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AFL-CIO Plans Aggressive Agenda for 2005

APWU Web News Article #3-05, Jan. 5, 2005

The AFL-CIO has begun to outline an ambitious agenda for 2005 to help workers protect their income security and retirement benefits, as well as their right to organize.

Activity will focus on three major issues:

• The fight against the privatization of Social Security, which President Bush has identified as his highest domestic priority this year;
  
  
• The struggle to protect good jobs – with healthcare coverage and retirement security; and
  
  
• Efforts to defend the freedom of every worker to join a union.

In a Dec. 30 memo to national union presidents and leaders of state and local labor councils, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney invited union representatives to help develop a unified action plan to carry out the agenda.

“This year will present many significant challenges not only for postal workers, but for all Americans who find their retirement, job security, and rights threatened,” said APWU President William Burrus.

“We will fight to maintain postal jobs, wages, and benefits when Congress considers postal reform legislation, and we will work with the AFL-CIO and other organizations to protect Social Security, safeguard good jobs, and defend the right of workers to organize,” he said.

AFL-CIO President Sweeney urged unions to build on the success of last year’s Labor 2004 political action program, its strongest-ever grassroots mobilization effort. He urged leaders at the national, state, and local levels to prepare to help elect more pro-worker candidates to Congress in 2006 and beyond.

The Labor 2004 effort helped produce an unprecedented 27 million votes from union households in November’s national election, which led to victories for a number of pro-worker congressional candidates.

“The APWU stands ready to work with our union brothers and sisters to take back America for working families,” Burrus said.

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