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Tenor of the Times

January/February 1999 IBEW Journal

By the time you read this, the Senate of the United States may have already disposed of the impeachment case against President William Jefferson Clinton. Or we may be in the midst of a lengthy trial, including witnesses. By any measure, 1998 was one of the more bizarre political years in the history of democracy.

As the impeachment process has played out, pundits have raised the question: Who is attending to the people's business? This, to me, is a very misguided query, because the obvious answer is: The people themselves.

It is a testament to the bulwark that is American democracy that the strange political drama we have witnessed has caused barely a ripple in the fabric of the nation. Working people of all stripes have gone about their business. IBEW members have continued to do their jobs, move their industries forward, organize new workers, fight for their rights, negotiate the contracts and in short do whatever is necessary to make progress. The mail is still delivered; the checks arrive on time, and we all look forward to the new century and new millennium with anticipation of great things to come.

All of this tells me that it is more important than ever for the average working man and woman to take back the political process. The 1998 midterm elections were the most heartening in some 20 years for labor because we rediscovered that our roots as a movement lie not in the halls of Washington, D.C., but in the grass roots themselves in communities across the nation. This same principle will serve our Canadian members well as they prepare to vote in several provincial elections in 1999. Registering to vote, casting your ballot, and helping your family, neighbors and co-workers to participate in the electoral process is one of the most patriotic endeavors any working person can undertake, and it will be critical to our future.

Working people thought they had sent a message to legislators in the 1998 election to move beyond the matter of the President's behavior and focus on bread and butter issues. I have no doubt there are many in our ranks who were disgusted with some of President Clinton's actions, a view with which I sympathize. However, to implement the highest and most traumatic political penalty under the U.S. Constitution, removal from office, is punishment out of proportion with the offense. Working people have noted that the most rabid anti-Clinton partisans are mainly those who also are the most contemptuous of the right of working people to organize and bargain collectively. While we remain willing to work with any office holder of any party who supports workers' rights, our political opponents have acted with excessive and obsessive zeal in seeking to undermine this Presidency. The damage they have done to the political fabric of the nation will take some time to repair.

Who better to repair it than working folks? The long term answer is the same as it has always been. We must continue to organize and strengthen our numbers. We must use those numbers to be more effective at the bargaining table and also at the ballot box. Only then will we reclaim our full and proper voice in society.

As the actions of 1998 have shown, there is often more wisdom in the voice of the people than in the babble of their elected officials.