September 2021
- Infrastructure
- Tax Fairness
- Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act
- Voting Rights
- Happy Birthday, Social Security!
Infrastructure
By battling on the front lines of the pandemic and advocating to pass the American Rescue Plan, public service workers saved our communities from collapse. Now, we can build our communities back better than before and level the playing field for working people for decades to come. By passing President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, we can make transformational investments in public services, create good union jobs and lower costs for millions of Americans.
Shareables: Facebook post on Building Back Better, Michigan AFSCME members push for infrastructure and CSEA member calls for early childhood investments.
Tax Fairness
President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda presents a rare opportunity to finally level the playing field for working families by requiring wealthy individuals and large profitable corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. That would help pay for this much-needed investment in America’s infrastructure, vital public services and the care economy. Recent polling shows that roughly two-thirds of voters and independents support Biden’s core plan to raise taxes on corporations and individuals with incomes over $400,000. When AFSCME members were asked if corporations and the wealthy should pay higher taxes to address economic inequality and pay for vital public services, 55% wholeheartedly agreed and an additional 17% strongly supported it.
Shareables: AFSCME blog on tax fairness.
Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act
We expect the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act (PSFNA) to be introduced in the very near future by Rep. Cartwright (D-PA) in the House and Sen. Hirono (D-HI) in the Senate. The PSFNA would set a minimum nationwide standard of collective bargaining rights that states must provide, including allowing public service workers to join together and have a voice on the job to improve both working conditions and the communities in which they live and work.
Share your story of how the PSFNA would help you by emailing atownsend@afscme.org
You can find the full AFSCME Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act Toolkit here.
Voting Rights
AFSCME President Lee Saunders joined thousands of people in Washington, D.C. and cities across the country on August 28 to urge swift action by Congress to protect our voting rights. The House passed H.R. 4, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and we call on the Senate to pass the bill as well.
Additional shareables: AFSCME blog on our voting rights campaign, President Saunders calls for swift action to protect voting rights and Reuters on unions’ push for H.R.4, the John R Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Happy Birthday Social Security!
We recently celebrated the 86th anniversary of Social Security and continue to call on Congress to fix its flaws and repeal the GPO and WEP offsets, ensuring that public service workers and their families receive full Social Security benefits.
Read more from the AFSCME blog here.