Congress asked Americans what they thought about our broken national health care system. Their answer, including that of more than 20,000 AFSCME members, was clear: we want affordable health care for everyone.

A federal commission called the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group was tasked with compiling the opinions of average citizens and issuing recommendations on health care reform. Its findings were consistent with AFSCME’s positions:

• Cost control: Contain costs instead of shifting the cost to workers and guarantee financial protection against very high health care costs;
• Coverage: Provide access to insurance coverage for everyone;
• Quality: Emphasize quality to improve outcomes and decrease costs from medical errors;
• Fairness: Everyone must share in financing of health care.

When approximately 46 million Americans lack health coverage, it’s more than time to do something. Just like millions of working families, AFSCME believes health care for all should be a national priority. This report should be a wake up call to Congress and President Bush to act accordingly.

As of today, nearly 7 million seniors and disabled persons will have to pay for the full cost of their prescription drugs – on top of their monthly premiums. They are victims of the dreaded Medicare Part D “doughnut hole.” The coverage gap affects beneficiaries whose annual costs fall between $2,250 and $5,100. According to a report by the Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, that’s nearly 88 percent of the new drug plan enrollees.

Well, can’t they switch to a better plan with no coverage gaps? Sure, if they’re willing to pay a whooping $40 dollars a month or more.

In order to bring this dubious milestone into the spotlight, Americans United and the Campaign for America’s Future have dubbed September 22, 2006 as “Doughnut Hole Day.” The campaign seeks to highlight the need to eliminate this fatal flaw and get Congress to fix Part D now.

A coalition of groups are joining in the campaign to crush, smash, pulverize, or eat 69,000 doughnut holes outside Members’ offices — 1 for each of the 100 seniors of the estimated 6.9 million who are expected to fall-in — to highlight the need to eliminate the ‘donut hole’ and to call on Congress to Fix Part D.

In addition, the Campaign for America’s Future has launched a contest for who can destroy doughnut holes most creatively. You can watch some of the video entries here.

No American should be forced to sacrifice vital prescription medications because he or she can’t afford them. If you agree with this, let President Bush and Congress know how you feel and demand they endorse legislation that’s been introduced to save lives and taxpayer money by eliminating the doughnut hole.

How would you like to pay for voting? The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill (H.R. 4844) that amounts to just that. By requiring voters to show a government-issued photo identification card starting in 2008, the misnamed Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006 is effectively making inordinate demands on people who simply want to exercise their right to vote.

Most drivers’ licenses don’t certify someone’s citizenship and accordingly don’t meet the criteria set forth by H.R. 4844. In order to cast a ballot, people would have to get a document such as a passport that will cost them $97 (not to mention a six-week wait.) Kind of a stiff price for casting your vote, isn’t it?

In other words, this is a de facto poll tax which, as the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has said, disproportionately affects “racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, people with disabilities, rural voters, students, the homeless, low-income people, frequent movers and members of large households.”

The bill comes in the wake of attempts throughout the country to pass state legislation requiring similar strictures. The commonsense fact that no citizen should pay money to vote has been recognized by judges in places such as Georgia and Missouri, two of the most recent instances where these so-called “Voter ID” laws were thrown out.

It was only in July that Congress reauthorized the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the landmark legislation that helped thousands of Americans gain access to the ballot box. Attempts to limit the ability of people to vote not only contradict its intent, but establish a grave precedent of discrimination. Working families should bear this in mind when they cast their own vote on November 7.

The end of the fiscal year fast approaches and yet Congress has not enacted a single funding bill. We’re talking about legislation to fund vital services like health care, social services, education and job training? Instead, the Republican led Congress is focused on cutting taxes for the rich – and ducking out for the fall elections without acting on these crucial measures. How’s that for priorities?

The Emergency Campaign for America’s Priorities (www.actnow.org) is calling on Congress to invest in America and enact these essential bills with adequate funding before adjourning for the fall elections. In other words, ECAP is asking Congress to do its job.

Yesterday, Lawton, OK general employees had their right to a voice on the job affirmed once and for all when the state Supreme Court rejected yet another request to repeal the 2004 Oklahoma Municipal Employee Collective Bargaining Act.

In 2005, Lawton and other cities persuaded the state Supreme Court to overturn the law, which grants municipal employees in cities over 35,000 the freedom to unionize. But in March 2006, city employees across the state, joining with AFSCME, successfully urged the court to reconsider its decision and reinstate the law.

In June, Lawton officials again asked the Supreme Court to repeal the law. Yesterday’s court ruling rejected Lawton’s request, and city employees will now seek union certification from the state Public Employee Relations Board.

Erlene Maroon, an employee in Lawton’s Police Records Department, called the decision, “a historic victory for freedom.” After the long hard battle Lawton, and other Oklahoma city workers have been through – first to pass the law, and then to fight off attacks on it in the courts – that’s no an understatement.

When planes roared through the sky on Sept. 11, 2001, millions of Americans watched on TV in horror. We were transfixed, unable to comprehend what we were watching. Many of us were paralyzed by fear, sadness and confusion.

That paralysis was not felt by the public employees in New York and at the Pentagon. The firefighters, EMT’s, paramedics, 911 operators, transit workers, nurses, hospital and health care workers, ambulance drivers, city engineers and air traffic controllers sprang into action and responded to the call of duty.

Three AFSCME members gave their lives that day in the rescue effort. Five more AFSCME members were killed in their offices at the State Department of Taxation and Finance at the World Trade Center.

On the fifth anniversary of the attacks, our hearts go out to their families. We know they are missed every day.

A list of those AFSCME members we lost that day:

The Rev. Mychal F. Judge of Local 299 (DC 37), the New York Fire Department chaplain who died at the World Trade Center administering last rites to a mortally wounded firefighter; paramedics Carlos Lillo and Ricardo Quinn, DC 37 members who braved that hellish scene to support rescue efforts; Chet Louie, a betting clerk and member of DC 37; and and five members of the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/ AFSCME Local 1000 — Yvette Anderson, Florence Cohen, Harry Goody, Marian Hrycak and Dorothy Temple — who worked for the state Department of Taxation and Finance in Tower 1 and were thus caught in the worst of places at the worst of times.

Tragically, the death toll does not end there. The collapse of the World Trade Center buildings created a heavy cloud of caustic dust and airborne toxins that included pulverized cement, glass, asbestos, lead and numerous chemicals. And in the early weeks of the recovery effort, city agencies provided no breathing protection. Many of the responders that day, as well as workers who have been part of the recovery effort at Ground Zero, breathed this noxious smoke. A new health study released this month shows that nearly 70 percent of recovery workers who responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center have suffered lung problems, and high rates of lung “abnormalities” continue. In February, AFSCME member Ron Vega testified before Congress on the effects that he, and others like him who worked at Ground Zero, have suffered as a result of exposure to dangerous toxins.

Many workers have lost their lives since 9-11, as a result of this exposure to toxics. They include AFSCME members such as Paramedic Deborah Reeve. The 17-year veteran and member of DC 37 was one of hundreds AFSCME members who worked at Ground Zero Sept. 11 — rescuing victims and searching for survivors of the terrorist attacks — and in the subsequent recovery effort. By 2003, she began having respiratory problems — difficulty breathing and a persistent cough. Doctors later discovered cancer in her lungs and diagnosed it as mesothelioma, which develops after exposure to asbestos. After waging a two-year battle with the malignancy, Paramedic Reeve passed away on March 15, 2006; she was 41 years old.

Public Employee magazine archives from the Fall of 2001:

Staying Calm While Others Panic

Hours of Horror, Weeks of Valor

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave

This week an important stride was taken in the fight for the freedom to form a union. At a press conference that included AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack of the Democratic Leadership Council, it was announced that the entire Democratic Party now stands united in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Check out video from the press conference at AFL-CIONow.

EFCA is legislation that would make sure workers have a fair chance to exercise their democratic right to choose a union. It would put into place stronger enforcements to deter violations of labor law and help workers reach contracts quickly and fairly through a mediation process, instead of getting dragged through multi-year negotiations.

According to McEntee, “Under President Bush, the NLRB has come to stand for the National League of Republican Businessmen or, worse yet, the No Labor Relations Board.”

Big Labor isn’t the only one with the NLRB in its crosshairs. Earlier in the summer, none other than Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” (a show satirizing Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor”) took on the National Labor Relations Board. Colbert took issue with the potentially disastrous impact a decision in favor of employers in three cases, known collectively as “Kentucky River,” could have on workers by expanding the definition of supervisor. Under federal labor law, supervisors are barred from forming unions. Watch the Colbert clip below by clicking on the play button in the middle of the image and have a laugh — or maybe a cry.

A new corporate front group is taking aim at public employees this Labor Day. AFSCME president Gerald McEntee talks about who they are and what they really want on the Huffington Post.