Some Excerpts from CWA's Election Night Statement

CWA: Congress Needs to Get to Work Now on Jobs, Help for Hurting Americans

The results of the midterm elections don’t change the tough times facing millions of middle class and working Americans who are struggling with joblessness and how to take care of their families.

CWA challenges Congress to get to work now to help build an economy that works for everyone. We don’t need a government that believes ‘we’re all on our own.’ We do need real efforts to help create quality, sustainable jobs in the U.S. and to build a government that supports its citizens.

CWA activists will continue to organize at work and mobilize in our communities, building alliances of the millions of Americans who agree that together we can build a country that supports middle class and working families. And CWA will continue to work with elected officials who support working families.

This election cycle, thanks to the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision, saw unprecedented spending by corporations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Corporations have spent more than $1 billion in this election cycle, with the Chamber of Commerce alone spending more than $300 million. That's 74.2 percent of all money spent in this election, the Center for Responsive Politics reports. “We’re back to the way elections were run in the United States one hundred years ago, when the Big Trusts and robber barons made sure theirs were the only voices heard,” said CWA President Larry Cohen.

“We’ve seen the same game plan used to hijack democracy in the U.S. Senate especially in the last session, where a single senator, doing the bidding of some corporate special interest, blocked even the discussion of critical legislation. So issues like ending the tax breaks for corporations that move jobs overseas or public disclosure of corporate spending on elections, couldn’t even be debated on the Senate floor this year,” Cohen said.

“Our goal remains the same: to help build an economy that works for everyone and to keep working for the change that millions of Americans voted for in 2008.

• Restoring bargaining and organizing rights, which for U.S. workers, are near the bottom of the global economy.
• Creating secure, sustainable, quality jobs in the U.S., and ending the offshoring of jobs that has devastated millions of families, entire communities and important U.S. industries.
• Ensuring real retirement security, not right-wing plans to privatize and put Social Security and Medicare at risk.