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CWA: Congress Needs to Get to Work Now on Jobs, Help for Hurting Americans

Contact: Candice Johnson and Chuck Porcari, CWA Communications, 202-434-1168, cjohnson@cwa-union.org and cporcari@cwa-union.org

Washington, D.C. -- The results of the midterm elections don’t change the tough times facing millions of middle class and working Americans who are struggling with joblessness and how to take care of their families.

The Communications Workers of America challenges Congress to get to work now to help build an economy that works for everyone. We don’t need or want a government that believes ‘we’re all on our own.’ Real efforts to help create quality, sustainable jobs in the U.S. and to build a government that supports its citizens is what working people are looking for, not a government controlled by short-sighted corporate interests.  

This election cycle, thanks to the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision, saw unprecedented spending by corporations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Corporations have spent more than $1 billion in this election cycle, with the Chamber of Commerce alone spending more than $300 million, the Center for Responsive Politics reports. “We’re back to the way elections were run in the United States one hundred years ago, when the Big Trusts and robber barons made sure theirs were the only voices heard,” said CWA President Larry Cohen. 

 “We’ve seen the same game plan used to hijack democracy in the U.S. Senate especially in the last session, where a single senator, doing the bidding of some corporate special interest, blocked even the discussion of critical legislation. So issues like ending the tax breaks for corporations that move jobs overseas or public disclosure of corporate spending on elections, couldn’t even be debated on the Senate floor this year,” Cohen said.

“Our goal remains the same: to help build an economy that works for everyone and to keep working for the change that millions of Americans voted for in 2008.

“It means restoring bargaining and organizing rights, which for U.S. workers, are near the bottom of the global economy.

“It means creating secure, sustainable, quality jobs in the U.S., by ending the excessive influence of investment interests that measure everything, except their profits and bonuses, of course, in terms of the cheapest possible cost. It means putting an end to the offshoring of jobs that has devastated millions of families, entire communities and important U.S. industries.

“It means real retirement security, not right-wing plans to privatize and put at risk Social Security and Medicare,” Cohen said.  

CWA, the union movement and progressive voices in this country will continue to organize at work and mobilize in our communities, building alliances of the millions of Americans who agree that together we can build a country that supports middle class and working families.  And CWA will continue to work with elected officials who support working families.

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