Statement of Howie Hawkins, the Green Party Gubernatorial Candidate, in Response to Andrew Cuomo's Call for an Offensive Against Unions and Promotion of the NYS Business Council

Press Release

"When Cuomo was nominated last May he promised to 'tangle' with public employee unions. Now he promises a 'presidential-style permanent political campaign' against all labor unions. My pledge is to fight back and campaign with working New Yorkers for full employment, living wages, progressive taxes, and more workers organized into unions," said Howie Hawkins, a Teamster freight handler at UPS and the only union member running for statewide office.

"Since the mid-1970s, workers' wages are stagnant, productivity is up 80 percent, and almost all resulting growth in income has gone to the richest 1 percent. Working class taxes are up. The taxes on Wall Street and big business are down. Today's state fiscal crisis is caused by under taxing the rich, not over paying wages and benefits to workers or for government services for the general public. It is time to stop scapegoating workers and forcing them to cover the losses of bad investments by the economic elites. It was bad policy for resolving the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis that Cuomo uses as his model. It is just as bad today," Hawkins added.

Hawkins statement is in response to NY Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/nyregion/25cuomo.html?pagewanted=1&%2359;ref=nyregion&&%2359;_r=1

Andrew M. Cuomowill mount a presidential-style permanent political campaign to counter the well-financed labor unions he believes have bullied previous governors and lawmakers into making bad decisions. He will seek to transform the state's weak business lobby into a more formidable ally, believing that corporate leaders in New York have virtually surrendered the field to big labor.

Source