CWA
7102 is proud to represent the Police, Fire Dept., Public Works, etc. in
the City of Waukee. See
news about these members in the Local News section.
TheCommittee
on Equity News is
located in ourLocal News section.
See
who is on the QWEST CONTRACTUAL COMMITTEES
in
our Resource Section. May
You and Yours have a Great Fourth of July
CWA Local
7102 Invites You to
Attend a Working Iowa
Neighbors (WIN) Meeting
Call to the
Iowa Alliance for Retired Americians 2nd Annual Convention
Click the above logo for their
web site or www.retiredamericans.org Contact: President Don Rowen
email: dprowen@msn.com Pics from the Convention
floor via
#cwa2009
Check out the
latest photos from the 71st CWA Convention. Remarks
of President Larry Cohen to the CWA Convention June 22, 2009
We meet in Washington at
an historic time. Thanks to your work last summer and fall, we have
a new government led by President Barak Obama. His election was only
the beginning as President Obama has challenged us ? this is a time for
change and the U.S. labor movement and CWA, in particular, are major engines
of change. (read
the rest of his remarks)(watch
the video) Vice
President Joseph Biden addressed the CWA Convention (watch
the video) Watch
Out, Washington, D.C. – Here We Come! More than 2,500 CWA members
will converge upon the nation’s capitol June 22-25 for the 71st CWA Convention
and Legislative-Political Conference. This year’s event will in some ways
be a “perfect storm” – it takes place as two of our signature issues, the
Employee Free Choice Act and quality, affordable health care take center
stage in Congress.
“This is an historic time,
the best opportunity the union movement has had in decades to restore workers’
bargaining rights and gain real health care reform,” said CWA Executive
Vice President Annie Hall. “CWA has been a leader in the fight to help
rebuild the middle class and our economy and our convention/legislative-political
conference in Washington, D.C. is taking place at exactly the right moment.”
CWA members will hear
in person from Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. And they’ll participate in two days of rallies
and lobbying on the Hill. On Wednesday, June 24, CWA members will walk
the halls of Congress, meeting with members and staff and demanding passage
of the Employee Free Choice Act. The following day, we will rally and lobby
to demand quality, affordable health insurance – and reform that includes
the option of a public health insurance plan without taxing workers’ existing
health care benefits. This rally is being sponsored by Health Care for
America Now, the largest single-issue coalition built in modern U.S. history
– a coalition that includes CWA and other leading labor groups.
In
a Point
of View guest column at the AFL-CIO website, Richard Kirsch, national
campaign director of Health Care for America Now! (HCAN), writes: It’s not only President
Obama who is on board for real
health reform. All five committees in Congress that work on health
care are right now joining together to write health reform bills. And 194
members of Congress have signed on with Health Care for America Now’s principles
for real reform.
Hirsch says the need for
health care reform is urgent and can’t wait.
* The
majority of all family bankruptcies in America today are due to health
care costs.
* Health
insurance premiums have risen more than 1,000 percent since 1993, the year
the insurance industry first killed health care reform.
* Wages,
meanwhile, have lagged far, far behind.
* Soaring
health care costs have led many businesses to drop or scale back health
care benefits, leaving employees at the mercy of insurance companies.
Hirsch, who has been working
for grassroots health reform for more than 20 years, says these rising
health care costs “are unsustainable”
and threaten to bring down
not only our federal budget or individual families, but our entire economy.
As President Obama says, we must bring down this nation’s health care costs,
and that means we must reform our health care system. We cannot wait.
There are four corners to
health care reform, says Hirsch. First, allow consumers the choice of keeping
the health care plan they now have or selecting a public insurance option.
Establish new rules for private insurers, including covering pre-existing
conditions.
Coverage must be affordable
and government, business and individuals will share responsibility for
providing health insurance. Health care reform must ensure that all communities
and groups, especially those currently underserved, have equal access to
health care. Says Hirsch:
Now is the time to pass
these reforms, to give all of us the care we need, and to bring down costs
so health care doesn’t overwhelm our personal bank accounts or our entire
economy.
Join Hirsch and thousands
of other health care, union and community activists June 25 in Washington,
D.C., for the largest-ever rally for health care reform. Go to
www.HealthCare09.org for more information.
Click here to read
Hirsch’s
guest column, “Health Care—We Can’t Wait.”
Retirees
Set to Tell Lawmakers: Health
Care Reform Now by James Parks,
For three hours before the
formal opening of their annual
legislative conference today, members of the Alliance
for Retired Americans got down to business by taking part in workshops
on health
care reform and Social
Security. They will be joined by speakers such as Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).
Throughout the June 15-18
conference in Washington, D.C., delegates and many high-level officials
and union leaders will discuss the best solutions to the nation’s health
care crisis and develop strategies to protect and strengthen Social Security.
In her opening address,
Alliance President Barbara
Easterling said seniors are in a unique position to influence the debate
on health care. It is important for seniors to define the health care issue
for Congress and the American people, Easterling said.
Too many debates in
this town make your eyes glaze over. People try to bury you in buzzwords
and jargon, in statistics and sound bites. They do this so you won’t notice
their top-dollar lobbyists sneaking around the back corridors of the Capitol.
We must make this year’s
health care debate different. It must be a debate about values—about
how our country will never be a just society until every American has access
to quality, affordable health care.
On Wednesday, delegates
will visit Capitol Hill where they will tell their elected representatives
that the nation must have affordable, universal health care and that they
must protect and strengthen Social Security.
“We must tell our elected
officials what is really happening back home,” Easterling said.
We must shine a bright light
into the dark corners that the drug and insurance companies don’t want
us to see. In other words, we must do what we do best—tell people our stories.
Easterling also outlined
the Alliance’s agenda for health care reform:
* Allow
Medicare to negotiate volume discounts with drug manufacturers. Veterans
Affairs does this, and its prescriptions cost 58 percent less.
* End
wasteful taxpayer subsidies to private insurance companies that run Medicare
Advantage programs at a cost nearly 20 percent higher than Medicare.
* Provide
early retirees the option to purchase Medicare coverage. Many of the 5.1
million Americans between age 55 and 64 who lack health insurance are victims
of mass layoffs.
* Create
a public insurance program to help families afford the cost of long-term
care.
* Pass
the Employee
Free Choice Act to help workers negotiate for higher wages and health
care and retirement benefits. We must tell the story of how it was only
through collective bargaining that we were able to support our families
and have a decent retirement.
Easterling warned delegates
not to forget about the battle over Social Security. Calling it “the best
anti-poverty program in the history of this country,” she reminded the
delegates that in these difficult economic times Social Security is needed
more than ever.
We must tell people no privatization,
no way, no how.
Alliance Secretary-Treasurer
Ruben Burks, a retired member of the UAW, said the problems facing the
auto industry, and the nation are connected.
Instead of creating universal
health care, we have let the big drug and insurance companies do whatever
they want, charge whatever they want and discriminate against whomever
they want.
Our nation’s manufacturing
base has crumbled. Our tax and trade policies have actually encouraged
big companies to send jobs overseas.
We have let the Wal-Marts
and the Wall Streets of the world run roughshod over our nation’s labor
laws. We have learned the hard way that when the ability to form a union
gets taken away, there will not be much left of the middle class in this
country.
This is a time for our nation
to come together, Burks said.
In times this tough, we
have to stay true to our values. Stay true to the values that guided
our generation through some pretty tough fights—building strong unions,
growing the middle class and tearing down the walls of hatred and discrimination.
Union leaders who will speak
to delegates include AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, AFSCME
President Gerald McEntee, Communications Workers of America President Larry
Cohen, Machinists President Tom Buffenbarger, Teamsters President James
Hoffa and former Alliance President George Kourpias. In addition, Alan
Cohen, chief counselor for Social Security for the Senate Finance Committee,
and Nate Loewentheil, executive director of the Roosevelt Institution,
are slated to speak.
Two
Former Labor Secretaries: Why
We Support Employee Free Choice by Seth Michaels,
Ray
Marshall, secretary of labor from 1977 to 1981, and Robert Reich, secretary
of labor from 1993 to 1997, have borne witness to a big shift in the economy
and the power of workers over past decades. They’ve seen an economy weakened
by inequality, corporate greed and the decreasing ability of workers to
bargain for their fair share—and they know now is the time to change that.
In Sunday’s Chicago
Tribune, Reich and Marshall explain clearly why we need the Employee
Free Choice Act, which would level the playing field for workers seeking
to join unions and create an economy that works for everyone. Economic
recovery starts by giving workers the tools they need to get fair wages,
better benefits and economic security, say the two former labor secretaries:
A vital component of our
nation’s recovery is making sure that we don’t return to a bubble-and-bust
economy, where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle
class gets squeezed…the economy we are rebuilding must be a sustainable
one. That starts with good-paying, secure jobs.
Long-term economic growth
requires consumers to have the purchasing power necessary to buy the goods
and services small and large businesses provide.
Lessons of history, Marshall
and Reich say, show that when workers have the ability to bargain for a
better life, everyone—workers, communities and businesses alike—benefits:
We must reform our obsolete
labor laws so workers can join unions without the roadblocks so many face.
The principles that are
the foundation of the Employee Free Choice Act—giving workers a direct
path to form unions, toughening penalties against employers who break the
law and helping workers secure a first contract in a reasonable period
of time—are ones we must never waiver on.
Read the whole thing here.