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Trumka Answers Your Questions, Lays Out Economic Vision
In a great live Web discussion yesterday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka answered a wide range of questions on the nation’s economic crisis, setting out a vision for short-term job creation and long-term progress toward a fairer economy.
Trumka touched on trade, green jobs, the challenges facing young and older workers, unity in the labor movement and more in an hour-long conversation. More than 6,700 union members and activists took part by submitting and voting on more than 150 questions.
The AFL-CIO has offered a five-point plan to put people to work and turn around the economy. We can and must create jobs now and spur consumer demand, Trumka said in explaining the plan.
Our current economic crisis is just a symptom of larger long-term weakness and inequality in our economy, Trumka said, and good jobs are the solution:
Remember, wages have been stagnant for years, so people had to start borrowing…we got to the point where people just couldn’t borrow any more and the economy just sort of collapsed at that point…we reached the limit of that. Debt can’t continue to be the engine that fuels the economy.
When we talk about stimulating or rebuilding the economy, Trumka asks, we need to ask: “To what end?” If we’re just rebuilding the old broken economy—with an under-regulated financial sector taking precedence over the real economy—then we haven’t really gotten anywhere. We need an economy where productivity is rewarded and prosperity is fairly shared.
In particular, Trumka says that to ensure the economy is really working in the long term, we need to give workers the ability to bargain for a fair share. The freedom to bargain means we won’t just create jobs, we’ll create good jobs. That means passing the Employee Free Choice Act and giving workers the freedom to form a union—and it means training more organizers to help workers across the country form a union and get a fair contract. That will give people the wages and the economic security they need to support the economy, provide for their families and get engaged in their communities.
You can watch more of this great conversation here.
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6 Comments
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CSPAN is now covering the Single Payer amendment introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sen. tom corurn (R-OK) requested that the bill be read.
If this bill passed, wouldn’t it create more jobs, because health care would no longer be tied to employment and workers would be able to move into other jobs?
Mr. Trumka, would you support Single Payer health care reform?
When health care fails we should join all 13 million union members under one plan. Your economic stratagy is sound and long over do.
Frank Lay
These are very good points, and I would add one.
The good points include the one about financial services versus the real economy. Financial services provide the financial lubricant to get things done, just like contracts provide the legal lubricant to get things done. But lubricants are not the engine. The focus needs to be on building the engine, which is the workforce.
The point worth adding is how we build and rebuild the engine in a changing economy. Innovation, new technology and new industries are important, but we need to focus on using the workforce resources we have. If you need to build a new engine, it may take more ingenuity to build the engine out of what is available right here in our own back yard, but that is what we need to do.
Financial services and contracts are great lubricants, but there is another “lubricant” — the development of new industries and new jobs — that needs to focus more attention on using and developing the workforce that we have right here at home. It’s not about trying to force fit our own workforce into jobs designed to be outsourced; it’s about designing industries and jobs that fit the workforce we have, and challenging the workforce we have so that it can grow and innovate.
Trumka and the rest of the AFL-CIO give more time to China bashing then they do to the crimes of U.S. capitalism and imperialism. They vanish the wars in Iraq and Pakistan/Afganifstan while calling on the U.S. Government to impose controls on Chinese currency and imports.
Hell who do you think is making money off of Chinese imports but the U.S. capitalists who do the importing. China bashing helps no one but the imperialists aims of the U.S. capitalist class which their paid for government do enough of already.
When labor gets down to the business of fighting the bosses and their government American labor will begin to move forward.
Green jobs, especially green jobs created by private U.S. business to create and maximize profit, does not mean automatically they will be “good jobs” that will bring workers into the “middle class” with good wages and benefits. Mr. Trumka ignores the iron law of capitalism: to maximize profit the wages and benefits of workers must be minimized.
The entire capitalist system has collapsed, Mr. Trumka, in case you didn’t notice. Millions of workers are without “living wage” jobs of any kind. Capitalist globalization, seeking to maximize profit by exploiting workers overseas, has permanently moved millions of jobs to China and other foreign countries.
U. S. capitalism is unable to compete today against (1) cheap labor overseas. (2) U.S. manufacturing cannot be “born again” because it is unable to compete in price and even in quality.(i.e. so that investors can make big bucks). (3) “Made in America” campaigns are doomed to fail because the benefits rightfully demanded by workers to have a “middle class” class lifestyle would price the goods into an uncompetitive position.
The unending blindness of Trumka and the conservative trade union “leadership” is this:
The simplistic trade union philosophy of the last 30 years, hopefully continued by the passage of EFCA, has failed the labor movement. Under present conditions of economic collapse and globalization, it is simply not possible to force employers to pay enough in wages and benefits have a “middle class” life style.
The simple struggle for a good labor contract to secure wages and benefits must be greatly expanded. Instead of trade union contract struggle, the economic needs of working people must now be secured through intense political organization and struggle.
Increasingly the essential economic benefit today required by working people do not come from employers but are secured by law from governments at every level. Social Security, Medicare, minimum wage laws, etc. are mandated by law. But these laws do not come easily or without serious political struggle.
The labor movement has failed for decades in creating the means to organize and fight politically for the needs of all working people, organized and unorganized. For years, the labor movement has relied on the Democratic Party to secure the essential needs of working people. They uncritically, and following a bankrupt subservient tradition, supported the Democrats and Obama in the last election.
The Democrats, totally corrupted by special corporate interests, do not give a damn about organized labor and working people. The current fiasco of a “health care reform” bill is only the latest case in point. The last thing considered, after bailing out Wall Street with trillions of dollars and waging more wars costing hundreds of billions of dollars, if ever, will be the needs of millions of working people for “living wage”jobs. The political impotence of the labor movement is now destroying the people of this country.
A new political strategy is essential if organized labor and working people are to survive.
1) Jobs: Failed capitalism is unable and unwilling to supply the jobs needed by working people. Under capitalism today, good “middle class jobs” simply do not generate enough profit to attract private investors.
2) The economic system of Capitalism must be phased out for a transition to a socialist economy. A socialist economy is focused and directed upon filling the economic needs of the vast majority of citizens, the working class.
3) The good jobs must be created to the unmet needs of society.Green jobs, health care jobs, infrastructure jobs, environmental jobs, housing jobs, etc.
4). Capitalists do not care about the needs of working people or the needs of society. Capitalists are driven simply by profit maximization, by corporate greed. So what is the strategy to secure funding for these essential jobs to sustain working people and society? Political struggle!!
5) Political struggle: Dump the Democrats. Call for the organization of a new socialist political party that refuses all corporate funds and capitalist agendas.
6. The Platform of the new party:
The corporate looting of the federal and state governments must end. Essential funding for education, health care, non-profit rebuilding of the economy has been stolen by Wall Street, insurance company lobbyists, war manufactures, etc.
* No more wars in the Middle East that profits only the oil companies and military-industrial complex. Cut the military-budget by 50 percent, shut down the now despised 700
foreign bases around the world.
* Reinstate the tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporations to restore a progressive tax system. Today the vast social inequality has resulted in the wealthiest 5% owning 90% of all wealth.
* Universal single-payer “Medicare for All” that ELIMINATES corporate profiteering from the health care system. Only this
will minimize the costs of the system and provide the universal
guarantee for health care access to all people resident in the U.S.
* Universal free public education from kindergarten through college and adult worker education for re-training for the new green jobs.
* The creation of new radio and tv programs providing a perspective to inform, educate and organize working people.
The media fairness doctrines must be re-introduced to end the corporate control and indoctrination of anti-democratic, anti-worker capitalist indoctrination.
I’m becoming deeply troubled by the manipulation of these comments.
For example, the Sea Star and Frank comments are under the same colored background which is applied by the computer application alternately for each entry. In addition Frank’s comments contain a left-border line as if it is being replied to although it does not appear as an original comment.
Such is happening more and more as if someone approving comments is also purposefully manipulating them. Although this instance appears harmless, others appear to be attempting to sway opinion, suggest support when support is not there.