CWA Pushes Economic Recovery Plan for American Families

Contact: Jeff Miller or Candice Johnson, CWA Communications, 202-434-1168, jmiller@cwa-union.org and cjohnson@cwa-union.org

The Communications Workers of America today proposed a bold plan for the country's economic recovery built on creating 21st century jobs, restoring bargaining rights for U.S. workers through the Employee Free Choice Act and reforming our broken health care system in a way that ends the current system's tax on jobs while ensuring coverage for all Americans.

This "Economic Recovery Plan for American Workers is exactly what working and middle income families need in this time of economic crisis, and we'll be working with members of Congress to make sure workers are included in plans for economic recovery," said CWA President Larry Cohen.

CWA is joining with other unions, civil rights, community and faith-based groups, student and senior organizations, and others to build support for a recovery plan that addresses the current and longterm needs of American families – especially when it comes to quality jobs, Cohen said.

"We've seen an enormous handout for Wall Street, now we need real attention to Main Street. That means the creation of quality jobs by developing alternate energy sources, necessary repairs to our highways, bridges, schools and communities and especially important, investment in the global economic engine for the 21st century, the build out of high speed Internet networks," Cohen said.

This kind of jobs program must be put in place before there are any further bailouts or tax rebates to Wall Street and for companies that continue to outsource jobs overseas, the CWA plan maintains.

Real health care reform is the second critical element of the plan. The U.S. must move from a system that is in effect a "tax" on quality jobs, in which employers who provide quality benefits at a competitive disadvantage to those who do not, and in which workers who leave or lose their jobs find themselves in the growing ranks of the uninsured, Cohen said. The U.S. is virtually alone among the world's global democracies in failing to establish a health care system that works. Now is the time to move forward so that American families can have the world class health care they deserve.

The third leg of the plan: enable working and middle income Americans to build their bargaining power to restore their standard of living by making the Employee Free Choice Act the law of the land. "We're through listening only to the organized voices of bankers, brokers and billionaires. We're tired of hearing how productive U.S. workers are while real wages continue to fall. U.S. workers are losing economic ground, because we don't have the bargaining rights that labor law promises but doesn't deliver," Cohen said. The CWA plan stresses that real bargaining rights, as exercised by workers not only in industrialized Europe but in new industrial democracies in South America and in other regions, is the best economic stimulus for restoring our middle class and our standard of living.