Unions applaud Obama jobs bill

Labor unions are giving their strong backing to President Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act, which will cut payroll taxes for workers and employees and provide funding for school modernization, infrastructure projects and teacher hiring. Obama proposed funding the $447 billion jobs package largely by raising taxes on wealthier households.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka urged Congress “to immediately pass the president’s proposal for job-creating investments, to ask the wealthy to start paying their fair share, to focus on the true causes of our long-term deficits, to reject any cuts to Medicaid or Social Security or Medicare benefits, and to stop scapegoating federal and postal employees and retirees for problems they did not cause.”

The jobs bill includes $30 billion to prevent layoffs of educators and another $25 billion to repair and modernize public schools. The president said the bill will help keep as many as 280,000 educators nationwide on the job.

AFT President Randi Weingarten praised Obama’s bill.

“Congress must pass this jobs package immediately so that students will have the teachers they need and fewer rundown schools; drivers will have better roads and bridges; and Americans will have better opportunities to get and keep good jobs, and have more money in their pockets.”

The AFT has organized a petition and a letter-writing campaign in support of the bill.

Tens of thousands of union members are also involved in “This Bridge Needs Work and So Do We!” actions nationwide to ensure the jobs bill passes. On Sept. 26, union members from the Texas AFL-CIO and their allies gathered outside an Austin venue where House Speaker John Boehner was speaking to tell him to support the legislation.

Similar actions, from vigils to protests outside job-outsourcing corporations, were organized by labor unions and their community partners in Milwaukee, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Detroit, Houston, Miami, Boston, Philadelphia and New York.

AFL-CIO Now blog, Sept. 26

AFTLeaderNet, Sept 8, 13