Working Together -- Election 2012: The Choice is Clear for American Workers

Elections are about choices. Do we want more tax breaks for the wealthy? Do we want to gut the Medicare and Social Security safety net for millions of Americans? Or do we want an economic recovery in which we participate? And how do we get there?

This issue of the CWA News compares the positions of the presidential candidates, as well as candidates in other key races, on the issues that matter to working families. No rhetoric, no wild claims, just the facts.

Working Americans, union or not, should realize that politics should be about public policy issues, about our jobs, our health care, our retirement security, and our bargaining and organizing rights. Politics should not be about personal issues, yet sadly, many in our nation campaign in reverse – their politics are about issues that should be personal and their public policy positions are missing.

Currently, 88 percent of American workers don’t have collective bargaining coverage and the 12 percent who do are mostly playing defense. Largely, as a result, we’re the only economy in the world where real wages have stagnated for the past 40 years.

President Barack Obama said again in Detroit on Labor Day that we must preserve collective bargaining rights. Sadly, Governor Mitt Romney would wipe out what’s left of collective bargaining if he’s elected. But even in the Democratic Party, few elected officials understand the effect that the collapse of collective bargaining has had on our economy and our rights as working Americans.

There’s not going to be one neat approach to building a movement for economic justice and democracy. Movement building is messy! But we have great examples in our booklet, “Building a Movement for Economic Justice and Democracy,” of local unions across CWA doing amazing work. Right now, in Canton, Ohio, our members are going door-to-door with activists from other organizations, building Stand up for Ohio. Stand-Up won’t just mobilize people for the November election but will fight to keep homes from being foreclosed, and support organizing drives and collective bargaining campaigns. In Philadelphia, CWA, the Transport Workers Union, and the NAACP are together registering voters at subway stops. In Detroit, the UAW is joining residents in sit-ins to prevent housing foreclosures and helping renegotiate loans with area banks. Across the union movement, there is a growing awareness that we must involve ourselves in broader campaigns so we can be part of rebuilding the American dream, building our democracy, and winning the fight for economic justice.