UE Convention Resolutions
Independent
Rank-and-File Political Action
Voters surged to the polls in November 2008 with the intention of ending the downward spiral of economic and financial collapse, corruption, and endless war. The policies and practices of the defeated regime inflicted deep and lasting damage to working people, our livelihoods, families, and communities. Nearly all working people and retirees are far worse off at the end of the Bush-Cheney regime than they were at the start. Frustration, pessimism, and anger at the downhill slide of our nation seems to permeate the countryside. Unfortunately, none of this is our imagination; there is ample evidence to support our concern and alarm.
The Bush administration compiled a rap sheet of criminality, corruption, and anti-worker animus unrivaled in modern times. It is breathtaking for its breadth and scope: from plunging our nation into the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, to an unlimited bailout of the financial industry, to two unwinnable wars breaking our budget, to a corporate crime wave that has stolen billions from U.S. taxpayers. Bush and Cheney and their corporate management team ran our nation into the ditch. They are lucky men to have been able to leave office as free men, and not as prisoners awaiting trial for their colossal lawbreaking and corruption.
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were elected with the expectation that swift and drastic action would be taken to undo eight years of damage by the Bush regime. Enlarged Democratic majorities in Congress allow – at least theoretically – real legislative progress.
Nine months into the new administration there is little progress. Bolder action is needed on all fronts. The Obama administration got off to a good start with passage of the stimulus package. Although not perfect, it was urgently needed. The stimulus bill was resisted by virtually all Republican lawmakers, receiving not one Republican vote in the House of Representatives and only three in the Senate. Republicans are not interested in accepting responsibility for cleaning up the mess left from their decades-long party.
President Obama seems to have forgotten this early lesson. Since February the new administration has sought to appease congressional Republicans in a misguided focus on "bipartisanship." The petering-out of the push to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, as well as the train wreck of healthcare reform, are early symptoms that the electoral momentum of the Obama administration is waning. Obama's failure to take strong principled stands on the issues has emboldened the "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House of Representatives, and similar pro-business Democratic Senators, who openly oppose the Democratic platform. Some of these corporate Democrats are hostile to card-check labor law reform and a public option in healthcare. They are among the biggest recipients of contributions from the health insurance, pharmaceutical, and banking industries.
Unless the White House recognizes what they are facing they may be consigning themselves to one term. Their margin of victory was large, but not overwhelming. Working people voted for change, not for appeasement with corporate forces who created the mess to begin with. But memories are short, and with unemployment rates nearing 10 percent, and home foreclosures still increasing across the country, there is likely to be backlash at the polls in 2010. Time is ticking away.
Our union has a long tradition of rank-and-file political action with the goal of improving workers' living conditions. If working people do not stay alert and defend themselves, what we have won at the bargaining table will be stolen away by our corporate-controlled government. Companies have spent millions of dollars buying votes in Congress to destroy organized labor and deny workers a living wage. It is up to labor unions and our allies 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.
The U.S. working class desperately needs an independent political party it can call its own. Until such a movement takes shape we should work with progressive candidates and officeholders. Resistance to the big business assault must come from the rank and file on as many fronts as possible. We must educate and involve as many as we can. Tremendous opportunities for progress still exist, but it is up to the rank and file to push President Obama and Congress to confront corporate power and address the crises we face.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 71st 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 authentic pro-labor candidates in the 2010 elections;
- Calls on the union at all levels to defend our members' jobs and improve 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, working for meaningful healthcare and retirement security reform, and reform of U.S. labor laws;
- Urges all members to utilize the UE News and the UE website as sources of political action news and updates on an ongoing basis;
- Encourages locals and regions to expand their efforts to contact lawmakers with the rank-and-file message on the key issues through petitions, letters, phone calls, e-mails, lobby visits, visits to state capitols, holding annual "political action days," town hall meetings, organizing rallies, marches, civil disobedience actions, and other peaceful means to gain positive political action;
- Calls on all locals and regions to send representatives to the UE National Political Action Conference to be held in Washington, DC in September 2010, and to take advantage of this meeting and its educational aspects to better conduct our unions' political action in the run up to the November 2010 elections;
- Urges all locals to undertake workplace campaigns to register members and their families to vote;
- 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 2010, in order to oust anti-labor politicians regardless of party affiliation;
- Calls on every region and local to establish functional political action programs and to encourage participation in them, including running for elective office;
- 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;
- Supports efforts to democratize our political system, such as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV);
- Calls on the union at all levels to participate in the tenth World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal in 2011;
- Encourages the union at all levels to participate in the protests planned at the American Bankers Association in Chicago, October 25-27, 2009;
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Calls upon all national and local unions, workers, human rights, civil rights, immigrants rights, and women's rights, youth, faith-based and progressive organizations to discuss the need to organize a "national work stoppage" as a "day of political solidarity" for Healthcare for all.