Labor & Employment Law

UAW Members Rally for Good Jobs Now

By James Parks

UAW President Bob King, fourth from the right, Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO President Saundra Williams and Teamsters President James Hoffa lead a Good Jobs Now! rally in Detroit yesterday.

On his first day in office, UAW President Bob King sent a clear message that the union movement is ready and able to fight as long as necessary to gain economic and social justice for all.

After delivering his acceptance speech at the UAW convention in Detroit, King joined Teamsters President James Hoffa and Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO President Saundra Williams to lead a Good Jobs Now! march and rally in downtown Detroit. Delegates to the convention and other workers joined the march that filled a city block. 

The marchers demanded Wall Street pay for its role in creating the recession, which cost 11 million jobs America. They called on Big Bankers to end their opposition to financial reform and to begin to make loans available to homeowners to stop foreclosures, to communities, small businesses and others starved of credit.

King told the crowd that the union movement must return to its roots and fight for social justice as well as economic justice.

 If we don’t win social justice for everyone, we don’t win.

That echoed a statement he made a few hours before in his acceptance speech, in which he said:

Our call, I think, is to go back to our roots and take on the fight in America for civil rights, for labor rights, for First Amendment rights.

King said the union is putting together a strategy for the 2010 elections:

We all have disagreement with President Barack Obama. We have forgotten sometimes to put that in context and talk about all the good things he’s done.

He said workers should not let the Republican Party get away with blaming Obama and congressional Democrats for the economic crisis. The truth is, King said, when George W. Bush entered the White House, he was handed a $127 billion surplus by President Bill Clinton. When Obama took office, he was handed a trillion-dollar deficit.

Don’t let any Republican get away with saying Democrats caused this crisis. No president has been as accessible to unions representing workers [as Obama]. He saved General Motors and Chrysler from disaster. The Republicans had no problem giving hundreds of millions of dollars to bankers.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 18, 2010 (boomark / email).