Labor rights | Be a Seed for Change

Are you worried, frustrated, and angry about the continuing attacks on workers’ rights, women’s rights, economic security and opportunity for all? Are you looking for another way to demonstrate your concern — in addition to making phone calls and sending emails? On April 4, you can join with people in your community in events to send a strong message: We Are One.

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, where he had gone to stand with sanitation workers demanding their dream: the right to bargain collectively for a voice at work and a better life for themselves and their children. Now those rights are under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and dozens of other states, and women’s interests are at stake.

Can you join us on April 4 by participating in an event on your community? You can find events near you on this interactive map. http://action.nwlc.org/site/R?i=uMLiBmcwTSFoVeogJPQeMg..

Attacks on public employees’ rights to collectively bargain directly threaten working women and the vital public services they provide. Most people who work for state and local governments are women: nurses, teachers and others serving our communities. And collective bargaining helps ensure that these women have decent wages, benefits, and working conditions. For more information on why the right to collectively bargain is a women’s rights issue, check out our fact sheet.

Please join us in solidarity on April 4: We Are One.

Sincerely,

Emily J. Martin

Vice President and General Counsel

National Women’s Law Center

Here is a message for PFAW members and activists from Wisconsin State Senator Chris Larson, a member of PFAW Foundation’s Young Elected Officials Network and one of the 14 Democratic Senators who left Wisconsin in order to prevent the Republican controlled Senate from passing Gov. Scott Walker‘s union-busting budget proposal:

Friends,

I write to express my sincere thanks to you and the other thousands of PFAW supporters who have taken the time to show your support for us and for our state’s public employees. Just one week ago, our Republican Governor Scott Walker announced that he would be using a budget adjustment bill to reverse 50 years of Wisconsin history and go after worker rights in Wisconsin. If passed, the balance in our society will again tilt to the powerful over the powerless. The ability to organize and get fair treatment are qualities that built our country. This is what the last generation fought for in the 60s and the 70s to make sure we all had a better life.

If this bill moves forward in Wisconsin, rights in all America we have grown to take for granted will no longer be so reliable. Workers will no longer be able to work as a group to negotiate anything besides wages. Republicans here have already passed a “tort reform” law that makes it much harder to seek justice in Wisconsin. But this new move by Walker is much worse. It is an unprecedented attack on workers, their communities and our tradition of working with labor to move our state forward.

If this passes here, it will pass in other states.

To be clear, Walker is seeking to scapegoat unions as the cause of the fiscal crisis in an effort to divide the middle class against itself. This, while he is opening tax loopholes for the richest in the country.

I appreciate your support and seek it for the ongoing fight ahead of us. Please speak out in any way you can. We need you to let your neighbors know that this assault on worker rights will hurt every person and every community across Wisconsin, and perhaps across the nation. It will drive down wages and decrease work place safety for all workers in our country, union and non-union alike.

Thank you for all you do for your community.

In Solidarity,

Chris Larson

Wisconsin State Senator

twitter.com/ChrisJLarson