Really.
Teamsters, members of other unions and community activists learned otherwise at a meeting held by Laborers Local 795 in New Albany, Ind., recently. They learned one in five children in Indiana live in poverty and 400,000 Hoosiers currently depend on food stamps.
Btw, we don't think it's a coincidence that Daniels pretty much obliterated public sector unions in Indiana when he took away their collective bargaining rights by executive order in 2005. Since then, according to AFSCME spokesman Gregory King,
Daniels succeeded in reducing the paychecks of all Indiana workers. In 2004, Indiana ranked 18th in the U.S in personal per capita income. By 2009, Indiana ranked 40th.Brother Jim Kincaid, business agent for Teamsters Local 89 in Louisville, Ky., was at the discussion. He believes education is key in fighting the war on workers and reviving the middle class.
We talked about different approaches to get working people to understand what is going on in the Statehouse and across the country. It’s about getting everyone to understand what is at stake, and how to communicate the seriousness of this to younger generations, older generations and non-union members. How you vote in the polls is directly relational to your jobs. People don’t always believe it, but now we’re seeing it.Kincaid, who comes from a long generation of union members, said people have forgotten that the rights we have weren’t just handed to us.
Nothing we have was given us—we had to fight for everything. If we don’t stay vigilant, we run the risk of losing what we’ve fought for. We have to remember why we have unions and what unions have done for this country.
