Job creation remains the labor movement’s top policy priority this year.More than three years after the onset of the Great Recession, America is still in a jobs crisis. Official unemployment remains at 9 percent and underemployment over 16 percent. We still have an 11 million job hole in our economy. In certain sectors—such as construction—and for certain population groups—such as African Americans, Latinos and young people—the rates are much higher. Manufacturing has far from recovered. Not only did we lose millions of jobs in the recession, but job growth in the recovery has been slow, and the job losses came on top of decades of inadequate job growth, wage stagnation and growing inequality. Globally, the recession has increased unemployment by 28 million to a record level of 205 million.
The Recovery Act of 2009 created or saved more than 3 million jobs, and we are no longer losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month. But we are not creating enough jobs to keep up with the growth of our population, let alone to put the millions of jobless Americans back to work.
President Obama clearly recognizes that the current recession is not only more severe than many earlier recessions, it is also fundamentally different. In his 2011 State of the Union address,the president presented a vision for addressing our country’s profound economic crisis—“winning the future” by strategically investing in the education, infrastructure and innovation, which we will need to restore American competitiveness and increase our nation’s long-term potential growth.
The fundamental fact is that the combination of decades of hollowing out our manufacturing economy, wage stagnation and now falling household wealth has left our economy without enough jobs and no source of increasing economic activity—no source of demand. Businesses lack confidence in the future and are not investing. Our hollowed-out manufacturing sector cannot deliver export-led growth. The only way to reverse this vicious circle is to put workers back to work directly through public investment, to create the jobs to spur the demand that will give private businesses the customers and the confidence they need to invest.
Our country desperately needs jobs, and we also desperately need more investment in our infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers has stated we have a $2.2 trillion deficit in old-style infrastructure—decaying roads and bridges and tunnels and ports and airports. Our mass transit systems are under-funded at a time of high demand and constrained by old rules that prohibit federal capital dollars from being used to forestall mounting service and job cuts.
We also have the challenge of the new century: We need to build a high-speed rail network with a modern, fully funded AMTRAK at its core; the NextGen air traffic control system; a smart electrical grid; universal broadband; and renewable energy sources that our competitors around the world are building now. We need to put people to work building our future and we cannot wait.
President Obama recognized this situation when he asked Congress to pass the Recovery Act of 2009, but the Recovery Act was not big enough to deal with size of the problem. Since then, congressional Republicans, supported at times by conservative Democrats, have blocked every effort to take effective action to create jobs. At the end of last year, they sank so low as to hold unemployment benefits for victims of the Great Recession hostage to the enactment of more tax cuts for the rich. We overcame their opposition to get help for the unemployed,money to keep teachers in the classroom, deliver health care to the poor and provide credit for small business, but because of their obstructionism at every turn, this assistance has been too small given the size of the problem. So the labor movement must intensify our efforts to create jobs this year and tie those efforts in to all the other initiatives we are working on. We need to strengthen our community alliances. And we need to work with new allies, including business.
A key part of our jobs strategy has to be holding lawmakers accountable for their votes on jobs bills. That effort needs to be addressed to both Democrats and Republicans, and it needs to start now—not in September 2012. We will press lawmakers of both parties and at all levels to lead the fight for job creation. We will champion those who support and lead on job creation efforts. We will call out obstructionist lawmakers through field action and keep the heat on them to deliver the economic change voters have demanded, especially in terms of key budget decisions and trade policy. Anti-jobs politicians must be defined by their actions—now and in 2012.
We want to make sure we are using every possible avenue to explore executive branch actions to create jobs. We will work with the Obama administration to make jobs legislation and job creation the top priority in the 112th Congress (including surface transportation reauthorization, FAA, infrastructure bank, Buy America, clean water, broadband, clean energy, high-speed rail, fair and responsible tax initiatives and other measures). We will work to revitalize our manufacturing sector by developing a comprehensive strategy for the future. And we will work to pursue job creation strategies at every federal agency, in conjunction with affiliate leaders.
At the same time, we will use direct action and other creative tactics to publicly shame corporations that are failing to create good jobs—the ones that took stimulus money and refused to create jobs, the ones that are sitting on $2 trillion worth of capital and the ones that are outsourcing good jobs or busting unions.
We will explore local job development opportunities in support of an employment-based, infrastructure- and manufacturing-driven local jobs agenda. We will work with state federations and central labor councils to support key geographically strategic projects that will quickly put people to work and allow us to achieve measurable results (such as the 30/10 project in Los Angeles). We will focus on job quality as well as job creation and promote tools such as project labor and community workforce agreements. And we will look to help workers’ capital earn good returns by investing in jobs.
Our economic future also depends upon maintaining a world-class workforce composed of healthy, highly skilled and well-educated workers. We urgently need a large infusion of public investment in education and skill-development programs to meet the challenge of a global economy for innovation in products, services and manufacturing processes. And we need a cohesive national strategy to invest in job creation with an improved educational system that dedicates more resources toward basic skills instruction, skill upgrading, on-the-job training and jointly registered apprenticeship programs.Skill development and continuous learning should become an integral part of working life for everyone.In individual workplaces, workers should have a legal right to request time to undertake training and have the opportunity to work with workplace learning advisors to gain the educational credentials required to achieve employment security.
The jobs crisis is made worse by the impact of millions of home foreclosures on housing prices and on consumer confidence. Helping families stay in their homes is not only the right thing to do, but it will also help us address the jobs problem.
We will also reach out to organize the unemployed, building on programs like the IAM's “U-Cubed” program and the Building and Construction Trades Department’s "Back on the Job" website. This effort, called "America Wants to Work," is a joint project of our central labor councils and state federations, United Way Community Services Liaisons and Working America, and it is being piloted in five cities: Portland, Ore.; Albuquerque, N.M.; Denver; the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St Paul; and Pittsburgh. In each of these communities, we are reaching out to unemployed workers—union members and non-members—and bringing them together in Working America to organize and speak out for jobs.
In addition, we are working to create a vibrant online campaign for jobs and the jobless, using social media and engaging a broad online community. At the same time, we will develop improved materials and programs for education for action, working with labor educators and our affiliate unions and their education departments.
Creating jobs is the agenda all Americans care about. We have so much work we need to do as a country, so many of us here in America are eager to work and so many families need good jobs at good wages. The AFL-CIO is ready to work with anyone—business, government, investors—who wants to create good jobs and help restore the American middle class, and we will fight with anyone who stands in the way of giving America the chance to go back to work.