Remarks by John J. Sweeney President of the AFL-CIO — Business Responds to AIDS/Labor Responds to AIDS Washington, DC September 7, 2000 Help | Search:

Thank you, Dr. Holtgrave [David], for those kind words and thank you all for your warm welcome — I am honored to be here and to speak on behalf of working families, few of whom have been untouched by this awful disease.

Hearing Lynda Arnold's story reminds us all that AIDS is an indiscriminate assailant, and in my work over the years, I've heard too many such stories up-close and personal.

I've listened to the dying words of a valued member of my staff at SEIU, Dave Cervantes.

I've witnessed the courage of several members of my union, registered nurses who were infected through preventable needlestick accidents, crusading in the media as "Jane Does," trying to help others even as they struggled with their own declining health.

One of them, Peggy Ferro from San Francisco, died barely two years ago after nearly 15 years of conducting workshops for thousands of hospital workers in her community.

I've also heard the stories from working families torn apart by the loss of sons and daughters who were seduced by drugs and paid with their lives, of fathers and mothers and uncles infected through transfusions.

And, all too often, I've listened to stories about the incredible barriers encountered by workers who are HIV-positive or suffer from full-blown AIDS — discrimination on the job and in society, problems with insurance coverage, shunning by co-workers and managers alike.

After so many years and so many encounters, one should be depressed, but I'm not because I've also seen so much progress made and so much work done by individuals and organizations.

Within my own union, SEIU, our Lavender Caucus has worked untiringly to promote workplace education and public understanding of HIV-AIDS and the labor movement has been deeply involved in the issue since the early 1980s.

At the AFL-CIO, our health and safety department has worked arduously for years on workplace problems with HIV/AIDS — needlestick legislation at the state and federal level as well as education to groups of workers at risk — hospital workers, firefighters and police officers, day care teachers, sewer workers and flight attendants.

We have a relatively new, official organization for gay and lesbian members — Pride at Work — which is taking a leading role in HIV/AIDS advocacy and our International Affairs Department and Solidarity Center are deeply involved in the global pandemic.

As you'll hear during this conference, we've joined with our employers in many industries and in many cities in pioneering joint education projects.

And of course, we've all witnessed the magnificent work of the CDC, as well as this organization, as well as that of our partners in the business community and, of course, many of you in this room who have dedicated major portions of your lives to this battle.

As Lynn [Franzoi] outlined in her opening remarks, no one is left untouched by AIDS and it affects our workplaces as well as workers in profound, disturbing ways.

But we are making progress — however slowly — and we know that together we are making a difference and for Dave Cervantes and Peggy Ferro and all the working families in our country, I want to say thank you to this organization, to the CDC and to all of you — as we say in the union movement, you are all warriors and because of you we are winning the battle, so please, give yourselves a round of applause, you deserve it.

As Lynn outlined, the epidemic we're encountering in our country pales in comparison to what is happening in developing nations around the world.

Through many other speakers and presenters at this conference, you're going to learn a lot about HIV and AIDS in workplaces here in our country, so I want to talk a little about what is happening in those developing nations, because it is truly frightening.

In doing so, I'm going to draw in part on remarks made by former president Nelson Mandela at the 13th International AIDS conference which was held in July in Durban, and I want to credit his great insight and leadership on the issue.

I'd also like to acknowledge delegates from three South Africa labor federations —COSATU, FEDUSA and NACTU — who are working through our Solidarity Center HIV/AIDS program and who are participating in this conference.

They are members of our Trade Union Task Force team and they will be joined by the director of SAMCOR, a South African subsidiary of Ford Motor Company in a presentation later in the conference.

Brothers and sisters, if AIDS is an awful tragedy here in the United States, it is a disaster of unbelievable proportions in much of the rest of the world.

As of the end of 1998, more than 33 million people around the world were living with HIV/AIDS and that number has increased.

In Africa, AIDS is claiming far more lives than wars, famine, floods and diseases like Malaria combined.

As President Mandela told us in July, half of all young people in South Africa will die of AIDS and, in his words, I quote: "It is devastating families and communities, overwhelming and depleting health care services and robbing schools of both students and teachers. AIDS is clearly a disaster, effectively wiping out the development gains of the past decades and sabotaging the future."

Meanwhile, we're slipping and going retro here at home — in the United States, we've worked hard and achieved a 47 percent decline in the AIDS death rate, but the increase in the rate of HIV infection among ethnic minorities is exploding.

In 1999, the rate of increase for new cases among African Americans was 66 percent, 25 percent among Hispanics and 8.8 percent for Native Americans — as compared to 7.6 percent for whites.

And the sad truth is that while the rate of infection is rising, the resources to fight the disease in our workplaces has declined.

It is one thing for us to fail to expend the resources needed to bring this equal opportunity killer to justice in this country and in sub-Saharan Africa and other economical distressed countries.

It is quite another to fail to do it in the midst of the longest economic boom in the history of the wealthiest country in the world.

In Africa and much of the rest of the world, it is a monumental human tragedy because many nations simply do not have the money to fight back.

For our part as Americans, it is a monumental human shame because we DO have the money.

It is clear that rich countries, especially the United States, can and must do more than we are doing in fighting HIV/AIDS and in helping poorer countries to do likewise.

Again, in the words of president Mandela, and I quote: "The experiences of Uganda, Senegal and Thailand have shown that serious investment in and mobilisation around these actions — meaning preventative actions — can make a real difference. Stigma and discrimination can be stopped, new infections can be prevented, and the capacity of families and communities to care for people living with HIV and AIDS can be enhanced." Close quote.

As I told our U.S./Africa Trade Union Summit on HIV/AIDS Workplace Education here in Washington in February, it is shocking that none of the wealthy countries have hit the United Nations' modest target of devoting seven-tenths of one percent of G.D.P. to development aid and virtually nothing towards fighting HIV/AIDS directly in emerging nations.

One of the most important ways we can help is through debt relief, which would allow so many countries to provide better health and education and as the United Nations meets this week to consider this and so many other problems, we need to urge President Clinton to push for more than the $300 million in debt relief in last year's budget.

At the AFL-CIO, we've made debt relief a priority issue and I would urge our partners in this battle to do likewise.

We're also working to redress the damage done to people of developing countries by the giant pharmaceutical companies that are denying drugs needed to fight HIV/AIDS by hiding behind the fig leaf of intellectual property rights.

We've also placed the call for urgent action to combat HIV/AIDS on the global trade union agenda so we can all urge our government, especially those in the wealthier countries, to realize this is a global crisis and that as world citizens we must all increase our resources to fight this disease.

We're also determined to use our collective power to fight for the protection of the rights of those who are infected and to end discrimination while we seek the means to care for those who cannot care for themselves.

We are quite disturbed as representatives of workers — and I am disturbed personally — over recent directions taken when it comes to the development of reporting systems and the possible establishment of central registries.

We think the potential for abuse of such systems and the information therein is tremendous, and we feel much more favorably towards expansion of anonymous HIV testing sites, increased efforts at prevention through safer sex information, condom availability and needle exchange programs.

Most important, we're determined to secure more funding for AIDS treatment through Medicaid and other programs and for research — AIDS is a treatable disease, it is a preventable disease and it is a curable disease.

Again, thank you all for your hard work and commitment — working together we can and will win the battle with HIV/AIDS. I look forward to hearing the outcome of your discussions here this week.

God bless you all .....