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Sweeney: ‘Working People Want Action on Creating New Jobs’ |
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The nation’s political leaders have a choice: They can strike out on a new economic course for America that will turn around the nation’s economy or they can give in to political paralysis and yield to the demands of the financial and corporate elites.
Speaking Friday before a Harvard University study group on “Working Class Revolt,” AFL-CIO President Emeritus and Harvard Fellow John Sweeney and AFL-CIO Policy Director Damon Silvers said policymakers failed to heed the union movement’s warnings against a campaign of radical federal deregulation and corporate empowerment—one that celebrated private greed over public service.
Those policies led to flawed trade deals that accelerated outsourcing, financial deregulation designed to promote speculation and the dismantling of our pension and health care systems. As a result, the enactment of these types of policies has now culminated in the worst economic decline in living memory.
Sweeney told the group that while our leaders are debating, the public is “angry and clamoring for action and results that work for them.”
The momentum is building for grassroots activism to push back against Wall Street and those who stand in the way of what needs to be done to turn our economy around.
Sweeney is a resident fellow during the spring term at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. The institute is part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and resident fellows participate in the intellectual life of the Harvard community and lead weekly study groups on a range of topics. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler will address the study group this week.
The key to turning around America’s economy, Sweeney said, is to create new, good jobs.
The labor movement is mobilizing and organizing union members, communities and allies all over the country in a major fight for jobs. The plan is to restore and create good jobs and we will be holding our elected leaders and accountable for what they do or don’t do to take action. We will also hold the private sector accountable—the Wall Street banks that caused the crisis and companies that destroy jobs—and we will stand with anyone in the business community that is working to create good jobs. We plan to be in the street wherever the fight for jobs is being fought.
Silvers told the assembled students and academics that the roots of our economic crisis come from trying to have a low-wage, high-consumption economy.
The only way to get out of this is to have an economy built on good jobs. We can start by creating the 11 million jobs that were lost in this economic crisis.
Although United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard was unable to attend the study group, Sweeney quoted some of what he described as Gerard’s passionate thoughts about the need for good jobs.
Our members are losing patience with talk; they desperately want action now. We need job-creating action that is bold, swift and sustained. The United Steelworkers are ready to roll up our sleeves and help President Obama get our economy back on track by getting Americans back to work.
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Yes, the nation’s political leaders have a choice and it would seem they’re choosing the low road.
While President Obama says his top priority is jobs, he apparently does not mean jobs for Americans. The country faces the highest unemployment rate in decades. Americans desperately need jobs. Yet the Obama Administration is reducing worksite enforcement of immigration laws even though worksite enforcement opens jobs for Americans. When illegal workers are caught, they’re often not deported, which means they’re free to take another American’s job. Also, the U.S. continues to admit more than a million foreign workers a year to take American jobs. Good paying jobs!
Call the White House at 202-456-1414 or email the President at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact and tell him that Americans want their jobs back!