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Mo. IBEW Activists Mobilize Against Anti-Worker Candidate Akin

 

October 9, 2012

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In an election season rife with gaffes from anti-worker candidates, Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin’s  campaign has stood out for his widely reported and untrue comments about women’s issues and for calling his opponent, Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill, not ladylike.

 

But for working families and union members, Akin’s views on retirement security (Medicare  is “unconstitutional”), minimum wage (it should be abolished) and a host of other issues is the prime motivator for IBEW activists in the Show-Me State who are mobilizing for McCaskill.

“If Akin wins, I wouldn’t expect him to cooperate with labor unions at all,” said Kansas City, Mo.,  Local 124 President Rudy Chavez, who is coordinating get-out-the-vote efforts involving 22 IBEW locals across the state.

It would be foolish to assume that we’d have a working relationship with him.

But with McCaskill, we have a seat at the table. She supports middle-class opportunity. Claire listens to us – she doesn’t always give us guarantees, but we have a dialogue. That’s what we want to have with our officials.

That relationship has paid dividends in the past few years for members. Since President Obama’s rescue of the U.S. auto industry, carmakers have expanded production in western Missouri. Local 124 members are manning a $1 billion construction job for Ford’s assembly plant in nearby Claycomo, along with at least a half-billion dollar job for General Motors just across the Kansas state line.

The auto rescuewill put more than 200 of our members to work at Ford, and more than 200 more on the job for G.M. We’d never have that work if the government had let Detroit go bankrupt, as Mitt Romney advocated. As the plants here expand manufacturing, that means construction work – and that spells jobs for our members. Claire McCaskill knows that and supports it.

Someone asked me recently if we were better off than we were four years ago. It took a bit to come back, but the answer for a lot of Missouri IBEW members is ‘absolutely.’

On the campaign trail, Akin – who has represented Missouri’s 2nd congressional district since 2001 – has spoken out against many aspects of wage protection and federal assistance, including to the elderly. During the GOP primaries, he said that setting a minimum wage "is just another example of a wrong thing that the government does.”

I don't think the government should be setting the … wages on different things. That's basically government control of the marketplace. It always is destructive and disruptive.

Akin has called federal student loans “the stage III cancer of socialism.” He has voted against project labor agreements and opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – which makes it easier for workers to fight for fair wages. At a Tea Party event in 2011, he highlighted his vote against Medicare’s prescription drug benefit for seniors and the disabled, saying “I don’t find in the Constitution that it is the job of government to provide health care.”

It’s statements like that,  along with other frequent anti-worker talk about phasing out Social Security, that Chavez says rile retirees he talks with: “They’re on fixed incomes, with no ability to go back to the job site.”

They’ve worked, they paid into the system, they expect it to continue. Retirees deserve what they’ve sacrificed for.

That’s why we’re door-knocking and phone banking for candidates like McCaskill who want to preserve the middle class – not just for us, but for future generations. We deserve better than Todd Akin.

 

 

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user KOMUnews.