TRADE
Domestic workers can compete with anyone on a level playing field, but all too often bad actors from overseas seek to dominate our markets and undercut our industries by engaging in dumping, illegal subsidies, currency manipulation and other unfair trade practices.
The USW has been involved in more than 100 trade cases over the past 25 years as we seek needed relief across all our major sectors.
However, in order to win these cases, we first must lose jobs and market share, some of which we never get back, meaning these are, at best, stopgap solutions.
All the while, multinational corporations and government-supported companies continue to exploit loopholes and challenge our trade laws.
We need elected officials willing to offer specific, achievable plans to preserve domestic manufacturing and revamp our broken trade system so that it will support American workers over the long-term.
This will not only preserve and create good-paying jobs but also make our nation safer and more secure.
HEALTH CARE
Affordable health care remains a top priority for working families.
The Affordable Care Act and other measures to help Americans access lifesaving care, like capping insulin prices and reining in prescription drug costs, offered needed relief, but health care costs still present a significant challenge to many Americans.
Corporations consistently try to foist rising health insurance costs on employees, and even workers who have the opportunity to collectively bargain must too often fend off cost increases by compromising in other areas.
No one should go into a lifetime of debt in exchange for medical care, and, as the pandemic starkly illustrated, providing widespread access to health care resources keeps everyone safer.
Many proposals to reduce costs and extend coverage have been put forward, including a single-payer plan like Medicare for All.
While there are pros and cons to each of these, it is essential that our nation implement real solutions to contain health insurance costs and continue working toward providing coverage for all Americans.
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
Having a voice on the job and a collectively bargained contract helps reduce economic inequality and raise wages for whole industries, not just at unionized facilities.
Unions also lead to increased civic engagement and more focused political power for working families, giving workers an opportunity to shape their communities. Unfortunately, these are the very reasons why corporatists fight so hard to keep workers from exercising their rights to organize and collectively bargain.
Over the decades, billionaire CEOs and their well-heeled lobbyists have pushed lawmakers to pass anti-union laws on the federal and state levels in an attempt to break down and bankrupt unions.
The pandemic shined a light on the essential nature of our labor, and thousands of workers are now seizing the moment, engaging in organizing campaigns and collective actions to improve conditions at their workplaces.
But to achieve true economic equality, we must pass legislation like the PRO Act that restores the balance of power between workers and their employers, imposing real penalties when greedy bosses violate workers’ rights.
We also need a robust, fully funded National Labor Relations Board that protects workers when employers break the rules.
It’s not enough for candidates to acknowledge existing labor laws. We need elected officials who will fight to ensure all workers can access the benefits of unionization.
DOMESTIC ISSUES
As our nation embarks on a once-in-a-generation upgrade to our roads, bridges, pipelines, communications systems and other critical infrastructure, it’s essential that we keep the momentum going.
Done right, this investment will not only make our communities safer and more resilient, but will create thousands of high-quality manufacturing jobs as U.S. workers supply the steel, glass, cement, and other materials needed to finish these projects.
That’s why it is vital that federal legislation includes strong “Buy American” provisions to ensure that our tax dollars support domestic industries.
We also need to build out our domestic supply chains as we invest in the clean energy economy. From mining and processing, to manufacturing and recycling, American workers are poised and ready to help usher in clean technologies if given the chance.
Candidates must back an industrial policy that invests in our future, our jobs and our national security, ensuring that we are manufacturing the materials that we need for defense, energy, transportation, communications, and more.
SAFETY & HEALTH
Thousands of workers lose their lives on the job every year, and hundreds of thousands more suffer nonfatal injuries and illnesses.
To protect workers, lawmakers, unions and other stakeholders have fought for decades to institute health and safety protections for workers on the job, oftentimes in opposition to greedy employers who want to cut corners or blame workers for getting hurt or sick.
This is why it is essential to have a U.S. Department of Labor that prioritizes workers and their needs as well as a well-funded and fully staffed Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
From airborne pathogens to combustible dust and beyond, workers and their communities face numerous threats, and they deserve to know that government agencies are working to protect them.
Instead of planning to roll back workplace protections, candidates must hold employers accountable for keeping workers and their communities healthy and safe.
RETIREMENT SECURITY
Workers spend their entire lives paying into the Social Security system with the understanding that their investment will allow them to live a dignified retirement after decades on the job.
Others negotiate pensions or other retirement benefits into their collectively bargained contracts so that this sort of deferred compensation can help them to lead a full life after they retire.
In recent years, however, some politicians have tried to cut Social Security and Medicare in order to pay for tax breaks for the rich.
Other lawmakers believe the opposite should occur – that these programs should be expanded.
A number of lawmakers went to bat for workers who faced the loss of their pensions as a result of corporate greed, deregulation and the aftershocks of the Great Recession. Bold leadership in Washington helped secure troubled multiemployer pension plans and ensured more than a million workers, including 120,000 USW members and retirees, could have the retirements they’d earned.
Social Security and Medicare function not only as part of the nation’s inviolable contract with working families but as a way of building shared prosperity, a guarantee that workers will not be cut adrift in old age.
Candidates must prioritize retirement security so that all Americans can live out their lives with dignity.