Labor Day 2016
By Dennis R. Pierce
BLET National President
INDEPENDENCE, Ohio, September 2 — Labor Day is the American holiday that formally honors the nation’s working class, and informally marks the end of summer.
This Labor Day comes in an election year that will present stark choices to voters, and will have a long-lasting impact on job and economic security for BLET members and their families. We are all free to cast our votes as we see fit, but I believe that BLET has an obligation to provide balanced information to all members concerning workplace issues.
Although there are politicians in the Republican Party that work to help the working class, the Party itself has for decades pushed a platform that does just the opposite. That analysis is not based on any blind loyalty to the Democratic Party, nor is it based on any emotional tie to one party or the other. Instead, one only has to read and compare the actual Republican Party platform to see it for what it really is — an anti-worker agenda that seeks to reward Corporate America at the expense of the working class
One also doesn’t have to read very far to find out how this Platform negatively affects Railroad Employees. At the Republican National Convention in July, the delegates approved a platform that calls for the direct elimination of funding for Amtrak.
The platform states: “The federal government should allow private ventures to provide passenger service in the northeast corridor. The same holds true with regard to high-speed and intercity rail across the country. We reaffirm our intention to end federal support for boondoggles like California’s high-speed train to nowhere.”
As railroaders, we know that two of the largest potential threats to our Railroad Retirement system are the elimination of Amtrak and changes to crew size on the freight roads. Not only would this platform, if adopted, result in the loss of thousands of good union jobs, it would also threaten our Railroad Retirement system. The stability of Railroad Retirement is tied to steady employment levels in the railroad industry as a whole over a long period of time. The privatization of Amtrak and the sudden elimination of 20,000 Amtrak jobs would seriously jeopardize Railroad Retirement’s future.
In addition to its decidedly anti-rail agenda, the Republican Party’s platform also calls for enactment of a national “right-to-work” law. It has been well proven that so-called “right-to-work” laws are nothing more than a windfall for Corporate America at the expense of the working class. General President Hoffa often calls such laws “right-to-work for less” — and for good reason. Employees in right-to-work states make nearly $6,000 less per year than those in states without right-to-work laws, and the poverty rates and infant mortality rates are higher in right-to-work states.
I can’t say it any more clearly than this: If you look at the Republican Party platform, it’s plain to see that they are supporting changes in America’s workplace that will harm those in the working middle class, railroad employees, and labor unions at large. We are square in their sites.
These policies don’t celebrate the working men and women of this nation as the back bone of our American society; they do just the opposite. Big business and the Republicans are doing everything in their power to ensure a weak labor movement. Why? A weak labor movement cannot best represent the interests of workers and a weak labor movement is less likely to put fair wages into the hands of any company’s employees. It’s way past time for corporations to stop treating American workers like cheap labor to be exploited, but that gets less likely by the day when politicians bought and paid for by corporate America control our nation.
Organized labor is the one movement that has fought these corporations on behalf of working class Americans, and those efforts have contributed substantially to the highest standard of living and the highest levels of worker production the world has ever known. It’s part of the legacy established by our forefathers, who founded our Brotherhood on May 8, 1863.
On this Labor Day, I ask that you do your part to uphold that legacy by fulfilling your obligation to vote in union elections, as well as the national, state and local elections coming up on November 8. It’s the best way to honor those who fought for your right to vote, whom we honor this weekend. We need to work together to transform government from a tool of the bosses to a servant of the people.
We certainly have our work cut out for us, but we realize that the stakes are far too high to lose. On behalf of the BLET Advisory Board, I wish you all a happy and healthy Labor Day.
Friday, September 02, 2016
bentley@ble-t.org