Good morning and thank you all for being here today.
It’s always a pleasure to come back for the Indiana State Council meetings.
President Buffenbarger sends his best to you for a successful conference.
Today’s meeting, coming just a couple of months after the inauguration, feels different from other meetings we’ve had during the past eight years.
This is the first time since that awful election of 2000, and the first time since Karl Rove’s Swift Boat campaign in 2004, that we’re not outnumbered, outgunned and totally on the defensive.
So before I go any further, I want to express my deepest thanks to all of you here who helped make this day possible.
The work you did during the recent presidential campaign was simply outstanding
I’d also like to add the thanks of President Buffenbarger and the entire IAM Executive Council for the outstanding job you did.
I can tell you that IAM members across the country were fully engaged right up to the minute polls closed on Election Day.
Here in Indiana, and in Kentucky, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, we hit the streets in force and urged our members to get out and vote their pocketbooks.
Indiana went BLUE this election First time in a long while In fact, the last Democrat to carry Indiana was LBJ in 1964 (44 years ago).
After eight years of Bush economics, it didn’t take much persuading I don’t know about you, but I watched in amazement as the returns came in and it became clear this nation was turning a corner.
Maybe Obama wasn’t the candidate we campaigned so hard for in the beginning, but this new president was able to win the support of working people from one end of the country to the other.
He was also able to win the support of plenty of Republicans too, who rightfully felt betrayed at what had become of their country under the Bush regime.
The sad truth is that we’ll be dealing with the consequences of Bush’s economic policies for years to come.
The same is true for his foreign policies.
And the fact is that Barack Obama might not have been able to unify the country quite as much as he did, if George Bush hadn’t made such a damn mess of everything he touched.
There are many people who say we should look to the future and not focus on who did what during the past eight years.
There are people who say he served to the best of his ability and we should respect him for what he tried to do.
Just for the record, I’m not one of those people.
This is a guy who deceived the American public on a regular basis, shredded the Constitution when it served his purpose and declared all out war on labor unions in this country.
He deserves to be remembered for what he truly was: the most harmful, the most arrogant and most aggressively anti-union president in U.S history.
But I won’t go on and on about the guy.``
I’m just as anxious as you are for him to disappear from the world stage.
I would, however, like to see his legacy stick around long enough to impact the next set of elections.
Senate Republicans in particular will face a difficult re-election picture in 2010.
At least four key Republicans, Florida’s Mel Martinez, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Kit Bond of Missouri and George Voinovich of Ohio have already announced they will not seek re-election HALLELUJAH!
The Republicans have got to keep all of the 41 seats they currently hold to be able to filibuster and block key legislation.
And in case anyone is wondering, that’s exactly what they intend to do.
While they didn’t think the public would stand for them blocking the Fair Pay Act while Wall Street was still giving themselves billions in bonuses, they do not intend to be silent when the Employee Free Choice Act comes up for a vote.
In fact, this is shaping up to be their signature campaign.
Backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from corporate contributors, House and Senate Republicans will launch an all out war against this legislation.
You can see it already.
Their main talking point, which is being repeated everywhere -- from talk radio to Fox News – is that EFCA will eliminate secret ballot elections BULL SHIT.
We may know better, but we need to recognize that this simplistic but potent argument can sway people who don’t know better.
The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Without a level playing field, unions will continue to have an uphill battle to organize new members.
And without new members, we will lose our voice, our core strength and ultimately our ability to deliver the services our members have every right to expect.
It shouldn’t be any surprise why companies and anti-union politicians will fight so hard on this.
More than half of U.S. Workers – nearly 60 million – say they would join a union right now if they could.
But we all know why they can’t – don’t we.
Companies routinely intimidate, threaten and even fire people who speak up about joining a union.
In fact, they’ve been doing it so long and with such success, they’re willing to spend hundreds of millions to ensure they can keep right on doing it.
Another of the arguments you can expect to hear is that the last thing this country needs in the midst of an economic crisis, is more unions driving business away.
If there’s ever a Pinocchio Award for companies with the biggest lie, this may be the all time winner.
After pushing so-called Free Trade policies that have cost this country millions of jobs over the past decade, it’s almost funny to hear corporations claim to be concerned about U.S. job creation.
But the key to their phony case against EFCA is their claim that it would deny workers the right to a secret ballot election.
Not only is this flat out untrue – workers can still have an election if they want – but it’s quite beyond belief that these large corporations are now casting themselves as the champions of workers’ right to choose.
I would think you’d only have to ask this question once: “Why would the nation’s largest business groups, from the Chamber of Commerce to the Business Roundtable, want to maintain the current system of union elections?
If anyone really believes it’s because they’re concerned about workers right to vote in secret, then I have some ocean front property in Indiana to talk to them about.
All joking aside, there are more than 500 groups that will be opposing this bill, some with names we know, likethe Chamber of Commerce, but others will be carefully disguised, wearing name like the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace.
So yes, we will have another campaign on our hands, one that’s every bit as important as the recent presidential campaign.
And the fact is we’ll never have a better chance to pass this legislation. Why? Because we now have a President that will sign this bill Congressmen Ellsworth and Bayh supported the bill when Bush was in office knowing that it would die on his desk are now not standing up with us knowing we have a President that will sign the Employee Free Choice Act.
It’s more than overdue and it could well make all the difference in what kind of a union we will be and what kind of labor movement we’ll have in this country going forward.
Already, we have seen a big change at the White House - - For one, the AFL-CIO Executive Council was present when President Obama signed several Executive Orders that are good for labor – first in a long time.
Let’s talk about the IAM for a minute.
Since the Grand Lodge Convention in September of 08’, we are down 9,000 dues paying members.
As of February 20, 2009, we have 392,591 dues paying members
- National IAM Plan –29% on Return
- Grand Lodge Plan –20% on Return
- Last six years General Fund decreased 32.8 million dollars
That is why the Employee Free Choice Act is important to us. We need to organize and grow the union. We all know someone in a non-union facility.
The Convention dues increase was also very important for the IA We the Executive Council thank you for your support.
We believe President Obama and the new Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis will help with LM and other ridiculous reporting requirements.
Secretary Solis told the AFL-CIO Executive Council that Bush put priority on investigating labor unions but she will investigate the Wage & Hour division and Safety & Health Administration of Employers She will put enforcement back in the DOL.
We need your help.
At Headquarters we are continually reviewing our operating costs for savings.
Lodge Audits, Local Lodge 2410 is the only one up to date.
$27,003.38 is owed to the Grand Lodge from local lodges in Indiana.
Before I close, I like to say thanks once more on behalf of myself and the Executive Council for the vote of confidence we received from our local lodges during the recent nominating process for the Executive Council, Law Committee, AFL-CIO Delegates and Delegate for the Canadian Labour Congress.
It’s an honor and a pleasure to report that we’ve all been re-elected to four-year terms and that we’ll have the opportunity to continue serving this great union that we all love so dearly.
Thank you all very much.
