“In New York, the combined city and state level of personal income tax on higher earners is half of what it was in 1970s; today it stands at 7.5 percent. If it were reinstated at the old rate of 15 percent, there would be no fiscal crisis. In fact, there would be billions left over to spend on education and other vital services.”

This is the finding of Sean Sweeney, director of Labor Studies at the Cornell Center for Industrial and Labor Relations in Manhattan, who blamed the politicians of both major parties for failing to rally behind union workers — particularly municipal employees — and defend their efforts to attain decent working conditions, wages and benefits.

“It’s striking just how rare it is for a top politician to say. ‘Hey, wait a minute! The public sector worker enjoys the kind of basic protections that should be extended to all workers. Our goal as a society is for everyone to have good health coverage, the 35-hour week, a decent pension and the protection of a union contract. The public sector should set the standard for all.’”

The findings of the veteran labor advocate take on a great importance this Labor Day as working families ponder who will be the successor of George W. Bush as President. A labor educator for 16 years and an active trade unionist for more than 25 years, Sweeney was one of the featured speakers at Local 237’s annual Shop Stewards’ Seminar in June in Atlantic City.

Sweeney contends that over the past 20 years, beginning with the Reagan administration in 1980, government after government — including the Clinton administration — “has sought to protect employers and weaken the industrial and political power of unions.”

Corporations now look for a workforce that can be hired on a short-term basis with no benefits, dumped without notice, and expected to do any tasks assigned without a contract or job description, Sweeney asserted.

The erosion of a “steady job,” he said, breeds insecurity and a sense of isolation in the workers and drives down wages and benefits.

“Today in the United States 41 million Americans have no health insurance; personal savings is lower now than at any time since the Depression, and levels of personal debt have skyrocketed,” Sweeney pointed out.

It is vital for Labor to put national health insurance back on the agenda, he said. “Labor must lead on this issue and rally non-union workers to the cause.”

The labor educator noted that the 1955 bus strike led by Dr. Martin Luther King unleashed forces that not only brought civil rights, but also fueled workers’ rights and unionization among civil servants and other workers who had not benefited from the economic recovery after World War II.

He pointed out that many public sector workers engaged in illegal strikes in order to win union representation, and suggested that these sentiments can be again rekindled. But he warned that no local can go it alone. “If a local defies the law, the local is in trouble with the government,” he noted. “But if every union defies the law, the government is in trouble with the people.”

Sweeney quoted James P. Hoffa’s insistence that “we must build maximum unity across the labor movement, so that workers can march together, and speak with one voice.”

He added, however, that to achieve this “we need to offer a vision of society that is rooted in social justice at home and peace abroad.”