The Western Kentucky Worker

Official newsletter of the Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO

Prepared by Berry Craig, KEA-NEA and AFT Local 6038

Volume 6, Number 4, April, 2005

Steelworkers Local 665 rally is April 2 at Mayfield

Area union families and friends are urged to attend a rally in support of Steelworkers Local 665 in Mayfield April 2. The rally starts at 10 a.m. at the union hall, 463 State Rt. 1241, and will include a march to the nearby Continental General Tire plant, which has all but closed.

The union is protesting the loss of insurance benefits for approximately 200 workers who were laid off in December, according to Terry Beane, Local 665 president. More information about the rally is available from Beane at (270) 247-3819.

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Young Dinner is set for 6 p.m. April 14 at PACE 5-550 hall

The annual W.C. Young Award dinner will be April 14 at the PACE Local 5-550 union hall, 2525 Cairo Road.

The 2005 Young Award recipient is Lewis Hicks, a veteran local labor activist.

The program starts at 6 p.m. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. The meal will cost $10 per person.

Anyone wishing to pay by check may do so. Checks should be written to the Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO.

"It is important that we have a good turnout to show our support for our honoree and to keep the legacy of W.C. Young alive," said Jeff Wiggins, Council president. "The W.C. Young Award is the highest honor the Area Council bestows."

The Young Award is named for late W.C. Young, a national labor and civil rights leader from Paducah. He received the first Young Award.

Hicks is mayor of La Center. He is also a Council trustee.

"I would like to thank PACE Local 5-550 for letting us have the dinner in their hall at no charge," Wiggins said. "Other unions chipped in to help us save a little money. They will be recognized at the dinner."

Wiggins called for a large crowd "to remember our good friend W.C. and to honor Lewis."

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Workers' Memorial Day program will be held April 28

The Area Council will again observe Workers Memorial Day April 28.

The program will start at 6:30 p.m. at the Area Council hall. It will feature speakers and a prayer of remembrance.

"Hopefully, we can have a better crowd this year than in the past year or two," said Jeff Wiggins, council president. "This is an important day for we the living to honor our brothers and sisters who died at work, often because of unsafe conditions they were forced to work in." Workers' Memorial Day is a national observance that honors working people killed on the job.

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New officers were sworn in at March council meeting

Jeff Wiggins, Steelworkers Local 9447-5, swore in every new council officer except one. "I couldn't swear in myself," said Wiggins, who was reelected council president. "Benny Adair did it."

Wiggins administered the oath of office to Vice President Adair, IAM Local 1720, and the other officers. They are Hardy Williams, Retirees Council, recording secretary; Donna Steele, PACE Local 5-550, financial secretary-treasurer; Berry Craig, AFT Local 6083, sergeant-at-arms; and trustees, Bonnie Edwards, AIM-UNITE! Chapter 22; Wayne Chambers, Steelworkers Local 665; Lewis Hicks, PACE 5-680; David Childress, IAM Local 1294, and George Wiggins, RUFF. Hicks will also serve another term as COPE director.

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Johnson seeks union backing in race for Supreme Court

Judge Rick Johnson can't file to run for the state Supreme Court until next year.

But the state appeals court judge from Symsonia is a candidate. He sought labor support at the March council meeting.

"It's a long way to the next election, but I don't think it is ever too early to talk to your friends about your plans," Johnson said. "I feel like I have benefitted from your endorsement in the past and I hope I can receive it again when the time is right."

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Labor's enemies strike out again on a right to work law

Labor's foes in the General Assembly are still batting zero on a right to work law.

"Always at the first of a session, there is an attempt to pass a right to work bill," Dewey Parker, state AFL-CIO affiliate services director, told the March council meeting. "And every time it fails, thanks to J.R. Gray."

Gray, a Benton Democrat, is chairman of the House Labor and Industry Committee. He is a longtime labor ally.

Parker cautioned that right to work supporters are getting organized for a well-funded right-to-work campaign they hope will succeed. "In the meantime, we've got to keep educating our members about how bad a right to work law is for unions," Wiggins said.

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Annual Labor Day parade will head downtown this year

A familiar father-and-son team is heading the Western Kentucky Labor Day Committee, which has new plans for celebrating the old holiday.

Jeff Wiggins is the new president of the group that puts on Paducah's annual Labor Day weekend festivities. George Wiggins, Jeff's father, is vice president.

The Committee met in March and agreed to:

-- Reverse the Labor Day parade route to go down Broadway toward the river from 17th Street to 2nd St.

-- Move the flea market, live entertainment, picnic and political speaking to the waterfront from Carson Park.

This year's program will be Sept. 2, 3 and 4. The parade, political speaking and picnic will be Sept. 4, Labor Day.

"We welcome support from our local business people, but we want to keep this program in labor's hands as much as possible," Jeff Wiggins said. "Before we started back up 30 years ago, the Labor Day program had been gone for a long time.

"We've got to have money and we've got to have people to keep this going. We want union people who will dedicate themselves to helping us."

Wiggins said he is practicing what he is preaching. "Friday is my day off and every Friday I have a date with Frances to work on the Labor Day program."

He meant Frances Willey, committee financial secretary-treasurer. Linda Downey is recording secretary.

The Labor Day Committee is a non-profit organization. Committee members are all volunteers. Anybody wishing to donate money or time to the Labor Day program or seeking more information about it may call Willey at (270) 554-1627.

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Republican right has scorned Social Security since '35

By BERRY CRAIG

KEA-NEA/AFT-Kentucky

President George W. Bush wants us to think that privatization is the only way to save Social Security.

Bush wants to get rid of Social Security. He'd prefer sooner, but he'll take later.

The Republican right has hated Social Security since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law 70 years ago. Then, GOP Social Darwinists -- the spiritual forebears of Dubya's Gospel of Greed -- claimed Social Security was "un-American" and even "communistic."

Social Security was a cornerstone of FDR's New Deal program, which was based on the Democrat's idea that government had at least a basic responsibility to help citizens who needed help.

Roosevelt denounced the "economic royalists" of his day. He meant the likes of Sen. Prescott Bush, the president's Granddaddy Warbucks.

Yet Dubya, Harold Meyerson wrote in the Washington Post, has shamelessly invoked

Roosevelt's name in his campaign ultimately to scuttle Social Security.

Bush invoked FDR "as a fellow experimenter-in-arms," Meyerson wrote. But he added that "the goal of Bush's experiment is to negate Roosevelt's."

Through the years, Social Security has been assailed by those who "doubted its solvency and those that disparaged its ideology," Meyerson wrote. So far, Bush has not smeared Social Security as "un-American" or "communist" or even "socialist."

Bush has left the trash tactics to his soulmates, like USA Next, the group that ran an attack ad that would have done Sen. Joe McCarthy proud.

The now notorious spot said the American Association of Retired Persons -- which is against the president's privatization plan -- opposes our troops in Iraq, but supports same-sex marriage. The ad included a photo of a GI in battledress and a pair of smooching men in wedding tuxes.

USA Nexters inked some of the same right-wing media consultants who advised Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The Swifties were the old salts who slimed Sen. John Kerry's multi-medalled combat record in Vietnam while they backed the draft-dodger-in-chief who ducked Vietnam in the Texas Air National Guard.

Bush doesn't even believe in the idea of Social Security. Like Alexander Hamilton, Dubya thinks government is supposed to help make rich people richer.

Hamilton said flat-out that rich people were the only ones who counted. Bush agrees, but doesn't say so in public. He likes huntin' and NASCAR racin' though.

Anyway, Bush figures "the only way the American people are going to turn against a massive program that clearly works is if they can be convinced that at some point it won't," Meyerson said.

Social Security does work and will keep on working, he added. "According to the system's actuaries, if we do nothing at all, the system will remain in the black, paying out full benefits, straight through 2042.

"Beyond then, its liabilities will amount to just a fraction of 1 percent of the national income. The program, like all programs, could use some modest fixes over time, and by such measures as raising revenue through a hike on the employer's payroll tax (by eliminating the cap on taxable employee income), it can be fixed."

The bottom line according to Meyerson: Bush doesn't want to strengthen a strong system. He wants to sabotage it.

"And the plans to privatize Social Security, it's important to note, have been devised by people who are ideologically committed to its destruction," Meyerson wrote. "When Milton Friedman was calling for privatization a half-century ago, it wasn't because he feared the system would run out of money when the boomers retired. (The boomers were at that point just midway through being born.) It was because he was a committed advocate of laissez-faire capitalism."

Meyerson added, "Similarly, the advocates for privatizing Social Security have for the past quarter-century been housed at the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute -- the nation's leading institutions of economic libertarianism. But since 1983 -- when a commission appointed to augment Social Security's solvency declined to consider privatization, though it was appointed in part by Ronald Reagan and headed by Ayn Rand-acolyte Alan Greenspan (Gov. Ernie Fletcher is a Rand fan, too) -- they have understood that the only way to realize their libertarian hearts' desire was to convince the American people that the system was teetering on bankruptcy."

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Got news? Email it to Berry Craig at bcraig8960@charter.net or Jeff Wiggins at JLWiggins2@Juno.com.