Job Creation, Bargaining Rights, Health Care - CWA Proposes Bold Recovery Plan for American Families

Not since Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933 has our nation faced such a severe economic crisis, and CWA has proposed a bold recovery plan for the new Congress and Obama Administration to restore the economy and create good quality jobs.

While Congress and the Bush Administration have concentrated on multi-billion dollar bailouts for banks, insurance companies, and Wall Street, CWA's Economic Recovery Plan for American Families, adopted by the union's Executive Board a month before the presidential election, focuses on three tasks: creating 21st century jobs and infrastructure, restoring workers' bargaining rights through passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, and providing affordable health care for all Americans.

"This 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. (See full text of the plan at CWA's homepage, ga.cwa-union.org.)

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

Creating 21st Century Jobs & Rebuilding Infrastructure

Creating jobs that invest in our nation's future is the first element of CWA's recovery plan. "Quality jobs and real economic development will address our country's financial crisis and should be ahead of any further financial bailouts or tax rebates to Wall Street," the plan stated.

It recommended retooling the nation's neglected manufacturing sector so the United States can regain a leadership role in the production and development of fuel-efficient products and alternative energy needs, including wind farms and high-mileage cars. Such measures could create millions of highly-skilled jobs and reduce the trade deficit.

CWA also called for a major build-out of the nation's high-speed Internet networks in both rural and urban areas. There is tremendous potential job growth for American workers in health care, education, telecommunications, and other information-based occupations in the coming years, but success will depend on access to high-speed Internet. "This is a real investment in our future," said the board, "one that supports middle and working America."

A national, high-speed Internet system, in fact, would be necessary to implement one of the goals of President-elect Barack Obama's plan to reform health care — modernizing and realizing efficiencies in the nation's health care system. This means encouraging hospitals and health care providers to take advantage of "health IT" and move quickly to create electronic billing and medical records systems.

Just before this CWA News went to press, Obama announced an economic recovery plan that echoes CWA's calls for a major government investment to rebuild America. Obama said "putting people back to work" and rebuilding the nation's crumbling infrastructure are critical "to restoring confidence in our markets and to middle-class families."

Restoring Workers' Bargaining Power

Restoring workers' bargaining power by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act is a critical element of CWA's plan to rebuild the economy and restore the middle class. Real bargaining rights, as exercised by workers not only in industrialized Europe but also in newly emergent democracies in South America and other regions, is the best economic stimulus formula.

"We're through listening only to the organized voices of bankers, brokers and billionaires, and we're tired of how productive U.S. workers are while their real wages continue to fall," the board stated. "Real bargaining rights for workers is the best economic stimulus for restoring our middle class and our standard of living."

Affordable Health Care for All

Real health care reform is another key element of CWA's plan. It calls for the United States to move from a health care system that has become a "tax" on quality jobs; where employers who provide quality benefits for employees find themselves at a competitive disadvantage to companies that do not, and a system in which workers who leave or lose their jobs find themselves in the growing ranks of the uninsured.

A primary reason that Japan enjoys a competitive edge over U.S. automakers is the fact that the Japanese government decided that it made good economic sense to help subsidize most of employers' cost in providing health care to workers. The United States is virtually alone among the world's global democracies in failing to establish a health care system that works and that does not fall heavily on either workers or employers.

"Now is the time to move forward so that American families can have the world-class health care they deserve," said the report. "If all Americans had world-class health care, millions of jobs would be created for health care workers and our nation's health care crisis could be addressed."

The board called on the union to join with labor and youth, civil rights organizations, faith-based groups, environmentalists and others to adopt a economic recovery plan that benefits American workers, not just Wall Street. "We need to step up and step out to build a coalition for a 21st Century New Deal."