A Labor Day agenda for America By UAW President Ron Gettelfinger

As holidays go, Labor Day is hard to beat – a long weekend to spend with family and friends.

But it’s hard to enjoy a break from work if you don’t have a job in the first place. Nearly one out of five Americans has been laid off at some point during the past three years.

George W. Bush is likely to become the first chief executive since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decrease in jobs during his term of office. Since January 2001, the U.S. has suffered a net loss of 3 million jobs.

We need new job opportunities for the unemployed. Equally important, we must pay attention to the quality of jobs for those of us who are still working.

American workers are facing a decline in job security, health security and our ability to exercise our rights at work. A few examples:

Health care: The quality of health care available in America’s finest hospitals is second to none. The problem is, not everyone can get into our finest hospitals – and some people can’t afford medical care of any kind.

Forty-one million Americans are without health insurance, including 9 million children. Those of us still insured are faced with demands by our employers for increased costs and limits on our health care coverage.

Whether it’s a 28-year-old who can only find temporary employment or a 78-year-old who can’t afford drug prescriptions, America’s broken-down health care system affects all of us: white and blue collar, union and non-union.

There is new momentum to address this crisis with a universal, single-payer national health insurance plan, which is how health care is handled in every other industrialized nation.

A proposal for national health insurance was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and endorsed by seven thousand physicians, including two former U.S. Surgeons General. These doctors have the right prescription.

“Free” trade: Bush, like presidents of both parties before him, has claimed that lifting restrictions on international trade will create jobs for workers everywhere.

Brad Schwanda knows better. He’s President of UAW Local 469 in Milwaukee, and has seen more than 1,000 of his members lose their jobs since 1997. His employer, MasterLock, has relocated production to China and Mexico in search of the lowest possible wages and weak or non-existent labor rights and environmental standards.

The loss of more than 2 million manufacturing jobs in the past three years hasn’t stopped President Bush from pushing a disastrous “Free Trade Area of the Americas,” covering 34 countries in North, Central and South America.

In partnership with environmentalists and citizen groups, workers across our hemisphere are determined to stop FTAA. Instead, we demand open, democratic procedures to regulate international trade.

Workers’ rights: Every American has the right to join a union and bargain for a better standard of living. But widespread employer resistance threatens these basic rights, and labor unions now represent just 9 percent of the private sector workforce.

How do employers prevent workers from joining unions? Consider this: Right before a union representation vote at Nissan’s Smyrna, Tenn. auto plant the company showed a video featuring CEO Carlos Ghosn. Every worker was required to watch.

“We’ll be making decisions on where future growth will occur in the U.S. and in Mexico based on the efficiencies of operation,” Ghosn said. “It is without reservation to say that bringing a union into Smyrna could result in making Smyrna not competitive.”

Everyone got the message: If this plant goes union, your job is gone.

In the face of such threats, it’s no surprise that union supporters did not prevail at Nissan. In fact, employers rarely close a plant in response to a union vote. But many threaten to do so, even though such threats are illegal. Eighty-four percent of U.S. employers break the law during union organizing campaigns, according to researchers at Cornell University.

Our union and others are fighting back with neutrality agreements in which employers agree to recognize unions based on majority status and accept binding arbitration to ensure fair and timely negotiations.

The Employee Right to Choose Act, introduced by Sen. Charles Schumer, (D-NY) would offer all U.S. workers similar protections. This bill deserves widespread, bipartisan support, because the right to join a union transcends party politics.

Winning quality affordable health care, fair trade rules, and genuine protection for workers’ rights will require standing up to the monied interests that currently dominate our political system.

That’s no small task, but American workers are always up for a challenge. This Labor Day, let’s renew the great American tradition of standing up to the powerful and privileged and working together for the common good.