Working Together: An Economy that Works for US

Home foreclosures are at record rates, and home values have dropped 10 per cent in one year.  Gasoline and food prices are hitting new records along with CEO pay yet a smaller percentage of American workers today earn the equivalent of $20 an hour than in 1979.  

The U.S. trade deficit even with a crashing dollar remains at over $700 billion and the answer from our president is a one-time $600 tax rebate — nothing to promote jobs or address a single one of these problems.  We all like getting a check but this must be a wake up call that the middle class is crashing and that CWA must help lead the fight back.

This issue of the CWA News focuses on these and other basic economic issues.  All too often we think these issues are out of our reach while the economists who deal with them usually work for management and prefer to talk about consumers rather than workers.  We all realize that our role as a consumer is directly linked to our employment and that our union rights on the job are directly linked to our ability to consume.

So who will fight for our families and who will fight for the middle class if not us?  The history of our union and our movement is that we "faced the future," not just consuming whatever we could.  Those who built our union would not have been bought off with a rebate check; they didn't believe that they could just depend on management but knew they had to depend on each other not only for their own sake but for the future of their children.

For nearly a year we have been focused on four issues that would bolster the middle class and turn the economy around:

•  Employee Free Choice Act
•  Health Care
•  Jobs and Trade
•  Retirement Security

These issues cut across the five main sectors where nearly all our members work — public and private sector, telecom, airline, manufacturing and media.

These issues define our focus at the bargaining table and are the focus of our political work.  The alliance we are building with other unions is based on deeper work on these issues, building our stewards army and deeper connections with every member.

This is not conventional wisdom in the United States or even Canada where the labor movement is stronger.  Conventional wisdom is that our political commitment is shallow and we can be easily distracted by social issues or anecdotes about candidates.  But we are CWA and this is our time to dig deeper and work harder as change becomes possible. 

Let me know what you think about this issue of CWA News or the last one which focused on health care.  We are moving away from trying to cover everything and instead trying to provide tools we can use as we debate the critical issues of our time.  Our weekly electronic newsletter fills in the gaps in real time with updates on our bargaining and organizing — you can sign up by going to ga.cwa-union.org and clicking at top left on Sign Up for Email Alerts.

Note:  New Spanish Translation

You'll see that in this issue there is a Spanish translation of the main overview story of our economic theme issue, click here.  For the benefit of the many Spanish-speaking CWA members in Puerto Rico and elsewhere we will be presenting a similar translation in future issues of the CWA News.