The American labor movement, together with our community partners and allies, is committed to changing the national debate from the right wing’s destructive focus on deficits, budget cuts and austerity measures—which undermine workers’ rights, living standards and communities—to a clear focus on the creation of good jobs that ensure workers’ rights, support families and build strong communities.
Based on the experience of our nationwide We Are One labor-community mobilization effort on April 4 and Summer Accountability campaign, we will start by partnering with our allies at the local and national levels to create a sense of urgency and focus on challenging the corporate agenda to demand jobs and investment in our communities and for our future.
We call upon all of our unions to commit to a campaign to focus on jobs that gives voice to the jobless, including unemployed veterans, students who cannot find meaningful work as they enter the labor force and communities of color that have been especially hard hit by the recession and the refusal of corporate America to invest in job creation.
1) We call for a Fall Mobilization for Jobs, starting with this focus on Labor Day: We Are One: America Wants to Work.
2) National unions need to be at the center of this effort, and begin a sustained internal member education and communication campaign to focus on good jobs and exposing the corporate and political interests that are blocking the road to the creation of good jobs while attacking fundamental workers’ rights and voting rights.
3) In partnership with our community allies at the local and national levels, as well as our state federations and labor councils, we will build to a National Week of Action in early October that focuses on the demand for good jobs and demonstrates in communities all across the country that America Wants to Work.
4) This must be a campaign for the longterm that builds real labor-community partnerships and strengthens our capacity through sustained year-round member education and mobilization through 2012 and beyond.