"Organizing is the single highest priority for you, for me and for everyone in the labor movement... because it is our lifeblood," said Linda Chavez-Thompson, Executive Vice President of the national AFL-CIO, as she keynoted Thursday's opening session of the Washington State Labor Council convention in Wenatchee.

The highest ranking woman in the U.S. labor movement delivered a call to action, reciting the convention theme of "Si Se Puede (Yes, We Can)," and urged each one of the hundreds of union delegates from across the state to step up their efforts to recruit new members.  She said everything labor does -- from contract bargaining to political action -- depends upon increasing our membership and that failure to do so is not an option.

WSLC President Rick Bender, who opened the convention, again put the state federation at the disposal of all affiliated union locals to "do whatever we can to assist you in your (organizing) campaigns."  Delegates were also reminded that, even if their locals had no campaigns, they could do their part by taking the message to their churches and community organizations that the right to join a union is a basic human right that deserves community support.

A panel of speakers who also focused on organizing were frank on the subject.  "We (in Washington state) are in crisis," said Bob Gorman, State Director of the national AFL-CIO.  "We are still one of the most heavily unionized states in the country, but our numbers are dropping."

WSLC Political Director Diane McDaniel and AFL-CIO Regional Political Director David Gregory discussed the new Declaration on Elected Officials and Organizing.  Unions are now asking endorsed candidates to sign a pledge in which they commit to supporting the right to organize by becoming involved when employers unfairly and illegally fight to prevent unionization.

U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee agreed, telling delegates Thursday "elected officials need to do more" to encourage employers to behave responsibly and be neutral as their workers decide for themselves whether joining a union is in their best interest.  He said he was pleased to have written a letter urging management neutrality at Northwest Hospital during last year's successful SEIU organizing drive, and he was proud to attend a rally and support University of Washington teaching assistants represented by GSEAC/UAW in their efforts to get an enforceable contract.

Friday's agenda includes U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, a panel on transportation issues including State Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald, a panel on energy issues including BPA Acting Administrator Steven Wright, and the convention banquet speaker, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney released the following statement Wednesday regarding the latest budget projections of the Incredible Shrinking Budget Surplus:

At the start of this year, the country looked to the possibilities created by a robust economy and an enormous budget surplus, which could have paid for investments to meet the needs of the American people and to save for the future.  The Administration and Congress chose instead to spend the surplus on an outsized millionaire tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the very wealthy. 

While proponents of the tax cut asserted that it was modest and affordable and would leave room to fund important national priorities, today=s budget news belies those claims.  This oversized and irresponsible tax cut now threatens to undo the substantial fiscal progress of the last decade.  The tax cut is already wiping out the Medicare surplus.  And even by its own estimates—using its own rosy assumptions and new-found budget gimmicks—his Administration is on the verge of dipping into the Social Security surplus.  By giving big tax cuts to the very rich, President Bush is squandering years of hard work by America=s families and their efforts to build up historic surpluses for Medicare and Social Security.

Fortunately, though the threats to Social Security and Medicare are real and alarming, this situation is not irreversible.  Congress should act now to stop the most excessive and irresponsible pieces of the tax cut.  Calling off the planned phase-out and repeal of the estate tax would be a good place to start.  This costly provision benefits only the wealthiest two percent of taxpayers, leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab for this excess today and into the future.

The private individual account plans being proposed by longtime advocates of Social Security privatization and now being jointed by the President raise even more serious questions and pose even bigger threats to working families.  Creating privatized individual accounts will drain more than $1 trillion from Social Security in just the first decade, depleting the surplus even further and necessitating huge cuts in Social Security benefits.

The Washington State Labor Council Convention convenes Thursday morning in Wenatchee (see Aug. 17 posting describing convention highlights) and this page will be updated with developments from the convention by your faithful webmaster.  In the meantime, here is the convention agenda:

The following Letter to the Editor by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney appears in today's Washington Post, in response to a recent oped by a restaurant association lobbyist who supports Bush's plan to allow states to "opt out" of future minimum wage increases:

Dear Editor:

That Richard Berman of the Employment Policies Institute thinks states should be able to override federal minimum wage hikes [op-ed, Aug. 17] is no surprise: His group regularly opposes -- or seeks to trim -- minimum-wage and living-wage increases. But this proposal, which in effect amounts to a repeal of the federal minimum wage, is one neither Congress nor the American people should swallow.

Minimum wage increases have not been shown to cause significant job losses. And even at the proposed rate of $6.65 an hour, the minimum wage sets a low floor that all states can afford but that, for workers, still falls below the poverty level.

Allowing states to opt out of increases would hurt the workers who most need the protections of a federal standard. Had an opt-out procedure been in place in 1973, the federal minimum wage in many states today might be $1.60 an hour. Improbable? Consider that the state minimum wage in Kansas is $2.65; in Texas, until recently, $3.35; and in Wyoming, which bumped its rate to $5.15 this year, the state minimum wage had been $1.60.

Maintaining a federal standard serves an additional important purpose. One reason Congress originally legislated a federal minimum wage was to prevent the interference with interstate commerce that occurs when states keep wages low to compete with one another for business. That purpose is equally compelling today. Many lower-wage states already enjoy a competitive advantage over states where wages are higher. Giving them an added edge by allowing them to override federal increases would fuel a race to the bottom that would be bad for workers and ultimately bad for the nation as a whole.

JOHN SWEENEY
President, AFL-CIO

The following column by a Brookings Institution scholar appeared recently in the Washington Post and offers an excellent new argument on the debate over Bush's simultaneous tax cut and plans to privatize Social Security:

Fiscal Chutzpah
By Gene Sperling

In Sunday school, I was taught that the definition of chutzpah was a child who murdered his parents and then pleaded for the mercy of the court because he was an orphan. The Bush administration's simultaneous pleadings that a large, explosive tax cut is affordable and that Social Security is in imminent danger certainly could be a contender for the definition of fiscal chutzpah.

First the administration started the year by successfully pooh-poohing concerns that a large tax cut should be resisted until we know how much of our surplus should be saved for Social Security solvency and reform. The result was a tax cut that -- including lost interest -- amounted to $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years and a whopping $4.1 trillion over the second decade of the new century.

Now the administration has taken the position that the important date for Social Security financial distress is not 2038, as current law suggests, but 2016 -- the year that annual payroll taxes are not enough to cover annual benefits for existing retirees. Democratic critics have cried foul, claiming that the administration is intentionally ignoring the assets in the Social Security trust fund and using an earlier date as a scare tactic to convince the public that Social Security needs a radical privatization overhaul to fix it.

However one views the Bush administration's tax cut or its view that Social Security is in financial distress 22 years earlier than commonly believed, what is most remarkable is the fact that it is able to hold both these positions at the same time.

That is why, rather than join the troops of Democratic critics who wish to blast the administration for using the 2016 date, I want to take their claims on Social Security's early distress seriously and encourage them to do so as well. For however sound are the arguments that the Social Security trust fund has real assets that can keep the system solvent until 2038, if the administration seeks to point to the financial trade-offs encountered in 2016 as a means to spur our nation to increase national savings and act quickly to prevent a more serious financial crisis, I am a potential convert. But for the administration to convince anyone that using the date 2016 is a serious call to action -- and not just a scare tactic for privatization -- it needs to show that it is serious about increasing national savings now.

Simply diverting 2 percent of payroll taxes for new individual accounts doesn't do it. Simply choosing to save a dollar in an individual account, instead of saving it by paying down debt, is at best a wash.

Indeed, plans to divert current payroll taxes actually make the 2016 crisis worse. If we withdraw 2 percent of payroll revenue now being used to pay benefits to current retirees to save for future accounts, the date that payroll revenues can't cover benefits comes nearly a decade sooner, in 2007!

Any serious effort to build savings or find transition funds to a reform must start with reconsidering at least part of the $6 trillion that is being drained from the surplus over the next 20 years. The administration and Congress could protect the current stimulus tax cut, still give every American a long-term tax cut and ensure that 98 percent of Americans get the full tax cut they were promised, while still freeing up enough funds to close half the financial gap Social Security faces. How?

The president and Congress can pass a Social Security reform reserve fund that simply says that in light of the Social Security issue our nation cannot responsibly implement the full repeal of the estate tax, and the second and third stages of the tax cut for those in the top 2 percent (36 percent and 39.6 percent tax brackets) until we know that we have saved enough to save Social Security. The 98 percent of American families making less than $180,000 -- those in the 15 percent, 28 percent and 31 percent tax brackets -- would get their full tax cut, and even those in the very top brackets would benefit from these tax cuts as well as the initial cut in the highest rates. No one would see his existing taxes raised in any way.

The money -- more than $1.25 trillion -- freed up from this repeal would be back on the table for Social Security reform and could close over half of the 75-year financial solvency gap. While hard choices would still be needed for 75-year solvency, the administration would have the moral high ground to ask for such sacrifice. If it keeps the full tax cuts in place, reaction to every tough choice it asks of others is going to be justifiably met with the claim that the measure in question could be avoided if the next stages of the tax cut for the well-off were taken back.

This type of Social Security reform reserve fund would show critics and skeptics that the administration is serious and credible in using a 2016 crisis date for Social Security. A less fiscally responsible response would make them too much like the child who gave away money being saved for his parents retirement and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that his parents would soon be going broke.

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The writer was director of President Clinton's National Economic Council and
assistant to the president for economic policy. He is now a guest scholar at
the Brookings Institution.