'We'll hold the president and Congress accountable'

AFL-CIO lays out demands for new administration

By Fred Gaboury

In his Jan. 5 speech at the Washington Press Club, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney outlined four benchmarks by which working families will evaluate the new president and Congress.

Will they respect work? Will they strengthen families? Will they advance democracy at home? Will they fight for fairness in the global economy?

"We will be the first to applaud him when he does right by the people who do the work that keeps our country going," Sweeney said, "and we will be the first to hold him responsible when he does not."

Sweeney said calls for consensus and cooperation could only be meaningful if public officials listen to the voices of working families. "With all the clamor and controversy around the election, I fear those families haven't been heard," he said.

Sweeney pointed to public opinion surveys before and after the election showing the majority of Americans favoring the solutions to the nation's problems advanced by the labor movement. "Those surveys also showed that Americans fear that President Bush will pay too much attention to large corporations and the wealthy," Sweeney said, "and not enough attention to working families."

Union families accounted for 26 percent of the votes cast last November. "We made the difference," Sweeney said. "Without our votes we would now have a Senate with 39 Democrats instead of 50, a House with two fewer Democrats and George Bush wouldn't have had to worry about Florida because he would have won by 363 electoral votes to 175." The AFL-CIO is planning an even greater mobilization of union votes in 2002 and 2004.

Sweeney said the election left many working families "angry and frustrated, their hopes crushed and their nerves raw."

With massive layoffs once again dominating the economic news, "working families are experiencing a renewed insecurity about their jobs, their health coverage and their retirements," Sweeney said.

The AFL-CIO is responding to these frustrations by launching a "Respect Work/Strengthen Families" program.

"Too many Americans find themselves living to work, instead of working to live," Sweeney said, as he outlined demands to strengthen families who can no longer count on good public schools, secure health coverage and reliable retirement.

"Will the new administration and the new Congress work together to give our public schools the resources they need?" he asked. "Will they reject the deceitful promise of private school vouchers that would drain resources from the public schools that 90 percent of our children attend?"

Sweeney called the administration to find new ways to extend heath coverage to every family and to enact a "real" Patients' Bill of Rights.

"Will President Bush and our Congress put working families first by using the federal surplus created by working Americans to provide prescription drugs, improve our public schools and expand health coverage," he asked, "or will they squander it on a $2-trillion tax cut for the rich?"

Sweeney was unequivocal in discussing the presidential election.

"Americans must come together behind the principle that the vote of every citizen should count and that every vote must be counted," he said.

"The disenfranchisement of minority, senior and student voters in Florida and across the country is a national disgrace and we must make sure that no voter ever again has to fight to get to a poll or beg for a ballot."

Sweeney said the global economy imposed a responsibility of the United States to prevent corporations from "scavenging the world" in search of cheaper labor and destroying employment standards, public health and the environment in the process.

He called for support of the International Labor Organization's "Fundamental Principles and Rights of Workers," which outlaw child and forced labor, guarantee the right to work free from discrimination and to make a free choice to form or join unions?

"These are not just labor rights, they are human rights," Sweeney said. "They are the charter for a fair global economy. We must make them an everyday reality all across the world."

Sweeney condemned the "divisive" Bush Cabinet nominations, particularly of Linda Chavez, the original candidate Secretary of Labor, and John Ashcroft for attorney general.

"The measure of bipartisanship will not be whether the president can pick off enough Democrats to pass some bills in Congress," Sweeney said.

"We believe that work should be rewarded, families should be strengthened, and all our children should have the chance to develop their talents; that America should practice democracy here at home - from our workplaces to our polling places - and promote simple decency abroad," Sweeney said.

"When the president and the Congress support these goals, we will support them. When they oppose these goals, we will oppose them."