AFSCME is at the forefront of pressuring corporate America to rein in skyrocketing CEO salaries and to preserve shareholder value, which determines the size of our pension checks when we retire.

As a leading shareholder activist, the AFSCME Employees Pension Plan recently brought together a network of institutional investors committed to giving shareholders a vote on corporate executive pay. Our goal: to make sure that CEOs and top executives are being paid for stellar company performance and not compensated outrageously for stuffing their own pockets with generous incentives and stock options.

In addition to seeking a shareholder vote on CEO pay, AFSCME is also working to make it easier for shareholders to nominate candidates to serve on corporate boards and to ensure that company directors are truly independent. These are just a few highlights of our union’s ambitious 2007 shareholder program.

“Large institutional investors have a duty to actively encourage good governance and corporate accountability, and that’s what these proposals are seeking to do,” said AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee, who chairs the Employees Pension Plan. “Our proposals are designed to give shareholders the tools to make boards listen.”

Everyone knows about AFSCME’s political successes last year. Now comes word that 2006 was a banner year for AFSCME when it comes to the growth of our union.

Last year, 50,000 workers gained a voice by organizing with AFSCME. Twenty thousand were child care providers from Michigan who, through a partnership between AFSCME and the United Auto Workers, organized through the largest card check in modern labor history – one that won bargaining rights for a total of 40,000 child care providers. From New Jersey to Iowa, from New Mexico to Oklahoma, thousands more workers are now proudly waving the AFSCME flag.

AFSCME’s successes bucked the national trend. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released 2006 union membership numbers yesterday, reporting a decline of 326,000 union members nationwide. Union density dropped from 12.5 percent to 12.0 percent of the American workforce last year, according to the BLS report.

How has AFSCME managed to add workers while other unions struggle to stem membership losses? We are fully committed to creating growth opportunities through worker political action and running aggressive organizing drives in cities across America. At our convention last summer, we passed the Power to Win plan of the 21st Century Initiative, a bold, new strategy to expand our ranks.

Recent polling shows that more than half of all workers say they would join a union right now if they could. That’s why AFSCME is lobbying Congress hard to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, so workers have the freedom to join unions without employer interference. Speaker Pelosi has said to expect a vote on this crucial legislation sometime this spring.

Apparently President Bush has discovered that our health care system is in need of attention. Welcome to the real world, Mr. President. AFSCME and others have been working on this problem for two decades.

Unfortunately, the President’s prescription for what ails us is meaningless manipulation of the tax code. It will do nothing to address the affordability of health care for AFSCME members or other members of the middle-class. But it will provide many higher income, self-employed earners with huge tax breaks while at the same time subjecting the health benefits of many in the middle class to taxation.

The president continues to foster a “go it alone” strategy when every expert recognizes that health benefit systems work best when there is shared risk. No wonder House leader Pelosi called the President’s plan “empty rhetoric.”

What this country needs is meaningful reform. AFSCME members have long recognized this need and as recently as at our Convention in August we passed a resolution in opposition to the President’s tax-based plans and passed another resolution setting out our own prescription to cure the health care crisis.

It will take more than rhetoric and tax manipulation. It will take a plan that addresses affordability, access to coverage, quality of care, and fairness in financing. It’s time for health care reform that matters. AFSCME is committed; and thousands of our members are engaged in the fight.

George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech revealed a president who is “dangerously out of touch with reality.” So says AFSCME President Gerald McEntee in a statement released after last night’s address before Congress: “In November, Americans voted for a new direction, not new rhetoric dressed up as reform. [Last night], George W. Bush missed what may be his last opportunity to listen to the American people and meaningfully tackle the challenges we face.”

Read McEntee’s full response to the State of the Union speech.

Raise the minimum wage? Check. Allow the government to negotiate prescription drug prices? Check. Repeal subsidies to Big Oil? Check.

In less than 50 hours of floor time, the House Democrats have passed all of the measures outlined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as part of the 100 Hours Agenda to help working families. Like Pelosi stated in The Huffington Post news site: “This is only the beginning” of the new direction America is taking.

Yesterday, the House voted 264-163 to rescind $14 billion in tax breaks and subsidies that oil companies have enjoyed these last few years, garnering record profits while Americans felt the pain at the pump. The money will be put to good use: developing alternative energy projects and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

And with that, the House has kept its part of the bargain and its commitment to the millions of Americans who voted for change in November. Now the ball is on the Senate’s court. Let’s make sure these initiatives become reality.

When it comes to prescription drug prices, it seems as if some people think it’s best to let pharmaceutical companies charge what they see fit and continue raking in the profits. Fortunately, House members did not feel that way last Friday as they voted 255-170 in favor of a bill allowing Medicare to bargain for better prices for seniors.

Shouldn’t Medicare’s 40 million beneficiaries be able to look for whoever offers the best price simply on account of their purchasing power. Apparently, that’s not how Pres. Bush likes it. He has already announced he will veto the initiative, claiming it “reduces convenience for beneficiaries and ultimately increases costs to taxpayers.” In other words, maintain the special interest law known as Medicare Part D which prohibits the government from negotiating with drug manufacturers.

It looks as if the lessons of Nov. 7 still haven’t quite sunk in for some yet. The reason why millions of Americans voted for a new Congress was because they were fed of this doublespeak and constant catering to corporations.

Let that be a reminder that even as working families keep scoring victories, there is still a lot of work to be done to make the 100 Hours Agenda a reality.

On April 3, 1968 the Rev. Martin Luther King spoke in Memphis, Tenn. in support of African American sanitation workers on strike for better working conditions and recognition of their AFSCME union (see video). Ensuring that workers were treated with respect no matter their race was almost unimaginable then and — in some places — remains a daunting task today.

And what about gender equality? How many people dreamed back then that we would have a woman Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives today?

We’ve made extraordinary progress in our country advancing civil rights for all, but the fight for dignity is not over. It goes on through struggles like raising the minimum wage, lowering prescription drug prices and making sure every worker can exercise the right to join a union through the Employee Free Choice Act.

MLK Day is not only a holiday to honor a great man’s fight for social and economic justice. It is also a reminder that the struggle continues and it involves all those who have benefited from living in a better world thanks to the sacrifice of our forebears.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman was dangerously wrong about the Iraq War. Now, in his latest contribution to The Huffington Post, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee launches a pre-emptive strike before Friedman can influence opinions on another topic the scribe frequently screws up: economics.

Yesterday, for the first time in more than 10 years, in the first hours of business of the 110th Congress and with Democrats back at the helm, the House passed a federal minimum wage increase. As stated by Representative Robert Andrews (D-NJ), “This is the day for the people who empty the bedpans, change the bed linens, sweep the floors and do the hardest work of America.” Amen.

The House of Representatives passed H.R. 2, legislation increasing the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour, by a vote of 315-116.

After years of ignoring the plight of the working class and leaving a stagnant minimum wage intact, Congress is doing something for working people. According the Economic Policy Institute, the increase could benefit as many as 15 million low-wage workers.

Thousands of messages from AFSCME e-Activists helped make this happen.

This issue now goes to the Senate. Shortly before the House vote, the Senate was urged by the AFL-CIO, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and others to reject business tax cut giveaways and pass a clean minimum wage bill. Hear, hear!

When the bill to raise the minimum wage goes to the House floor today, it will be time for politicians to put money where their mouth is… literally.

Unlike previous initiatives, this bill has no strings attached such as tax giveaways for corporations or rollback of worker protections. Just a straightforward $2.10 an hour raise to the hardworking Americans who for 10 years have had to get by making a mere $5.15 an hour, $206 a week or $10,712 a year. No matter how you cut it, it’s just not enough to keep a family out of poverty.

For too long working families have been clamoring for a minimum wage hike. The signs couldn’t be clearer than in November, when voters overwhelmingly approved a raise in all six states where the initiative was on the ballot.

Now it’s time for the Congress we helped elect to take the hint.