Veterans for Peace Labor Outreach

Veterans and Labor for Sensible Priorities

A project of Veterans For Peace to develop labor support for reductions in the Pentagon budget

Purpose: to bring veterans, labor unions and other worker organizations together around a program to cut the Pentagon budget and move the money to address the climate crisis, fund human needs and create good family-supporting jobs and last but not least, expose how corporate rule is against the interests of labor, peaceful resolution of conflict and the planet.

Goal: to encourage unions and other worker organizations to endorse the principle of reprioritizing national priorities by cutting the Pentagon budget to meet domestic needs, and specifically to endorse Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s bill H.R. 1134 called “People Over Pentagon Act of 2023”, which would cut the Pentagon budget by $100 billion.

1. Background:

Barbara Lee’s H.R. 1134 states: “It is the sense of Congress that—

(1) many of the most urgent threats to the national security of the United States are not military in nature;

(2) the Federal budget should reflect the national priorities of the United States; and

(3) in order to better protect the security of all people and address the national priorities of the United States, the budget of the Department of Defense should be reduced and the associated savings should be reallocated. . . the aggregate amount appropriated for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2023 [shall be] reduced by $100,000,000,000 [$100 billion]

This excellent proposal stands no chance of passing in this Congress, but it popularizes and builds support for the idea of sensible spending priorities, and it organizes and educates around this issue.

2. Why Cut the Pentagon?

• The ever-increasing military budget greatly exceeds what is required to properly defend the security of the American people.

• The US military, as the world’s largest institutional producer of Greenhouse Gasses, is damaging the climate.

• Military spending keeps climbing in spite of US military involvement in Afghanistan having ended.

• Military spending is over half the discretionary US government budget.

• US military expenditures are more than the military funding of the next 10 countries combined.

• Military contractors routinely gouge the public, overcharge the government, inflate their costs, and make products that are too frequently defective, like the boondoggle F-35 fighter jet.

• The Pentagon has failed every attempted audit.

• Massive military spending increases the danger of war.

• The 750 overseas US bases do not defend us, but rather become flashpoints for conflict.

• For every million dollars spent, military expenditures create fewer jobs than sectors such as health and education.

• The biggest threats to the people of the US (and the world) are the Climate Crisis and the danger of nuclear war.

• We need military funding to be redirected to address the climate emergency and to meet other urgent social needs, and in particular the needs of working people, the poor and disadvantaged.

3. Past labor opposition to war and military spending.

After the George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq, hundreds of local unions passed resolutions opposing the invasion. This eventually led to:

• In 2003, the formation of U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW), which ultimately included almost 200 local, state, regional and national unions and other labor bodies.

• In 2005, the national AFL-CIO opposed the war in Iraq.

• In 2011 the AFL-CIO National Executive Council passed a resolution stating that "There is no way to fund what we must do as a nation without bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. The militarization of our foreign policy has proven to be a costly mistake; it is time to invest at home.”

• In 2017 the national AFL-CIO Convention resolved that “The AFL-CIO calls upon the president and Congress to bring the war dollars home and make our priority as a nation rebuilding this country’s crumbling infrastructure, creating millions of living wage jobs and addressing the human needs such as education, health care, housing, retirement security, and jobs.”

These resolutions represented an historic break from past AFL-CIO policy which supported US wars and war spending unequivocally. If anything, the need to change national priorities is even greater now than it was then.

4. Just Transition

As we move toward a Green economy and renewable energy, it is essential that there is a Just Transition for fossil fuel workers, and the communities where they work and live. Workers in military industries and their communities must also be included in Just Transition. They should not bear the social cost of a transition that is in the interests of the whole society. The labor movement must fight to make sure that this happens.

5. Potential labor support for reducing the Pentagon budget.

A significant part of the labor movement in the U.S. can be receptive to the idea that the massive spending for war and war preparation in our federal budget represents the wrong set of priorities. Nevertheless, there is currently no organization or campaign to mobilize the labor movement to cut the Pentagon budget to adequately fund programs to meet social needs. Many workers in both fossil fuel and military industries are both union members and veterans. Because of the respect that veterans are given, Veterans for Peace could play a significant role in galvanizing support within the labor movement for cutting the Pentagon budget.

6. Campaign steps:

(1) Work with labor activists and labor leaders to develop a list of unions that opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(2) Develop a short presentation for audiences in these unions, and in worker centers, about the importance of reducing the Pentagon budget and reordering federal spending priorities for climate crisis mitigation and for education, health care and other human needs.

(3) Distribute a sample resolution.

(4) In areas where there are Veterans for Peace chapters, VFP members can work together with anti-war rank and file union members and officers to reach out to unions, starting with those that opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to ask to make a presentation to that union’s membership meeting or other decision-making body about the need to change our federal spending priorities.

(5) Ask the union to pass a resolution in support of Barbara Lee’s People over the Pentagon bill and to extend this campaign to other unions, labor councils and state labor federations.

(6) If steps 1 - 5 are successful, publicize the growing list of unions in support of moving money away from the Pentagon toward funding human needs.

The labor movement possesses a powerful capacity to affect the legislative process to be responsive to the needs of society and the planet. This project proposes to engage that capacity to achieve a just transition to a sustainable economy and ecology, and a just equitable future for society, humanity and the planet that is our only home.

Revised: 8/6/23