California labor federation backs WPA-type jobs program

Following are excerpts from a resolution adopted by the California Labor Federation at its 28th biennial convention on July 14.

In this 75th anniversary year of the WPA ...

We need the same kind of bold, sweeping public jobs program today!

Whereas, 75 years ago, on April 8, 1935, Congress passed legislation creating the largest public works program in U.S. history. On May 6, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order founding the Works Progress Administration, which created 8.5 million jobs during the Depression of the 1930s; and

Whereas, the WPA didn’t just happen because of the kindness and concern of President Roosevelt. It was a response to a tremendous mass movement in the streets and workplaces all over the U.S. — from the Bonus March and Ford Hunger March of 1932; to the San Francisco general strike and large industrial actions in Toledo and Minneapolis in 1934; to later sit-downs in the auto plants of Michigan; to militant actions by Unemployed Councils in hundreds of cities. It was this pressure from below that got us the WPA, which put millions of people back to work, Social Security and other New Deal programs; and

Whereas, today’s crisis is nearly as bad as it was back then. Unemployment in manufacturing is almost at Great Depression levels. What we have now is an economy based on permanent high unemployment and low wages ... a political and economic system that provides trillions of dollars in bailouts for Wall Street, and trillions of dollars for war, but nothing for large numbers of workers and the poor, who are facing growing joblessness, foreclosures, evictions, layoffs, low wages, hunger and homelessness; and

Whereas, the AFL-CIO has a worthy five-point Jobs Plan, but without a massive amount of “street heat” its implementation is far from assured. Proposals from many local and state unions for a labor-led Solidarity Day III march on Washington, in the tradition of past AFL-CIO Solidarity Day marches, have not yet been acted upon; and

Whereas, our infrastructure is falling apart, our schools and health care facilities understaffed. We need the same kind of bold, sweeping jobs program that people demanded — and got — in the 1930s. There are between 20 and 30 million unemployed and underemployed people in the country today. We need a real WPA-type program that is big enough to ensure that those who need work get work — work that is socially useful and paying union wages and benefits — a real jobs program fully funded by the government; and

Whereas, Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated the final months of his life to starting a movement for the right of everyone to a job or a guaranteed income — and we need a movement like that now. The issue of jobs is on the front burner: all it needs is a flame. But as in the 1930s, only a massive movement in the streets and workplaces will bring about a real public jobs program like the WPA.

Therefore be it resolved, that in this 75th anniversary year of the WPA, which created 8.5 million public jobs during the Depression of the 1930s, that the California Labor Federation urge the AFL-CIO and all of organized labor to do two things:

1) Fight for a real WPA-type program that is big enough to ensure that those who need work get work — work that is socially useful and paying union wages and benefits — a real jobs program fully funded by the government;

2) Get behind and urge that we support the Oct. 2 march called by the NAACP, SEIU Local 1199, other civil rights groups and supported by the AFL-CIO for JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.