Putting America Back to Work
KIRKLAND, LANE
Thinking Aloud PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK BY LANE KIRKLAND Continued high unemployment and economic stagnation threaten all of this nation's goals and ideals. For without a strong economy,...
...I do not discount that symbolism, and I would have hoped that working people and their contributions to society were represented in it...
...We had hoped to be able to applaud and pledge our full backing for the first economic program of the man we supported so strenuously for the Presidency...
...The indirect result would be to restore the faith and brighten the future of an entire generation...
...We didn't get that...
...stimulus it needs...
...To the argument that we must move forward slowly so that the business community won't be upset, my answer is: Baloney...
...They have better employment results per dollar spent than does a tax cut...
...This would not make new jobs, but it would keep 125,000 people on the job...
...But what disappointed us most, and what we argued most strongly against, were the tax cuts for corporations—tax outs that will not produce a single job or feed a single unemployed worker's family...
...Last November we felt that the United States, having survived Watergate, would survive the economic mess Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford left behind...
...We thought that in 1977 America would once again start back on the road to full employment and full production...
...We believe that many on Capitol Hill share our commitment to a healthy, expanding economy...
...And we are going to have to continue to do our own job ourselves and keep our powder dry—for that, after all, is the meaning of a free trade union movement...
...The pledges to put America back to work are being revised, rethought, reconsidered, and retailored...
...We will ask Congress to make available $5 billion of authorized but unappropriated funds for so-called "tandem plan" below-market interest rate financing of housing, plus an additional $3 billion for a variety of other programs, including public housing...
...To rely on tax outs and rebates, instead of job-creating legislation, is to use the least effective method...
...That is why we worked so hard for the Democratic candidate during the months before the election, and for no other reason...
...Our objective was to provide the most jobs at the least cost to the Federal treasury, which we thought to be a reasonable approach...
...We are not interested in preference for a few people, in prestigious jobs...
...a democratic society of equal rights and equal status for all...
...Our American corporations find it necessary to bribe governments overseas to get their confidence and let them do business there, and then expect us to bribe them in order to get their confidence and persuade them to do business here...
...For the last eight years, what business wanted business got...
...And the figures cited, it should be noted, come from the Congressional Budget Office, not from the AFL-CIO research staff...
...We couldn't let them believe that this package will solve their problems when we know full well that it won't...
...But if you put the same $1 billion into tax cuts, in one year you would create only about 30,000 jobs in the best case, at a net cost that jumps to more than $725 million...
...Our purpose was not to get jobs in the Administration, not to secure tokens or symbols, but to support concrete policies and programs...
...We are disappointed in the Carter proposals, and we have said so publicly because we have an obligation to our members and to the jobless in America...
...We will ask for an $8 billion expansion in the public service employment program...
...Subsequent modifications in the Administration pack, age have not altered our view, and we don't particularly relish having to say that...
...We will ask for a $10 billion increase in the accelerated public works program—for projects that can be undertaken within 90 days, that are badly needed by the states and communities and school districts and sewer districts, and that would improve the quality of life in America...
...We recommended a program aimed at accomplishing this after weighing the relative job gains to be achieved by tax cuts as opposed to accelerated public works and public service employment...
...We hope they will listen to our proposals, to our five-part program designed to stimulate the economy...
...We got a program that simply does not square with the campaign speeches, does not meet the needs of America, and does not go far enough...
...For without a strong economy, without full employment, America is weakened, its ability to lead the free world is undermined and human rights everywhere are further endangered...
...And the jobs created would not only be the 325,000 on the work sites but the thousands more in every industry making goods that go into a home, from nails to refrigerators...
...What did the rest of us get...
...We are interested in the future and the hopes of those who are working at $2.30 an hour, or who are drawing unemployment compensation...
...We propose to put 2 million men and women back to work, and before very long the success of that effort would pay for itself and then some...
...There has been some discussion in the press of controversies revolving around appointments to a few top-level government positions...
...If that is the size of the goal for half of the total Administration, when are we going to get to the goal of full employment as set forth in the Humphrey-Hawkins bill...
...We share the view recently expressed by Clarence Mitchell of the NAACP, when he said he was relatively indifferent as to whether those who were named to Cabinet posts were black, brown, green, or white, or men or women...
...We have to continue to work and fight and bring pressure to bear just as we did before...
...We'd rather help 250,000 American kids than give the corporations another tax bonanza...
...And they will get customers when millions of unemployed have jobs again, not before...
...An examination of the basic elements of the President's planthe size, the shape, the timing of his strategies to put America back to workshows that it clearly undercuts even the excessively modest goal of a 1.5 per cent reduction in unemployment that he set for the first year of his Administration...
...Corporations need customers, not tax gifts...
...We had expected strong economic stimulation, and we presented our position to the members of the President's economic team in detail prior to its decision...
...If you put $1 billion into public service employment, within one year you would create nearly 145,000 jobs at a net cost of some $450 million, and necessary services to the citizenry would have been provided...
...The bold words of last fall have given way to hesitant, timid steps...
...It would create an additional 2 million jobs this year, bring hope to 2 million American homes, provide 2 million more customers for American industry, and make taxpayers—not tax users—out of 2 million of our fellow citizens...
...back to the balanced, healthy economy that John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson left at the end of their periods in office...
...Now, however, we cannot be sure we are going to get them soon...
...The direct result would be 250,000 jobs for youngsters...
...It may be recalled that during the campaign it was taken as gospel—and not disputed by any economist?that an increase in employment of 1 million people would reduce the budget deficit by $16 billion...
...This would put 1 million additional people into jobs providing public services not now available that are badly needed, indeed essential, for the well being of our communities across the nation...
...I want to make clear that the AFL-CIO is not interested in patronage...
...The difference is quite dramatic...
...America's need for housing must be apparent to everyone...
...So public service jobs and public works projects are not rash spending schemes...
...But beyond those symbols, we are concerned with the substance of what those who receive high-level appointments can be expected to produce, with what they represent in terms of policies...
...We are told that it is necessary to help instill and revive business confidence...
...We are interested in government appointments only insofar as they reflect and indicate programs and policies...
...If today you put $1 billion into accelerated public-works projects, for example, within one year you would create approximately 70,000 jobs at a net cost to the treasury of some $525 million, and something of lasting value to a community would have been built...
...Certainly it is fitting to symbolize in the high offices of our country the fact that this is a multiracial society...
...We will ask for $2 billion for training America's youth, the kids who can't get into college and can't get a job because they have no skills...
...Moreover, only when the unemployed are put back to work can they truly enjoy the rights and liberties—the human rights—of which this nation is proud...
...Our package totals $30 billion...
...Three recessions, the worst inflation in peacetime history, the highest interest rates in 100 years, and the worst unemployment since the Great Depression...
...Since President Carter agreed with us during the campaign on the need for putting America back to work, we expected he would want the best employment program and the most jobs at the lowest cost...
...That is the measure of a concerned and humane society—not the distribution of Cabinet and sub-Cabinet posts for the elevation of a few and the press attention that goes with it...
...And the result is just not good enough...
...They would put 600,000 people back to work...
...Finally, we will ask for an additional $2 billion in counter—cyclical aid to state and local governments...
...We got a program that represents the employment goals for the next two years—for 50 per cent of the new four-year Administration...
...Incidentally, this program would cost exactly as much as the proposed tax cut for corporations...
...That lesson is that the outcome of an election and the rise of new political leadership does not relieve the trade union movement of any of its burdens or solve any of its problems...
...His article is adapted from an address to a Jewish Labor Committee dinner honoring International Ladies' Garment Workers Union president Sol C. Chaikin...
...Thus a special subcommittee of the AFL-CIO Executive Council felt compelled to say after going over the plan with deliberate care when it was announced: "The two-year package is too small, and it takes too long, and it is too ill-advised to give the economy the Lane Kirkland is Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO...
...He wanted to know what they had done for the great mass of the people of this country...
...New players are in the game, new intellects" are reviewing the issuesintellects who were not visible on the ticket in the campaign...
...That's the price of business confidence...
...The Administration's economic package is woefully lacking in the real answer, the only answer, to America's unemployment problemsjobs...
...Isn't that ironic...
...His concern was programs that would put the millions of blacks that are unemployed and the millions of the poor that are unemployed or working at subminimum wages back to work at a living wage...
...Out of our unhappiness with the proposed economic program has come, perhaps, a useful and wholesome lesson, and at a fitting stage in the life of the Carter Administration...
...The stimulus from these tax cuts and rebates is far more costly and moves at a muoh slower pace than direct, job-creating programs...
...Now we will be going to Congress...
Vol. 60 • February 1977 • No. 4
