Creating Good Jobs Tops My Holiday Wish List

Download the Labor Leader - December/January issue in PDF format

Lorena Gonzalez
Secretary-Treasurer/CEO

En español

It is the holiday season, a traditional time for celebrations and spending time with family and friends.

But for many local families this year, the holidays will be a time of worry and struggle.

The recession has been devastating for many local workers and their families. Although the corporations and banks have had their bailout, the number of unemployed workers and underemployed workers are rising.

Working families continue to struggle to pay for food and housing, let alone extras like toys and holiday presents.

Our hope is that in the New Year, elected leaders in Congress and the White House continue to seek real change for America’s workers. First, we need to extend unemployment and other benefits for our out-of-work brothers and sisters. Now is not the time to end the safety net for individuals and families that have been hardest hit by this economy.

Our legislators should also look to the real needs in our communities and create jobs to help build and improve our infrastructure – the schools, roads, and sewer systems in our neighborhoods. And the federal government must send some monetary support to state and local governments to help eliminate the enormous financial deficits that will help keep our libraries, schools and hospitals open.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, this recession should not be an excuse to simply make previously self-sustaining jobs into minimum wage jobs that perpetuate a lifetime of poverty. Our government should take this opportunity and ensure that the jobs created with the help of taxpayer dollars provide for the possibility of a middle class career, and the right to organize and collectively bargain for a better life.

Alleviating unemployment by simply creating chronic underemployment is not a solution!

This holiday season, working families are calling on President Obama and Congress to pass a new jobs bill that will help put San Diego and Imperial Counties back to work in jobs that pay livable wages.

Hopefully, we will ring in the New Year by taking the steps necessary to turn around our economy in 2010 – and that starts with creating new good jobs.