Proposal 3: Time for Action
This piece first appeared in the Times Argus.
I’ve heard people say that when we work, we’re selling our labor. But I think it’s more than that. I think that when we work, we’re selling our most precious commodity: Time. We can’t control how much we have and when it’s up, but it’s everything: Time for family, friends, and for hobbies, passions, and for yourself. All too often it’s spent working until you die.
This thought weighed heavily on me as I sat in a hospital room in Florida with my dad — a marine, a Vietnam vet, and a lifelong union laborer — who’s just beginning his fight with the cancer that will likely dictate what time he has left. At 79 years old, his generation, and the generations before him, fought literally and figuratively for the rights Americans and, specifically, American workers have relied on for decades. And so it was daunting to sit beside him, knowing that the sacrifices of his and past generations are being systematically dismantled and are at risk for a complete tear down.
Our basic rights are under attack almost daily. Just two years ago, a billionaire sending pink slips to federal employees would have sounded like the beginning of a “Twilight Zone” episode; but, in reality, that was just the beginning of a concerted campaign by both politicians and corporations to get U.S. workers back under the thumb of the wealthiest people in the world. I never thought that future generations of Americans would have fewer rights than I did growing up.
But it’s happening right before our eyes. Reproductive rights, civil rights, voting rights, and workers’ rights are all up for auction to the highest corporate bidder. For the last 100 years, this dark money has been used to influence politicians who gut labor protections across our country. These groups who lobby to cut rights of workers only care about maximizing profits for the companies they represent.
Passing Proposal 3 is a guaranteed way to protect future generations of Vermont workers from out-of-state groups looking to influence the Green Mountain State negatively for working people. There’s no rational argument against it, unless you stand to gain financially from the opportunities created when working people have fewer rights.
At a time in history when corporations and the billionaire class have bought politicians and are attempting to sow anti-worker sentiments into our collective consciousness, Vermonters can vote yes on Proposal 3 to protect themselves and the generations to come.
Proposal 3 would amend the Vermont Constitution to establish that employees have the right to organize or join a labor organization and collectively bargain over wages, hours, working conditions, economic welfare, and workplace safety. It would also prevent laws from interfering with or diminishing that right. This is not about forcing anyone to join a union. It is about making sure that workers who choose to organize have a fundamental right to do so and to have a voice in the workplace. It is about ensuring that a worker who believes their wages are unfair, their workplace is unsafe, or their working conditions need to change can stand together with their coworkers and advocate for themselves. It protects the voice of the workers on the jobsite and won’t allow rogue politicians to take away worker rights.
I can’t give my dad more time. And while it’s easy to dwell on the injustice of this, I choose to see a life’s work worth fighting for. He has what every Vermonter deserves: because of the collective bargaining agreements negotiated on his behalf and his many years of hard work and service, he earned a livable wage, had premium health care, and has enjoyed a well-deserved and dignified retirement. When I was 20 years old without any direction or anything resembling a life plan, my dad pulled up to our house in Winooski one afternoon and said, “Get in the truck, we’re going to work.” Now, more than 25 years later, as a proud second-generation member of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, I have the same protections he had.
I urge you and all working Vermonters to vote yes on Proposal 3 and afford these same protections to future generations.
Larry Moquin Jr. is President of the Vermont AFL-CIO.