22 Jun President Durkee: Working People are Mobilizing to Defend Democracy

The following is the President Durkee’s Message from the May/June BCTGM NEWS:

From teachers and public service workers fighting for great public schools and quality services, to fast food workers demanding $15 an hour and a union, American workers are standing up and speaking out. Most recently, in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, we witnessed grassroots worker action at its most powerful as tens of thousands of teachers stood their ground to win changes for themselves and their students.

Workers are more productive than ever before but are working longer hours for less money and fewer benefits. It doesn’t make sense that people are finding it more and more difficult to get by and provide for their families, no matter how hard they work. And it doesn’t make any sense at all that CEOs and folks who are already wealthy are receiving trillions of dollars in tax cuts.

It might not make sense, but it didn’t happen on its own. Corporate CEOs and the politicians who do their bidding have rigged our economy against working people and now our very freedoms are at stake.

When the freedom to join together in strong unions is secure, other freedoms follow. Like the freedom to take off work to attend a parent-teacher conference or to care for a sick loved one without fear of losing our jobs or a day’s pay. Or the freedom to choose where to live because quality public schools are available in all communities, not just in the most wealthy areas. Or the freedom to retire in dignity and comfort.

Unions are critically important to fix a rigged economy that disproportionately hurts all workers, particularly workers of color and women. Union jobs continue to be a path to social mobility for people of color and women, so they, too, have the freedom that comes with earning a decent wage and having benefits that help their families.

Right now, there are too many poverty-wage, no-benefit, part-time jobs and not enough good, full-time, middle-class union jobs that provide financial security to families and strengthen our communities.

This is a “which side are you on” moment. Are you with us? Are you ready to stand up for your freedoms?

We need to bring a loud and clear message to our elected officials. The country is better off when workers have the freedom to join unions and bargain collectively.

When working people have the freedom to come together, the sky’s the limit for our communities and our families. We’ve seen unions lift up entire communities, shape the course of history, and advance the promise of freedom for everyone in America.

Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched alongside striking sanitation workers in Memphis demanding the freedom to join a union. It was their union that gave them a voice and the power in numbers to resist racist “right-to-work-for-less” legislation, a scam that to this day drives wages down and marginalizes working people and communities of color. It is as true today as it was then: Working people in unions are winning better pay, benefits and protections that raise the standard of living for everyone. Unions use our collective voice to advocate for policies that benefit all working people – like increases to the minimum wage, affordable health care and quality public schools.

That’s why the CEOs and billionaires who have spent their money and influence rigging our economy will stop at nothing to take away the freedoms we deserve and fight for. Now they want to use the courts to rig the rules against working people even further in a case they pushed before the Supreme Court – Janus v. AFSCME Council 31. If they’re successful, they’ll try to drive down wages, kill good paying jobs, defund our public schools and services, try to silence working people at the ballot box and cripple the fundamental values we celebrate today.

We have to stop them. We have to confront this rigged system head-on. We have to stand up for strong unions – the permanent, powerful organizations that we need to amplify our voices and give us a say in the decisions that impact our families.

Unions are needed now more than ever. We have to fight for our freedoms. America is a nation of fighters, and we won’t stop fighting for ourselves, our children, our communities or our two countries.

So, I’m calling on every BCTGM member to work with their brothers and sisters in other AFL-CIO affiliated unions to call on our elected leaders in Congress to make it easier – not harder- for working people to join together in unions. I urge you to raise your voice and tell your elected officials that we need to know which side they are on. If they’re on our side – on the side of working people – then they can start right now by making clear where they stand and what they’re going to do about it.

— David B. Durkee, BCTGM International President