“I am now a proud American with a vote and a voice,” said former Canadian and first-time U.S. voter Bill Hoogenhout, a US Airways aircraft technician of Local 1725 in Charlotte, NC. “I urge every American to use their vote.”

Election Day: A Chance to Fight Back
Every U.S. worker has good reasons to vote but none have more compelling reasons than unionized airline and railroad employees. November 2nd should be a ‘Day of Reckoning’ for the Bush Administration’s four-year campaign to roll back wages, eliminate benefits and slash organizing rights throughout the industry.

Leading the list of offenses is the outrageous 9-11 airline bailout bill that distributed $5 billion in immediate cash assistance to airline executives without providing any aid for hard-hit airline workers. The same legislation created the Air Transportation Stabilization Board (ATSB), a federal agency staffed with Bush’s political appointees who guided the government’s campaign to gut pay and pensions at the nation’s largest airlines.

Rail Talks Held Hostage

Rail workers also faced Bush appointees with anti-union agendas. The National Mediation Board’s refusal to resolve a stalemate at the nation’s Class 1 freight rail carriers holds rail workers hostage to the terms of a five-year-old contract. Other administration appointees are pressing for privatization of the nation’s passenger rail system, a move that threatens thousands of rail workers’ jobs.

Corporate Assaults

Corporate America’s assault on collective bargaining rights began shortly after the presidential election in 2000. Within months, Bush Administration officials joined forces with airline industry lobbyists to push for legislation that would replace collective bargaining with forced arbitration and give government officials the right to impose contract terms on union members.

More assaults soon followed. In one of his first acts as director of the Transportation Security Administration, Admiral James Loy unilaterally stripped union organizing rights from more than 60,000 airline security screeners. The reason? Union protection and national security were incompatible, according to Loy.

“On November 2nd, we can give the current admin-istration four more years to destroy transportation jobs,” declared Transportation GVP Robert Roach, Jr. “Or we can say ‘Enough is enough.’   The choice is ours.”