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:: Friday, May 21, 2004 ::

Senate Votes $170 Billion in Tax Breaks For Business; Zilch for Jobless Workers LaborTalk By Harry Kelber
It was disturbing to union members that Senator John Kerry, the AFL CIO’s candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was the lone senator who failed to vote on the unemployment benefits issue, that might have made a difference in the outcome

Kerry was on the campaign trail when the vote was taken. He said that his vote would not have helped, since some of the Republicans who had voted for the amendment would have changed their minds if they thought the measure would pass. Nevertheless, Kerry’s absence from the voting is regarded as, at the very least, a symbolic blunder.

It is troubling how the AFL-CIO, with 13 million dues payers, who play such an important role in producing the goods and services of our economy, are treated with so little respect by Congress. In the 2000 election, union households accounted for a spectacular 26% of the total national vote. Yet organized labor has not won a single piece of legislation on its agenda in years, even when Democrats occupied the White House and both houses of Congress.

Why does the AFL-CIO spend many millions on candidates for high office, supplying them with thousands of volunteers -- and getting nothing in return, even when they win?

The Sweeney administration played this disgraceful, servile role in the presidential elections of 1996 and 2000. Are we going to get the same brush-off treatment in 2004, after we spend $44 million of dues-payer money? Isn’t it time for our national leaders to show some spine?

posted 8:12 PM :: reference link :: 0 comments ::

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