HY UNIONS SHOULD BE KEY ELEMENT
IN ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Robert Reich at the Local 1245 Leadership Training in Berkeley.
“Whenever anybody says to you, ‘We have to worry about the national deficit,’ I want you to remember what I am about to say. The deficit number means nothing,” Robert Reich told Local 1245 members at the Leadership Training in Berkeley on Jan. 24.
The real issue in our current economic slump is getting people back to work. The annual federal deficits—and the accumulated national debt—will only get smaller when the economy begins to grow. If the national economy isn’t growing, Reich says, then people won’t be buying and the debt will keep going up.
And the only way to get the economy growing again is to get people back to work and get some money in their pocket.
“And the best way to put money in people’s pockets,” he says, “is to get more people unionized so they have more bargaining power.”