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Sometimes it is hard to believe it has been ten years since that awful day September 11, 2001. Sometimes it is hard to believe the avowed enemies of the United States killed more than 3000 non-combat civilians in New York’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and that lonely Pennsylvania Field.

But it has been ten years and our lives and country have changed greatly in that time.

My son, Sam, with whom I flew that day, has grown into an eleven year old boy-skateboarder, drummer, and baseball catcher. He and I were at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport that day when they announced the ground stop that awful morning.

We all allot more time when we leave for the airport. Some of us may nervously survey the other passengers with our own eyes and bemoan the security lines. (more…)

By Stewart Acuff
Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President, Utility Workers Union of America

Just a week ago I had the honor of being in Mt. Vernon, Indiana for a major protest against the closing of a large Whirlpool factory that had employed 1,200 people so they could move the work to Mexico.

In Minnesota, Polaris snowmobiles announced they are closing their factory in Osceola to move that work to Mexico.

Both these decisions made by Corporate America and our Financial Elite during the worst economic crisis and highest unemployment since the Great Depression 70 years ago.

These totally unjustifiable decisions reinforce the fact that the free market isn’t free, that free trade isn’t free, that the invisible hand of the market is a myth and that unregulated, de-regulated capitalism ultimately only works for the Financial Elite. (more…)

By Mike Langford
President, Utility Workers Union of America

And

Stewart Acuff
Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President, Utility Workers Union of America

With the oil continuing to spew out of BP’s hole in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico and with Israel’s assault on those who would provide aid to blockaded Gaza, the continuing rise of sea levels and melting of the Polar ice cap and climate patterns changing; it is beyond debate that we must move to green energy generation on a much larger and faster scale and pace and reduce the amount of carbon emitted in our air and the amount of fossil fuels that we consume.

This is no longer a debate about wildlife or nature or natural beauty or the environment. This is now a question of human sustainability, national security, and economic justice.

Just look at the Gulf. We are watching the economic devastation of a whole region of our country–the economic destruction of coastal regions from Louisiana to Florida and maybe all the way to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. We are watching the destruction of a way of life and human culture as old as the story of Evangeline.

We know that a serious commitment to climate change legislation will result in the creation of as many as 2 million good-paying, family-sustaining jobs.

All this is why we at the Utility Workers Union of America are so pleased that the American Power Act has been introduced in the US Senate by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman.

THIS IS THE ONLY VIABLE, REAL JOBS CREATING BILL CURRENTLY IN THE US CONGRESS.

It is not perfect. But there is time and opportunity to improve it.

The legislation will spur investment in solar energy creation and wind energy generation. Maybe most importantly the legislation will reduce carbon emissions 4% by 2013, 17% by 2020, 42% by 2030, and 83% by 2050. Capping carbon emissions will create the incentives for America to cultivate its clean energy economy. Without the certainty of true emissions reduction we cannot achieve our environmental goals nor maximum job creation.

We need to both mandate and invest in green energy generation and energy efficiency improvements.

We must update our electricity grid and transmission lines–commonly called power lines–to accommodate wind and solar and to stop line loss.

Manufacturing investments are needed to make sure we have the products and components necessary in the clean energy economy, especially including the transmission sector as we move to update the grid.

The American Power Act provides funds directly for manufacturing projects that include advanced transmission technologies that support renewable technologies, and advancements in industrial efficiency, which will require, among other things, the improvement of industrial facilities’ ability to interact with the grid and inproving transmission. In addition, the APA provides funds for clean vehicle technology, greatly increasing the number of electric vehicles and furthering the need to significantly update our nation’s grid.

It is imperative that Congress move immediately to improve and pass comprehensive climate change legislation for our environment, our economy, our national security, and our future.

***

Michael Williams helped with research for this blog.

By Stewart Acuff
Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President, Utility Workers Union of America

Any student in any beginning economics class soon learns that the way a nation or a society creates wealth is by making things or building things other people want to buy and are willing to pay for.

The Financial Elite figure out one way for them to maximize their wealth and power is to use poor people with no power in places like China and Indonesia to build things and sell them back to America.

To re-create Middle Class jobs, to get back to creating wealth by making things, to stop the Financial Elite from forcing American workers to compete with slave labor in China and child labor in parts of Latin America and Asia we have to restore common sense rules governing imports and exports. Our government must provide incentives for investments in domestic manufacturing and disincentives for oppressing workers in America and across the developing world.

We have to get back to creating wealth again not by manipulating money in ways that only benefit the Financial Elite.

American workers are some of the most skilled and productive workers in the world. We can build what we need here, what we use here. We can build and make here what other people need. We don’t have to import cheap goods and export good jobs.

But it will take government and action by all of us. It will take a government willing to negotiate trade deals that protect workers rights and freedoms, that honor unions, that outlaw exploitation of workers here and abroad. If our government can negotiate trade deals that protect the investments of the Financial Elite, it can negotiate trade deals that protect the economic security of the United States and its people.

Our government also needs to provide incentives to re-develop manufacturing in the United States. Countries with a strong Middle Class and higher wages than we have and lower unemployment have government policies to encourage domestic or home-grown manufacturing and production and discourage worker exploitation. Countries like Canada and Germany and Sweden and Denmark and Brazil and South Africa are growing or maintaining a Middle Class by investing in and providing incentives for domestic manufacturing. These governments work with businesses and unions to protect Middle Class jobs and to protect investment internally.

When Europe came together to create a unified economic system, the European Union, they did it in a way to raise the standard of living in Portugal and Spain, not lower the standard of living in Germany and Sweden. We have been doing just the opposite.

When the United States entered World War II we took the manufacturing capacity that had been created in Chicago and Detroit and Flint and Toledo and Akron and Pittsburgh and turned it to manufacturing the munitions and tanks and rifles and planes that the allies used to defeat Nazism, Fascism, and Japanese Imperialism.

Not just our economic security but our national security demands we re-build our ability to create wealth and to protect the economic and national security of the United States.

By Stewart Acuff
Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President, Utility Workers Union of America

Our economy is mired in the worst crisis we’ve had since the Great Depression. The one seemingly insurmountable barrier to reviving the economy is the lack of consumer demand caused by 30 years of stagnant and declining wages and now rising unemployment.

At the same time there is growing awareness that our continued reliance on fossil fuel energy generation is bad for our climate, bad for our economy, is ultimately unsustainable, and is harmful to our nation’s security and future. More and more Americans realize that unless we maximize the use of sustainable, domestic sources of energy, our future is threatened.

So we have arrived at the intersection of what is good for the economy is what is good for the environment. We realize now that there is not an inherent conflict between good jobs and a healthy climate and environment. In fact good jobs and a healthy environment complement one another.

It is very hard for the average worker to care about the environment if s/he is worried about how to provide dinner for the family or pay the rent on Friday.

Moving to sustainable energy generation means, among other things, wind farms in the natural wind tunnel through the heart of America, solar farms in the Southwest, installing solar panels, weatherization, retrofitting buildings, domestic manufacturing, carbon capture and sequestration for coal, and more.

Altogether we believe this work could create as many as 2 million good paying, middle class producing jobs.

It is critical that we are very intentional about how we create these jobs to ensure that they maximize the benefit to the economy and maximize the political constituencies they attract by pumping good wages into the pockets of working families to create more consumer demand and provide benefits essential to healthy families. These jobs must pay prevailing wages. Good jobs, a healthy environment, sustainable work, sustainable economy, sustainable environment. Now is the time.

By Stewart Acuff
Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President, Utility Workers Union of AmericaThis Monday the nation will pause for a minute to celebrate the birthday, life, work, and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.

All through this three day weekend we will see ads on tv, read them in newspapers, and hear ads on the radio with corporate America thanking Dr. King for his incredible efforts to free African-Americans and fight racial injustice.

 

But corporate America will stop far short of the whole story. Those ad won’t say anything about Dr. King’s struggle for economic and social justice. They won’t say anything about the Poor People’s Movement and Dr. King’s effort and determination to end poverty in America.

And corporate America won’t say anything about Dr. King’s support for unions and for the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.

Dr. King was killed in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968 while leading a sanitation workers strike to have their union recognized by their employer and win collective bargaining.

Dr. King marched with workers at the Scripto strike in Atlanta and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference worked hard to help hospital workers organize with 1199 in Charleston, South Carolina.

At the 1961 AFL-CIO convention Dr. King said:” Our needs are identical with labor’s needs–decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health can welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda for the other mouth. I dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.”

On this Dr. King Day, tell your senator to support the Employee Free Choice Act. Dr. King’s dream has been defered but we can still fulfill it.

 

 By Stewart Acuff
Chief of Staff of the Utility Workers Union of America

A front page story in the Jan. 2 issue of the Washington Post gives a damning report on George Bush’s economic policy and what happened to our country during the last decade, the decade of the aughts.

Put succinctly, the decade was a disaster for America’s working families.

• Zero job growth in the last decade when every previous for 60 years had job growth of at least 20 percent.
• Not stagnant but declining income for working and middle class families.
• And declining net worth or family wealth–despite substantial growth in productivity.

You have to hope that Lawrence Summers and the economic team at the White House are reading the Post.

You cannot grow the economy from the top. You must have broadly shared prosperity.

As the Post put it: “Capital was funneled to build mini-mansions in the Sun Belt, many which now sit empty, rather than toward industrial machines or other business investment that might generate economic output and jobs for years to come.”

The prescription for a policy of broadly shared prosperity is clear:

• Pass the Employee Free Choice Act to allow workers to freely form unions and bargain for a fair and greater share of the wealth they create and the productivity they generate.
• Reform health care. Take the system from the grip of insurance companies, create a large public plan to make sure everyone is covered and to compete with the insurance companies–and do not tax the benefits of working families. Force every employer to provide health care for their workers.
• Invest now, immediately in sustainable energy–wind farms, solar farms and small scale solar energy generation. Make sure all elements of new energy generation are produced here with wages that can sustain middle class lifestyles. No more impoverishing our own people. That means wind turbines built here, not in China, erected here by union operations. Power lines and a new electricity grid erected by members of the Utility Workers Union.
• Create a real industrial policy and investment incentives and re-think trade policy to re-create an American manufacturing base so we get back to creating wealth instead of borrowing it.

 

By Stewart Acuff
Special Assistant to the President, AFL-CIO

It is more and more fun to read the newspaper stories, articles, blog
posts, and the rest about the demise of conservatism and/or the
Republican Party.

It is no wonder there is so much speculation. Just watch John Boehner
or Mitch McConnell or the nightly news or catch a clip of Rush
Limbaugh ranting on “Morning Joe.” The leaders of the Republican Party
and the ideologues of Conservatism have no answers for any of the
problems of our Country and our people are trying to deal with.

Recently, I saw an opinion piece of Steven Hayward of the American
Enterprise Institute in the Washington Post. His piece was headlined
“Is Conservatism Dead?”

Hayward’s point was that, of course, Conservatism isn’t dead but that
the ideology needed a balance between rightwing populism and
intellectual heft. He noted the success of William F. Buckley as a
public intellectual.

Shockingly, Hayward lifted up Fox News’ Glenn Beck as a thoughtful
conservative who bridges the gap between rightwing populism and
intellectual heft. To hold Glenn Beck up as either the future or
savior of conservatives is laughable on its face. Beck doesn’t even
take himself seriously. And Beck’s open, ugly visceral hatred for
those he disagrees with will hardly draw thoughtful young people or
independents to his ideology.

Hayward then criticizes Progressives for the “belief in political
solutions for everything…” This is one of the Right’s scariest
notions, because politics is how free people in democracies solve
social problems.

Conservatism’s illness has other symptoms. For one thing, rightwing
ideologues now call themselves conservatives. Folks like Glenn Beck
and Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove are hardly conservatives. They want to
continue to transfer power and wealth from the great majority of
Americans to those who already have too much and who’ve brought on the
greatest economic crisis in 80 years. Just the other night I was on
Fox Business debating these rightwing nutcases about health care
reform and the public health care plan. One of them admitted that they
thought of Canada as a socialist country. I said that is just how
bizarre their thinking is.

That kind of bizarre rightwing (conservative thinking) has brought us
30 years of declining wages, 15-18% unemployment, 50 million Americans
without health care, CEOs making 400 times that of the average worker,
increasing poverty, a shrinking and stressed middle class, a falling
standard or living, a government that lied to take us into an
unnecessary and disastrous war, the worst economic crisis in 80 years,
a business-government ethos that produced obscene greed and gluttony
at the highest levels, ballooning debt, a coarsening of our culture
and political discourse, and a shredding of any notion of our Nation’s
common good.

Maybe conservatism is dead.

By Stewart Acuff
Special Assistant to the President, AFL-CIO

I was on Fox News last week doing an interview with right-wing talking head Stuart Varney. He began what became a very hostile interview by charging that the labor movement is using Pope Benedict’s Papal Encyclical for political purposes, part of our effort to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

Given, what the Pope wrote, that charge may be the only defense of the Right against the Pope’s clear, unambiguous, and strong language: “Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labor unions. Hence traditional networks of solidarity have more and more obstacles to overcome. The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum (60), for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honored today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level.”

Sounds like an unambiguous call for the Employee Free Choice Act to me.

Pope Bendict’s Encyclical Letter called “Caritas in Veritae” or “In Charity and Truth” seems to be a guide for the social teachings of the Church in a time of profound global economic change. Certainly, as we’ve shown the Pope is clear about the necessity of unions and workers rights, but he is also critical of the kind of greed and unfettered capitalism that has led the US to yawning inequality and economic crisis:

“Profit is useful if it serves as a means toward an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by an improper means and without the common good as its ultimate ends, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty… The world’s wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities are on the increase. In rich countries, new sectors of society are succumbing to poverty, and new forms of poverty are emerging.”

And what does the Pope say about the common good?

“The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbors, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practice this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influences he wields in this polis. This is the institutional path — we might also call it the political path…”

So he is calling for political action based on his words. On politics and market economics the Pope also says: “Economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic. This needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also takes responsibility.

Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceives as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.”

I’m neither a Roman Catholic scholar nor a Biblical scholar, but I can read and the Pope’s language is crisp and clear. He has laid out the moral imperative for all of us to engage political action to bend the market towards the common good, to restrain the greed of the markets, to protect workers and collective bargaining rights, to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, and to see that those rights and other aspects of the common good are not sacrificed on the altar of profit for profit’s sake.