Brothers & Sisters,
You did it! Thanks to the hard work of union members and many others in Maine, TABOR/Question 4 was soundly defeated 60-40 at the polls yesterday as was Question 2/the gutting of the auto excise tax. This is an important victory for Maine workers and our communities. We want to take a moment to thank all of you and your unions for the work that you put into defeating TABOR. The work that our affiliated local unions and councils did educating & mobilizing our members and the general public was a significant reason we so soundly defeated TABOR II.
A few quick numbers that reflect the quality and depth of our collective efforts:
- 76 - Educational Presentations about TABOR & the Excise tax were made at 76 local union or union council meetings
- 33 - 33 Local Unions called their own members to talk with them about Questions 2 & 4
- 62 – at least 62 of our affiliated union members took phonebanking shifts calling the general public to defeat TABOR
- 41 – 41 local unions leafleted multiple worksites with anti TABOR Leaflets and scores of other unions got leaflets out at local union meetings or through the mail
- 21 Unions or Union Councils sent customized local union mail to their members covering 104 different local unions in Maine on this issue
- 3 – The Maine AFL-CIO, with direct support from the National AFL-CIO, sent out 3 mail pieces to 26,000 union & Working America households
- Hundreds – Hundreds of you spoke to your families, friends & co-workers about this issue and turned an initial 30+ point deficit into a 20 point victory. That’s great work!
We see this victory as a beginning rather than an end to this tax & budget fairness work. We rooted our campaign in an effort to not only defeat question 2 & 4 but to also educate about the larger structural taxation, budget & economic issues that underlie the TABOR debate. For the last 40 years there has been a massive tax shift in this country – from corporations to individuals and from the rich to the rest of us. That tax shift coupled with stagnant wages for workers is a major cause of the soaring inequality in our country, the constant structural budget deficits our towns and cities face and the underlying sense of unfairness and discontent with our tax structure. At our recent Maine AFL-CIO convention we held a workshop on the labor movement’s vision for taxation. The workshop culminated in establishing a tax fairness committee that will work on researching, educating and developing a program to create a more economically just tax structure and revenue streams. We’ve been on the defensive on these issues for way too long and that needs to change.
Thanks again for all of your great work!
In Solidarity,
Matt Schlobohm
