In My Opinion: Gore 2000 - For CWA, an Easy Choice

CWA's Executive Board voted on Feb. 14 to endorse Vice President Al Gore for the presidency in the 2000 election (read related article in this issue of CWA News). It was probably the earliest that we've ever made a presidential endorsement. And that's because the right choice was never more clear at this stage of the political season.

Recent polling of CWA members shows that Gore is the overwhelming favorite out of the field of potential candidates from both parties, and members have strongly positive feelings about the policies of the Clinton-Gore administration overall.

And rightly so. This is the first administration since FDR's time to publicly advocate the unionization of workers. Gore himself carried a union card when he was a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean newspaper — and the card he carried was that of The Newspaper Guild, now affiliated with CWA.

His concern for workers' rights is heartfelt. I had an opportunity to introduce the vice president to a group of workers who had been fired by Sprint — from the telemarketing office in San Francisco, Sprint La Conexion Familiar — simply for trying to organize a union.

This was at an AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting early last year, and I can tell you that Al Gore was visibly moved by speaking to these workers, most of them Hispanic women with families. And he was outspokenly angered by the conduct of an employer who would use fear and intimidation and go so far as to shut down an entire subsidiary to keep people from organizing a union.

Another example of the kind of friend he has been to CWA goes back earlier in the administration, to 1993. When he saw on his calendar for the following week that there was a meeting scheduled with CEOs of the Bell regional companies and GTE, Gore sent word that if he was to meet with them, the president of CWA must also be present. So the phone executives had to call up and invite me in order to have their meeting with the vice president.

No administration official, of course, has been more influential in the area of telecommunications policy — or more knowledgeable. Gore invented the term "information superhighway," and he was the driving force behind the creation of the President's Commission on the National Information Infrastructure, of which I was also a member.

From working with him both on this commission and subsequent panels on skill needs for the next century, I can testify that no one in public life is more committed than Al Gore to providing training opportunities and fostering the growth of high-skilled, well-paying jobs in communications and information technology.

Gore has played a key role in most of the administration's major programs and initiatives, and in fact he has been more active and directly involved than any vice president in history, particularly in areas such as protecting the environment, crime prevention, cutting waste and improving services of the federal government, issues dealing with science and space technology, and family issues such as pressing for expansion of family and medical leave protections.

Most recently, Vice President Gore took the lead in launching an administration initiative to increase the development of private pensions, especially by small businesses, lower the time period for pension vesting to three years, and promote pension portability by liberalizing the rollover of assets between different kinds of savings and retirement plans.

The retirement security initiative comes at a time when the Clinton-Gore White House is taking the lead in using budget surplus funds to make sure that the Social Security and Medicare systems remain stable and fully funded for the next century — an effort that quite possibly will carry forward during the transition from this administration to the next.

Al Gore, along with Bill Clinton, has stood firm in fighting off attacks by the anti-union right-wing that would have destroyed the 40-hour workweek, legalized employer dominated unions, weakened the right to strike, slashed workplace safety and health funding, and allowed employers to raid pension funds.

As president, Gore will carry forward this administration's commitment to the issues of greatest concern to CWA members and all working families — affordable health care and patients' rights protections, retirement security, safe schools and smaller class sizes, lifelong learning and skill training opportunities, and equal rights for women and minorities.

Al Gore has more experience in the workings of the presidency than any other potential candidate. And that experience, together with a brilliant mind and a compassionate heart make him uniquely qualified to lead America as our next president.

This portion of this website is paid for by the CWA Committee on Political Education - Political ontributions Committee, with voluntary contributions from union members and their families, and is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.