Be Part of the Solution

Lets talk about your job.

Your livelihood is what enables you to keep a roof over your head, to support your preferred religious and charitable institutions, to indulge your love of outdoor sports and to help your kids pursue their chosen path in life. So why would you take kindly to anyone who would mess with that?

Some politicians come around with smiles on their faces and go right for your wallet. So it makes sense for every working person to ask them the tough questions.

I was in my native Western Pennsylvania over Labor Day weekend. So was President George W. Bush. He was showing what a good friend of working people he was by attending an invitation-only bash staged on an island by the national officials of the Carpenters. Some union protestors showed up and were promptly consigned to a fenced-in area out of camera range. So much for free speech. Bush avoided the Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh where some 70,000 people, including rank and file carpenters, marched freely and didnt show much support for the presidents policies.

Also on Labor Day weekend, former Penn State professor Russell W. Gibbons wrote a hard-hitting editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. You can read it by Clicking here.

Gibbons noted that perhaps President Bush didnt want to explain his executive order barring project labor agreements. Maybe the president wasnt up to talking about why his administration has gutted mine safety laws, even though he had also posed with the nine rescued miners. Maybe he didnt want to tell IBEW members why he continues to push for electric utility deregulation, even though his cronies at Enron and other companies have ripped off states, businesses and individual consumers for billions of dollars. And maybe he couldnt justify to the IBEW construction members why he seeks to lower the journeyman to apprentice ratio on job sites or make it tougher for our locals to compete for voice-data-video work.

Listen carefully. That chipping sound you hear is the ground being taken out from under your feet. And theres no safety net underneath.

We have got to wake up. Too many of us let ourselves be bamboozled by these smooth-talking thieves in pinstripe suits. Yes, I call them thieves, because they are after your Social Security. Their gaming of the financial markets is threatening your pension security. Their work rules are undercutting your ability to work safe, earn a decent living, and compete fairly for work. Voting for them is like supporting your own slow slide backward into poverty.

These are tough times in North America. We are already in a war that may expand. And we see politicians using foreign affairs as a cover to push through an anti-labor agenda. Dont let anybody tell you to shut up and support the president. Ask them why the president and his congressional allies are being so unpatriotic as to stick it to the middle- and working-class families of the soldiers and sailors and pilots back home.

Be part of the solution to the challenges we face. Vote for people who will give you a fair shake to share in the benefits of American society. But if you choose to support the backstabbers, dont come crying a year from now. You know what you are getting.

  Presidents Message

October 2002 IBEW Journal