JAN, 21, 2011:NWLP
1/18/11
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Republicans ban
word ‘labor’ from
House committee
By Mike Hall
National AFL-CIO
Petty. Petty. Petty. With major issues
like jobs and the economy straining for
attention, House Republican leaders
took a big step to solving the nation’s
problems when they boldly acted —
drum roll, please — to change the
name of the Education and Labor
Committee to the Education and Work-
force Committee.
Give me a bleedin’ break. They so
hate the word “labor” because after all,
it’s often followed by the word “union.”
OMG!
The Education and Labor Commit-
tee was founded in 1867 and retained
that name — except for a brief time
when it was split into separate Educa-
tion and Labor committees — through
both Democratic and Republican ma-
jorities for 122 years.
In 1995, the last time a group of
swaggering, loud-mouthed extremists
— remember Newt and his cohorts, the
tea party forebears? — hit Capitol Hill,
they stripped the word “labor” from the
committee door.
In 2006, figuring 122 years of con-
gressional history should be honored,
the new Democratic majority restored
the word “labor.”
So here’s another symbolic bird-flip
from Republicans to working people
over a concept that’s clearly unfamiliar
to them: Labor.
Page 10
Disciplined unity gets results
To the Editor:
I agree with Brother Schell: “rioting
in the streets” does not help build the la-
bor movement in this country (“Rioting
in the streets won’t help cause,” Jan. 7,
2011). However, disciplined unity in ac-
tion does get results and increases our
strength. When Oregon AFL-CIO Pres-
ident Tom Chamberlain called for “tak-
ing to the streets,” I’m sure he was not
advocating for the type of vandalism a
few youth have exhibited on the streets
of Europe in the past year.
I’m sure he was referring to the type
of marches, rallies, strikes, blockades
and sit-ins that millions of European
workers employed — led by the union
movement — to push back against em-
ployer-led attacks on their standard of
living. These are the same tactics used
by our own labor movement in the
1930s — which led to a huge increase
the size of our movement and won us
some of our most fundamental rights:
to strike, to collectively bargain, to un-
employment insurance, to a minimum
wage, to social security.
Brother Chamberlain is suggesting
that we are facing tough times where
some of those fundamental rights are
threatened. Tough times require tough
tactics.
Jamie Partridge
Letter Carriers 82
Portland
House GOP cuts jobs, funding
to highway and transit programs
(From the Building and Construc-
tion Trades Department, AFL-CIO.)
The 112th Congress has convened,
and the first order of business by the Re-
publican majority in the House of Rep-
resentatives was, incredibly, to cut jobs
and funding to highway and transit pro-
grams.
Specifically, House Republicans
changed a number of longstanding rules,
including one that historically ensured
that money raised solely for highway
and transit projects through the federal
gas tax be spent on those projects.
The new rule change by the Repub-
lican majority in the House will hence-
forth allow highway and transit funds
that have already been raised to sit idle
in a bank account, reducing investment
in highways and transit, and subse-
quently destroying jobs.
Despite the best efforts of moderate
Republicans like Steve LaTourette of
Ohio to reduce the negative impact of
this rule change, Republican leadership
refused to modify their new rule. Ap-
parently, they are more interested in
perpetuating a shell game where high-
way and transit funds are held back in
order to make it appear that the deficit
has been reduced in the short-term, thus
allowing Congress to continue to spend
money on pet projects and cutting one
of the best job-creation programs in the
history of the country.
Last November, the American peo-
ple demanded that Congress make eco-
nomic growth and job creation their top
priority. For the millions of unemployed
in the construction industry, cutting
funding that would put them to work re-
pairing or replacing our crumbling
bridges, highways and transit systems is
not a solution; it’s a slap in the face.
We thank Congressman LaTourette
for his efforts to prevent this rule from
taking effect. We will need more voices
like his, if Congress plans on getting se-
rious about fixing the real problem fac-
ing our country; which is JOBS.
E
E
FR
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ing wealth … and ignoring the poor.
His “Poor People’s Campaign” was re-
ally about economic restructuring. His
plan was to put pressure on Congress
to shift its priorities from war and mil-
itary spending to housing, health care,
jobs and education, focusing especially
on the people who were losing jobs be-
cause of automation of industry and
outsourcing.
It was a two-pronged approach. One
was that there were these people who
were being thrown out of the economy
to starve, and something had to be done
about that. But secondly, the priorities
of the country are all wrong.
Honey: At various times he says he
is not opposed to people having wealth,
he’s opposed to people having wealth
at the expense of other people not hav-
Q: What do you think King would
say about the current economic crisis,
its effects on working people and the
PAGE 10
attack on public employee unions?
Honey: In his speech to the AFL-
CIO in 1961, King talked about the de-
veloping right-wing coalition that
would threaten the labor movement
and the civil rights movement. The
quote is “the alliance between big mil-
itary and big business or the coalition
of Dixiecrats and militant reactionaries
— whatever the form — these menaces
now threaten everything decent and fair
in American life. Labor today faces the
greatest crisis. In the next 10 to 20
years, automation will grind jobs into
dust. This period is made to order for
those who would drive labor into im-
potency by viciously attacking it at
every point of weakness.”
His idea [to fight this developing
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Dr. King’s Legacy: Fighting for economic justice
In his latest book, “All Labor Has
Dignity,” historian Michael Honey
brings together 16 of Martin Luther
King Jr.’s speeches on economic jus-
tice, many of them unpublished until
now. Honey, a professor at the Univer-
sity of Washington Tacoma, edited the
speeches and wrote an introduction for
the book. AFL-CIO Now senior writer
James Parks interviewed Honey about
King and his legacy of economic jus-
tice.
Q: In All Labor Has Dignity, you
say King’s dream called for “eco-
nomic equality.” What does that mean
and how do we achieve it?
W ANTED
right-wing coalition] is to develop a
mass coalition of labor, civil rights
churches, anti-war, students — any-
body who’s moving in the same direc-
tion.
Q: What is King’s legacy today and
how can we best honor it?
Honey: King was a holistic thinker,
and he said the problem is not just in-
dividuals; the problem is the system.
The real evil is systematic. The three
great evils are racism, militarism and
materialism. Our country is under the
control of those three evils, and we
have to change the whole setup of the
country to change that. If you look at
him in that way, he’s timely and time-
less.
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JANUARY 21, 2011