Members Lobby For Economic Justice
02.05.2008

UAW activists visited Capitol Hill today to meet with their representatives and senators and discuss issues confronting working people.

But before taking to the Hill, they heard from Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who said this year’s elections are about economic justice.

She called the budget the president sent to Congress yesterday “a work of fiction,” and said it doesn’t include funding for the Iraq war.

“He doesn’t even want the American people to realize the economic problems that come from us being stuck in Iraq.

“He has made his priority extending the tax breaks to the top one percent of wealth in this country,” she said, while cutting spending on domestic programs, including education.
“It is the most cynical and inappropriate budget that this president has ever sent to us, and it will not pass.”

McCaskill said most Americans don’t realize that the United States is borrowing money from Mexico to help fund the war Iraq.

“Now let’s just think about that. We are borrowing money every month, not just from Mexico, but from China, from Japan,” she said. “This is bad, because, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to negotiate trade with the guy who holds the mortgage on my house!

“We have to realize that the economic strength of this nation is more important, in the long run, to our ability to protect Americans from harm than any weapon systems we can buy. And that’s why this election is so important.”

Charlene Davis, president of Local 551 at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant and a delegate to this year’s CAP Conference, said universal health care is a key to achieving economic justice. Her daughter and son-in-law both lost their jobs - she worked for a temporary medical staffing agency, he at a car dealership - so Davis and her husband, also a UAW member, are caring for the couple’s three children.
“My granddaughter, when she was two years old, was so sick she could barely breathe. And we would take her the hospital and they would treat her for a couple hours and kick her out because she didn’t have insurance for her. Now with insurance she’s doing 100 percent better,” said Davis.

“I think anyone who doesn’t think it’s a big problem should try and walk in the shoes of someone who doesn’t have health insurance.”

CAP delegate Pete Miller of Local 12, who works at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, says the American Dream has been lost. “My parents came from middle-class backgrounds and they were able to go to college. But will their grandchildren be able to do that?”

He cited the sub-prime lending problem as one of many economic injustices that needs to be addressed. “We just had to refinance our house and the value went down because three houses on our street were foreclosed on,” said Miller.

“There’s a huge disconnect between what’s going on in Washington and what’s going on in the rest of America.

“That’s why we’re here this week. We’re going to bring back the American Dream.”

Local 1413 activist Leslie Hinshaw and other Region 8 CAP delegates called on Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Ala., during the afternoon’s Hill visits. Hinshaw works at the an automotive electronics plant in Huntsville, Ala. She said the plant had 3,500 workers before NAFTA was enacted and now employs only 700 people.

“We’re in a fight to survive,” said Hinshaw. “Bad trade agreements have decimated labor. And I think we need to put an end to bad trade agreements until they’re fair to workers.”