Trumka Announces New Jobs Plan, New Independent Political Voice for Workers

 

The nation’s ailing economy needs a prescription powerful enough to heal the jobs crisis and America’s working families need an independent political voice that’s not beholden to parties or politicians, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
At a Labor Day press conference this afternoon, Trumka unveiled a six-point “America Wants to Work” jobs and economy initiative “that is serious and reflects the scale of the crisis we face.” The plan includes:

• Rebuilding the nation’s transportation and energy infrastructure;
• Reviving U.S. manufacturing and ending the exportation of U.S. jobs;
• Putting people to work in local communities;
• Helping states and local governments to prevent layoffs and cuts to public services;
• Extending unemployment insurance (UI) benefits and helping homeowners keep their homes; and
• Reforming Wall Street so it helps Main Street create jobs.

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Four workers joined Trumka, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker at today’s press conference. They told reporters their personal stories about struggling to find work and fighting back against the attacks on workers and workers’ rights being waged by extremist politicians in states across the nation.

Leann Bosquez, a member of the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America, has been out of work since early this year. A former retail sales manager with a reputation for boosting sales and cutting costs says:

I’ve never had difficulty getting a job before. But now I send out resumes or talk to people and they say I’m either overqualified or undereducated. There are hundreds of people applying for the same job. It’s clear more must be done to create jobs.

New Hampshire Electrical Workers (IBEW) member Steve Soule describes himself as a “conservative Republican,” but he fiercely opposes Republican attacks on workers such as the fight in New Hampshire over so-called right to work legislation. The Navy combat veteran says:

I don’t support Republican efforts to diminish unions. My family benefits from what labor unions do. Being in a union has allowed me to have a family and a job with security and benefits. It’s a good thing for me and a good thing for my community.

Many young workers are not as fortunate as Soule to have steady work in a good job with a union contact. Shuler says the jobs crisis has hit young workers particularly hard, with 22.5 percent of high school graduates under 25 years old jobless in 2010, compared with 12 percent in 2007. Too many politicians, she says, are focusing on “deficit reduction” and cutting vital programs instead of investing in jobs.

Without investment in job creation, young people will suffer in the future as the result of stunted opportunities in the present.

Mobilizing for job creation and economic justice will be the focus of the AFL-CIO’s Next Up Young Workers Summit to be held Sept. 29 to Oct. 2 in Minneapolis.
While the faltering economy has taken its toll on jobs and working families, there have been deliberate attacks on public service workers by politicians like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) and others. These extremist lawmakers blame workers for their states’ economic crises—not their failed corporate-backed policies—and claim eliminating workers’ rights to collectively bargain will somehow solve their economic problems.
“B.J.” Simmons Talley, an AFSCME member and Ohio bus driver for 32 years, says she is offended by Kasich’s targeting of public employees.

I’ve been watching Gov. Kasich. What he’s done hasn’t created any jobs, he’s just attacked workers, teachers, firefighters….He’s taken money from public schools. We’re not trying to be rich. We just want to feed our families, buy clothes for our kids and send them to school and hope there are jobs for them when they get out.

Holt Baker says that along with attacks on workers’ rights, these same extremist lawmakers are pushing voter suppression efforts that could disenfranchise as many as 21 million people, especially young people, people of color and poor people. She says the voter suppression drive is “shocking” and “reminiscent of the 1950’s…and a new poll tax.”

This year, state legislators in 34 states—nearly all Republicans—introduced voter ID laws under the guise of preventing voter fraud. But these laws disenfranchise voters rather than stopping actual fraud. Even the Bush administration’s Department of Justice’s comprehensive five-year investigation uncovered only 86 instances of improper voting across the entire country.

Like many union and other workers this year, Dawn Jennewein isn’t passively sitting around, instead she is fighting back against these assaults on workers. The vice president of her Missouri Communications Workers of America (CWA) local union says she has been holding politicians accountable and speaking out rallies because:

if we don’t fight for our future, our kids and our grandkids, they won’t have anything. We have to fight for them like the retirees before us fought for what we have today.

Trumka also announced the creation of an independent advocacy PAC that will “build the political power for America’s silent majority, the middle class and poor who are struggling to get by.”

It will be an effort by and for working people, communicating beyond our membership and striving to ensure all who work a strong and clear voice in the political process.