Here’s What the World Labor Movement Is Saying to President Obama and Asian Leaders
The global labor movement and the AFL-CIO are urging President Obama and other world leaders meeting in Singapore at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to take strong stands on issues of jobs, trade imbalances, currency policy, workers’ rights and climate change.
With 59 million people expected to be unemployed worldwide by the end of the year, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other trade union leaders called on the G-20 countries, which include China and Japan, to continue to press for a coordinated global economic strategy to stimulate new jobs to ensure a real recovery. China’s stimulus package has been significantly larger compared to the size of China’s economy than the U.S. stimulus and has been credited with driving China’s rapid recovery.
Let’s Foment a Green Industrial Revolution
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Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, is among several key speakers at the Building the New Economy conference Oct. 29 in Washington, D.C. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka also is among the keynote speakers. Here Gerard describes why we need a 21st century green manufacturing revolution.
We need to foment a new American industrial revolution—specifically, a 21st century burgeoning of green manufacturing in the United States.
Americans going green—manufacturing windmills and solar cells—would benefit both the economy and the environment. As the Wall Street debacle that pushed this country into the Great Recession last year showed, the United States cannot depend on trading in obscure financial products to support its economy. To survive, America must be able to manufacture products of intrinsic value that can be traded here and internationally.
China and the U.S. Housing Bubble
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We often write about how China’s policy to devalue its currency, the yuan, has been a key factor in the U.S. trade deficit.
It’s not an easy issue to grasp. But economist Paul Krugman devotes an entire column to explaining why China’s devalued currency has such ramifications for our country. Here’s Krugman:
If supply and demand had been allowed to prevail, the value of China’s currency would have risen sharply. But Chinese authorities didn’t let it rise. They kept it down by selling vast quantities of the currency, acquiring in return an enormous hoard of foreign assets, mostly in dollars, currently worth about $2.1 trillion.
Many economists, myself included, believe that China’s asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China’s insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.
Read the entire column here.
AFL-CIO Executive Council: Economic Recovery Package Good First Step
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| 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.
