QC Labor Focuses on Employee Free Choice Act, Health Care Reform With Public Option

PHOTO: AFSCME members Preston Smith, Greg Johnson and Tracy Nesseler
 
Contributed by Tracy Kurowski

Dozens of union locals, politicians, community leaders and thousands of spectators came out on Labor Day to celebrate Organized Labor in the Quad Cities.

This year’s theme, Turn Around America, centered around the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and heath care reform with a robust public option.

Our work, though, for both, has only just begun.  Washington Post’s article, “Unhappy Labor Day” points out that 33% of people in their late sixties are still in the workforce – postponing their retirement indefinitely. In France that percentage is just 4%.

Moreover, 31 percent of workers 18-35 do not have health insurance. 1 out of 3 of those same young workers still live at home with their parents – this includes those who’ve dropped out of high school as well as those with college degrees.

Even minimum wage employment is scarce. 25 percent of teenagers are without work, the highest since 1948 when tracking data by age began.

No matter how rosy the picture of the economic turnaround is painted- the light at the end of the tunnel supposedly shown by modest increases in the Dow Jones average – the fact remains that too many hard working people still cannot make ends meet. It is a shame that the country with the largest economy on the planet cannot sustain gainful employment nor health care for tens of millions of its people, a shame that needs to be corrected.

Organized labor in the Quad Cities cleans our streets, builds the combines that harness the grain for our breadbasket, builds our bridges and roads, puts out fires, drives our trains, hauls our goods, cares for our elderly and disabled, slaughters and processes our food and forges metal for industry.

Our community has a long labor history that has enriched some of our nation’s largest industries like Alcoa, Deere, and Oscar Mayer. People have a right to dignity at the workplace and an economy that works for all – it’s in our Constitution’s Preamble, “…promote the general welfare…”

Keep up the good fight…for ourselves and for our posterity.~