Dear Peter,                       4-8-2008

With the U.S. economy in near free fall, President Bush has sent the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to Capitol Hill—Bush wants to force a vote before he leaves office next January.

The all-out, nationwide mobilization to let members of Congress know that working Americans oppose this deal begins today.

As the fight gears up, we need to know whose side your members of Congress are on.

Call your senators and representative today to ask if they will side with workers and oppose the Colombia FTA. The call is toll free:

1-866-338-5720

We need you to report back to us: Click here to let us know how your lawmakers will vote.

The deal is wrong for workers in both countries. 

Bush has made passing this agreement a priority, even though it will do next to nothing for the failing U.S. economy.

The Colombia FTA represents a continuation of the Bush administration’s failed trade policies, an agenda that has contributed to the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2000, skyrocketing trade deficits and shrinking paychecks.

Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world for union members—39 trade unionists were murdered in 2007 and another 17 to date in 2008. Of the more than 2,500 murders of trade unionists since 1986, only some 70 cases—about 3 percent—have resulted in convictions.

Balanced trade agreements must guarantee the right to organize, lift the lives of workers in both countries and prevent exploitation. But this can’t happen in a country where workers who try to organize are killed.

Colombia’s government has thwarted workers' right to organize and bargain collectively—by weakening labor protections, refusing to register legitimate unions and failing to enforce the law against anti-union discrimination.

Remember to call your representative and senators today. Tell them to oppose the Colombia FTA: 1-866-338-5720.

In solidarity,

Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO

P.S. Please tell your friends to call the U.S. House and Senate today at 1-866-338-5720. Together, we can stop the Colombia FTA.

Dear Peter,                                4-3-2008

Across the country, working families have been getting the word out about John McCain’s sorry record on working family issues like the economy, jobs, trade, health care, retirement security and the freedom to bargain.

Many people are stunned to hear the facts about McCain's economic record--making it all the more important that we continue to expose McCain's plans to continue the failed economic agenda of George Bush.

But we need your help to keep up the momentum.

Click here to join the McCain Revealed Rapid Response Team.

As a team member, here's how you can help:

• Attend Rapid Response events in your area;
• Write a letter to the editor of your local paper;
• Share information with your friends and family about McCain’s poor record on working families;
• Post worksite fliers about the 2008 election.

Wherever John McCain has gone these past few weeks, working men and women like you have been there to confront him on economic issues--they’ve demanded that he speak to working families’ concerns.

In Denver, dozens of working men and women chanted “Stop Foreclosures” as McCain entered a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser at the Petroleum Club.

Denver resident Linda Donna had this to say:

The market is upside down, and so many of us have had our property value plummet below the purchase value of the home. McCain has no plan to deal with this crisis.

In California, working men and women turned out strongly to confront McCain in Pebble Beach and San Francisco, calling him out on his anti-worker record.

The same thing keeps happening as McCain travels across the country--from Pennsylvania to Missouri to New Hampshire.

And with your help, we’ll continue to reveal McCain’s real record on working families, wherever he goes.

Please sign up today to join the McCain Revealed Rapid Response Team.

And check out “McCain Revealed: The Briefing Book” to learn more about McCain’s anti-worker record.

In solidarity,

Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO

P.S.  Please forward this message to your friends and invite them to join the McCain Revealed Rapid Response Team. The bigger the team, the better the response.

Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

 

Dear Peter,                       3-28-2008

In the tomato fields of south Florida, modern-day servitude still thrives.

Farm workers who pick tomatoes for the fast-food industry are among this country’s most exploited workers. They sometimes are held against their will, beaten and forced to work for little or no pay. Thousands more are trying to survive with poverty wages, no overtime pay, no sick leave and no freedom to join unions for a better life.

Click here to sign the petition to eliminate modern-day servitude in America’s produce fields.

The tomato workers are demanding that Burger King and food industry leaders work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to improve the wages and conditions for the workers who pick tomatoes and join an industry-wide effort to eliminate human rights abuses from Florida’s fields.

Last April, the CIW won a groundbreaking agreement with McDonald’s, the world’s largest restaurant chain. The fast-food giant agreed to pay a penny more per pound to workers harvesting tomatoes, which means the workers get 72 cents to 77 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick, up from 40 cents to 45 cents.  

But Burger King, the world’s second-largest hamburger chain, has rejected working with the CIW to improve farm workers’ wages and conditions.

Instead, it has joined with extreme conservatives and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange to fight the agreements. In fact, to discourage the growers from paying a mere penny more per pound, the growers exchange has threatened to impose a $100,000 fine on any grower who participates in the agreements.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who signed the petition, told a Capitol Hill rally:

I come here with a message for every woman and man who picks tomatoes: You are not alone. We know about your courage, we’re proud of you for standing up for what’s right. Your struggle is our struggle. Your dream is our dream. Your goal is our goal. And we’re going to be right beside you until the morning arrives when you win what you deserve, when you have better pay and decent conditions, when you and your hard work are respected and honored, when justice is finally done!

Members of Congress, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), also have signed the petition.

You can sign the petition by clicking here.

In January, federal officials in south Florida arrested six people, charging them with conspiring to make money off workers from Mexico and Guatemala, forging documents and committing identity theft. The six are connected to a business operation in Immokalee, Fla., allegedly created to hold workers in involuntary servitude and peonage.

The campaign is entering its final month. We need your support to make it a success now more than ever.

Take a moment today to add your name to the growing list of petition signers, and forward the petition on to your family, friends and co-workers so that they may sign it as well.

With each signature, our message to Burger King and other food industry leaders that they must take responsibility for the human rights crisis in America’s fields grows even stronger.

To learn more, please read the Ft. Myers News-Press article, “Group Accused of Keeping, Beating, Stealing from Immokalee Laborers” (1/18/08), or the Miami Herald piece, “How About a Side Order of Human Rights?” (12/16/07). 

In solidarity,

Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO

P.S. The more signatures we get, the stronger the voice we give to the tomato workers suffering in horrifying conditions. Please click here to send this petition to your friends today.

Dear Peter,                               3-26-2008

Over a period of seven weeks, more than 26,000 people took the online 2008 Health Care for America Survey sponsored by the AFL-CIO and Working America. Most are insured and employed. Most are college graduates. More than half are union members.

These are the people, it would seem, most likely to have positive experiences with America’s health care system. Instead, their responses tell a sobering story about the breadth of the problems with health care in America. They say our system has fundamental problems that must be fixed.

And they’re ready to vote about it.

Click here to read the full results of the 2008 Health Care for America Survey.

And click here to listen to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney discuss the survey results.

You can learn more about our findings, download the full report in PDF format and read the thousands of heart-wrenching stories about the effects of this broken health care system on the respondents and their families.

One in three survey respondents say they had to skip medical care because of cost, a quarter had serious problems paying for the care they needed and a huge majority--79 percent--say health care is a top voting issue.

Here’s what else the survey found:

• The demand for change in today’s health care system is based primarily on deep concerns about costs.
• The failures of America’s health care system are a significant factor in broader economic problems facing working families today.
• Having insurance coverage is not insulating families from problems, concerns and dissatisfaction with today’s health care system.
• But people who lack insurance—and those who have children younger than 18 who are not covered—report particularly troubling problems getting the care they need because of cost.
• More than half of the survey takers say their health insurance does not cover all the care they need at a price they can afford.
• Medicare is not a shield against unaffordable prescription drug prices.
• Concerns about today’s health care system span all ages, races and education levels, and affect the insured as well as the uninsured.

“These are the people you would expect to have positive experiences with America’s health case system...the lucky ones--except they’re not,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said of the survey results. “They’re hurting, struggling to pay medical bills, skipping doctor visits and prescriptions because of costs. And they are extremely pessimistic about the future of our country.  They think health care is one of today’s most important issues--and they are ready to vote about it.”

Click here to learn more about the 2008 Health Care for America Survey.

The survey gives voice to working families’ concerns about health care in this critical election year, and the results will be shared with candidates for office across the country at every level. The survey exposes a health care system that costs too much, covers too little, leaves too many behind and is getting worse. The results deliver a mandate for health care reform to everyone who wants the support of working families in this year’s elections.

Our job in 2008 is to elect a president, Congress and leaders at every level who will work to Turn Around America. The road to health care reform—and to an economy that works for all—runs through the 2008 elections.

We have to help candidates who support real reform to become active champions for health care. And we have to expose and hold accountable candidates at all levels who oppose real reform and propose false solutions.

In solidarity,

Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO

P.S.  Please send the 2008 Health Care for American Survey results to your friends, family, colleagues, and anyone else who wants to learn more about the survey and how working families can win secure, high-quality health care for all in 2009.

Dear Peter,                      3-12-2008

Working families across this country are facing all kinds of hardships: a staggering economy, stagnant wages, a broken health care system, a home foreclosure and housing crisis, a disastrously flawed U.S. trade policy and a hostile climate for workers seeking to form unions.

But someone must have forgotten to tell Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who has clinched the Republican presidential nomination. “I still believe our fundamental underpinnings of our economy are strong,” McCain said recently.

It’s no wonder—McCain has said economic issues are something he’s “never really understood.”

• McCain—Wrong on Trade: McCain has cast vote after vote for every free trade agreement under the sun, including the most devastating agreement in our history, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He has gone on to praise NAFTA and its effects and has voted to make it easier for the president to enter into agreements without strong worker protections.
  
   
• McCain—Wrong on Workers: McCain voted to block the Employee Free Choice Act and supported a national “right to work” for less law. He supported President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while voting against raising the minimum wage.
  
   
• McCain—Wrong on Jobs: McCain has made it a point to tell audiences that some jobs “aren’t coming back.” What he doesn’t often explain is his role in exporting those jobs in the first place. McCain voted against prohibiting the overseas outsourcing of government contracts and voted to privatize federal jobs. He also voted to contract out federal jobs. And McCain has certainly done little to aid those who have lost their jobs, voting against the extension of federal unemployment insurance benefits.
  
   
• McCain—Wrong on Social Security: McCain voted for Bush’s Social Security privatization plan and says the only solution to fixing Social Security is through private accounts.
  
   
• McCain—Wrong on Health Care: McCain wants to make health care premiums part of taxable income, creating a new tax for working families. His plan would force working families to fend for themselves in the private insurance market and undermine employer-based health care. In addition, McCain has voted to slash funding for Medicare and opposed the reauthorization and new funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
  
   
• McCain—Wrong on George W. Bush: Since President Bush took office, McCain has supported Bush’s positions 89 percent of the time. McCain’s support of Bush’s policies reached as high as 95 percent in 2007.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll share more information with you about Sen. McCain’s record on the issues, including the economy, jobs, health care, trade, workers’ rights and retirement security.

For now, take a look at McCain Revealed: The Briefing Book, and send it to your friends and family.

And remember—sign up to be a part of our rapid response efforts and receive regular updates and alerts about John McCain:

http://www.unionvoice.org/wfean/mccainrevealed.html

In solidarity,

Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO

P.S. Please forward this message to everyone you know so they can see McCain Revealed: The Briefing Book.

Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.