Feb. 19—The union movement endorsed Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for president today at a meeting of the AFL-CIO General Board. After the endorsement vote, Kerry joined workers and several hundred union members and federation and affiliated union staff and leaders at a rally at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.
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| John Kerry told union members and leaders when he is elected president, he will work for all working families. |
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| Hundreds of union members rallied in Washington, D.C., with leaders of the AFL-CIO in support of John Kerry for president. |
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“Every place I have been in this campaign, I have seen the wreckage of the Bush economy....Jobs on the run....Every single year George Bush has promised to create jobs and every year he’s ending up losing them,” said Kerry, as union members waved colorful placards and signs in support of Kerry for president.
Four workers, including those who have lost or risk losing jobs and health care, also spoke at the rally, and Kerry vowed to take back the nation for them and all working families.
“Just last week, the White House promised to create 2.6 million jobs. But yesterday, George Bush said he couldn’t be held responsible for knowing the numbers of new jobs because he’s not in charge of numbers. Well it doesn’t take a lot of fuzzy math to count to zero. We’re going to put America back on track, back on the road to prosperity, the road of fairness, the road of jobs,” Kerry said.
“We've had three years of national priorities that placed the special interests of corporations and the wealthy over those of regular workers and their families,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “John Kerry will lead us in our fight to make creating good jobs America's number one priority—to make affordable health care a right and not a privilege.”
The General Board represents the democratically elected leadership of the union movement, including the leaders of all 64 member unions, the AFL-CIO Executive Council, representatives of AFL-CIO state federations and trade departments. Several unions, including the UAW and UNITE, abstained from the endorsement.
Kerry Backs Overtime and Jobless Protections
Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 1984, Kerry has compiled a 91 percent lifetime AFL-CIO voting record on important working family issues. In 2003, Kerry voted to protect workers’ overtime rights from the Bush administration’s assault on the Fair Labor Standards Act that could cost 8 million workers their overtime pay. He backed the extension and expansion of federal unemployment insurance benefits for long-term jobless workers and voted to protect millions of retirees from the loss of their employer-provided prescription drug coverage as part of the recently passed and seriously flawed Medicare prescription drug law.
Other highlights of Kerry’s legislative tenure include addressing the nursing shortage, increasing the minimum wage, expanding early childhood development and children’s health insurance coverage, increasing law enforcement funding and providing assistance to families of Vietnam veterans who were victims of Agent Orange.
As president, Kerry said one of his first priorities will be to restore the nearly 3 million private-sector jobs—including 2.8 million manufacturing jobs—that have disappeared under the Bush administration.
Kerry will fight to roll back President George W. Bush’s tax cut for the wealthy while expanding tax breaks for the middle class. Kerry told the Feb. 19 crowd he supports repeal of tax breaks and loopholes that reward “any Benedict Arnold CEO or corporation for exploiting the tax code to export American jobs overseas.”
Kerry: Long-Time Supporter of Freedom to Form Unions
Kerry has a long record of supporting workers’ freedom to form unions and supports card-check and employer neutrality in which employers recognize workers’ choice if a majority of workers sign authorization cards asking for union representation. He also is co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act (S. 1925) and supports measures to restore the bargaining rights of hundreds of thousands of workers in the Defense and Homeland Security departments that are under attack by the Bush administration.
See where Kerry stands on other important working family issues, including retirement security, corporate accountability, civil and human rights and more.
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Watch clips from the Feb. 19 AFL-CIO rally with John Kerry.
Read Kerry’s statement in support of workers seeking to form a union at
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