The Road Ahead

AFSCME’S Legislative Agenda: Support America’s Working Families!

On Election Day 2006, America’s voters rejected the Bush administration’s agenda. We said no to giving special favors to the privileged while blocking a minimum wage increase. No to privatizing Social Security, our most important family protection program. No to spending hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives in Iraq while ignoring the war on the middle class here at home. No to energy and health care policies that have fattened oil and pharmaceutical industry profits without helping working families afford today or build for tomorrow. 

We demanded a decisive new course for our country. Now we’re determined to organize at the grassroots and work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to change America and renew economic opportunity for all.

1. Strengthen Public Services. Increase public investment in the critical services provided by our members, including lifeline entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and also domestic spending priorities like education, Head Start, child care and job training; stop the executive branch’s efforts to outsource publicly administered programs such as Food Stamps and employment services; increase oversight of contracted-out services; close corporate tax loopholes and repeal tax breaks for companies that outsource American jobs overseas.
2. Promote health care Security. Build a political movement to win universal health coverage and reduce skyrocketing medical costs; mandate that Medicare bargain for lower drug prices as well as fix the prescription drug law to protect beneficiaries and limit states’ costs; and improve Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to provide coverage for more children.
3. Protect retirement Security. Safeguard and strengthen Social Security and defined benefit pensions at the state and local levels. AFSCME opposes any measure that cuts or takes away guaranteed benefits.
4. Raise the minimum wage. Increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour after being stuck at $5.15 an hour for almost a decade. A society that demands hard work should reward hard work.
5. Restore workers’ freedom to form unions. Pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards saying they want one, and stop employers from intimidating and harassing workers who want a union; and reverse the nefarious National Labor Relations Board’s ruling that allows employees to deny workers’ rights by classifying them as "supervisors."
6. Make elections fair. Increase funding for HAVA (Help America Vote Act of 2002) to ensure that voting machines are secure and every vote is counted; and increase government oversight of elections.
7. A fair Judiciary. The U.S. Supreme Court is sharply divided on issues of critical importance to AFSCME’s members. We must ensure that future nominees to the federal bench will defend workers’ rights as well as civil rights.
8. Expand regulatory oversight. The present administration has weakened the government agencies that keep workers safe, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. We will support legislation that preserves and expands protective safeguards for our members, including extending OSHA coverage to all public-sector employees.