What Does Labor 2008 Mean to You?
Dear Ohio Labor Leaders:
What a night! What a campaign!
You are the ones who made this happen. From worksite leafleting in the rain in March, to taking the time and effort to put together local union mail in the summer, to packing the phone banks and the walks in the fall, you have chosen who will lead this country, this state, your counties and towns.
But it’s more than that. You haven’t just picked candidates, you aren’t washing your hands of it now that the election is over. You have demonstrated that people’s voices still matter, union voices still matter, and, as always, when we unite, we win.
Now, the release staff go back to their normal jobs – letter carriers go back to letter carrying, bus drivers go back to bus driving, construction workers go back to building – and the rest of us go back to a more normal state of our own. But the work has just begun. Thanks to the campaign that you all have worked tirelessly to make succeed, we now have a crop of leaders that we can work with. People who will listen to what we have to say, and who will be accountable to working families. We have a chance to build a better future for ourselves and our families, to emerge stronger from the darkness of our recent history. We needed allies in government to help us, and now we have them.
We have new leaders in the both houses of Congress, the State House, and elsewhere to create and keep jobs in America, pass the Employee Free Choice Act, create a health care plan that will take care of all of us, create education reform that will make us globally competitive again, and create a plan to protect our retirees who have worked so hard for our country. And perhaps above all, we have a President – finally, we have a President – who cares about our kids and our parents and our jobs and our society, and who we can be proud of.
You should all be amazingly proud of what you have achieved. You should feel ownership of the victory we have reached together.
Cindy Bonneau (AFGE): “We worked our butts off for this, and I think it’s going to make a huge difference. I don’t think that Barack Obama would have won Ohio without us. I think the future is going to be a lot better for workers and for union members.”
Dearie Cheatham (APWU): “We were on the ground every day, walking, phone banking, getting the word out. Hopefully we’ll get the Employee Free Choice Act signed, and I’m hoping to see a lot of great things happen for working families in the future. It was very exciting, it was very exciting to play a part in history.”
Dana Dupler (USW): “Our campaign was very well-run, and it’s important to say that we concentrated on the real issues, the issues that really matter the most to working people. I think that we’re going to actually have a candidate in place that’s going to help us as union workers and I believe we’re going to turn this country around thanks to everybody’s efforts.”
Joanne Johntony (OAPSE/AFSCME): “ think the unions won the race. It was the hard work of the that won a victory that could not have been better for members of unions and working people all over the country. Had it not been for the labor movement this could never have been achieved. The State House seats, the Attorney General, the Presidency – these things might have been impossible without us. Who would have thought? There were a lot of obstacles people had to overcome, but we did it. Everybody was dancing last night because they saw that people were going to change in this country and a lot of lives would be improved. We saw that maybe we could get some jobs back for our people.”
Take a look at the very fun slideshow we made as a tribute to you!
Now let’s get to work.
