Left Turns

The White House is hosting a summit to “start the conversation” on amplifying workers’ voices. It’s an interesting idea for an administration that’s been largely tone deaf to the challenges facing working families. Anyone who has been listening knows that the president’s failed policies are hurting the economy, and as a result, hurting workers across the country.

• While the economy may be showing some signs of improvement, according to U.S. News and World Report, “the financial picture is far less promising” for American households. They note that “both the poverty rate and median wages remain stubbornly stagnant.”

• Oren Cass points out in the Washington Post that the “true rate of unemployment in America has not declined at all since the recession’s end” and “critical trends have accelerated in the wrong direction.”

• In fact, according to Mortimer Zuckerman, “the number of full-time jobs today is 0.7%, or 822,000, lower than it was at the prerecession peak,” and USA Today reports that “the ranks of part-time workers who prefer full-time jobs remain swollen.”

• Maybe that’s why 15 percent of Americans say the economy is the biggest problem facing the country right now, and an additional 8 percent believe that it’s unemployment.

• Things are so troubling that some are warning of a “new normal,” or as Jeff Cox writes at CNBC.com, “a prolonged, secular malaise that indicates American workers will be looking at the job recovery's glory days in the rearview mirror.”

What’s always lost on the president and his political appointees is that actions speak louder than words. And their actions over the last six years have contributed to the “weakest U.S. recovery since World War II” and are wreaking havoc on working families. With the conversation underway, here are just a few examples:

• Crippling the right of workers to make an informed choice about whether to join a union.

• Jeopardizing the privacy of workers and their families.

• Pushing an extreme regulatory proposal that will limit flexibility and opportunity in the workplace (while ignoring the complexity and legal uncertainty surrounding existing overtime rules).

• Making it more difficult for small business owners to do business with the federal government.

• Threatening the right of workers to opt out of union representation.

• Denying workers greater transparency and accountability over how union leaders spend union dues.

• Restricting workers’ access to secret ballot union elections.

• Advocating for a regulatory scheme that will make it harder for middle-class families to save for retirement.

• Imposing on workplaces a radical definition of employer that will lead to higher costs, fewer jobs, and less opportunity for men and women to pursue the dream of owning a small business.

And of course, this doesn’t include the president’s plan to drive up energy costs or his demand for job-destroying tax increases. It’s no wonder working families believe the president isn’t listening, and a summit at the White House isn’t going to change that.

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