AFT Officers Take Up Convention Resolutions

At the AFT executive council’s fall meeting, the leadership body of the union voted on several resolutions referred to it by convention delegates last summer.

Among the resolutions approved by the council was one calling for congressional oversight hearings into the Bush administration’s “threats to science and scientific integrity.”

Specifically, the resolution notes that a pattern of “suppression and distortion of scientific findings” has emerged within the Bush administration on air pollution, global warming, mercury pollution, childhood lead poisoning, reproductive health and drug-resistant bacteria, along with irregularities in the appointment of scientific advisers and advisory panels.

The administration has “placed people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees, has disbanded advisory committees before their work was completed and has censored and suppressed reports by government scientists,” says the resolution.

The council also approved a resolution opposing a constitutional amendment that would take away the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to enter into civil marriage.

“If passed, the Federal Marriage Amendment would become the first constitutional amendment to restrict the rights of a certain class of Americans,” notes the resolution. In addition, such an amendment “would make it virtually impossible to maintain and negotiate benefits on behalf of our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers,” and “could invalidate thousands of union contracts that include domestic partnership benefit provisions.”