What Do Working Families Want?

More than a hundred years ago, Samuel Gompers declared, “What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”

This issue of the CWA News focuses on what working families want today: Good jobs in our communities, health care, safe workplaces, retirement security and the right to join together in a union. 

How do we accomplish this? By doing what we’ve always done. That means staying true to our values and our mission to improve the lives of working families. It means keeping up the fight, no matter who’s in the White House, to improve the standard of living of CWAers and all working families, to ensure dignity and respect on the job, to enable our children and grandchildren to have better lives and opportunities than we have had.

Our labor movement is more important than ever.

If Members of Congress, CEOs, governors and other elected officials now are emboldened to go after workers’ rights and protections, and critical programs like Medicare and Social Security, it is the labor movement that will stand in the way and stand up for millions of working families.

Together with our allies, we will resist.

In Missouri, we’re ready to stand strong with our public worker members who face an attack on their right to a voice on the job.

We’re ready for the “right-to-work for less” assault that is likely to come in Missouri, Kentucky and other states, and maybe on the federal level as well.

We’re standing together in tough bargaining across our union, at AT&T West, the Orange contract at AT&T Mobility, DIRECTV, Envoy, Piedmont, Frontier and other employers that want to roll back the gains that working people have made. We won’t let that happen.

We’re standing with CWA members in New Jersey who won’t give in to a governor who wants to cut pensions and the services that so many residents count on. 

Together with our allies, we will resist.

We’re taking on Wall Street and banks that see an opportunity to eliminate regulations and consumer protections, and to guarantee even higher returns for the 1 percent.

We’re ready to fight back, whether against attacks on voting rights, pay equity and laws banning discrimination or our very right to exist as the voice of working people. 

Together, we will resist.

Right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have outlined an aggressive agenda to roll back safety and health protections, wage laws, collective bargaining rights and more.

Big corporations can’t wait to roll back changes made by the National Labor Relations Board and to make it harder for workers to get to a union election and allow corporations even more leeway to intimidate and scare workers who want a union.

Together, we will resist.

Generations of workers before us have fought for the protections and rights we now enjoy. It is our turn to resist all attempts to turn back the clock. Our families matter, our safety matters, our jobs matter, our retirement security matters. We will not give them up without a fight.