CWAers to Demonstrate on Dec. 10 for Fair "Fiscal Cliff" Solution

AFL-CIO voter survey shows strong support for safeguarding benefits working families count on and making sure the wealthy pay their fair share.

Below: Members of Local 1103 send a message to Rep. Nan Hayworth.

CWA members are joining candlelight vigils outside congressional offices, rallies, town hall meetings and many other actions on Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, part of a nationwide campaign to make sure that the solution to our country's fiscal crisis makes the wealthy pay their fair share and doesn't cut benefits that working families depend on.

Across CWA, in every district, actions will be held to reinforce the need to keep Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid strong. CWA members can check out events in their area at www.americawantstowork.org. Please send photos of actions to news@cwa-union.org.

As part of the campaign, CWAers also are collecting thousands of "Hands Off Medicare" letters and postcards that will go to members of Congress. To send a message telling your member of Congress "Hands Off Medicare," click here.

"Lots of people have had lots of different agendas, and it's time to unite and bring together organizations that haven't been good government groups, and start to engage in these process issues," said George Kohl, a senior director at CWA, told Roll Call.

CWA Local 1103 got an early start, and handbilled during a local Hudson Valley action, asking New York residents to demand no tax cuts for millionaires and no cuts to Medicare. The Mid-Hudson Valley 99% coalition organized a banner drop at a Beacon, NY, highway overpass asking residents to call Representative Nan Hayworth (R-18) and tell her, as her last act in Congress, to vote against any tax cuts for millionaires. CWA members were a big part of the campaign to defeat Hayworth and elect Democrat Sean Maloney to the seat.

CWA and progressive allies are pressing hard for three principles in the fiscal negotiations: no tax cuts for the top 2 percent of earners, a tax on financial speculation so that those who contribute to excessive Wall Street speculation pay, and no cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The financial speculation tax, which CWA and a group of unions and progressive groups support, would discourage, or at least penalize, high-frequency trading (HFT). HFT enables Wall Street traders to make hundreds — sometimes thousands — of trades per second, and they make money by taking advantage of miniscule fluctuations in stock prices and other factors. These trades largely are responsible for exacerbating the Flash Crash of 2010 — a brief market collapse that evaporated millions of dollars in a matter of minutes.

These HFT traders produce zero benefit for working Americans and place pensions at risk when their software glitches send markets into a frenzy. By taxing these kinds of dangerous trades we can level the playing field for good investors and raise revenue for the programs and projects we need most.