A little more than a year ago, the nation’s economic future was as bright as it had been in a decade. Projections for the nation’s budget surplus seemed to grow every day. And even as signs of a recession began appearing, the budget surplus was viewed as a shield against any serious downturn. The only question seemed to be: Would the surplus be channeled to address working families’ soaring health care costs? Create decent jobs at livable wages? Strengthen Social Security?

		From America@work, July 2002.

The Bush administration answered those questions when President George W. Bush mounted a massive campaign to win a $1.6 trillion tax cut that sent almost all of its largesse to the wealthy. Bush and the Republican Congress promised there was more than enough to go around—working families would get theirs later.

Later hasn’t come for working families. The Bush recession, after eight years of economic growth under the Clinton administration, worsened, and layoffs began to grow. When terrorists struck Sept. 11, the economic aftershocks that rolled through the economy nearly devastated some industries, such as aviation and hospitality, with hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs, their health insurance and their retirement security. Many didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits or had exhausted benefits.

Yet help for working families was held hostage for months as Bush and his allies in Congress insisted on tying economic relief for working families to huge tax breaks for business.

In January, the AFL-CIO, state federations and working family groups around the nation joined together to put even more resources and effort behind issues at the state level.

	Next steps: Buidling on their mobilization around statewide issues compaigns, Illinois union activists are getting set to register 250,000 new union voters.

“I find it insulting that the president blew the surplus and put this nation back into deficits without taking one step for working families,” AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said at one of the more than two dozen events around the nation to kick off the union movement’s state-level efforts to focus on passage of key issues.

Through state federations’ year-round political action, outreach to community allies and the resurgence of the National Labor Caucus of State Legislators—a forum for union member and union-friendly lawmakers—activists are making strides in unemployment insurance reform, affordable prescription medication, workers’ rights, corporate accountability and other key items in the working families agenda.

Unemployment insurance

Unemployment insurance (UI) is the first line of defense during economic downturns—not only because it provides vital income support to laid-off workers but also because the money workers receive from UI returns to the community, boosting and stabilizing local economies.

But more than 40 percent of jobless workers cannot collect unemployment insurance because of outdated and narrow eligibility rules. Women, low-wage and part-time workers are the hardest hit. Benefits vary from state to state, but for the most part, weekly benefits are inadequate and workers typically receive benefits for no more than 26 weeks.

After months of Bush administration and Republican roadblocks to extending, expanding and improving UI benefits, working families in about two dozen states went to their state legislators this year for help.

In Wisconsin, the state federation led a successful fight to win an eight-week extension of benefits in March. During a special February session of the Oregon legislature, working families and their unions secured a 13-week extension and a $20-a-week boost in benefits. A 13-week extension also was approved in Hawaii.

“We’re working with a lot of people, civil rights and women’s groups, pressing the legislature on UI,” says Missouri AFL-CIO President Hugh McVey.

	Victory: California union activists successfully pressed for a state unemployment insurance bill, signed by Gov. Gray Davis, that increases benefits for workers receiving UI on or after Sept. 11.

When Michigan’s legislature tacked on a “penalty week” to a UI increase, the Michigan State AFL-CIO mobilized union members, student, religious and other groups to rally on the capitol steps in Lansing to protest the proposed waiting period.

While the “penalty week” was dropped and the final legislation raised benefits for some workers, state federation President Mark Gaffney says the issue is far from dead, because about 40 percent of the state’s jobless workers still do not qualify for the increase. He has urged the legislature to revisit the UI issue.

Only the embarrassment of the approaching six-month anniversary of Sept. 11 forced Bush and congressional Republicans to drop their resistance to a minimal 13-week UI extension—loaded with Big Business tax breaks—in March that also provided states with some $8 billion for other UI expenses, such as expanding eligibility or raising benefits.

The California Federation of Labor threw its support behind several UI bills, including legislation that will provide a retroactive $100-a-week benefit increase to workers receiving UI benefits on or after Sept. 11. The increase initially covered only workers who applied after Jan. 1, 2002. Gov. Gray Davis (D) signed the retroactivity bill into law at the federation’s June legislative conference.

Affordable prescription medication

Prior to the recession, one in four Americans—70 million—did not have insurance to cover prescription drugs. Since the onset of the nation’s economic downturn, hundreds of thousands of workers, many who have lost the prescription drug coverage their workplace health plans may have provided, have joined the ranks of the uninsured.

Drug manufacturers sell the same pharmaceuticals to different purchasers at widely varying prices. State Medicaid programs and the federal government are able to leverage their market power to negotiate steep prescription drug discounts. At the same time, on average, uninsured families pay a whopping 100 percent more than the federal government pays for the same drugs, according to the nonprofit Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA).

	Fighting for immigrant rights: UFW President Arturo Rodriguez (far right) marches with state Sen. Gloria Romero at the April 4th Annual Césare Chávez Walk.

State federations, central labor councils and affiliated unions are modeling their affordable prescription medication legislation on laws enacted in Maine in 2000 through the efforts of union activists like Chellie Pingree. The former Maine State Senate majority leader was the sponsor and driving force behind Maine’s legislation, the first prescription medication pricing bill in the nation to direct the state to use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate steep prescription drug discounts for the uninsured, just as the federal government does when it buys prescription drugs for public health programs such as Veterans Affairs hospitals and the Department of Defense.

“The time has come to stop talking about the problem and enact meaningful policies that will substantially reduce the cost of prescription drugs for seniors and all Americans,” says Pingree. Term-limited out of office, Pingree is running for the U.S. Senate.

“After seeing what Maine did, we drafted a similar bill last year and we were able to get it introduced, but it was going no where. When they didn’t move on it, we decided to form this coalition to keep pushing when the legislature returned this year,” explains Ohio AFL-CIO President William Burga. The Coalition for Affordable Prescription Drugs includes unions, senior groups, religious organizations, health care activists and community groups. The group is building support through radio and television ads, packed town hall meetings and union events.

“This is really resonating in the community. We hope it will move the legislature and if not, we’ve got the groundwork done to try and turn this into a ballot initiative,” Burga says.

In Hawaii, unions rallied behind Democratic Rep. Roy Takumi’s bill to expand the state’s Medicaid discount prescription to include individuals with incomes up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level. As communications director for Hawaii State AFL-CIO, Takumi had an inside track in building union support for the legislation. A campaign of union member lobbying, plus public demonstrations, helped pass Takumi’s bill, along with legislation for a discount prescription drug plan open to all the state’s residents. Both bills were signed into law in May.

Affordable prescription medication legislation has been introduced in some 26 states and signed into law in Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico and West Virginia.

Corporate accountability and workers’ rights

For years, states have provided huge economic development subsidies and tax subsidies to companies—many of which often fail to live up to promises to create jobs, or which only create low-wage jobs that don’t support families. And in many cases, these firms fight workers who seek a voice at work. Yet the companies rarely are held accountable for how they use the money or whether they play by the rules. These “no-strings-attached” subsidies and contracts are bad for states, bad for taxpayers and bad for working families.

In California, Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, who also is a member of the National Labor Caucus, showed how important state-level action can be for working families when he introduced legislation in 2001 banning companies with state contracts from using taxpayer money to influence workers’ choices about unionizing. Working with the California federation and other allies, Cedillo succeeded in getting the bill passed and signed into law.

In June, California union leaders and workers traveled to Sacramento to press for passage of a measure that would allow all workers, documented and undocumented, to receive back pay if they were unfairly fired for such actions as attempting to win a voice at work. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision denied such awards to undocumented immigrants.

	Model bill: Union activists in Maine set the pace for activists across the nation with their efforts to pass legislation making prescription medication more affordable for the state's uninsured.

Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez says the court’s decision allows unscrupulous employers to fire workers for union activities because it removes any meaningful penalty for doing so.

“Along with a large coalition of labor and immigrant rights groups, the UFW is sponsoring Senate Bill 1818, which will protect the rights of immigrant workers,” he says.

Even when companies are required to account for how they spend their state-funded subsidies, many hide or bury objectionable activities. In Colorado, the state Senate passed a bill that would have required businesses that receive tax incentives and subsidies to disclose—in an accessible and readable manner—how they are spending taxpayer money. Pro-business forces were able to kill the bill in the House, but several of the bill’s provisions, including disclosure of the number of jobs created, their average salary and hourly wages, were added to another bill that passed.

In Washington State, the state labor council’s huge mobilization last year to break a 49–49 deadlock in the state Senate paid off handsomely for collective bargaining rights in the recently ended session. Now, with a 50–48 Democratic advantage in the Senate and a sizable House edge, working families have won full collective bargaining rights for more than 20,000 state employees—legislation allowing the University of Washington to recognize the choice of 3,700 teaching assistants to join the UAW/Graduate Student Employee Action Coalition and a bill to allow some 5,000 to 6,000 four-year college and university professors to unionize.

“The state [federation’s] aggressive measures were the real key to our success,” says Rep. Steve Conway (D), chairman of the House Commerce and Labor Committee and president of the National Labor Caucus of State Legislators.

“With union members and our allies working together on issues like collective bargaining, the idea is that by joining forces and speaking with a united voice on the issues affecting working families, we have more impact,” says Washington State Labor Council President Rick Bender.

While working families won several important state legislative fights this year, it’s just the start of an ongoing battle. Speaking of the further improvements needed in Michigan’s UI reform legislation, Gaffney sums up what’s in store for the entire working families agenda: “There is still work to be done….If the legislature can’t get the job done, we’ll have to elect a more worker-friendly legislature this November.”