Helping America's Working Families

Many of the things we take for granted on Labor Day -- the forty hour work week, minimum wage laws, and regulations governing safe working conditions, civil rights and voting rights, for example -- are the direct result of action by organized labor.  Concerted efforts by corporate and industrial powers over the last 50 years, working through their wholly-owned Republican Party, have had a negative effect on union membership and on organized labor's ability to act as a countervailing force against corporate greed.  Income inequality that has grown over that same 50 years directly correlates to declining union membership.

There was hope in the aftermath of the Dems control of the White House and Congress following the  2008 elections that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would be enacted and make it simpler for workers to unionize.  In the summer of 2009, several Conserva-Dems turned their backs on labor and joined with Senate Rethuglicans to block consideration of the bill, and, facing Rethuglican obstruction, the bill has remained in limbo ever since.

Now that there is renewed public concern about income inequality, it's more important than ever that key issues be addressed: increase in the living wage to $15/hr., paid family leave (the U.S. is last in the industrialized world), and ensuring that free trade is fair trade, where U.S. workers have a level playing field with foreign workers.  These and other kitchen table concerns are at the core of what organized labor is fighting for, facing unrelenting push-back from corporate America and the right wing.  We have to fight along with them.