There is a class war going on in this country and across the world. But only one side in that struggle seems to recognize it for what it is. Politicians and their corporate masters are cutting budgets, attacking benefits and laying off workers. Real wages for workers peaked in the early 1970s, yet the official leadership of organized labor has spent most of the past forty years in denial that this is happening. The figures, and our bank accounts, our car loans and credit card bills and – for those lucky enough to “own” their homes – our multiply refinanced mortgages – do not lie. All this despite the unrelenting rise in productivity which we paid for with our brains, our bodies and our nervous systems.
The passing of the Tax the Rich resolution (below) on Friday, October 16 by members at the Illinois state convention of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) shows that workers are waking up to this reality a lot faster than our union leaders.
Attacks on public services and public sector workers
Illinois ranks 49th out of the 50 states in spending on public education, with huge inequalities between school districts: expenditures vary from $8,000 per child a year to more than $13,000 per child.
The State Constitution, last revised in 1970, prohibits a graduated, progressive income tax, mandating instead that everyone pays at the same percentage rate regardless of how rich or poor they are.
This means that the poorest 20% of Illinois residents pay about 13% of their income in State and local taxes while the top 5% of households pay less than half that and the richest 1% only have to contribute 4.6% of their bloated incomes – which average $1.3 million a year for this income bracket – to the general welfare!
A series of tax exemptions benefit the better off: for example, retirement income is exempt, so wealthy retirees get tax free pensions – regardless of their actual age – while seniors who are forced to keep on working, continue to pay taxes on the income they get from work.
And with all this freedom from taxation, big business still didnt invest in the Illinois economy.
Over the past three decades, the living standards of Illinois workers have fallen faster than the rest of the nation. Despite being a major financial and industrial center which never suffered anything like the kind of job and income loss suffered by Michigan or Ohio, Illinois has the second biggest budget hole of any state in the nation – more than $12 billion this year.
Our Union leaders solution to increase taxes
Our State Union leaders insisted that the only “practical” way to defend our jobs and living standards was a broad tax increase on incomes and services, to fill up the State’s $12 billion budget hole. Our Local has campaigned harder than any other in the State for the solution that our Union leaders prescribed.
Out of loyalty to our fellow Union members we campaigned for HB 174, the bill which Council 31 supported. This bill would increase the State’s flat-rate income tax from 3% to 5%, so that even with significant breaks for the lowest income earners, the bulk of the cost would fall on middle class and working people. If passed it would also take away some of the more egregious exemptions for the rich and some of the corporate loopholes would be closed, and it would increase corporate income tax – but only by an imperceptible 0.2%. But in the meantime it would create a new sales tax on 39 services – some of them luxury items such as boat storage and charter aircraft but with most of the revenue coming from workers pockets by taxing Laundromats, movie and amusement park tickets and internet and cable TV use (for more details see http://www.ctbaonline.org/New_Folder/Education/HB%20174%20Section%20by%20Section%20Synopsis.pdf
This is the bill that some of the Democratic leadership and even some of the business class are pushing, as even those people are forced to admit that after three decades of treating employee pension funds as their piggy bank, the State will shortly go bankrupt if nothing is done.
But the demand to raise taxes has allowed big business, the political elite and the media to drive a wedge between public employees and the rest of the working class, accusing us of trying to raise ordinary workers taxes so that we can keep our jobs, pensions and benefits at a time when the private sector is laying people off and after two decades of attacks on private sector pensions.
Socialist leadership organizes workers to protest in the streets!
Local 2858 never limited ourselves to supporting this bill, which would mean that the bulk of the cost of saving jobs and services would be paid out of workers pockets and paychecks.
Wherever we went on this campaign, we called for taxes on the rich and the corporations. This is why we were able to mobilize so many more of our members: we tapped into the class anger of the workers against the rich – the same class anger that saw massive support for the Republic Windows sit-down strikers last December, with their signs and chants of “THEY GOT BAILED OUT- WE GOT SOLD OUT”!
So on June 23rd, a day of action at the State Capitol called by community groups that are being starved of funds for the poorest in society, while the whole of AFSCME Illinois turned out a reported 500 members, we contributed 65 of that total, representing 20% of our membership. (Thanks to the abysmal labor laws, all of those workers had to take their own vacation or personal time to do this). We have only 355 members, which represents less than 1% of the State bargaining unit but we provided – according to the Council’s own figures – at least 12% of the AFSCME turnout. If the rest of the State locals had turned out the way we did, there would have been not 500 but 7,500 Union members on the streets of the State capital in one of the biggest demonstrations in Springfield history.
We were able to do this because instead of contenting ourselves with supporting one flawed bill out of all the innumerable flawed bills that happened to be in front of the legislators, we tapped into the massive anger that exists – against the rich.
Why don’t the union leaders get it?
The Union leadership have made it clear by their actions that they do not believe in doing this: at the outset of the campaign earlier this year they plainly stated to the assembled State Local Presidents: “our (by which they meant, “your”) jobs, pensions and benefits are under attack and we have few allies in this fight. AFSCME Council 31 has approximately 70,000 members and over 150 full time staff, and together with the teachers unions it ranks as one of the most significant unions in Illinois. Armed with these resources the public sector unions have the power to take our case to the working class, through meetings and demonstrations that use class demands like “tax the rich!” that would tap into other workers’ anger. Why don’t we do this?
Seemingly our leaders would rather lobby big business politicians – who as we have found out, up close and personal in our lobbying efforts, are anything but our friends – rather than reach out to the rest of the working class and find common cause with them. This is an enormously dangerous policy which leaves us appearing to be both more privileged than other workers – in that our pensions and other benefits are still theoretically intact – and at the same time, expecting those workers to pay higher taxes so that we can hold on to what we have. That is exactly the argument which is used against us in the big business media and by almost all of the politicians we have lobbied – all but one of whom, so far, has said that we should accept reduced or “two tier” pensions and benefits in return for their support of a tax increase.
Why do the Union leaders insist that we should rely on these false “friends”? Because they deny or ignore the fact that there is a class struggle. They ridicule the idea that our class enemies have an agenda, even when that agenda is spelled out for all to read in the pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, or on the web sites of the Civic Federation and the Commercial Club of Chicago. They deny all that because to admit it would be to admit that there is a capitalist class and that that class is our enemy and needs to be challenged and removed from power if we are to defend our living standards and those of future generations.
The membership sees through the lies and supports Tax the Rich resolution!
This Tax the Rich resolution is one of the ways in which we have fought against this disastrous policy, taking that fight to the floor of our State Union’s Convention to gain the support of our fellow rank and file delegates. It was written by one of our newest Stewards, a member who has brilliantly channeled her anger against what is being done to us, and signed by every one of our delegates.
When the Resolutions Committee Chairperson read out the “Resolves” there was a huge round of applause. Normally the reading of these resolves is – not accidentally – the dullest part of the convention. They are usually barely listened to. And this thunderous applause was in spite of the fact that the same Chairperson had just told the assembly to vote our resolution down!
The union leadership then attempted to defeat the resolution – not by presenting arguments against it – the speakers they sent to the floor did not come up with any – but by attempting to tie acceptance of their own resolution to voting ours down, and, when that failed thanks to a successful motion from the floor to separate the two, by setting up the vote in such a way that “yes” meant “support for the committee recommendation” – which was to oppose the resolution (in other words, yes meant no to the resolution and vice versa) – but this was seen through by everyone, and the leadership were repeatedly outvoted by the body: on two more voice votes, then a hand vote and finally a hand count.
After the vote – and a moment of stunned silence in the hall – we were congratulated in the hallways by members of the Executive Board – elected rank and filers themselves, who had been instructed to oppose it but were delighted that it passed. No-one can remember the last time that a resolution that was opposed by the union leadership, was carried by this body.
Since the Convention, the State Council, while ignoring our requests to discuss the implementation of Resolution 21 and continuing to make it very clear that the flawed House Bill 174 is its top priority, has added the following clause to its political program:
AFSCME supports measures that would make the Illinois tax system more progressive, including the enactment of a constitutional amendment that would make it possible to build real progressivity into the Illinois tax structure and to ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.
The cautious legalese portrays the moderate, responsible stance of the union leadership. Our resolution showed that the mood exists among the rank and file to go where the money is – in the holdings of the rich and their corporations – but without rank and file mobilization it will be toothless. We want to spread the word as widely as possible: the membership are awakening. They know who our real enemies are. What is needed is a fighting leadership that will carry the fight forward on behalf of our class.
Along with other rank and file activists we are building a new force, Public Workers Unite! to bring together workers from different unions who recognize that the approach of our present leadership is not enough. Watch this space as these developments unfold.
Steve Edwards, Chicago Socialist Alternative [also President, AFSCME Local 2858, writing in personal capacity].
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The Tax the Rich Resolution
The following resolution was passed by 400 rank and file delegates over the opposition of the Union leadership, at the biennial 80,000 members Convention of AFSCME Council 31 in Springfield, Illinois on October 16 2009.
We urge trade union members across the country to pass similar resolution as way to organize a working class fighback.
TAX THE RICH!
WHEREAS ..We the people of Illinois are told by those in power that there is a budget “crisis”, a deficit of approximately $12 billion,
WHEREAS ..if we don’t start taxing big companies and the rich, 65,000 people with addiction problems will lose access to treatment, 80,000 low income working mothers will lose their subsidized child care, 175,000 people will lose access to mental health services, 190,000 students will lose college scholarships, foster parents will lose 50% of reimbursements for child care,
AND WHEREAS these cuts would mean that state workers would face massive layoffs, AFSCME recognizes that those cutbacks, made at the expense of the poor, the workers, the sick, the disadvantaged, women, children, and minorities, to protect the wealthy and big companies from paying their fair share in taxes, is politically irresponsible and morally repugnant;
AND WHEREAS: AFSCME recognizes that the needs of the many should outweigh the greed of the few and that it is unwise and backwards to cut public sector jobs during a time of economic depression, and that in Illinois we tax the lowest income workers at double or triple the rate of the wealthiest 1%;
AND WHEREAS: The measure of a civilization is how it treats it’s weakest members, and this idea is supported by the great majority of the working people of Illinois, as was shown in the following surveys:
In an “Illinois State Survey of 500 likely Voters” conducted June 9th, 2009 by Rasmussen Reports,40% say that it is “Not very likely” that the Illinois legislature can balance the state budget without increasing the state income tax, while a “Paul Simon Public Policy Institute Poll Results of 800 Registered Voters” conducted in the fall of 2008 showed that: 72 % OPPOSE state cuts in spending in state universities,77% OPPOSE cuts in state spending on public safety such as state police and prisons,65% OPPOSE cuts in state spending on state worker’s retirement,65% are IN FAVOR of adding brackets to the state income tax structure so that higher income residents PAY HIGHER TAXES,
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the rich begin to pay their fair share of taxes in Illinois!!!!
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Council 31 will continue to campaign for HB 174 be adopted and implemented, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the “Research and Development tax credit” for corporations, a corporate tax loophole which reduced state tax collections by $27 million in 2000, be eliminated, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Council 31 and its allies draw up and campaign for the changes in State law and /or amendments to the Illinois Constitution necessary to:
1) Tax corporate profits at 50%, which was the approximate rate used in the 1950s and 60s when the nation’s economy flourished;
2) Raise income taxes progressively, rising to 50% of the income of the richest 1% of Illinois residents;
3) Implement a Wealth Tax, a direct tax on household wealth not including the primary residence but including holdings such as corporate stock and personal trusts;
4) Implement a tax on financial transactions such as purchases of commodity futures at entities such as the Chicago Board of Trade;
AND BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that Illinois solve it’s budget crisis not by harming the workers and the needy, but by taxing the rich who are currently walking across the backs of the people, getting off scot free and profiting from the suffering of the masses…TAX THE RICH.
Submitted by the following delegates from AFSCME Local 2858:
Delegates: Pauline Turlow, Steve Edwards, Bunnie Johnson, Dean Moulopoulos. Alternate Delegates: Diane Stokes, HCD V-P;
Mary Bennett, ORS V-P; Magali Acacia, Amy Seidenbecker.