which they abandoned 50 years ago. The Democratic Party apparatus, and many Democratic politicians remain beholden to corporate interests and cannot be relied upon. Due to their narrow majorities and corporate influence, the Democratic congressional majority is frustrating the American people through their ineffectiveness at challenging the Bush administration. This is clear regarding the Iraq War, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and a host of other issues.
It is up to the organized portion of the working class – labor unions and our allies – to lead the political fight and to channel the anger and frustration of the American people into productive outlets. We must hold the feet of Democratic politicians to the fire to carry out a program which supports working people and creates an atmosphere to bury the corporate agenda for a long period to come.
The U.S. working class desperately needs an independent political party it can call its own. Until such a movement takes shape, we should make use of the Democratic Party candidates and office-holders to advance a pro-worker agenda.
Every Republican candidate for president of one version or another is an outright corporate apologist, if not a complete stooge for big business. The leading Democratic candidates fall far short of what the working class needs from a presidential candidate.
We have an obligation to exert whatever pressure we can muster to push the Democratic candidates, at both the presidential and congressional level, to take stronger positions in support of working people and in opposition to pro-corporate policies. We must exhort the Democratic majority in Congress to take up as much of a pro-worker agenda as possible, lest their inaction cause such voter frustration that another 1994-like electoral debacle occurs where Republicans retake control of one or both houses.
The corporate agenda is now laid bare, and the disastrous results are plain to see. We are now at another critical juncture in American political history. Effective resistance to big business assaults must come from the rank and file on as many fronts as possible. We must educate and involve as many UE members and their families as we can.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 70th UE CONVENTION:
- Calls on the union at all levels to mobilize the membership and work with our allies to promote worker issues and the election of pro-labor candidates in the 2008 elections;
- Regards as paramount the defense of our members’ jobs and working conditions in both the private and public sectors, with an emphasis on having an impact on the national trade policy debate, resisting privatization and state budget attacks, ending the war, and working for meaningful healthcare and retirement security reform;
- Urges all UE rank-and-file to utilize the UE News and the UE web page as sources of political action news and updates on an ongoing basis
- Encourages UE locals and regions to expand their efforts to contact lawmakers with the rank-and-file message on the key issues at the national and state levels, through the use of petitions, letters, phone calls, e-mails, lobby visits, visits to state capitols, and town hall meetings;
- Calls on all UE locals and regions to send representatives to the 2008 UE National Political Action Conference to be held in Washington, DC April 27 to 30, 2008, to take advantage of this meeting and its educational aspects in order to help better conduct our unions’ political action back at home in the run up to the November,2008 elections;
- Urges all UE locals to undertake workplace campaigns to register UE members and their families to vote in the 2008 elections, and all other elections;
- Calls on the union at all levels to consult the UE Congressional Scorecard and to take an active role in the primary and general election contests during 2008, culminating in an all-out effort at the ballot box to oust anti-labor politicians at the national and state level, regardless of party affiliation;
- Calls on every region and local to establish functional political action programs and to encourage participation in them;
- Supports education of the rank-and-file on the importance of being politically active;
- Encourages campaign activity to promote labor’s issues and pro-labor candidates;
- Demands that elected officials be accountable for the jobs they do and the promises they make.