Let’s take nothing for granted, warns AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee in his latest missive on the Huffington Post. Things are looking up for fair-minded people who don’t want to just stay the course. According to McEntee, “If we desire victory on November 7, we must back up our optimism with hard work. In the next two weeks, each of us must volunteer a night or two to phone bank and door knock.” Read the full McEntee post.
Enemy of the Taxpayers is what 258 legislators (209 members of the House and 49 senators) were dubbed by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ). CTJ scored legislators on key votes that dramatically affected tax fairness, revenues and budget deficits. According to CTJ, “the grading system is based on the combination of two criteria: tax fairness and fiscal responsibility — principles that all sides of the political debate at least pretend to honor.” For a full accounting, check out CTJ’s “Congressional Tax Report Card” report.
What’s the difference between Americans who have health insurance and the 46.6 million who don’t? The former are out of several hundred dollars in premiums and the latter can’t afford to pay them.
Health insurance continues to erode for working families as the number of uninsured people grew for the fifth year in a row. Meanwhile, premiums for employer-sponsored health coverage rose by an average 7.7 percent in 2006, an increase of more than twice as much as workers’ wages (3.8 percent) and overall inflation (3.5 percent), according to the 2006 Employer Health Benefits Survey.
Many among the uninsured postpone urgent medical care due to economic constraints, increasing mortality and costing billions in lost productivity. Our health care system is spiraling into crisis and only comprehensive reform will prevent disaster. Making sure that every American has access to affordable health coverage is not just good business; it is the right thing to do.
Where in the world could you work for less than 100 days, perform at below the bare minimum and earn a fat check every payday? Try the second session of the 109th Congress for starters.
Setting an all-time record of unproductiveness, the House and the Senate at least seem to have worked hard at something: earning the well-deserved moniker of a “Do-Nothing Congress.”
Failing to fulfill even its core responsibility to make budget and spending decisions, Congress has recessed without completing a budget plan for this year. Instead, it passed a spending reduction bill that increased Medicare premiums, froze payments to home health care providers, increased co-payments for prescription drugs and cut student loans and child support enforcement.
Clearly showing where its priorities lie, it passed a mere two appropriations bills: defense and homeland security.
Left on the wayside were issues such as:
It is clear that this Congress has not only neglected its responsibilities but also the needs of working families. Having had enough time to prove it can serve the American people well, it has failed miserably.
What good is economic growth if working families don’t see the benefits? In spite of what pundits might tell you, America’s middle class is in its worst shape in years as families struggle with rising expenses and stagnant wages.
According to a recent report from the Center for American Progress, our so-called economic “recovery,” currently in its fifth year, has more families struggling to pay for medical care, housing, transportation and their children’s education than ever. While they barely cope, corporate profits are soaring.
The trend is especially pronounced among typical middle-class families – dual income couples who earn between $18,500 and $88,030 a year. From 2001 to 2004, the proportion of middle-class families that has saved three months’ worth of income fell from 28.8 percent to 18.3 percent.
Not only are they increasingly unable to save for a rainy day, but they are also borrowing at record levels to maintain their day-to-day consumption.
The economic trends signal a path leading straight to this fictional article from the satirical newspaper The Onion where the middle class is depicted as a museum piece and described as “the socioeconomic category that once existed between the upper and lower classes.”
The ongoing trend can be averted on November 7 when working families will have a precious opportunity to take back Congress and elect representatives that have their (and not big business cronies’) best interests at heart.
The folks who brought us Enron, record tax cuts for millionaires, a minimum wage stuck at $5.15 (and numerous other outrages), raised the bar on their contempt of working people to new heights. The Bush appointed and Republican dominated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), in a party-line vote, gave employers broad new powers to reclassify workers as supervisors — denying them the right to join a union.
The NLRB — which we now know stands for the “National League of Republican Businessmen” — ruled on three cases, known collectively as “Kentucky River,” that will turn back the clock on working professionals, especially nurses.
A worker who spends as little as 10% of his or her time directing other workers and has no promoting, hiring or firing power, can now be classified a supervisor, and therefore be made exempt for being part of a union.
This decision is nothing but another bald face assault, and is part of the Bush Administration’s concerted efforts to undermine the rights and protections of working people and to dismantle labor unions and thus any semblance of an American middle class. According to AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee, the decisions “irreparably change the landscape of the American workplace by giving private-sector employers a license to deprive millions of workers of their freedom to form a union.”
Said United Nurses Associations of California/UHCP/AFSCME member Scott Byington, R.N., “This is not just an attack on nursing, it’s an attack on health care. If nurses can’t speak up, there is no one to speak for patients.”
In their dissent, NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh say the decision “threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law—workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees.” Liebman and Walsh wrote that most professionals and other workers could fall under the new definition of supervisor, “who by 2012 could number almost 34 million, accounting for 23.3% of the workforce.”
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, “It is a sad day for every American who works to put food on the table and gas in their cars, when the rights they count on can be cynically eviscerated by a Labor Board that is informed more by political ideology than sound legal analysis.”
Vowed, McEntee, “This decision is an outrage, and workers across the country are mobilizing for this fall’s elections to elect leaders who will hold future appointees to the NLRB to a higher standard.”
AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, featured today on the Huffington Post, explains why the so-called Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) ballot initiatives are bad news for public employees, public health and safety and the entire progressive movement. As with so many other right-wing “strategic initiatives,” if it sounds too good to be true, it definitely is.
McEntee writes that these initiatives will, “starve the public of vital services and decimate public employee unions.” Check it out.
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AFSCME’s 1.4 million members provide the vital services that make America happen. With members in hundreds of different occupations — from nurses to corrections officers, child care providers to sanitation workers — AFSCME is the voice of the dedicated workers who take care of America, and is a leading advocate for all working families.
