Building a United Movement to Make Wall Street Pay

There are still over 15 million unemployed Americans, nearly 6 job-seekers for each opening, and about 100,000 workers entering the job market each month.  Public services and education are being wiped out.  Corporate greed and Wall Street recklessness put the squeeze on working people and have created the worst economic crisis in a generation.  Big corporations shipped jobs overseas and Wall Street speculators took more and more of our wealth, getting rich quickly at the expense of workers and families.

But this is not news.

What has developed is the upsurge of workers, youth, and the communities we all live in to Occupy Wall Street, and to be in solidarity with these actions around the country.  This momentum came just in time, as workers around the country have begun to fight back in bigger and more coordinated ways—understanding that the fight is over who has control over what happens in our workplaces and our communities — working people or Wall Street corporations.

Last winter in Wisconsin and in nearly every state, we saw a breathtaking show of militant resistance to attacks on bargaining rights for public employees.  More recently, Verizon workers joined the fight back to defend good jobs and strengthen the economy.  When Verizon, a company that pays its CEO more than they pay in taxes and is making record profits, tried to gut good jobs, workers made the bold decision to go out on strike.

Hyatt housekeepers in hotels in four cities went on strike, not only to defend and protect their own jobs, but to fight for their sisters in non-union hotels. Student guest workers at Hershey’s exposed the flaws in the State Department’s J-1 visa program, and the contradictions in a system which allows companies to bring in exploited workers from other countries rather than creating good jobs for local workers.

In the coming weeks and months workers at Rite Aid, the American Red Cross, Kaiser Permanente, janitorial agencies, and more will stand up to tell companies that workers are not going to accept declining wages and more expensive benefits any more.

In an era of insecurity, workers are standing up to rebuild the economy the right way—by creating and maintaining good, union jobs, a strong social safety net, and all at the expense of the banks who stole it from us in the first place.

Jobs with Justice has long asserted that in the fight for full and fair employment—good jobs and public services that support our families and build our communities—Wall Street must be held accountable to pay for it.

These movements converged on October 5th in New York in yet another community-labor demonstration targeting Wall Street and again in Chicago on October 10th—this one in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, building on momentum brewing from the past couple of years where unions and community groups mobilized a march on Wall Street, on K Street, and in bank actions around the country.

This latest series of actions further demonstrates the sharpened level of unity between various sections of the social justice movement, and the advanced clarity we all share that there is no budget crisis—only a revenue crisis, and Wall Street is the culprit.

In moving forward, it will be tempting to be satisfied with mobilizing solidarity actions and Occupy {Insert City} demonstrations around the country.  But the energy in that will fade fast if labor and larger movement organizations do not take advantage of this political moment to push concrete strategies to create and maintain good union jobs with revenue generated from Wall Street.

This is not a foreign idea to Jobs with Justice.  Just a couple weeks ago, JwJ coalitions in Texas, Arizona, Pennsylvania and South Carolina joined National Peoples Action and others to target area super-committee congressional members demanding their support on the American Jobs Act and the passage of tax reforms such as closing the “Hedge Fund Loophole”, ending the Bush tax cuts, and instituting a Financial Speculation Tax can generate over a trillion dollars that can be used for housing, jobs, and repairing our nations’ frayed social safety net.

Through the Caring Across Generations campaign, Jobs with Justice has actually identified a number, demanding 3 million new jobs in the long-term care sector, and is exploring creative ways to tax Wall Street and industry corporations to generate the revenue to make this possible.  And this is only 2 million of the 15 million the country actually needs!

There are other efforts worth connecting to as well.

The New Bottom Line is moving a smart strategy asking local municipalities to divest from Wall Street banks and adopt other regulations to eliminate their negative impact on local budgets.

The New Priorities Network aims to create jobs and save public services by cutting Pentagon spending.

And as already noted, there are multiple efforts to introduce and implement a Financial Transactions or Speculations Tax to curb Wall Street’s ability to gamble with our homes and our jobs.

To be clear, the current fights are not simply fights for organizing and collective bargaining rights, new jobs or to make Wall Street pay for the damage they’ve done.  These are certainly our demands.  But our ultimate fight is over who has control over what happens in our workplaces and our communities — working people or Wall Street corporations.  Corporations were allowed to sink billions of dollars into political campaigns, out-spending the labor movement by more than ever, with the sole purpose of protecting the interests of the rich—Bush tax cuts for millionaires, corporate tax breaks, and other anti-worker policies.  But their cash cannot be louder than our need for jobs and the right to organize during this economic crisis.

In this electric era of spontaneous uprisings and pro-longed demonstrations, it is not enough for us to simply sit back and analyze what is happening.  Nor can we get so lost in the moment that we lose site of specific opportunities to win real victories.  As we gear up for the next round of right-wing attacks on workers in the states, Jobs with Justice must be building working class power in order to turn these defensive battles into opportunities to continue supporting and broadening a movement where the key question is not the deficit, but creating reclaiming control of our labor, our homes, and our livelihoods.

To engage in this discussion and join the fight, contact your local Jobs with Justice coalition, and stay tuned to this blog and/or visit http://www.occupytogether.org/.