Hollywood, Fla.
In their 2001 resolution “One Nation, Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for All,” delegates to the AFL-CIO’s 24th Constitutional Convention reiterated the labor movement’s decades-long support for affirmative action, a program that has worked well and continues to work well to promote diversity, prevent ongoing discrimination and remedy past discrimination. As a result of affirmative action, the delegates noted, “Many professions, businesses and educational institutions now include significant numbers of women and people of color where there were few or none not long ago.”
Our convention resolution committed us anew to “continue to support affirmative action in employment and other arenas of American life.” We also promised to “defend affirmative action from attacks by the far right, especially since we recognize these attacks are often cynical ploys designed to create a wedge issue to divide Americans for political gain.”
Affirmative action is once again under attack, this time in proceedings before the U.S. Supreme Court, which is reviewing the University of Michigan undergraduate and law school affirmative action programs. The AFL-CIO is participating as an amicus in this case in support of the University of Michigan. We applaud the university for its commitment to promoting diversity within its student body as an essential strategy to help our nation at long last realize the promise of equal opportunity.
We are deeply disappointed that President George W. Bush has decided to weigh in against the university’s affirmative action program and to mischaracterize it as a quota program. The administration’s stance threatens to undermine not only the University of Michigan program but also similar programs throughout the country.
President Bush’s decision to oppose the Michigan plan slows our country’s progress on civil rights and is part of an unfortunate pattern of actions by the administration that potentially harms the advancement of women, people of color, workers and the poor. For example, the president has nominated judges and other top leaders with abysmal civil, human and women’s rights records, rolled back workers’ safety protections and other workplace rights and cut programs that help poor families. He is once again pushing a giant tax giveback to the rich that will provide little or nothing for most families, will exacerbate the terrible fiscal crisis facing the states and will prevent us from meeting the most basic needs in education, health care and homeland security.
If successful, these actions by the administration will undermine the rights, opportunities and dreams of millions of Americans, consigning many to poverty; roll back decades of progress; reopen old wounds; and sow discord, division and discrimination.
This cannot stand: On behalf of our 13 million members, the AFL-CIO and its affiliates pledge again to support and defend affirmative action and basic civil rights protections. We will steadfastly oppose the administration’s attacks on affirmative action and other civil and worker rights. And on behalf of the American people, we call upon Congress and the courts to resist these attacks as well.