We stand together or fall alone - CWA Local 1180

Let’s reclaim our country
“ We must all hang together,
or assuredly, we shall all
hang separately,” Benjamin
Franklin said at the signing of the
Declaration of Independence.
Those words are just as relevant
today as many of us wonder if our
jobs are secure, wonder if pay raises
will keep up with rising prices,
wonder if our benefits and pensions
will remain whole, worry about the
prospects for our children, many of
whom will graduate but stay home,
unable to find affordable housing
and unlikely to find a job that
offers benefits, a pension, and pays
enough to move out.
Most New Yorkers and Americans
who carry these burdens look at
them as private, personal issues
rather than as the broad systemic
problems they are. Millions of
Americans were aggressively
sold loans and investments filled
with what Elizabeth Warren,
President Obama’s choice to run
the Consumer Affairs Agency—and
Republicans’ nemesis—describes
as “tricks and traps.” She pointed
T
he jobs numbers for May are
out, and but for a minor blip
in 2011, we have suffered
through a steady unemployment
rate exceeding 9% for a solid two
years. We can rail all we want about
how President Barack Obama has
not been bold enough, has not led
forcefully enough around a progressive
agenda, has made needless
compromises with the Republicans
and the “Republican lights” in his
own party on healthcare reform,
the extension of the Bush tax cuts
for the rich, and stimulus.
We can realize that this President
was never the progressive that some
hoped he would be and that his
anti-Iraq war stance really meant
a pro-Afghanistan war footing. We
can criticize him for not using his
political muscle to aggressively promote
labor law reform through the
Employee Free Choice Act
We can do all those things, sit on
the sidelines and sulk about the
great disappointment that has thus
far been the hallmark of the Obama
out that consumers have more legal
protections when buying a toaster
than they do a financial product
like a student loan, credit card, or
mortgage.
We must organize
How did this happen? Our corporate
masters have hijacked our
political process and are dismantling
our democracy. Over the last
30 years, they told us to be good
consumers. Forget about being
good citizens. Business rules.
What’s good for us is good for you.
We’re rich and know what’s good
for you.
They told us the freedom to shop
is our most important freedom, that
presidency and sit on our hands,
undermining his chances for a second
term.
But we would be wrong.
Instead, we ought to be putting
forward our own working-class
agenda. Local 1180 has led among
unions in the labor movement
advocating for such things as peace
and a Medicare-for-all single payer
health care system. And this is not
to advocate that we should abandon
those important principles. But
if we cannot successfully push this
president and the Democrats to
do something meaningful and dramatic
about the jobs crisis, we open
the doors for more Scott Walkers,
C o m m u n i q u e
president’s column
by Arthur cheliotes acheliotes@cwa1180.org
It is foolish to think that we
can all engage in our individual
fights and survive for long.
shopping is patriotic. So get government
off our backs! Liberate the
banks and Wall Street so they are
free to make more loans. Cut taxes
and government spending; private
industry can do it cheaper.
After 2008 most of us now understand
that they are frauds and
criminals. The freedom to shop
is servitude to impulse and selfishness.
Yet we remain a divided
nation unable to understand the
common struggles we all face
because we are manipulated by the
media they control, which creates
phony issues that diverts our attention
from the tremendous burden
the elite rich have placed on our
nation and society.
Let’s make Barack Obama all that he can be
2 nd vice president’s column
by Bill Henning bhenning@cwa1180.org
Putting people to work should
be lawmakers’ top priority.
John Boehners, and Chris Christies
to dominate the political discourse
in 2012 and beyond.
Protecting the already dangerously
fraying safety nets of Social Security,
Medicare, and Medicaid looms as
our immediate priority. Fortunately,
the Democrats got a view of how
winning a strategy that can be with
the upset by their candidate Kathy
Hochul in the special election in the
seemingly safe Republican enclave
of the 26th Congressional District in
upstate New York. Fighting cuts and
crippling privatization of these most
successful and popular government
programs can launch the defense of a
new New Deal.
J u l y /Au g u s t ’11 9
We cannot fight the rich as individuals.
We must organize. Nor
can individual unions fight alone.
We must come together as a labor
movement to rebuild our nation,
to rebuild the middle class, and
reclaim our democracy. We are not
servile consumers. We are citizens
who can shape the course of our
city, state, and nation when we
stand together. Like Ben Franklin
and the signers of the Declaration
of Independence understood in
1776 and the people of Wisconsin
understand now, when working
people are organized, we have
power. When private sector workers
locked arms with public sector
workers to fight for collective bargaining
in Wisconsin, the journey
back to government by and for the
people started once again.
The labor movement in New York
must do the same. It is foolish to
think that we can all engage in our
individual fights and survive for
long. It is not just about our wages,
benefits, and pensions. It is about
our democracy.
How much more effective might
it be if we prod these lawmakers
to make putting people to work
their top priority. Not only will it
be a welcome relief to those unemployed,
many of whom have been
jobless for more than six months,
but the spending generated would
further stimulate the private sector
jobs activity.
The federal deficit be damned.
It is not important. We need an
immediate jump start from the
federal government to states and
localities that are lashed to budgets
which cannot legally be in deficit
(unlike the federal government).
Preventing further job erosion in
the government sector will go a
long way toward turning this jobless
ship around.
And maybe—just maybe—we can
see if our movement can be galvanized
to make Obama the leader of
hope and change in 2012 that we
hoped would surface earlier.
But we’ll never do it as spectators
or armchair critics.