Building Trades News

Building Trades Get Out the Vote

Jobs, Healthcare, Pensions, Training and Education at Stake this Election click to enlarge Gary D. Parker, an electrician with IBEW Local 11 stood outside of the Kaiser-Sunset jobsite in the early morning hours of October 6, along with members and Business Representatives from other Building Trades Unions including UA Local 250, Ironworkers Local 433, Local 11, UA Local 250 and staff members from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. The group was greeting their brothers and sisters as they started their shifts with an important message about the November election. “The November election is an opportunity to elect Phil Angelides and have a pro-labor governor in Sacramento that actually cares about working class families,” said Parker. The Get Out the Vote team was their to remind Union members about the anti-worker policies of Arnold Schwarzenegger who  tried to take away lunch breaks and overtime pay away from workers, and who callously attempted to cut  pensions and death benefits to the widows of firefighters and health care services for children, the click to enlarge elderly and disabled. While many in the news media seem to have forgotten Schwarzenegger’s attacks on police, firefighters, nurses and school teachers in last November’s special election, Eric “Action” Jackson, an organizer with UA 250, remembers clearly.  “He’s taking the American Dream away from the people. The governor has got to go.” Despite the governor’s attempts to move to the center after his right-wing agenda was spanked by organized labor last year, his election-year “extreme makeover” shouldn’t fool anyone. Schwarzenegger supports the same pro-corporate policies of the Bush administration that devastated working people for the past six years. Angelides, in contrast, is trying to get corporations to pay their fair share and has committed to enacting tax breaks to middle class families.  The fact that Angelides currently trails the governor in the polls doesn’t discourage Eric Jackson, “Polls don’t vote,” he said. Some political analysts also believe that many Republicans will be discouraged from going out to the polls as a result of the demoralizing impact of the GOP’s ongoing sex and corruption scandals that have plagued the party over the past few years. click to enlarge The last few weeks leading up to the election will be crucial. Organized labor in Los Angeles and Orange Counties was the deciding factor in defeating the governor’s anti-worker agenda last year.  This year we have the power to put Angelides in office for working people all across California. In order to do that we need to get our members and their families out to the polls on November 7. In addition to the fight for governor, there are many important congressional races, state assembly and senate races, municipal and county races and ballot measures that will impact the pocket books of our members. “It is important that we elect a whole slate of pro-labor candidates—from city hall to Sacramento, from the county seat to Washington. Even a seemingly minor position such as a seat on the water board can impact work opportunities for our members,” said Richard Slawson, Executive Director of the LA/Orange County Building & Construction Trades Council.  See pages 8 and 9 for the full slate of endorsed candidates from the LA/Orange County Building Trades.

 

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