Why People Join Unions
 A union is a group of workers who come together to win respect on the job, better wages and benefits, more flexibility for work and family needs and a voice in improving the quality of their products and services. Workers in unions counter-balance the unchecked power of employers.

 People who work for a living know about the inequality of power between employers and employees. Workers want to form unions so they can have a voice on the job to improve their lives, their families and their communities.

With a union, working people win basic rights, like a say in their jobs, safety and security. Unions help remedy discrimination because union contracts ensure that all workers are treated fairly and equally. When there’s a problem on the job, workers and management can work together as equals to solve it.

Higher union wages translate into stronger tax bases for our communities, better schools and infrastructures and healthier local economies. And when workers have a real say in their hours and working conditions, that means they can spend more quality time with their families.

Unions help make sure our nation prioritizes working people’s issues: unions hold corporations accountable, make workplaces safe, protect Social Security and retirement, fight for quality health care and ensure that working people have time to spend with their families.

All workers deserve to make a free and fair decision on whether to form a union.

Despite recent job gains, a net 79,000 private-sector jobs—nearly 1,500 each month—have been lost since President George W. Bush took office. By March 2005, 7.7 million were officially jobless—but experts estimate the total number of unemployed and underemployed is nearly 13.6 million.

U.S. jobs that pay well have disappeared as a result of the recession that began in 2001—the Bush administration’s failed economic policies based on tax cuts for millionaires, trade laws that encourage companies to move jobs overseas and the unwillingness of Bush and Congress to embrace job-creating programs to repair the nation’s roads, schools and rail and water systems.

The number of workers facing long-term unemployment and unable to find work before exhausting their unemployment benefits is at an all-time high. But the Bush administration and congressional Republicans stubbornly refused to extend unemployment benefits until the public outcry forced action—but not to workers who already have exhausted their benefits.

Senators consider boosting retirement age

DAVID ESPO
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Work till you're 69 before getting full Social Security benefits? That's one possibility - for Americans who retire two decades or more into the future - as Republicans on a key Senate committee review suggestions for improving the program's solvency.

No decisions have been made yet, and it could be fall before the politically volatile Social Security issue reaches the floor of either the House or Senate, if then.

At the same time, an increase in the retirement age is one of the suggestions that Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, outlined last week for fellow Republicans on the panel, according to several officials. Officials said Grassley's suggestion for raising the retirement age would be phased in, possibly over two decades or more, depending on future demographic trends.

The Iowa Republican has also suggested steps to hold down benefits for future upper-income retirees. The officials who described his presentation did so on condition of anonymity, saying the discussions were confidential.

Under current law, the age for retiring with full Social Security benefits is 65 years and six months. It is rising gradually until it reaches 67 for individuals born in 1960 or later.

The GOP lawmakers on the committee are scheduled to meet again on Thursday to continue their work, hoping to agree on a plan that can unify Republicans and allow them to advance one of President Bush's key second-term priorities.

The issue has become intensely contentious in Congress, with public polls indicating tepid support for Bush's call to allow younger workers to create voluntary personal accounts funded out of their Social Security payroll taxes. Democrats accuse the White House of seeking to privatize the depression-era program, while supporters of the accounts argue they are needed to modernize it.

"The easy path is to do nothing. That's the easy political path," Bush said Tuesday in State College, Pa., where he appeared before a young audience drawn from rural families.

"The tough path is to come together and get something done. But let me tell you something. By doing nothing, you're about to hear that we will have done a disservice to a younger group of Americans coming up," he told a convention of the Pennsylvania FFA, formerly known as the Future Farmers of America.

For their part, Democrats criticized Bush anew, saying his proposal would privatize Social Security while cutting benefits.

"Rural Americans tend to be older and more likely to depend on Social Security," Reps. Stephanie Herseth, D-S.D., and Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., said in a joint statement. They head the Democratic House Rural Working Group.

The president has called for a bill to create permanent solvency for the program, and he also wants the bill to give younger workers the option of establishing a personal retirement account financed from a portion of their payroll taxes.

Under current predictions, Social Security will begin to pay out more in benefits than it receives in tax receipts in 2017, and the trust funds will be depleted in 2041. At that point, benefits would be cut to adjust for the reduction in available funds.

Along with curbs in benefits or increases in taxes, raising the retirement age is one of three general approaches that lawmakers can consider as they try to improve the solvency of Social Security.