Labor & Employment Law

?America Can?t Wait for New Jobs?

By James Parks

Creating new and good jobs is the most urgent task facing our nation?s leaders and Americans who are unemployed or whose wages are stagnating cannot afford to wait any longer. Until we fix the jobs crisis, economic growth and fiscal stability will be hard to achieve, AFL-CIO Policy Director Damon Silvers told a congressional hearing today.

On top of the employment crisis, we are living with the consequences of our failure to invest in our nation?s infrastructure or in the technologies we need in the future, Silvers told a Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing on ?Creating Good Jobs Now.? ”Jobs Now means rising incomes and falling deficits, it means rebuilding America.”

Jobs Now means an America where we make things again, where we export more than we import, where we lead the world toward an environmentally and economically sustainable and prosperous future. That?s the kind of future the American people deserve.

Silvers told the committee the stakes could not be higher, for working Americans, for our nation?s economic future and for our world. 

That?s why the AFL-CIO last week joined with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to urge our elected leaders to move forward with the broad vision of investing in our nation?s future that President Obama outlined in his State of the Union address.  We literally cannot wait any longer. The millions of unemployed Americans cannot wait. The majority of Americans whose wages have stagnated during the era of Wall Street dominance of our economy cannot wait.

While the Democrats are focusing on jobs, Senate Republicans let an opportunity pass to help create new jobs. Instead, like their House counterparts, they are putting repeal of the health care reform legislation before jobs.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on February 02, 2011 (boomark / email).