Labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan said he got a good look at the American public when he campaigned door to door for a congressional seat in Chicago last winter.

"The thing that hit me most is that we are not pushing [for] a redistribution of power to working people," said Geoghegan during the Union Days keynote address April 15 at the ILR School. "Instead, we are focusing on the bailout of education, banking, the health care industry."

Geoghegan, who lost his bid to fill the vacancy opened when Rahm Emanuel gave up his seat to become President Barack Obama's chief of staff, said "The danger is there's going to be no money for anything else. What we need is a labor movement that's pointing the country in the right direction."

The right direction, he said, would include increasing the level of Social Security from 39 percent to at least 50 percent of a person's income level at retirement. "People don't have enough to live on," he said. "It's important to have government provide the economic security people need most."

The government should also provide health insurance and pensions, he said, noting that absorption of those costs by manufacturing contributed to the current economic downturn.

About the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (which calls for an option that allows workers to support unionization by marking a card rather than voting by secret ballot and proposes stiffer penalties for companies that violate federal unionization rules), he said that if voted into law by Congress, it "is not enough" to reinvigorate unions. The act is endorsed by many labor organizations and opposed by many businesses.

The upshot of passing the act is increased involvement by the National Labor Relations Board in union matters -- "not a good thing," said Geoghegan, who supports the act. But more board involvement would increase the bureaucracy surrounding unionization, said Geoghegan.

In response to a student's question -- "If you're an ILR student, and you want to help labor ... where should the energy go?" -- Geoghegan responded that students should consider union work. "Pick out the union that works in the area you care about most."

Mary Catt is the ILR School's staff writer.