AFL-CIO Executive Council: Economic Recovery Package Good First Step

by Mike Hall, Mar 3, 2009

IBEW President Ed Hill, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney meet with workers at an IBEW training facility in Miami.

In the AFL-CIO Executive Council’s first full day of meetings in Miami, union leaders today addressed vital aspects of reviving the nation’s economy for working families, including growing good jobs, reforming health care, strengthening Social Security and revising the nation’s trade practices, especially with China.

The economic recovery package is a good start to turning around America and putting workers back on the job, say union leaders, who emphasized that rebuilding the nation’s major economic engine—manufacturing—will require strong compliance with the Buy American provisions in the package.

The council also called for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act to help boost the economy by restoring workers freedom to form unions and bargain for better wages and benefits.

Meeting at the union hall of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 349, the Executive Council began the day with a video address from President Obama. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis—who on Monday night joined the council and 700 community members in a forum—spoke with the council during the morning session today.

She later accompanied AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and other council members on a visit to the neighboring IBEW training center where young workers are learning skills that will prepare them for jobs in the growing green job market. Here is a summary of AFL-CIO Executive Council statements approved today.

Growing Jobs

In outlining the key components needed to rebuild the economy and create and maintain good jobs, the council points out that nearly 4 million manufacturing jobs were lost from the time former President George W. Bush was inaugurated in January 2001 to the November 2008 elections. In addition, another 520,000 disappeared between November and January. Says the council:

America’s economic and national security relies on a strong manufacturing sector. Millions of good, family-supportive jobs depend on manufacturing employment.

Obama’s economic recovery package provides nearly $800 billion to jump-start the economy—focusing on transportation, school and other infrastructure projects to clean energy to investments in education and health care and crucial funding for state and local governments. The package’s strong Buy American provisions mean that not only will jobs be created for specific projects but throughout the economy’s food chain if the Buy American rules are enforced. Says the council:

Ensuring the proper implementation of the Buy American provisions, as well as the most effective use of state and local funds, will require sustained vigilance. From teachers to building inspectors to sheet metal and transit workers and countless other occupations, union members will be on the front lines helping to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure and ensure that state and local governments can continue to provide vital public services. As they do so, we need their help in ensuring that contractors follow Congress’s mandate that American-made products be used wherever possible.

However, the recovery package is just the first step in a sustained economic revival. There must be major infrastructure rebuilding—from bridges and roads to broadband networks to the air traffic control systems, says the council. More must be done to revitalize and ensure survival of the U.S. automobile industry—which accounts for a quarter of the nation’s manufacturing jobs—including moves to thaw the frozen credit market.

Click here to read the full statement.

Health Care and Retirement Security.

In the weeks since Congress enacted the economic recovery package and Obama proposed his first budget, far-right ideologues are citing the growth in government spending to call for “fiscal responsibility”—a pretext to hide their true intentions to cut vital social programs. In a statement, the council warns:

Of course, we must be concerned with long-term fiscal stability, but we cannot allow fiscal responsibility to be used as a pretext for cutting the social safety net. In this time of growing economic insecurity, we should be strengthening rather than dismantling the social safety net.

A misdiagnosis of our budget problems can too easily lead to prescriptions that are worse than the disease.

Under the guise of an “entitlement crisis,” some groups have called for deep cuts in Medicare, Medicaid. and Social Security. But those calls are ignoring the real problem, out of control health care costs—$2.2 trillion a year. Says the council:

There is a long-term budget problem caused by the unsustainable growth of health care costs. Indeed, the CBO projects that if nothing were done to slow the growth in health care costs overall, we would be spending 49 percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care by 2082.

There is no practical way to control public health care costs without addressing private health care costs as well. The price of admission to the debate over long-term fiscal responsibility is support for comprehensive health care reform. To fix our long-term structural deficits, we have to fix Medicare and Medicaid, and to fix Medicare and Medicaid, we have to control health care costs in the private sector.

On Social Security, the council warns:

Under no circumstances should we be considering proposals to undermine retirement security through benefit cuts….As President Obama has said consistently, the finances of Social Security are essentially sound and will remain in balance far into the future with only modest adjustments.

“Fixing” Social Security by lowering living standards is no solution at all.

Click here to read the full statement.

Trade With China

In 2008, the U.S. trade deficit with China hit $266 billion, and the top imports from China are manufactured goods, many of which used to be made in the United States. As the council asks:

What is wrong with this picture, how did we get to this point and what new policies do we need to reverse this course? This distorted trade and investment relationship is not only damaging to America’s workers and producers, but it also is robbing Chinese workers of a decent living standard and their basic human rights.

The imbalanced and unfair U.S.-China trade relationship reflects much of what is wrong with our government’s approach to trade policy to date, with multinational corporate strategy and with the framework of global economic rules.

The council says that China has used a number of unsavory and illegal tactics to gain its trade advantage over the U.S. and other global competitors including:

• Currency manipulation;
• Systematic repression of workers’ fundamental human rights;
• Illegal export subsidies;
• Lax enforcement of environmental, consumer and workplace protections; and
• Tax measures designed to favor domestic production.

Says the council:

It is time for our government to stand up for America’s workers, producers and farmers and insist that the Chinese government play by the rules of the global economic system—and respect its obligations under international human rights, labor and environmental conventions as well.

Click here to read the full statement.

Employee Free Choice Act

In the long battle to restore workers freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life, “the next few weeks are critical” to the success of the Employee Free Choice Act, says the council.

We also know that those who have always opposed workers’ rights, freedoms and advancement—the radical right wing and corrupt, corporate bullies—will fight us with everything they have and every advantage they can employ. They have spent vast sums and will spend even more-up to $300 million.

Union leaders on the council vowed to help build a warchest to combat the massive corporate onslaught against the bill; ramp up the nationwide grassroots campaign for the workers’ rights legislation; build on the success of the Million Member Mobilization to keep union members active and educate lawmakers; and reach out to employers.

We will have more on the Employee Choice Act mobilization tomorrow. Click here to read the full council statement.

The council also called for the restoration of collective bargaining rights for the 43,000 Transportation Security Officers in the Transportation Security Administration, the resignation of Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue, and federal funding to solve serious correctional officer understaffing and inmate overcrowding in the federal Bureau of Prisons.

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