AFSCME Family:

This pandemic is ravaging our communities and demanding more of AFSCME members than ever. Above all, we need robust assistance for state and local governments — as much as it takes to ensure that our front-line fighters have the tools and resources to keep us safe. That’s the key to defeating COVID-19 and reopening the economy.

Let Congress know just how urgent this is — click here to write to your lawmaker today.

Support for states and localities is the very top priority so that public service workers aren’t thanked with pink slips, and so they can stay on the job supporting our communities. However, it’s not the only priority. As U.S. senators return to Washington this week, the rubber is about to meet the road. We are demanding that the next phase of coronavirus recovery puts the challenges facing working people front and center.

AFSCME is partnering with several other labor unions on a campaign to ensure that the next phase of coronavirus relief, as well as future legislation, address what we’re calling America’s Five Economic Essentials:

1. Keeping America healthy by protecting and expanding health insurance and keeping our hospitals solvent.
2. Keeping front-line workers safe and secure with more personal protective equipment, an emergency infectious disease standard and more testing.
3. Keeping workers employed and protecting the pension checks we have earned.
4. Keeping state and local governments, public schools and the U.S. Postal Service solvent.
5. Keeping America competitive by creating jobs with huge investments in infrastructure.

Working families were already living precariously before this public health crisis. The economy was rigged, wages weren’t keeping up with the cost of living and retirement security was threatened. Now, Americans are experiencing catastrophic job loss, with many in our union family facing layoffs despite putting their lives on the line to serve their communities every day.

Write to Congress — tell them to put working people first by adopting the Five Economic Essentials.

Funding the front lines by helping cash-strapped state and local governments is the first order of business, but we can think even bigger and do even more. We can to build a more solid foundation for working people in the short term and the long term. Congress must step up for us, the way we’ve stepped up for our country.

In solidarity,

Lee Saunders
AFSCME President