Monday, September 1, 2008
Valuing Work, Honoring Workers
Whether you are a teacher, a farmer, a health care worker, a construction worker, a state or federal employee – whatever your profession – you are privileged to enjoy the dignity and honor of hard work, and the satisfaction of contributing to your community and country. But, this Labor Day, with rising energy prices and a shaky economy, working people are anxious about their jobs, their pensions, and their health care.
Historically, unions have played a major role in building and preserving the great middle class in America. That’s why I am co-sponsoring the Employee Free Choice Act, which would create a level playing field for unions in their efforts to organize and collectively bargain. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in our efforts to pass this bill in the current Congress, but we will be back next year for an even stronger push.
Meanwhile, I am concerned that private pensions are increasingly vulnerable to under-funding or outright default. Many companies are choosing to eliminate pensions for rank-and-file employees, while giving their senior executives gold-plated retirement packages. Again, to create a more level playing field, I have introduced the Restoring Pension Promises to Workers Act, which says that if a company has the resources to provide a generous retirement income to their top executives then they must provide at least a basic pension plan to the rest of their employees.
We also need to fight harder to achieve pay parity in the workplace. This year, the Senate attempted to pass a bill to address the terrible injustice in the Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co, which held that workers only have 180 days from the time a discriminatory pay decision is made to file a discrimination claim, instead of rightfully pegging the statute of limitation to any discriminatory paycheck. We fell just three votes short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster. However, you can be sure that I will keep fighting to pass this legislation – as well as my Fair Pay Act, which requires employers to provide equal pay for equivalent jobs, while also requiring disclosure of pay scales and rates for all job categories at a given company.
In the new Congress, next year, I intend to help lead the fight to boost economic security in America. We need to increase criminal penalties for employers who deliberately and willfully violate occupational health and safety laws that cause the death or serious injury of a worker. We need to continue to fight rollbacks of overtime and minimum wage protections, and find ways to restore those protections that have been eroded. We need to improve worker training opportunities that give working Americans the skills they need in order to succeed in the competitive global economy. We need to seriously address our broken health care system, and the fact that some 46 million Americans do not have health insurance.
In the heartland, we believe that all Americans deserve well-paying jobs, a safe work environment, reasonably priced health insurance, and safe and secure pensions. But we also realize that we are going to have to fight hard to keep these things – and to obtain them for people who are still relegated to the shadows of our economy. The power and responsibility to make the future brighter rests with each one of us.
