The AFL-CIO and a coalition of allies are launching a large campaign to pressure lawmakers to pass a new jobs bill, federation President Richard L. Trumka says.  Their drive already has support from approximately 200 House Democrats, who unanimously backed jobs creation in a Nov. 16 closed-door Capitol Hill meeting that Trumka addressed.

      The joint campaign will involve the AFL-CIO, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the National Council of La Raza and the Center for Community Change among others, the groups said at a joint “Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis” panel discussion/press conference on Nov. 17.  It also is designed to push the Obama administration into a commitment, before the president’s planned Dec. 3 White House summit on jobs.

      “The Recovery Act”—the $787 billion stimulus law—“created or saved 1 million jobs, and pulled us back from the brink of a depression,” Trumka explained.  “But we haven’t hit bottom yet.  Doing nothing is not an option.  If we don’t act, everything will be even worse,” he declared.  That’s because unemployment and underemployment combined cover more than one of every four workers, panelists declared.

      The 5-part jobs package the coalition advocates includes a 1-year extension and expansion of measures to help the jobless, all part of the stimulus law, that are due to end on Dec.  31.  They include extended jobless benefits, longer COBRA health insurance coverage for some jobless workers, and more food stamps.

      Their package also would extend more aid to the states.  Trumka pointed out states face a $187 billion deficit combined next year, and without help they would—again—have to cut workers and services, right at a time when both are needed most.

      To keep the recovery going, the federation and the others also advocate creation of “direct public service jobs” in addition to—not as a substitute for—current state and local government jobs.  To spur private job creation, they favor a 10%-15% job-creation tax credit over each of the next two years, and expanding federal construction to meet what engineers call a $3 trillion shortfall in what the U.S. needs to repair its infrastruc-ture.  That includes crumbling roads, collapsing levees, retrofitting old school buildings to make them energy-efficient and expanding railroad, airport and broadband capacity.

      The Obama administration has been reluctant to endorse a second stimulus bill, much less one targeted specifically to jobs, due to business and Republican opposition and worries from fiscally conservative Democrats about the burgeoning federal deficit.

      To counteract that negative pressure—which is continuing—the fed and its allies will send thousands of members out into streets, homes, workplaces and elsewhere, campaigning for jobs and arguing that by not putting people back to work, the deficit will only worsen and the economy will remain mired in recession..

      “We’re organizing 30,000 people a week through Working America for health care, jobs and the Employee Free Choice Act,” Trumka pointed out.  And he expects the hundreds of thousands of workers’ letters and phone calls to Congress about health care will be repeated about jobs.

      None of the panelists put a price tag on the new jobs program, but Trumka suggested that unused Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) money—several hundred million dollars—could help pay for the jobs package.

      Trumka also warned if any politician or group tries to “obstruct” the pro-jobs drive “we’ll expose that.”  Business, except for pro-union firms such as American Income Life Insurance Co.—whose representative asked a question—was absent from the Nov. 17 session.  “I’ve never known the Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Manufacturers to be for anything for working people,” said Trumka.

      While the package unveiled on Nov. 17 concentrates on immediate measure to help the 15 million jobless, Trumka again said the economy also must be put on a longer-term footing of creating well-paying jobs making things, not an economy built on finance, credit and debt.

      And one key to creating such a new economy, he again declared, is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.  That law, a top labor legislative goal to help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining, is hung up in the Senate by a planned GOP filibuster.

      “There’s a real pathway to make any jobs good jobs.  It’s called collective bargaining,” Trumka said, to applause from the packed room.  “When my grandfather and dad went into coal mining, they weren’t good jobs.  They are now,” said Trumka, who started his working life in the mines—before United Mine Workers aid paid his way through college and law school.  He later became UMW president and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer before claiming his presidency two months ago.

      “That’s why EFCA is part of the recovery.  Without it, the people at the top will do great, the upper third will do OK, and the rest of us will do poorly and we’ll replicate the former economy,” Trumka concluded.

Courtesy of Press Associates, Inc., article by Mark Gruenberg