Labour has 'responsibility to lead the fight for democracy'

Screenshot of video of Fred Redmond speaking at the AFL-CIO meeting.

WASHINGTON — AFL-CIO Treasury Secretary Fred Redmond issues a dire warning to all workers – union and non-union alike: This November's election is not just about the presidency, it's about democracy.

Redmond said at a panel discussion at the Labor Department on September 17, the anniversary of the Founding Fathers' signing of the Constitution, that unions must lead the fight to preserve the republic.

“Trade unions thrive in democratic countries and in countries where democratic principles prevail. They do not survive in autocracies and dictatorships,” Redmond explained.

“So we have a responsibility to fight for democracy, and it should be the responsibility of the entire labor movement to lead this fight.”

Redmond did not have to explain the policy decision by name to the assembled crowd at the Labor Department. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, her party's nominee to succeed her boss Joe Biden, has repeatedly promised to obey, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

Their opponent, Republican Donald Trump, Biden's predecessor and a convicted felon, has declared he will be a dictator from day one. No one, including his own supporters, believes he will stop then. Trump says he will throw overboard parts of the nation's basic rights that he doesn't like. Three and a half years ago, he tried to overturn the peaceful transfer of power, inciting what he himself describes as an “insurrection.”

Redmond spoke at a number of events that day. One event inducted unions into the Labor Department's Hall of Service, another honored working women and showed how far they still have to go to achieve equality. A panel also discussed how unions should change in the next 100 years.

The various panelists had different ideas about how unions should change their work. The most vocal speaker was the new president of the Service Employees, April Verrett, whose union was one of those included in the room.

“We need enough worker power to do justice to workers,” whether unionized or not, Verrett said. Her solution is to organize the unorganized and give them power. “We need to be multigenerational, multi-stratified, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural.”

“We need to make room for people who look like us,” she told her colleagues on a panel of women, workers of color or both. “We need to organize the most marginalized” to cement both union gains and democratic norms, Verrett added.

“We cannot rely on the same rules, the same culture and the same practices that we have practiced for the last century.” “We need new rules, such as industry-wide collective bargaining, new leadership and new institutions.”

“Let's go beyond the National Labor Relations Act and the Protect the Right To Organize Act,” she said. Republicans in Congress who opposed the NLRA when it was passed as part of the New Deal have since weakened it and are continuing to try to do so under Trump. Negative court decisions have punctured further holes in the law and made labor law more business-friendly overall.

The PRO Act, workers' most important legislative initiative, is intended to close most if not all of these loopholes and restore balance between workers and the corporate bosses who currently rule.

The other DOL session recognized the achievements of working women, but also pointed out that they still have a long way to go.

This symbolized a follow-up film to the epic 9 to 5 and one point the speakers made was that working women still earn just 82 cents for every dollar a working man earns — and even less for working women of color. The median is where half the group is above that and half is below that..

Verrett was a keynote speaker at both ceremonies and the panel discussion before the film. At one event, new unions were inducted into the Labor Department's Century of Service Honor Roll of American Labor Organizations by celebrating those organizations' centennials — all of which occurred at least three years ago, as the last such induction was in 2013.

This session was meant to showcase how far working women have come in breaking various glass ceilings. However, since the session was held on federal property, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler took the lead and praised the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for putting workers first, giving them a seat at the table and encouraging them to unionize.

The ultimate glass ceiling, the presidency, would be broken if voters elevate Harris to the White House this fall.

In addition to SEIU, the new unions on the honor roll are train conductors, firefighters, professional and technical engineers, National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees, National Federation of Federal Employees – now a machinist sector – postal workers and roofers. The agency also honored the Federation of Police.