By M. Scott Carter
The Moore American
OKLAHOMA CITY
June 18, 2008 10:58 am
—
A union member who votes for a Republican in this fall’s presidential election is like a chicken supporting Col. Sanders, the state’s attorney general said last Friday evening.
“Anyone who votes Republican in a national race and who is a member of organized labor, or a friend of organized labor, well, that’s like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders,” Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said. “Or, it’s like a chicken company voting for Drew Edmondson — it’s not goanna’ happen and it shouldn’t happen.”
Edmondson, appearing at the Labor and Friends annual banquet Friday in Oklahoma City, delivered a fiery, partisan speech to an audience of more than 200; he praised the work of Oklahoma labor unions, urging them to “continue to work toward a better state.”
Invoking the memory of former corrections official Kate Barnard, Edmondson said Oklahoma “needs to see more heroism from its public officials.”
“Kate Barnard was a champion for the poor and downtrodden in this state,” he said. “She was terribly concerned about the conditions of working people. She was particularly concerned about those who worked in the coal mines; she was concerned that children worked in those mines.”
Barnard, Edmondson said, expressed that concern during a speech in McAlester, then a major mining community in the state.
“She made a speech in McAlester,” he said, “in the heart of the coal mining country. One of the mine owners, in an attempt to intimidate her, stood at the front of the audience in front of Kate as she made her speech — it didn’t work. She pointed to the owner and said, ‘the diamond stickpin in your tie was purchased with the blood and lives of the children and adults in Pittsburg County and we’re going to change that.”
It’s that type of attitude, he said, that Oklahoma needs more of today.
“Speaking truth to power — that’s something the labor organizations of this nation and this state have been at the forefront of for more than 100 years,” he said.
Turning to recent history, the attorney general blistered former labor commissioner Brenda Reneau for her anti-union stance.
“You can’t send out a minimum wage poster with an anti-union message stuck right in the middle of it,” he said. “Isn’t it nice to have Lloyd Fields as our labor commissioner?”
Edmondson also had tough words for President George Bush.
“The real income of workers has declined by more than $1,300 since the first year of the George Bush presidency,” he said. “And today, there are 37 million Americans living in poverty — 5.4 million more than in the year 2000. The typical American family added $14,000 in debt from 2001 to 2004, in order to meet the failed economy of the Bush administration.”
And Bush’s 2007 tax cuts “gave $119,500 in tax relief to households earning in excess of $1 million.”
Citing more statistics, Edmondson said 46.6 million Americans were without health insurance.
“Between 2000 and 2005 6.8 million lost their insurance coverage,” he said. “Those are staggering numbers and the people in this room know what those numbers represent: They represent people, they represent human beings, they represent members of our unions and the family members of our unions. Union members know what it’s like to work for a living.”
Saving his harshest criticism for the country’s business executives, Edmondson railed against the million dollar salary packages many company leaders have.
“CEO salaries are in the millions,” he said. “For ConocoPhillips, the total package for its CEO was $91 million. And these figures are not the income and stock options and salaries for all executives, this is the pay for the CEO of these companies.”
The income of U.S. executives continued to climb, he said, while the country’s poverty rate increased. “Their salaries climb and yet, the real disposable income of working men and women in this country declined by $1,300.”
Quoting labor leader John Sweeny, Edmondson said the country’s next president must work to rebuild America.
“Instead of soaking American workers with failed economic policies that do not create jobs, and that build mountains of debt for our children, and destroy our capacity to meet the nations needs, the president should rebuild America with investments in what matters most: schools, our healthcare system and the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.”
It’s that message, Edmondson said, that the “next president of the United States will hear and do something for the working American families. We have a lot to do to accomplish the vision of President Sweeny.”
Talking of the “coalescence” between the Bible and organized labor, Edmondson said labor unions have been “at the vanguard of taking the good news of the Bible and putting it into practice.”
“It’s in the Bible I read,” he said. “It’s in the Bible when it talks about caring for the sick and poor and hungry and the naked and housing the homeless, and those who are in prison, and those who are in need of care. The Divine government weighs the sins of the warm-blooded and the cold-hearted on a different scale,” he said. “And it’s better an occasional mistake from a government acting in the spirit of charity than the consistent omission of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”
Working families, he said, can “build a better future.”
“I believe we can build that future, we can build a better state,” he said. “There is no doubt in my mind that when that better state is built it will be built with union labor, and when that future arrives it will wear a union label.”
But before that time comes, Edmondson said, labor unions “have a lot of work to do.”
“It’s labor, the AFLCIO, that continues to fight for health care, education, worker’s rights, the ability of an injured worker to pick his or her own doctor, and the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively — the most fundamental right of working people throughout the world — it’s labor that leads that charge.”
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