Legislative Issues

Right to Organize –

The middle class in this Commonwealth and around this country was built on the right of workers to organize into unions to bargain collectively for wages, benefits, working conditions and a voice at work. For decades this fundamental right to organize has been under attack by anti-union think tanks, politicians and employers. The right to organize is a fundamental human right and a right granted to workers by the federal and state governments. Unfortunately all too often employers ignore this basic, guaranteed right and deny their employees a voice at work. Just as often these violations go unpunished by the government agencies designated to monitor these elections. There is nothing more important to the Massachusetts AFL-CIO than for our elected leaders to stand up for the right of workers to organize.
 
Collective Bargaining Rights –
Once workers freely decide to form a union their power is found in the right to collectively bargain their wages, benefits, working conditions and their ability to collectively assert their voice at work. After the right to organize, collective bargaining rights are among the most important to the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. It is vital that elected officials understand and defend collective bargaining rights and stand with workers to resist any weakening of these rights.
 
Wages –
For decades wages have not kept pace with the increases in worker productivity, executive compensation or profit. Worker productivity has skyrocketed while wages have remained stagnant. Executives and profit-lines receive an inordinate and unjust share of increased revenues than do the workers whose skilled labor actually creates the wealth. It used to be that as productivity rose workers would receive a fair percentage of the increase in revenues that resulted. That has not been the case for decades. Because of the power of collective bargaining workers who belong to unions earn up to 30% higher wages than those not in unions who perform similar work. The only way to rebuild the middle class is for government to protect and adopt laws that inject fairness into our economic models. These include minimum wages, prevailing wages, overtime pay, annual raises that allow workers to keep up with rising costs of goods and services, and other fair wage standards that ensure workers are compensated fairly and justly for their indispensable contribution to our economy.
 
Prevailing Wage –
Public construction constitutes a significant portion of the construction market in which our members work. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO has always supported legislation such as the prevailing wage law and competitive public bid laws which allow all contractors to compete fairly on public construction projects without slashing wages or cheating on Unemployment Insurance, Workers’ Compensation, payroll and other taxes.
 
Health Care Quality, Affordability and Accessibility –
Health care is one of the most important issues effecting working families today. Massachusetts has been on the cutting edge of improving quality and access to health care for our citizens. The first few years of the state’s comprehensive, far-reaching and historic health care reform have had mixed results. Hundreds of thousands of previously uncovered people have acquired health insurance through the Commonwealth Connector. Residents at the lower rungs of the economic ladder have received substantial subsidies in order to put health insurance within their financial reach. There is a mandate that children be covered and programs have been put in place to assist families in affording health insurance. However, the individual mandate is a basic tenet of the reform requiring all residents to have health insurance and has resulted in a drastic paradigm shift of responsibility for health insurance costs. Instead of an equal distribution of responsibility between employers, government and individuals, the new health care reform shifted a disproportionate amount of responsibility onto individuals and weakened the role and level of accountability of employers dramatically. The next “frontiers” of health care reform should focus on restoring the role of employers to that of an equal partner with individuals and government in providing health insurance and efforts to lower the skyrocketing costs of health care.
 
Pensions and Retirement Security –
One of the most fundamental aspects of the American quality of life is the ability to retire with dignity and enjoy our latter years free of the financial stresses that burdened us during our working years. In order to retire with dignity workers need adequate resources to sustain a decent quality of life and to accommodate the inevitably rising costs of food, energy, prescription medicines and other essentials. Defined benefit pensions are an absolute necessity in securing a dignified retirement. Unfortunately, public policies in recent years have sought, and in many cases succeeded, to jeopardize a secure retirement for the American workforce. For the most part employers, as in health care, have abdicated a great deal of their responsibility to provide retirement security by doing away with defined benefit pensions and putting the burden of securing a decent retirement squarely on the backs of workers. The shift from defined benefit pensions to 401(k) plans is a shift from a secure retirement to an insecure retirement. Retirement must be at least a three-legged stool with Social Security, defined benefit pensions and personal savings, such as 401(k) plans and annuities. It is vital to the Massachusetts AFL-CIO that elected representatives stand up for pensions and retirement security for working families by supporting policies that strengthen all aspects of retirement.
 
Education –
The future of our Commonwealth depends on the quality of the education we provide to our children. Public education started in this Commonwealth and organized labor has been central to the struggle of maintaining a quality public school system for our members. The education this Commonwealth provides to our children will determine the degree to which they can achieve the quality of life that we expect for them. The public school system in Massachusetts is one of the most heavily unionized in the nation. It is no coincidence, therefore, that our students have topped all the various national rankings of educational assessments for years and years. Contrast that with states that have lower union density in their education system and you will note that those states constantly rank near the bottom in national rankings of education assessments. Teachers and organized labor have a vested interest and a wealth of knowledge and perspectives with which to positively impact our public education system in this Commonwealth. The Education Reform Act of 1993 set a paramount goal for the Commonwealth to provide a public education system of sufficient quality to extend to all children the opportunity to reach their full potential and to lead lives as participants in the political and social life of the Commonwealth and as contributors to its economy. Over the past 15 years school districts have made significant educational progress for all students. Remaining educational challenges include: strengthening academic standards, closing the achievement gap and implementing a strong support system for teachers in the classroom. It is incredibly important to us that our elected officials consider our viewpoints and seek out our input during all debates on education.
 
Occupational Safety and Health –
Perhaps the contributions of the Labor Movement that are most taken for granted are the accomplishments we have achieved by our fights for occupational safety and health. One of the reasons the Labor Movement formed was the desire of workers to act collectively to improve their working conditions. Safe jobs at safe workplaces are an indispensable factor in workers’ quality of life. Nothing is more central to quality of life than one’s health and ability to return safely home from work. Each year on April 28th the Massachusetts AFL-CIO commemorates the lives of workers who died on the job on Workers Memorial Day. This year’s ceremony honored the lives of 80 workers who did not make it home to their families from work. Losing 80 workers to mostly preventable accidents is unacceptable in this day and age. Frankly, one worker dying on the job in preventable accidents is one worker too many. Too often these deaths are the result of a lack of training, a lack of precaution, and unreasonable productivity demands that sacrifice safety. As outlined in our annual report co-authored with MassCOSH, “Dying for Work in Massachusetts,” for every worker killed on the job, ten more die from occupational disease. In addition to these tragic and preventable deaths, thousands more workers are exposed to toxic chemicals and other hazards that have deleterious effects on a worker’s health. Occupational exposure to unsafe conditions causes many chronic diseases that ultimately take the lives of workers and carry with them an incredibly high cost of treatment. The legislature has the ability to enact laws that protect the health and lives of workers. Elected leaders must stand with working families on the most critical issues of occupational safety and health.
 
Economic Safety Net –
Critical safety nets have been put in place by our government to ensure that no one suffers catastrophic hardships when events out of their control make it impossible for them to reach their full earnings potential to support themselves and their family. These safety nets have been the difference between remaining in the middle class and slipping into abject poverty. Unfortunately, these safety nets have been under attack by employers and anti-worker political forces for decades. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO is constantly fighting to defend these key programs and seeks elected officials who will stand up for these critical safety nets.
 
If you work hard at your job, you should be able to care for your own health and for the health of your family. Yet our work rules are not in sync with today’s economy and prevent us from being responsible to both our work and our family. A shocking 47% of workers in the private sector in Massachusetts lack a single guaranteed paid sick day. These workers lack the ability to stay home from work to get well, or to care for a sick child or elderly parent without losing a day’s pay or even their job. Employers who do not provide any paid sick days encourage “presenteeism” (coming to work sick) that is costly in lowering overall productivity, spreading contagious illnesses, and forcing employers to deal with more than just the cost of absenteeism. Moreover, this contributes and exacerbates rising health care costs for everyone as workers cannot seek preventative care, stay sick longer and invariably spread disease. Additionally, domestic violence survivors need safe days and should not be forced to sacrifice their jobs because they must deal with the effects of domestic violence on themselves or their children. For all these critical reasons, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO strongly supports legislation that seeks to establish earned “paid sick days” for workers in the Commonwealth. Paid sick days are guaranteed in 156 nations, and of the 10 most competitive nations, only the United States does not do so. To ensure the success of our recent health care reforms, our state needs to update our workplace standards to include paid sick days.
 
Revenues and Tax System Fairness –
Paying taxes is the price we pay for living in a civilized society. To paraphrase Congressman Barney Frank, taxes pay for the things we choose to do together. The choices we make about who pays taxes and how much they pay is the foundation for what Massachusetts can achieve as a Commonwealth. Unfortunately, our system of raising revenue is unfair and inadequate. Individual taxpayers in working families take on the overwhelming brunt of the tax burden, especially with soaring property taxes, while employers have abdicated a large share of their responsibility. Corporations continue to avoid paying their fair share through various loopholes and other tax avoidance schemes. In 1968 the corporate income tax made up 16% of the total taxes collected in the Commonwealth. By 2001 that percentage had decreased to 7%, with some recent years reaching as low as 4%. There are currently numerous pieces of legislation that are moving through the legislative process that will seek to restore fairness to our tax code in terms of employers’ responsibility inching closer to that born by the individual taxpayer. It is important that we have ample revenues in this Commonwealth to ensure we have the best public services possible. While it is not politically popular or expedient to advocate for taxes, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO takes the bold position that in order for us all to enjoy the strongest possible Commonwealth we must all pay our fair share. It is our hope that our elected state legislators will have the same courage and support ideas for revenue-generation, as well as support tax system fairness.
 
Public Safety –
Police, fire and other first responder personnel are proud union members that perform heroic and extraordinary, sometimes deadly work in order to protect our families. They are the most selfless of public servants. Too often their working conditions are attacked by those who would ignore the contribution of these brave men and women in the name of an anti-union, anti-public employee agenda. It is important to the Massachusetts AFL-CIO that our elected officials understand and appreciate the contributions made by unionized public safety workers and stand up for them once in office.
 
High Quality, Worker-Focused Economic and Workforce Development –
The Massachusetts AFL-CIO believes that the Commonwealth cannot engage in “high road,” high quality economic development without including workforce development in all initiatives. In the ever-evolving economy in this Commonwealth and our country, it is essential that government espouse the notion that our workforce is the key to the strength and growth of our state’s economy. Workers must constantly be trained, re-trained and up-skilled in order to survive in our fast-changing economy. Currently 152,000 workers are known to be without work. Yet employers have 92,000 jobs they are unable to fill. This is direct evidence of a chronic skills gap that results from decades of neglect of our workforce development system. Fortunately, in recent years new leadership in government has allowed Massachusetts to act upon a renewed focus on linking economic and workforce development.
In addition to providing our workforce with the tools they need to secure family-sustaining and secure employment, it is vital that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts pursue economic development policies that are fair, strategic and intent on ensuring the state’s economy receives all the benefits private employers should provide when given state assistance to grow their business. The state should demand high quality job standards from employers that benefit from state assistance. Additionally, the state should make it a point to hold employers accountable for the promises and commitments that they make when they seek public assistance for their businesses. It is important that as we work to grow our economy in Massachusetts that we do so in a way that makes employers equal partners in our mission to build the strongest possible Commonwealth with the best possible jobs that allow for the highest quality of life for our working families.
 
The Massachusetts AFL-CIO has long supported responsible gaming in the Commonwealth. With the most successful Lottery in the nation and neighboring states with booming casinos built largely on use by Massachusetts residents, it is clear that the people of Massachusetts are in favor of a responsible approach to gaming. Recently, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO took a strong stand in favor of establishing Destination Resort Casinos in the Commonwealth because of the overwhelming proof that they would represent only the highest quality economic development. Destination Resort Casinos would create thousands of construction jobs during the build-out and thousands more permanent jobs during operation. Additionally, hundreds of millions of dollars in new public revenues would be raised with this responsible economic development proposal. By licensing Destination Resort Casinos the Commonwealth of Massachusetts can ensure that the jobs created in the construction and operation of the facilities will be of the highest caliber, with family-sustaining wages, good benefits, safe working conditions, worker training and career ladder programs. In addition to job quality standards, the Commonwealth can ensure conditions that are favorable for PLAs and organizing drives, as well as insist on responsible procurement policies. In fact, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO only supports Destination Resort Casinos if they live up to these high standards. Because the economic development merits of establishing Destination Resort Casinos in the Commonwealth are so clear, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO will continue to pursue them as a jobs and revenue creation mechanism.