Volume 74, Issue #1 | Spring 2014

America needs a raise. Productivity, corporate profits, executive pay and the stock market keep going up, but working families only have seen their wages stagnate. There is no evidence of any economic recovery for most working women and men in the US.

Multinational corporations are celebrating the new advantage they hope to get under the TPP. TPP would allow corporations to sue governments over any laws or regulations that could affect their "expected future profits."

As a general matter, employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement containing a Union security clause are required, as a condition of employment, to pay an agency fee equal to normal Union dues (and, where applicable, initiation fees). While the wording of these clauses is not perfectly uniform, none requires more than the payment of this agency fee to retain employment.

Across the country, CWA activists joined with Sierra Club, Green Peace, Food and Water Watch, Common Cause and dozens of other allies in an unprecedented ten days of action aimed at stopping "fast track" legislation for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade agreements.

No question about it, minimum wage workers need a raise.

Naomi Bolden, Vice President of CWA Local 2204, tells Democratic Senators that the economy isn?t working for working families.