Labor & Employment Law

Massachusetts Working Families Mount Big Weekend Push for Coakley

By Mike Hall

This weekend, Massachusetts working families are on the phones, doorsteps and worksites–mobilizing a get-out-the-vote drive for Martha Coakley in Tuesday’s special election for the U.S. Senate.

Coakley, the Bay State’s attorney general, has a long record of supporting working families. As attorney general, she vigilantly enforced prevailing wage, overtime, employee misclassification, independent contractor and workplace discrimination laws. She has earned the support of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.

As a U.S. senator, Coakley says she will be a strong advocate for job creation and the Employee Free Choice Act. She vows to continue the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s legacy of fighting for working families.

Her opponent, Scott Brown, strongly opposes the Employee Free Choice Act. Like an echo from the Bush-Cheney days, Brown believes the answer to the economic crisis is to give more tax cuts to the wealthy.

Brown opposes a proposed fee on Wall Street firms that received taxpayer bailouts and then gave extravagant bonuses to executives. Coakley says that exemplifies a major difference between them.

I choose to stand with the middle-class taxpayers who deserve to get their money back from the big banks that caused the economic crisis and are now lavishing bonuses on failed executives. Scott Brown is standing with Wall Street CEOs. As attorney general, I’ve stood up to Wall Street and recovered millions of dollars back for taxpayers

In the state legislature, Brown turned his back on working families when he voted to cut unemployment benefits for people who needed them the most.

If you live in Massachusetts, or neighboring Connecticut, New Hampshire or Rhode Island, and would like to volunteer at phone banks this weekend, call any of these numbers: 978-766-0705; 508-450-3238; or 781-775-0268.

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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.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 17, 2010 (boomark / email).