Next week, the U.S. House is expected to vote on the bipartisan Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would make it illegal to fire someone because of his or her sexual orientation. It is a national disgrace that in more than 30 states, competent and qualified workers can still be fired simply because of their sexual orientation.

In his statement on ENDA, AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee said, “Congress now has an opportunity to right this wrong. Immediate enactment of ENDA will send a clear message that the American Dream belongs to all of us… It is time to pass ENDA. It is the right thing to do.”

The House of Labor must be doing something right. According to the latest Gallup poll, sixty percent of Americans approve of labor unions.

That’s right. Sixty percent, even though unions are under constant attack by one of the most anti-worker administrations in recent history.

And here’s why: When it comes to fair wages, better health care and pensions, a union makes all the difference. Union members earn 30 percent more than nonunion workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Likewise, 80 percent of union members are covered by pension plans versus just 47 percent of nonunion workers. Furthermore, nonunion employees are five times more likely to lack health insurance coverage.

It is not surprising that 60 million U.S. workers say they would join a union if they could. So, what’s the hold up? Employer intimidation. Our nation’s labor laws are enforced so feebly that employers routinely get away with breaking them.

Anti-worker lawmakers recently derailed Senate passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, an initiative that would allow workers to join unions – either by ballot elections or majority sign-up – without employer interference.

Despite clear approval from the American public, George W. Bush seems to think it’s fine that workers aren’t free to join unions or bargain for a better future for their families. He’s promised to veto the bill should it reach his desk.

Just one more reason for us to lead the battle to elect a pro-working family President in 2008!

Iraq War veteran and AFSCME member David Watchous talks to reporters about the need to fully fund veteran provisions in the labor-HHS funding bill. Watchous is a corrections officer at the Topeka Corrections Facility in Topeka, KS.

Congress has a lot on its plate now that it’s back in session. And one of the most important priorities for AFSCME members is a bill that funds the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education – or the Labor-HHS bill.

For months, AFSCME and partner organizations, through the Emergency Campaign for America’s Priorities, have been putting pressure on Members of Congress to pass this bill. It would begin to reinvest our tax dollars in vital services for regular Americans – things like child care, education and job training. In July, the House overwhelmingly passed the bill – despite a threat from President Bush to veto it.

The bill also provides funding for homelessness prevention and mental health services for American veterans. And that’s why AFSCME veterans have been coming out in full force across the country calling on their senators to follow the House’s lead.

Click these links for a small sample of press coverage from our events in Indiana, Oregon and Kansas:

• Indiana Veterans Calling for Lugar’s Support (WISH-TV)
• Indiana Vets Call for More Health Care for Soldiers
(WTHR-TV)
• Vets Call on Senator Smith (1190 KEX-AM)
• Military Suicide Rate Highest in 26 Years… Vets Urge Support (WIBW-TV)
• Vietnam Veterans Urge Senators to Pass Mental Health Funding (KBSD-TV)

Naysayers may want to look the other way, but reality speaks for itself.

According to the latest Census Bureau report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage, the number of Americans without health insurance rose last year from 44.5 million to 47 million. That’s almost 16 percent of Americans who simply can’t get sick enough to require a doctor visit… because they can’t afford it.

And what about children? More than 600,000 of them joined the ranks of the uninsured in 2006. They have now reached 8.7 million. At a time when Pres. Bush threatens to veto reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, this is particularly dire news.

Meanwhile, the official poverty rate decreased slightly from 12.6 percent in 2005 to 12.3 percent last year. Nonetheless, that’s still nearly 37 million Americans living in poverty or 5 million more than when Pres. Bush moved into the White House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) said it best: “While the poverty rate is down slightly, millions of Americans feel the American Dream is getting further out of reach. Today’s Census data confirms these fears. Americans are working harder but living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to make ends meet and going deeper into debt because of the high cost of health care, energy, and education.”

The tide cannot be stopped. Slowly but surely, public employees across the country are gaining a voice at the bargaining table.

In Delaware, nearly 13,000 state workers won collective bargaining rights. Their fight to gain a voice at their job culminated when a bipartisan majority passed a bill in the state Senate and Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) signed the initiative into law.

As AFSCME Council 81 Pres. Michael Begatto explains in this radio interview, this triumph marks the culmination of a 20-year struggle to win the right to bargain for a better future.

Delaware is but the latest among a streak of recent wins for state workers nationwide. In Oregon, the state legislature passed a bill allowing public employees to join a union via card-check. Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) signed it into law along with legislation codifying an executive order to grant bargaining rights to child care providers. New York, Kansas and Pennsylvania providers won collective bargaining shortly thereafter. In New Hampshire, majority sign-up for state workers became law while both the Massachusetts House and the Vermont House passed card-check bills earlier this year.

We did it! The House approved expanding heath care for children and protecting Medicare for seniors!

In the last two weeks, nearly 10,000 AFSCME members called and emailed Congress urging them to expand health care for children and protect Medicare for seniors.

They listened. Last night, the U.S. House passed the Children’s Health and Medicare Protection (CHAMP) Act of 2007, 225-204.

CHAMP will insure millions of poor children in America. The House bill will also scale back the so-called Medicare Advantage program, a scheme to privatize Medicare.

According to today’s New York Times: “Over angry Republican objections, the House on Wednesday passed a sweeping expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, financed with increases in tobacco taxes and cuts in subsidies to private Medicare insurance plans for older Americans. The bill embodies the Democrats’ vision for health care, taking a step toward the goal of universal coverage while reversing what they see as Republican efforts to ‘privatize Medicare’.”

These votes are proof that when AFSCME members fight, we win. Unfortunately, our work is not yet done. George Bush says he will oppose providing more kids in need with the health insurance coverage they deserve.

It was high time the brave men and women who keep America secure were given their due. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill extending full collective bargaining rights to police, firefighters and first responders across the nation.

As the AFL-CIO blog reports, nearly 20 states limit our public safety officers’ bargaining rights while two other states – Virginia and North Carolina – don’t even allow them to negotiate at all over hours, wages and terms of employment.

In order to effectively put an end to what a police officer described to the Washington Post today as “collective begging,” the initiative now has to go the Senate.

Let’s make sure that when the time comes, our elected officials do the right thing for our public safety officers, including the thousands of first responders, police and corrections officers represented by AFSCME. It’s the least we can do for those who risk their lives every day to keep us safe.

In a spot-on column in yesterday’s New York Times [subscription only], columnist Paul Krugman examines George W. Bush’s insidious strategy to prove that government does no good by having it do no good. In discussing Bush’s opposition to increasing funding for SCHIP, a popular and hugely successful program that provides access to health care to children in need, Krugman writes:

Now, why should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further ‘federalization’ of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It’s not because he thinks the plans wouldn’t work. It’s because he’s afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can’t do the same for adults.

In his blog, Matt Yglesias calls this Can’t Do Conservatism, and points out that, “Unfortunately, the public opinion data does tend to suggest that Bush’s staggering achievements in the field of maladministration have, in fact, boosted public skepticism of government capacity to do anything at all to some extent.”

Crooks and Liars adds: “So much for compassionate conservatism.”

Read more on The Carpetbagger Report.

Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog has this to say about Bush’s opposition to health care for our nation’s kids:

George Bush doesn’t take care of wounded soldiers who he sent to war, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s not worried about the health of America’s kids. Okay, it shouldn’t be a surprise, but somehow it is. Bush is even being lobbied by hard core Republican Senators Grassley and Hatch to support the SCHIP bill, but he won’t.

Read the rest of the post at AMERICAblog.

Just when we think a president with 28% approval ratings couldn’t get less support from the public, Bush has found a way to reach new lows. He is threatening to veto reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), a program to provide health insurance coverage to low- and middle-income children that enjoys broad bipartisan support. As the New Republic reports, this is not the first time he has short-changed SCHIP.

With 9 million children in the U.S. lacking health insurance, SCHIP reauthorization is a vital step toward closing the coverage gap. But the Bush White House doesn’t like the fact that some governors (both Democrat and Republican) have expanded their programs to cover not just kids at the poverty limit, but their working parents as well. This is merely a reflection of how spiraling health care costs have made insurance coverage unaffordable for millions of working families. And that’s an Inconvenient Truth that this SICKO administration would prefer to ignore.