The budget agreement Congress passed this week is a bad deal for our country—especially working people. It will make it even harder to solve our country’s biggest crisis—the jobs crisis.

The AFL-CIO—and the entire labor movement along with our community partners and allies—is committed to putting people back to work. And we’re determined to protect and strengthen workers’ rights so people have the opportunity to get good jobs that provide a pathway to the middle class.

Will you add your voice to our petition and help shift our national debate?

Add your name to the "American Wants to Work" petition. We'll deliver it to Congress, the White House and major media outlets.

Americans agree—we need jobs. When asked in a poll last week whether Congress and the president should focus on the federal budget deficit or jobs, 67 percent of the public said “jobs.”⁽¹⁾

America needs to stop wasting time on manufactured political debates that will make our economy worse. According to economists, the recent deal to raise the debt ceiling will undermine economic growth and job creation across the board and make our fragile economy worse.⁽²⁾

Add your name to our “America Wants to Work” petition. It says: “America wants to work. It’s time to move on from manufactured crises and focus on jobs.”

We need to demand politicians and major media outlets focus on our jobs crisis. And congressional Republicans in particular need to hear that message. Last November, they campaigned on jobs, jobs, jobs. But then, they forced us to waste months on raising the debt ceiling—and finally forced a “solution” to the manufactured debt crisis that will destroy jobs.⁽¹⁾

The only solution to our jobs crisis is a national jobs strategy. Outside of Washington, job creation is at the top of everyone’s agenda. Only in this topsy-turvy Alice in Wonderland place are long-term deficits more urgent than massive unemployment. We’re years into a jobs crisis with no end in sight. It’s time our leaders and the media started paying attention.

Urge our political leaders and the media to bring just as much urgency to the task of creating jobs as they brought to the politically manufactured crisis over the debt ceiling.

In Solidarity,

Richard L. Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

P.S. This August, when members of Congress get back home and away from the Washington, D.C., bubble, AFL-CIO working families activists will show up and demand they work to solve the jobs crisis. And we’ll keep demanding major media outlets cover the jobs crisis in America—and help them understand that we can’t cut our way to prosperity. Will you add your voice?

Click here to sign our petition. It says: “America wants to work. It’s time to move on from manufactured crises and focus on jobs.”

⁽¹⁾ http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/07/28/poll-voters-rank-jobs-as-nations-top-priority

⁽²⁾ http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/debt-ceiling-deal-risks-compromising-fragile-economic-growth/2011/08/01/gIQA9phUoI_story_1.html