Labor & Employment Law

Massachusetts Working Families Gearing Up GOTV for Coakley

By Mike Hall

U.S. Senate candidate Martha Coakley addresses Massachusetts AFL-CIO members.

Working families in Massachusetts are mobilizing for a huge get-out-the-working family-vote drive for Tuesday’s special U.S. Senate election where Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is running for the seat left vacant by Sen. Edward Kennedy’s death last year.

As Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, says, “This election has been all about working families.”

Martha Coakley has a proven record of fighting for working families, including vigilantly enforced prevailing wage, overtime, employee misclassification, and independent contractor enforcement laws in order to ensure that an honest day’s work would result in a fair paycheck with real benefits.

Coakley supports the Employee Free Choice Act and rebuilding the nation’s economy with job-creating legislation. But in an echo of the Bush-Cheney era, her opponent Scott Brown strongly opposes the workers’ rights bill, health care reform and believes the answer to the economic crisis is more tax cuts for the wealthy.

Here’s a hard-to-believe fact, but one that shows just how out of touch Brown is. He doesn’t think the recession, the financial meltdown or the housing crisis was caused by failed policies, including Wall Street deregulation. “We had plenty of regulations,” he says.

Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Kennedy, is urging voters to back Coakley,

so we can continue the agenda that Ted made the fight of his life?reforming health care, ensuring equality and justice for all, protecting our seniors and rebuilding our economy so everyone can prosper.

If you live in Massachusetts, or neighboring Connecticut, New Hampshire or Rhode Island, and would like to volunteer at phone banks this weekend, call any of these numbers: 978-766-0705; 508-450-3238; or 781-775-0268.

Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate?s committee.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 14, 2010 (boomark / email).