New Haven, CT
Wednesday Morning, September 16
President Hovis introduced Bill Fletcher, longtime labor and civil rights activist, leader and author. Fletcher is currently executive editor of the online magazine The Black Commentator, founder of the Center for Labor Renewal, and Director of Field Services & Education for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). He is the former Education Director of the AFL-CIO and former assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO.
Fletcher began by noting that this fall marks the anniversary of a terrible chapter in American labor history. Sixty years ago, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) began expelling its most progressive affiliated unions, including UE. This, he said, was the beginning of "labor’s self-destruction" as a result of "cold-war paranoia." Fletcher praised the positive example UE continued to offer to the labor movement through difficult decades that followed. "I applaud your union and its courage."
Brother Fletcher then suggested how labor should look at and relate to the Obama presidency, by describing "the three Barack Obamas" – Obama the individual, the Obama administration, and "Obama the Hope" that people voted for last year. We need to focus not on the personality of Obama, but on the nature of his administration, including its unfortunate tendency to seek the middle ground and "bipartisanship," and on "Obama the Hope." By that he meant the "putting people first" message that the Obama campaign offered, and that people flocked to the polling places to vote for.
What Obama does "depends on what we do," said Fletcher, and we need to organize to push him in a more progressive direction. That requires real organizing, "one-to-one, human-to-human interaction." We need to remember that blogs and emails are no substitute for that kind of organizing through personal contact. Fletcher discounted the effectiveness of mass email campaigns directed at members of Congress – "Congress has become immune to email campaigns," something he said the right-wing knows, but the left seems to have forgotten. "If we’re not in the streets, we will get nothing."
Fletcher warned of the threat to democracy posed by the "irrational right" which exploits people’s economic insecurity, fears and anger, and misdirects those feelings in irrational directions. He said the fantasy that Obama is not a citizen "would be funny if just 1 percent believed it," but said that it is not funny when 25 percent of the population "now say we don’t know if he was born here." Another manifestation of the irrational right is Dick Cheney, "who seems to be hoping for a terrorist attack," in order to "prove" that the policies of the Bush administration were right.
People showing up at Obama speaking events with AR-14 assault rifles, and claiming they have a right to do so under the Second Amendment, is another example of what he called the irrational right. "Look at me," Fletcher said. "If I had showed up at a Bush rally with an AR-14, how long would it have taken them to send me to Guantanamo?"
The decline of the standard of living of average Americans over the past few decades has come as a shock to many, said Fletcher. Lots of people responded to the fall in their wages by increasing their use of credit cards, going deeper into debt. The banks drove the housing bubble by telling us that home values would never go down. Now, he said, "People are trying to figure out why this happened," and the right responds by stoking people’s fears and anger. When the "tea party" groups "denounce ‘big government,’ "what do they really mean?" Fletcher asked. "Do they mean the Iraq war?" Do they mean the U.S. military in Afghanistan? Do they mean big programs like Social Security or the Veterans Administration, which is a government-run healthcare system?"
What the right really opposed when it attacks "big government," said Fletcher, is any effort to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, and any effective move to make healthcare a right for everyone.
Instead of a labor movement with the strength and a coherent message to counter this right wing, Fletcher said, we today have "an anemic collection of unions that can’t act." The labor movement "needs to be promoting solidarity" and remember that "the key to our success is, and always has been, collective action." Getting back to those basics of organizing and mobilizing working people, to fight in our own interests and in solidarity with others, is what’s needed both to revive the labor movement and to push Obama to carry out the positive changes for which people voted. Delegates gave Fletcher a standing ovation at the conclusion of his address.
INDEPENDENT POLITICAL ACTION
President Hovis then again called on the co-conveners of the Resolutions Committee. Committee member Matt McCracken (506) read the body of the resolution "Independent Rank-and-File Political Action," and Dawn Knight (170) read the resolves. Wayne Burnett (506) said he supported the resolution, but found its tone too harsh on Obama. "You can’t undo eight years of Bush policies in nine months," he said. "The Obama administration has faced fierce opposition to everything it’s tried to do." Marie Lausch, Local 222 president, said she was apolitical before she became involved in the union. "But I got involved, joined demonstrations, and tried to defeat the worst politician in the U.S. Senate," by which she referred to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT.)
Angaza Laughinghouse (150) said his local has been involved in town hall meetings in North Carolina, and had encountered "right-wing protestors wearing holsters and carrying guns" to political events. He proposed an amendment to the resolution calling on UE to initiate discussions with other unions and organizations on the need for a national general strike in support of the political changes we need. The amendment was later adopted by the delegates.
Delegates then viewed a short video, prepared by Eastern Region President Andrew Dinkelaker, on the 2008 UE Political Action Conference in Washington. Pres. Hovis then called on UE Political Action Director Chris Townsend to address the convention.
Townsend opened by waving a copy of that day’s USA Today, with a front page story in which Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernacke announced that the recession is over – it just doesn’t feel like it. Townsend asked specific delegates, "Is the recession over in Erie? Is the recession over in Iowa? Is the recession over in New Haven?" All replied "No!"
He then recapped political developments and UE’s political action over the two years since the last convention. Locals and regions have been increasingly active in state and local politics, fighting back privatization schemes and attempts to balance budgets on workers’ backs. UE locals in several states have conducted political action conferences and lobby days in their state capitols, pushing legislators to adopt a pro-worker agenda.
"On the national level, we have been even busier, with several union-wide campaigns conducted by our membership," said Townsend, in which he included UE’s campaigns for real healthcare reform, to restore the right to organize, and to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The union has pushed specific members of Congress to stand up for workers in tough organizing campaigns, and participated in the campaign to put an end to the Bush-Cheney policies of the previous eight years and elect Barack Obama.
Townsend told delegates, "...we are now nine months into the new administration and the new Congress, and it’s time that we start seeing some results, or at least more progress ..." He went on to offer "some suggestions for our Democrat friends."
Townsend called for the arrest of "the top 1,000 corporate criminals who have looted the banks and run the country into the ditch." Bernie Madoff is in jail, he said, but almost no one has been prosecuted for their involvement in the housing bubble and the massive subprime mortgage scam that caused massive economic destruction. Townsend saw a lesson in the Madoff case: "When you steal $50 billion from other rich people – like Bernie did – we see that the government prosecutes you very quickly. They get right on it." Townsend applauded the arrest of former Republic Windows CEO Richard Gillman, but said that, compared to the big bankers and other top executives who wrecked the economy, Gillman was a small-time operator.
On healthcare, Townsend called for Obama and the Democrats to "drop the hammer on the health insurance and healthcare companies." Nine months of the Democrats trying to "accommodate the insurance companies," pharmaceuticals and big hospital chains has left us with real healthcare reform looking less likely. "Worse, it looks like the insurance companies may win, by getting Congress to pass a law labeled as ‘reform’, but which is really just a scheme to make working people buy insurance." The recent announcement by insurance companies that they will increase premiums by "only 10.5 percent" over the next year "adds insult to injury," he said. Instead of thanking the insurers, the White House should have responded by prosecuting them "for price fixing and market manipulation."
Townsend predicted that healthcare reform will be "the deciding issue on whether the Obama presidency goes forward and is able to start solving our dire problems, or whether this administration gets stuck in the mud and is then destroyed by the Republican and corporate heavy artillery."
Addressing labor law reform, or as he put it, "the legislation formerly known as the Employee Free Choice Act," Townsend said it is urgent that the Democrats produce some kind of legislation "that addresses the epidemic of union busting" and "makes it possible and practical for workers to join unions again." He offered an example of a government enforcement agency that’s able to act "with lightning speed" – the joint strike force from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Comptroller of the Currency. Every Friday afternoon, this multi-agency federal team "swoops in and seizes banks that are insolvent or found to be engaged in criminal acts. It’s amazing!" "Why," Townsend asked, "can’t we have an NLRB strike force like this to protect workers who are unionizing?... (I)f we did we would start to see a little different attitude among bosses, I can assure you." This suggestion drew strong applause from the delegates.
Townsend also called for Obama to make "a U-turn on the Iraq and Afghan wars... The last time I looked we do not have very many people demanding that we keep our troops in these far-off places." In his final point of advice, Townsend called on Obama to stop chasing the mirage of "bipartisanship." He pointed out that every Republican in the House of Representatives, and all but three in the Senate, voted against President Obama’s first initiative, last February’s economic stimulus bill – even though most big corporations supported it, and at the time "it looked to everyone like the economy was about to go off the cliff." He asked why the Democrats keep wasting their time seeking "common ground" with obstructionists.
Also speaking on the political action resolution were delegates Annie McDonald (222) and Robert Plunkett (255). The resolution was unanimously adopted by the delegates.
The resolution "Fight Workplace Closings" was read by Annie MacDonald. Peter Knowlton (Northeast Region) called it "one of the most important" resolutions before the convention. Deb Johann (1174) a Quad City Die Casting worker, said "This is what happened at my plant," she said describing her local’s tough but unsuccessful fight to save their jobs. Carole Braun (768) spoke on the fight to reopen Antioch College, where workers have long been represented by UE. Alluding to the recent arrest of the ex-boss of Republic Windows and Doors, Western Region Pres. Carl Rosen said, "There’s more criminality among employers, and more prosecutions are needed" for the dirty dealings that often lie behind plant closings. Larsene Taylor (Eastern Region), Armando Robles (1110), Bill Lynch (262), and Caroline Neil (150) also spoke on the resolution, which was unanimously approved.
Tom Michalski (Western Region) and Mary Stewart (618) read the report of the Policy Action Committee, which called for placing special priority on three resolutions in the union’s work in the months ahead: Healthcare for All, Labor Law Reform, and Independent Political Action. Roger Zaczyk (506) said that access to healthcare in the U.S. "doesn’t need a band-aid, it needs a new prescription." Delegates unanimously adopted the report, as well as a resolution calling for "Peace, Jobs and a Pro-Worker Foreign Policy."
FINANCIAL REPORT
President Hovis then called on General Secretary-Treasurer Bruce Klipple who made a detailed financial report and analysis of the union’s per capita dues structure. Figures and other information from Klipple’s presentation were projected onto a big screen to aid delegates. Klipple reported that the financial plan adopted in 2003, including the graduated per capita structure, had been a success, but had run its course. Wage increases won by UE locals had gradually eroded the graduated nature of the dues and per capita plan, as the bulk of the membership has moved up into the top “tier” of wages and dues. In addition, plant closings and the recession have hit the union hard and reduced revenue. Klipple laid out the elements of the revised financial plan adopted by the General Executive Board and presented at UE regional meetings over the past several months. The delegates would vote that afternoon on constitutional amendments incorporating the major elements of that plan; those amendments will then be referred to all UE locals for ratification by membership vote in the weeks ahead.
“We set ambitious goals for ourselves” at the Convention, said Klipple, to continue building the union and carry on our fights for the interests of working people. “Now we need to do what’s needed” to see that the union has the resources to continue its work. Klipple said that greedy bankers and corrupt politicians have put our economy in very bad shape, “And then the corrupt bastards come to us for a bailout because they’re ‘too big to fail.’ Well, in UE, we’re too good to fail.”
The convention recessed for lunch break, with many of the delegates joining in a protest at the nearby branch of Wachovia/Wells Fargo, against that bank’s actions that are putting UE Local 1174 members out of a job and, so far, denying them benefit payments they’ve already earned.