Let’s vote to stop Project 2025
The five richest men in the United States are now referred to as centibillionaires, meaning they are each worth more than $100 billion. That’s not a typo, though it is a travesty. And there’s more: The ranks of billionaires are steadily growing. Every person now on the Forbes 400—an annual listing of America’s wealthiest—is a billionaire. In fact, the ranks of billionaires increased by 88% over the past four years.
|
|
|
Roberta Lynch |
The richest 10% now control 67% of our country’s wealth. The sale of yachts is through the roof. And mega-mansions are booming too.
In other words, the super-wealthy are doing very well. So why are so many of them so bound and determined to drive the rest of us down? This is the central question provoked by the Project 2025 blueprint for restructuring American society.
This gameplan for a new Trump administration was produced by the Heritage Foundation, the policy arm of America’s wealthy elite. Its goal is to profoundly reshape American society to benefit those who are already doing exceedingly well—to increase privatization of public services, decrease affordable health care, reduce taxes on the super-rich, and concentrate power at the top.
Unions built the middle class
No surprise: They really don’t like labor unions.
That’s because, over the course of generations, unions in our country lifted up working people into a solid middle class that could afford more than the basic necessities of life; a middle class that could own a home, raise a family, take a vacation, buy a second car.
But beginning in the 1980s, the percentage of workers represented by unions in the private sector began to decline, due both to aggressive employer hostility and to jobs being shipped overseas. As a consequence, the overall well-being of those working families also took a big hit.
Union growth was initially much slower in the public sector, where the right to collective bargaining had to be won state by state. But win we did in states all across the country—and public sector union representation is now higher than in the private sector.
Unions fought for laws that strengthened workers’ rights on the job, improved workplace safety, made health care more affordable, and much more.
And labor unions didn’t just fight for a voice in the workplace. We realized that in order to improve our lives, we also needed to have a say in the political arena.
In fact, over time, labor unions became the most effective countervailing force to the nearly unbridled power that the super-rich had in politics.
Despite setbacks over the years, unions today are more popular than ever with the American public. Union workers who are fighting for better wages and benefits—many going out on strike to win them—are sending a powerful message that working people don’t have to accept the ever-growing consolidation of wealth in the hands of the few. Our country can afford to sustain the basic well-being of all.
We don’t have to be a country where so many have to work excessive amounts of overtime, or even two jobs, just to get by. We don’t have to be a country where working people live paycheck to paycheck, unable to save for their children’s education or their own retirement. We don’t have to be a country where the cost of essential medications can drive a family into debt.
More and more workers are waking up to this reality. As they do, more and more workers are seeking to form unions. And, despite threats and intimidation from their employers, more and more of those workers are succeeding.
Boy is the Project 2025 crowd mad about that. That’s why they loaded up their gameplan with a host of measures aimed at weakening unions.
A target on our backs
None is more radical, nor more dangerous, than their recommendation that Congress seek to ban collective bargaining in the public sector. Yes, they would try to prevent any public employee anywhere from being able to join a union.
This is not just an idle threat. We saw what happened in Wisconsin when Republican Gov. Scott Walker pushed through an anti-union law that resulted in a decline of more than 60% in public employee union membership. Iowa soon followed suit. And now Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is leading an all-out attack on public sector unions in that state, stripping thousands of public employees of their bargaining rights.
No doubt about it, Project 2025 is coming after the power of working people.
But know this: We’re ready to fight back. The entire labor movement in this country is rising up to say ‘no way’. We’re determined to stop them in their tracks, defend the gains we have made and make sure the path to progress remains open.
The surest way to do that this fall is by voting, and volunteering to help get out the vote, for union-recommended candidates. Let’s get to it!
