By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

Nationwide, union members and working people are the bedrock of the economy. Here in New York City, the services our hard-working members provide make it possible for the booming financial sector to generate billions of dollars for hedge fund traders and investment bankers. But while corporate profits are up, the real income of most Americans has shrunk, and the quality of life for working-class families and poor people is in deep trouble.

• The prices of food and housing, gasoline and higher education are climbing fast and getting ahead of our paychecks.
• Rapidly rising rents and purchase prices have created a housing crisis for the middle class, while foreclosures on mortgages issued by predatory lenders are driving working families from their homes.
• Higher premiums and deductibles put health insurance out of reach for more working people every day. Some 47 million Americans, two-thirds of them employed, now have no insurance coverage and no access to health care.
• The lives of nearly 4,000 American men and women have been sacrificed in a war based on lies, a war without end that is eating up the resources we need at home to provide better education and health care and improve our crumbling infrastructure.

The working people who have made America great are suffering, and the District Council 37 members who keep our city running are not getting their fair share of the good things of life.

This is a bleak picture, if you look at it as an individual confronted by vast economic and nationwide issues. But in District Council 37, we are united with our sisters and brothers in a powerful union. We can improve our quality of life because this union knows how to fight for our needs at the bargaining table and in the political arena.

Right now, we are preparing to negotiate an economic agreement for 100,000 of our members. I will seek substantial wage hikes to make up for the big bite that rising costs are taking out of our paychecks and press for higher city payments to our union welfare funds to preserve the value of our benefits. I aim to protect members from future fiscal problems by locking in our gains with a contract covering at least three years. We will press hard because, for the first time in decades, it looks like we have the opportunity to finish bargaining before the current contract expires and save members the pain of waiting for retroactive raises.

I will be reminding the mayor that through our work, we have contributed immensely to the city’s economic gains. I will be pointing out that we now deserve to share fully in that progress. I am cautiously optimistic, because he has listened to reason in the past. But contract bargaining is never easy. While we do not negotiate in the press, I am urging every local leader and every member to stay alert. I will call on you if action is necessary to help achieve our goals.

In the end, it is only through the strength and power of the membership that a union can make progress, in negotiations and also in politics. The disastrous war and the sorry state of our national economy are the results of electing the wrong president and, before November 2006, the wrong Congress.

The current Congress, now led by Democrats, is trying to reverse Bush’s cuts in education, child care, Medicare and Medicaid, working to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and restore labor’s right to organize, and fighting to support the troops in Iraq by bringing them home. But this agenda has been blocked by Senate rules that let the Republican minority frustrate progress. It is clear that to improve the quality of life for most Americans, we have to strengthen the pro-union majorities in Congress and take back the White House.

Volunteer now and restore economic justice
To accomplish this, we must raise our largest political war chest ever, and we must mobilize an army of volunteers for the 2008 election. I urge every member to join PEOPLE, the political action committee of our national union. If you are already a member, now is the time to become an MVP — Most Valued Participant— by upping your contribution to $4 a paycheck.

And I am asking members to give of themselves, to volunteer to give up a little time to make a better America for all. To contribute or volunteer, call the DC 37 Political Action Department at 212-815-1550. Only your efforts can stop the bloodshed and restore economic fairness to our country.