For the past several years, the five-person board that governs the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency in charge of protecting workers’ rights, has had a pro-worker majority, and that pro-worker majority has helped create the conditions for UE to grow as much as we have in the recent period. But we may lose that pro-worker majority if the Senate does not act soon!
On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate considered three “joint resolutions of disapproval,” proposed by long-time UE ally Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), which would have blocked U.S. sales of offensive weaponry to the Israeli military. The resolutions, in Sanders’ words, “are aimed at offensive weapons that have been used to devastating effect against civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. They would not affect any of the systems Israel uses to defend itself from incoming attacks.”
Statement of the UE officers on the election
For over half of a century, working people in the U.S. have seen stagnating wages, worsening working conditions, the loss of good jobs, and constant increases in the cost of living. This is the result of corporations’ never-ending thirst to squeeze as many profits out of workers as possible. Throughout this time, both major parties have been complicit in this corporate assault. They have maintained their power, and a corrupt two-party system, by dividing the working class along lines of race, gender, and education. Frustration with the Democrats and their unwillingness to confront corporate power or offer real solutions to working people’s economic concerns led many working people to vote for Donald Trump on Tuesday, giving him the margin of victory.
Israel’s recent strikes on Lebanon, which have killed hundreds of people including women, children, and paramedics, are exactly the type of regional escalation of hostilities that we predicted would happen without a ceasefire in Gaza. Right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has faced massive protests including a general strike, is attempting to stay in power by expanding the war and killing additional innocent people.
Meeting in Pittsburgh this week, UE’s General Executive Board discussed the 2024 elections and adopted a statement declaring, “Working people desperately need an independent political organization, based on a political program that can unite us, which can fight for that platform in the electoral arena — in short, a labor party.”
In April, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President, chose the Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance has traded on his 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy and his working-class background to position himself as a “working man” who hates “elites” — and to win votes from working people who have been the victims of decades of corporate globalization. However, his actual life tells a different story.
In April of 2023, the right-wing Heritage Foundation published a 900-page document called Project 2025. In it, prominent corporate and right-wing operatives have created a comprehensive wishlist for expanding corporate power under a second Trump administration — and a detailed plan for achieving them.
The privately-administered Medicare Advantage program is causing significant harm to America’s patients, providers, and health care system, according to a new report from Physicians for a National Health Program. Medicare Advantage harms patients’ health by limiting their access to treatments, physicians, and hospitals, while creating what the report calls “a massive profit machine” for insurers.
This year’s presidential election is the starkest demonstration yet of how the two corporate parties which dominate American politics prevent working people from using our democracy to improve our conditions.
The only way out of this two-party trap is a strong and politically independent labor movement, with millions more working people organized into unions and other worker organizations independent of the existing political parties. Only then will we be able to force politicians to address the needs of the working class and then hold them accountable once they are in office, not only through elections but through other forms of political action such as marches, strikes, occupations and mass civil disobedience.
Saying, “The time has come to cancel all medical debt,” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced legislation in May that would eliminate the over $200 billion in medical debt held by millions of Americans. Companion legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA).