Labor Committee for Howie Hawkins for Governor is Launched

Cuomo attacks Public Employee Unions

Howie Hawkins - Green for Governor
Media Release
www.howiehawkins.org - www.gpny.org

For Immediate Release: July 16, 2010

For More Info:
Howie Hawkins, 315 425-1019
Mark Dunlea, 347 725-4885

Labor activists from throughout New York State have started a committee to support the gubernatorial campaign of Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins.

Howie Hawkins is a member of Teamsters Local 317 and active in the national Teamster rank-and-file reform caucus, Teamsters for a Democratic Union. Howie presently works unloading trucks and rail cars at UPS. He is the former Director of CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives working for an economy that is cooperatively owned, democratically controlled, and ecologically sustainable.

"I'm supporting Howie Hawkins because I believe that working people will never mover forward in the political field until we support candidates and a party by and for workers. The Democrats and Republicans are fundamentally creatures of the corporations that fund them and therefore represent their interests. Howie Hawkins is a working Teamster who understands this question, and who will fight with us for a working class agenda," said Jon Flanders, a railroad machinist, past president of Local 1145 of International Association of Machinists, co-chair of Railroad Workers United, a cross craft caucus of North American railroad workers. and a trustee of the Troy Area Labor Council.

"New York State workers face growing insecurity, deteriorating public goods and renewed attacks on their living standards. As Governor, Hawkins will address the fact that New York has the greatest income disparity in the country, raise the state minimum wage, reform our tax system, increase and expand unemployment benefits, investing in affordable housing, and recognize the need to strengthen the right of workers to organize. Hawkins will ensure that economic development focuses on creating sustainable, living wage jobs rather than providing merely more corporate welfare for companies that play one state off the other for the biggest tax giveaways. He will ensure that corporate criminals who harm our pension plans, workers and communities are prosecuted." said Prof. Stanley Aronowitz, who has been a steelworker, a union organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (now UNITE) and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Worker, and a member of the Executive Council, Professional Staff Congress, AFT

Hawkins has been a long time advocate for repeal repressive labor laws such the Taft-Hartley Act, the Hatch Act, and state Right-To-Work Laws which have crippled labor's ability to organize by outlawing or severely restricting labor's basic organizing tools: strikes, boycotts, pickets, and political action. Hawkins plans to make publicizing and solidarity with workers' struggles a central feature of his campaign

"Politicians from both major parties have given hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare to their corporate campaign contributors while CEO's have awarded themselves with obscene compensation packages as they slash jobs for Americans workers through mergers, runaway investments, subcontracting, and outsourcing abroad to countries where labor is repressed and cheap. What we need to do instead is win to labor law reform, fair trade rules, and a policy of full employment that would create millions of new living-wage jobs directly and indirectly through public investment in a sustainable green economy featuring infrastructure restoration, public works and services, and conversion from nuclear and fossil fuels to solar-based renewable energy," Hawkins added.

Hawkins supports an increase in the state minimum wage to $10 an hour; a constitutional amendment to guarantee a living wage job; strengthening of workers’ rights, including the right to unionize, starting with a repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act; a reduction in the work week to 32 hours; increase government support for employee ownership; enactment of a single-payer universal health care system; extending state and federal labor laws to protect farm workers; and, mandatory six week vacations for all workers.

"Unions have contributed about $15 billion to Democratic campaigns since 1980 with little to show for it in terms of labor law reform and pro-labor economic policies. If we had spend that money on independent labor political action, we could have created a labor daily newspaper, a labor news and public affairs radio and cable TV network, and a powerful independent pro-labor political party with paid organizers in every county in the nation," Hawkins noted.

Below is the call of the Labor Committee for Howie Hawkins and the initial signers.

Labor Committee for Howie Hawkins for Governor of New York State

We, the undersigned New York State labor union members, support the Green Party campaign for governor by Howie Hawkins.

Environmental, financial and political crises rock the nation. But measures taken in response by those elected to power have made things worse, not better.

Taxpayer bailouts for the Wall Street rich combined with reductions in public programs are not the answer. Endless wars and environmental catastrophe blister on top of job losses. We have suffered progressively unaffordable costs of living in the face of a real decline in our benefits and wages.

With the state and the nation plainly headed in the wrong direction, we need a strong labor movement more than ever. But where is the voice of working people in the elections?

Labor has no voice when it is ever more difficult to tell the difference between the Democratic and the Republican Parties. A prime example: Andrew Cuomo's proposed austerity policy for New York State.

Andrew Cuomo intends to cap state spending while rejecting higher taxes on the rich. His anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-democratic platform is unacceptable. It echoes the big-banker proposals of his Republican opponents.

Working people must have a voice in the November elections, independent of the Republicans and Democrats. The race for Governor of New York is a good place to start.

Howie Hawkins can help us find our voice. Because he is a rank and file unionist, a member of Teamsters Local 317, Howie Hawkins understands workers' concerns in a way that the professional politicians never can and never will.

Howie Hawkins' platform includes:

PROGRESSIVE TAXES
Take the Rich Off Welfare! The Wealthy Must Pay Their Share to Erase the Deficit and Fund Jobs, Schools, Health Care, Homes, the Environment, and Revenue Sharing with Local Governments

REFORM ALBANY
Replace the Two-Party Corporate State with Multi-Party Democracy through Proportional Representation, Democratize Legislative Rules, Strengthen Disclosure Laws for Lobbying and Election Expenditures

FULL EMPLOYMENT
Jobs for All at Living Wages

HEALTH CARE FOR ALL
A Single-Payer, Community-Based Health Service

Howie Hawkins complete platform can be seen at http://www.howiehawkins.com/2010/index.php/platform.html

It is time for working people to give up choosing between bad and worse.

It is time to find our own independent voice.

It is time to support a genuine working class alternative to the parties of corporate rule.

It is time to support one of our own, a worker who understands our problems and issues and who will fight with us.

It is time to support Howie Hawkins for Governor of New York State.

Please join us in the Labor Committee for Howie Hawkins.

You can email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to add your name to the list of labor Hawkins endorsers.

Initial Labor Endorsers of the Hawkins Campaign for Governor