CWA President Chris Shelton said that if the cuts proposed in the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” go into effect, corporations should guarantee that working people will receive the raises the administration promised and ensure that the bill’s treatment of overseas profits will not result in domestic job loss.
Shelton sent individual letters to CEOs of some of the largest corporations where CWA members work including Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, Frontier Communications, American Airlines, General Electric, NBC Universal, and ABC Entertainment asking them to sign a memorandum of agreement as part of the current contracts with CWA now in force. “Together, through collective bargaining, we can ensure promises about wages and jobs are kept,” Shelton wrote.
CWA’s call for working people to get raises if the tax plan passes was front page news in the New York Times:
“President Trump and the Republican Congress have been trying to sell this corporate tax cut to working families by making big claims about wage increases, investment and job growth that don’t seem to be supported by the evidence,” said Chris Shelton, the president of the union. “We’re going straight to the people who know how corporations plan to spend the billions of dollars being handed over to them — the C.E.O.s — and asking them if they intend to keep the promises that Trump is making on their behalf.”
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As Bloomberg reports, corporations are not planning to give working families the average $4,000 wage increases that the Trump administration has promised:
“Major companies including Cisco Systems Inc., Pfizer Inc., and Coca-Cola Co. say they’ll turn over most gains from proposed corporate tax cuts to their shareholders, undercutting President Donald Trump’s promise that his plan will create jobs and boost wages for the middle class.
The president has held fast to his pledge even as top executives’ comments have run counter to it for months. Instead of hiring more workers or raising their pay, many companies say they’ll first increase dividends or buy back their own shares.
Robert Bradway, chief executive of Amgen Inc., said in an Oct. 25 earnings call that the company has been “actively returning capital in the form of growing dividend and buyback and I’d expect us to continue that.” Executives including Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey, Pfizer Chief Financial Officer Frank D’Amelio, and Cisco CFO Kelly Kramer have recently made similar statements.
“We’ll be able to get much more aggressive on the share buyback” after a tax cut, Kramer said in a Nov. 16 interview.
Watch President Shelton on MSNBC talking about how the tax bill would be disastrous for working people here.
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The Senate is expected to vote on the GOP’s tax bill this week, so we need to flood the Capitol with calls. Republicans in the Senate are trying to ram through the largest transfer of wealth from working families to big corporations, millionaires, and billionaires in our lifetimes. They want to raise taxes on working families to pay for permanent tax cuts for big corporations and their wealthy donors.
Click here or call 1-888-848-4824 to join thousands of other CWA members on this day of action.Tell your Senators to oppose any tax plan that raises taxes for working people to give big corporations a tax break.
Across the country, CWA activists and allies are taking action to stop the Republican’s tax plan that gives billions to corporations and the wealthy and makes working families pay the bill.
Top row, from left: Members of Local 4250 in Chicago; Local 4310, Columbus, Ohio, and Local 4501, Columbus.
Second row: Locals 4900 and 4998 in Indiana; Locals 1104 and 1108, Long Island, N.Y.; Local 4603, Brookfield and Milwaukee, Wis.
Third row: Local 4630, Madison, Wis.; and Local 3122, Miami, Fla.
Bottom row: Local 7019, Phoenix, Ariz.; and Local 3808, Nashville, Tenn.