Workers Emergency Recovery Campaign

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

Rank-and-file unions from various parts of the country, as well as Central Labor Councils, have been passing resolutions calling on the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to organize a massive Solidarity Day III demonstration in Washington to demand job-creation programs as well as other programs vital to working people. [See initial list of endorsers below.]

This campaign just took a qualitative leap forward when the statewide South Carolina AFL-CIO passed a similar resolution, which you will find below.

These resolutions have a receptive audience. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently argued: “It’s not time to leave it to any political party to take care of us once we put them in office. It’s time to organize and mobilize as never before to make every elected or aspiring leader PROVE he or she will create the jobs we need in an economy we need with the healthcare we need. Š I know we are the people who can mobilize a massive army to force elected leaders to deliver.”

Together, these developments signal that now is the time to act. We want to encourage all of you to raise similar resolutions in your union locals and labor/community organizations. Every resolution will help, and any single resolution might just provide the essential tipping point that results in a nationwide call for a Solidarity Day III demonstration.

Every recent poll has concluded that job loss is the top concern of the American public. If we succeed in winning a call for Solidarity Day III march in Washington, this diffuse sentiment will achieve concrete expression in the streets as working people across the country mobilize under the banner of a demand for job-creation programs, single-payer healthcare, an end to home foreclosures and evictions and war, money for education and vital social services, and so on.

The labor movement in this country represents the interests of the majority of the people in this country. The bankers do not. We have a solemn duty to press for Solidarity Day III so that the collective voice of the majority of working people can be heard across the nation.

In Solidarity,

Alan Benjamin and Bill Leumer
WERC Co-Conveners

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SOUTH CAROLINA AFL-CIO
Post Office Box 39 * Swansea, S.C. 29160 *
(803) 798-8300 * Toll free 866-798-8300 * FAX (803) 798-2231 *
E-Mail: scaflcio@bellsouth.net
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Resolution in Support of a Labor-Sponsored March on Washington
WHEREAS in the aftermath of the Massachusetts special senatorial election, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued a statement declaring, “It’s time to organize and mobilize as never before to make every elected or aspiring leader PROVE he or she will create the jobs we need in an economy we need with the healthcare we need. I know we are the people who can mobilize a massive army to force elected leaders to deliver;” and

WHEREAS despite the so-called economic recovery, the economic crisis for working people has continued unabated, with growing unemployment and underemployment, rising home foreclosures and evictions, and the underfunding of public education and vitally needed social services; and

WHEREAS the government has bestowed billions of bailout dollars on the financial institutions whose recklessness and greed created this economic crisis and who are rewarding those responsible with obscene gigantic bonuses; and
WHEREAS the labor movement’s legislative priorities — a massive program for jobs, true universal healthcare, and enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act — are all in great peril; and

WHEREAS while the government has no problem allocating a trillion dollars for two wars thousands of miles away, it has not committed funds critically needed to put America back to work, with healthcare and quality education for all; and

WHEREAS right wing, anti-labor forces, such as the Tea Bag movement, have brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets to advance their reactionary demands; and
WHEREAS there is a growing movement within the House of Labor to counter the right-wing offensive against workers’ living standards with our own massive mobilization; and

WHEREAS various union bodies, including the South Bay Labor Council (CA), acting on a resolution submitted by Plumbers and Fitters Local 393, Troy Area Labor Council (NY), and the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO, have adopted resolutions calling upon the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to organize a Solidarity Day III March on Washington D.C. in the spring of 2010 to demand jobs, healthcare, housing, full funding for public education and social services, and peace; now therefore be it

RESOLVED that the South Carolina AFL-CIO joins with our brothers and sisters in calling for a labor-sponsored march on Washington for jobs, peace and justice, which would have the capability of mobilizing the kind of massive army Brother Trumka spoke of; and be it finally
RESOLVED that a copy of this resolution be sent to the AFL-CIO and to Change to Win.
(Adopted by the SC AFL-CIO Executive Board – February 2nd, 2010)

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Initial list of endorsers of Call for a Labor-Sponsored
Demonstration in Washington for Jobs, Peace and Justice

- South Carolina State AFL-CIO
- San Francisco Labor Council
- South Bay Labor Council (San Jose, Calif.)
- San Mateo Central Labor Council
- Hartford (CT) Central Labor Council
- Troy (NY) Central Labor Council
- AFT Local 1021 (Los Angeles)
- Executive Council, AFT Missouri
- California Peace and Freedom Party
- Harlem Tenants Council
- Harlem Antiwar Coalition
- Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice
- Ohio State Labor Party
- Railroad Workers United
- Painters and Dry Wall workers Local 93 (Bay Area)

- Glen Ford (Black Agenda Report)
- Donna Smith, American SiCKO, American Patients United
- Harry Kelber (Labor Educator)
- Sharon Black (Organizer, Bail Out the People Movement)
- Monadel Herzallah (Arab American Union Members Council)
- Andy Griggs (UTLA member)
- Don Bechler (chair, Single Payer Now!)
- Larry Duncan (Labor Beat-Chicago)
- Allan Fisher (AFT 2121)
- Fred Hirsch (South Bay Labor Council)
- Jerry Gordon (Ohio State Labor Party)
- Bill Balderston (Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice)

WERC Interim National Committee Members:

- Kali Akuno, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Gulf Coast Reconstruction activist
- Alan Benjamin,* Executive Committee member, San Francisco Labor Council
- Mike Carano, Progressive Democrats of America
- Colia Clark, Veteran, Civil Rights Movement
- Donna Dewitt*, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO
- Pat Gowens, National organizer, Welfare Warriors
- Bill Leumer,* International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 853 (ret.)
- Luis Magaña, Coordinator, Organization of Farmworkers of California (OTAC)
- Cynthia McKinney, Former Member of Congress, 2009 Green Party presidential candidate
- Jack Rasmus, Economist, Professor at St. Mary’s College
- Al Rojas, Coordinator, Frente de Mexicanos en el Exterior
- Marc Rich, United Teachers of Los Angeles
- Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star mother, antiwar activist
- Clarence Thomas, Member, ILWU Local 10
- Mark Vorpahl*, SEIU Local 49, Portland, OR
- Nancy Wohlforth*, Co-Pres., Pride at Work/AFL-CIO, Vice Pres.,California Federation of Labor

(* titles & org. for id. only)

WORKERS EMERGENCY RECOVERY CAMPAIGN
P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140
Tel. (415) 641-8616; fax: (415) 626-1217
email: wercampaign@gmail.com
website: www.wercampaign.org

Tags: WERC