And everywhere I go, no matter who I see, what they want to talk about comes down to the same word we’ve been hearing on everyone’s lips: Jobs.
So I bring you an SOS from the people I’ve met: Help us fix this jobs crisis.
I’ve been hearing their stories first hand—people who have lost not only their jobs, but their health care, their pensions, in too many cases even their homes—and their hope.
The young workers are especially moving – they’re so eager but so scared And as I look into their faces, it really hits home that they are the first generation in recent history likely to be worse off than their parents.
This is a tragedy.
What working people, young and older, know in their hearts, you’ve seen in your research.
What’s happening to the workforce today is no accident.
It’s the result of a deliberate 30-year drive to create a low-wage workforce.
Decades of anti-government, corporate-serving ideological rule gave us an era of deregulation … privatization … destruction of our manufacturing base … job exporting … and essentially a declaration of war on America’s unions.
Look at the history of wages in our country: When unions are strong, paychecks grow and working men and women have benefits like health care and pensions.
That’s true not just for union workers, but for all workers.
When unions are under attack, paychecks shrink. Pensions vanish. Health care becomes the emergency room.
It’s as true today as ever.
And as a result, although workers’ productivity has risen—and risen some more—our wages stagnated.
Desperate to hold on to jobs, employed workers are taking on more and more.
In the third quarter of 2009, employee output jumped 8.1 percent—the biggest productivity increase since 2003.
But wages are not even close to keeping pace.
And they won’t while we’re in this buyers’ market.
In the past two years, America needed to create 2 million jobs just to keep up with population growth.
Instead, we lost 8 million jobs—so we’re 10 million jobs in the hole.
With our industrial base in shambles, we’re no longer a country that prospers from what it MAKES.
Instead our economy has been relying on what we SPEND.
But when jobs disappeared and the puny paychecks remaining couldn’t fuel consumption as America’s economic engine, we borrowed.
Our homes became our bank accounts.
Deregulation let loose a Wild West free-for-all on Wall Street.
And when it all collapsed, working people were buried in the rubble.
Young workers are among those buried the deepest.
Let me tell you about the findings of a survey conducted recently by the AFL-CIO and our community affiliate, Working America. It’s a survey of young workers—and I’m not talking about 17- and 18-year-olds. I’m talking about 18- to 34-year-olds.
In the past 10 years, they have suffered disproportionately from the economic downturn.
We found that one in three young workers is worried about being able to find a job—let alone a full-time job with benefits.
Only 31 percent make enough money to cover their bills and put some aside—that is 22 percentage points worse than it was 10 years ago.
Nearly half worry about having more debt than they can handle—many of them are saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in college loans, and credit card debt, and no real prospects for decent jobs.
One young woman, Jessica from Frankfort, N.Y., told us on behalf of her generation: “Sometimes we wonder if it was really worth it to get an education for the price we’ve paid.”
Today’s young workers are blocked by the jobless economy from moving into independent adulthood.
In fact, our survey found one in three still lives at home with parents.
Maybe that’s familiar to some of you?
It sure is to me.
It wasn’t that long ago that I was trying to make ends meet by piecing together multiple part time jobs – back in the 90s we called them McJobs.
I moved back in with my parents, too.
What made the difference for me was a union job.
So I know first-hand: It’s not enough for us to respond to the jobs crisis by creating jobs. We have to create GOOD jobs.
Fortunately, we have the tools we need to do it.
The AFL-CIO’s 57 unions represent 11.5 million working women and men, in every walk of life. Add their family members in, and we can reach about 30 million people.
And if there is anything they are ready and able to mobilize around right now, it is jobs.
These are the moments the union movement is made for.
We have a unique reach into every state and every community, and at moments like these…the voices of many can be heard above the wealth and influence of the few.
Allies and activists like you are the wind beneath the union movement’s wings.
Unlike our opponents, we deal in facts, not hyperbole and hysterics.
Your research and analysis is what fuels our member education—and when union members are well-informed, we mobilize and vote in our best interests.
Help us help America.
Help us help the hardest hit communities, where addressing the jobs crisis is a matter of survival, not an option.
And help us help the companies we partner with.
Maybe that’s a surprising request, because unions are often seen as adversaries of employers. But union workers can only be successful if our companies are, so no one has a higher stake in their doing well.
Many, many labor-management partnerships are enabling companies to succeed in these tough times. Union codes of excellence make it easier for companies to compete. A great example from my union, the IBEW, is the New Meadowlands Stadium outside New York City, soon to be the home of the Jets and Giants. Not only is the massive electrical piece of the project under budget—it’s five months ahead of schedule.
I also ask your help in helping the young people, who soon will take our places in the struggle for economic and social justice.
When Richard Trumka and Arlene Holt Baker and I were elected to lead the AFL-CIO, we knew that connecting in new ways with young people needed to be one of our top priorities.
Young people need unions. But unions need young people just as much – young people have always provided the leadership for movements when we need it most.
Martin Luther King Jr. was just 26 when he led the Montgomery bus boycott.
At 25, César Chávez was registering Mexican Americans to vote.
Walter Reuther headed strikes demanding GM recognize its workers’ rights starting when he was 30.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was 33 when she drafted the declaration of women’s rights.
Young people lead change—and today’s young people are poised to lead – Right, Kelly?
That survey I mentioned earlier had some alarming statistics, but it also has some goodness. Young people are at a whole new level of civic engagement. We saw it with the surge of new voters in the 2008 election.
They are well-informed and following government and policy news.
They believe in collective action and understand the power of having unions.
They have hope for the future and the vision of a savvy, diverse movement to bring about progressive change.
Let’s talk more specifically about what that change should be.
Over the longer term, we have to do nothing less than re-create America’s economy—
…To build a thriving manufacturing sector geared to make us the world leader in green technology.
…To return the financial economy back to its role as servant of the real economy, not the master.
…To export products and services—not jobs.
For this moment, our top priority has to be job creation.
We have to stop the hemorrhaging—now.
At the recent White House jobs summit, the AFL-CIO laid out a five-point plan to save and create millions of jobs in the next year. Let me outline the plan, point by point.
You have it with you at the table.
- First, we have to take care of families that have lost jobs. Unemployment insurance benefits, COBRA health insurance assistance and food aid keep money in people’s pockets. Congress must extend these programs for at least another year. The Defense Appropriations bill extended them for two months so they didn’t expire at the end of December. The House’s Jobs for Main Street Act would give them through June. But does anyone really think we’ll be out of the woods by then? No, we need at least a year. We can’t let Congress nickel and dime our lifeline.
- Second, it’s time to rebuild America by closing our glaring infrastructure gaps. Our country’s infrastructure receives an overall grade of D from the American Society of Civil Engineers. About 11 million students attend schools in need of repairs. More than one in four of the nation’s bridges are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Leaking pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water a day and aging sewage systems leak billions of gallons of untreated wastewater every year. These are crying needs in a country that is a world leader. Let’s put people to work tackling these desperate problems and strengthen the economy for the future by fixing crumbling schools, roads and bridges, developing 21st century energy and communications systems and investing in green jobs and green technology.
- We should be the leader in green technology – but instead, other countries are winning that race. China is investing billions.
- Third, let’s save state and local governments facing huge budget deficits from cutting vital services that will undermine our chances for economic recovery. If Washington does not act fast, we could lose 900,000 more vital public-sector workers next year alone, including police, teachers and firefighters. We can’t let that happen.
- Fourth, we can put people to work doing work that needs to be done. The private sector is not creating jobs, and America can’t wait. It’s time for the government to step in directly. The economic crisis has hit the long-term unemployed, people of color, young workers and veterans the worst, leaving whole communities behind. Let’s create the jobs they need where they live, from cleaning up abandoned property to helping seniors get to the grocery store. These must be good, new jobs with good pay and benefits, not jobs to replace existing public-sector workers.
- And fifth, we need to ease the credit crunch by putting TARP money to work for Main Street, not just Wall Street. When small businesses can get credit, they create jobs. The bank bailout was supposed to get credit flowing again, but small businesses are still waiting. We should hire local banks to lend leftover bailout money to small and medium-sized business for job creation.
When we talk about government spending to create jobs, we get attacked by people who scream “Deficit, deficit!”
In a recession like this one, the only fiscally responsible move is to spend money creating jobs so the economy recovers enough that we can shrink the deficit.
With more jobs will come higher tax revenues and less government spending to help the unemployed. Then we can concentrate on reducing the deficit—and we know how. The small tax on financial speculation under the Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act, for example, would generate more than $150 billion a year in new revenue while encouraging long-term investing rather than short-term speculation.
Although we all know it wasn’t large enough, the 2009 economic recovery package helped pull the economy back from the brink of catastrophe. It created or saved 1 million jobs and has kept teachers teaching, police officers on the beat and firefighters guarding our safety in communities across the country.
Now we have our work cut out for us convincing our elected leaders to step out and do what needs to be done—and convincing the public that more government spending on jobs is the solution we need.
My job is to help mobilize 30 million union household members to tell their members of Congress: You must act and you must act NOW.
Will you help?
Not just your organization, but you, individually, as an activist as well as in your professional role?
Will you?
It will take every one of us—but I know this is within our power.
Because we ARE turning around America.
And together we can do great things!!!
Thank you.
