All working people deserve good jobs and the power to determine their wages and working conditions. Here are some of the ways working people are uniting to make an economy that works for us all.
The immediate priorities of the Texas AFL-CIO focus on helping workers who have lost their jobs recover, avoiding unnecessary layoffs, and making sure adequate compensation is available. Texas must improve safety for working people who have kept the state’s economy going at serious risk to themselves.
When crisis and calamity take jobs away, the market economy alone cannot provide working people the help they need to make ends meet. That is where the Texas Unemployment Insurance system comes in.
There is something fundamentally wrong with our economy. The rich keep getting richer while working people are working longer hours just to make ends meet. Despite year after year of increased productivity, we are not sharing in the fruits of our labor.
The state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour condemns hundreds of thousands of working people to poverty, costs taxpayers and shuts out business customers. It is high time for Texas to join 29 other states in raising the minimum wage above a federal level that has become a victim of congressional gridlock after decades of bipartisan support for a decent wage floor.
A strong manufacturing sector is essential to our nation’s economic success and to our ability to raise wages and provide family-supporting jobs. But decades of devastating trade policy and attacks on unions have taken their toll.
Renegotiations of the failed North American Free Trade Agreement are underway and the recently released objectives are vague and unambitious. Sign the petition calling for a new NAFTA that prioritizes working people.
