Volume 75, Issue #4 | Winter 2015

Winter 2015

Wall Street Greed Hits Workers' Wages

Real wages for working people (adjusted for inflation) have stagnated over the past 40 years. As CWA members, we've done better than that, but like all working families, we're up against the greed of Wall Street and the 1 percent. It's the financialization of our economy, and it's bad for working families and bad for our communities.

Workers' wages and productivity used to rise together. Since 1973, the gains from worker productivity started going, mainly into the pockets of company CEOs and Wall Street investors.

Stop 'financial strip-mining'

Financialization is a big word that’s causing big problems for working families. Financialization is the strategy that corporate and wealthy interests are using to get and keep an even bigger share of the economic pie. It’s the “financial strip-mining of America,” writes Les Leopold, director of the Labor Institute of New York City, in “Runaway Inequality.”

Make the Connection: New Alliances Get Results in Fighting Against TPP

Allies took on the destructive Fast Track Authorization for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with real results. We forced individual lawmakers to take a stand and let their constituents know whose side they were on, big corporate interests or everyday Americans.

Moving Forward: Public and Small Donor Financing of Elections

Seattle passed a ballot initiative that created a funding system that will democratize the city's elections. A Chicago ballot measure promoting small-donor public financing in the city's 50 wards was overwhelmingly approved by voters.

Moving Forward: Automatic Voter Registration

Democracy Initiative organizations and activists are gathering signatures for a state ballot initiative to automatically register Alaska citizens to vote as they sign up for the Permanent Fund Dividend. The PFD is paid annually to Alaska citizens, based on the state's oil revenue dividends.

Moving Forward: Getting Big Money Out of Politics

In Maine this past Election Day, voters approved Question One, an initiative that strengthens the state's landmark Clean Elections law, expands small-dollar public financing for campaigns and making candidates more accountable to the voters by requiring that outside groups disclose their top three donors on all political ads.

Moving Forward: Redistricting

Democracy Initiative allies, including CWA, pushed candidates and measures to end gerrymandering and make redistricting more bipartisan, transparent and fair.