Action Plan: America Wants to Work

(This article appears in the July/August 2014 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

Joyce B. Robinson, Research & Education Director

Unemployment and underemployment are projected to remain at crisis levels for years; our trade deficit is growing; the housing market continues its downward slide; millions of Americans are facing foreclosure, and real wages are stagnant. Communities of color in particular are facing a nearly unprecedented economic crisis, with unemployment rates that are nearly double the national average and rising poverty rates.

The AFL-CIO has called on Congress and the administration to put America back to work, retain good jobs, and rebuild the U.S. economy with six pillars to create and keep good jobs. Here’s the proposal:

1. Rebuild America’s schools, transportation, and energy systems - Fund the Surface Transportation Act proposed by President Obama; adopt a national policy to get truly high-speed broadband to every individual, family, business, and community in America; create a government-backed bond program to help state and local governments finance the maintenance and repair of infrastructure and new construction projects; renew the Building Star program to create jobs through the installation of energy-saving technology, and ensure that U.S. tax dollars are used to create U.S. jobs by insisting on Buy America safeguards.

2. Revive U.S. manufacturing and stop exporting good jobs overseas - Renew tax incentives for investments in advanced energy; end tax incentives that encourage the offshoring of good manufacturing jobs; reform our trade agreements to raise global labor and environmental standards and support good jobs at home; enforce our trade laws; reauthorize a Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program for workers who lose their jobs due to trade, and oppose free trade deals with Korea, Colombia, and Panama.

3. Put people to work doing work that needs to be done - There are 25 million people in America who need full-time work. Pass legislation to provide for the creation of millions of jobs in local communities. These jobs must target distressed communities to address the disproportionate impact of the jobs crisis in communities of color. They must also pay competitive wages and must not replace existing jobs.

4. Help federal, state, and local governments avoid more layoffs and cutbacks of public services - Layoffs by federal, state and local government are dragging down the economy. Congress should make a commitment not to lay off any more federal employees and to prevent additional state and local layoffs by providing increased federal funding of Medicaid when unemployment is high and by providing additional federal investment directly to local communities to save and create jobs and protect and restore public services.

5. Help fill the massive shortfall of consumer demand by extending unemployment benefits and keeping homeowners in their homes - Extending unemployment benefits for jobless workers and providing mandatory reduction of principal for homeowners facing foreclosure can help reduce this drag on the economy. If banks lowered the principal balance on all underwater mortgages to their current market value, over $70 billion per year would be pumped back into the economy; millions of families would be able to stay in their homes, and over one million jobs would be created.

6. Reform Wall Street so that it helps Main Street create jobs - Pass legislation to encourage more lending to small businesses; enact a Financial Speculation Tax to discourage harmful speculation; make Wall Street pay to rebuild the economy it helped destroy, and enforce tough safeguards to stop the kind of cheating and massive fraud on Wall Street that precipitated the crisis of 2008.