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Tomorrow morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will announce a major new initiative to create and save jobs.
(Watch the live webcast at aflcio.org/createjobs starting at 9 a.m.)
Trumka will be part of a noted panel in “Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis” at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
With unemployment at its highest rate in more than 20 years, Trumka says America needs bold, quick action to put people back to work, in addition to longer term, structural fixes for our economy. The AFL-CIO initiative he announces will include calls to extend help for the unemployed, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, provide aid to struggling states and communities, create federally funded community-based jobs and increase lending to small and medium-sized businesses to spur job creation.
Other panelists, representing constituencies particularly hard hit by the current economic crisis, are Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change; Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP; and Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza. Lawrence Mishel, EPI president, will moderate.
The Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis and Trumka’s announcement come as President Obama is preparing for the December jobs summit on job creation. According to the latest data, the official unemployment rate of 10.2 percent rises to 17.5 percent when the underemployed are included.
Tune in tomorrow at aflcio.org/createjobs for this critical conversation on the future of our economy and jobs, or follow us here on Twitter.
(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)
6 Comments
To bad Trumka isn’t in the Government.
Trumka can do this because he is not in government. We need more people on the outside pressuring those inside government to do the right thing.
Good to see some positive action; will be interesting to see what this looks like in practice.
I do not believe for a moment that the congressional leadership and the presidential administration sufficiently prioritize addressing the economic situation faced by the broad population to pursue real and serious job creation. If this sort of thing was a priority for the politicians, they would have made the first stimulus much larger, and they would have prioritized a jobs and assistance package on a large scale ahead of health care “reform”. Between the trillions of dollars funneled into the banking industry and the health care “reform” that seems primarily intended to make big business happy, it would seem clear that what the agenda is in the Obama team and its congressional allies: giving wealthy, powerful business and banking interests what they want, wrapped up in a veneer of populist “reform”.
The unions in particular will be on their own. The government officials do not care about them except every 2 years, briefly.
Trumka is sure to increase union participation and growth in this country the next few years. He seems to be a powerful shaker and mover. He sure gave kudos to our favorite Marcy Wheeler (for here investigation, research, writings,having to do with labor and auto manufacturers) during his speech at NN09.
Trumka is a bright and forceful guy. Good to see he’s carrying the ball even though Obama has dropped it. Progressives and liberals have to continue to pressue this hesitant and timid administration to start working on the agenda that got them elected in the first place. Jobs should be at the top of the list.