Dear Colleagues,
We received the following call-to-action from the AFL-CIO. We urge you to do as they ask and contact our legislator in support of the HEROES Act. (We know the dates on the image are from last week, but we received this notice over the weekend. The HEROES Act still hasn’t passed. We need to put pressure on the Senate to act.)
After a month and a half of the HEROES Act sitting untouched in Mitch McConnell’s lap, the Senate majority leader has finally proposed his own woefully inadequate proposal.
The pitiful proposal barely addresses our national child care emergency, strips millions of their unemployment benefits, and gives nothing to the U.S. Postal Service ahead of one of the most important presidential elections in America’s history.
To no one’s surprise, the proposal has caused a stalemate in Congress at a time when we couldn’t need action sooner. U.S. House members have put their foot down and said they won’t go on recess until a bill is agreed upon, but the Senate is still set to go on vacation next week.
We have been driving phone calls to Capitol Hill all week, letting our senators know that heading out on vacation before approving lifesaving legislation that would benefit millions of Americans is unacceptable.
The future and livelihoods of millions of working Americans are in the hands of the U.S. Senate. Just last week, millions who lost their jobs through no fault of their own during the coronavirus pandemic were stripped of $600 in weekly unemployment benefits—benefits that were keeping them and their families afloat. For the Senate to go on vacation before coming to an agreement that would save lives is despicable and disgraceful.
We need every working American to tell their senators to get back to work.
We are facing a crisis unlike anything the labor movement has ever dealt with before, and it’s going to take every single union member to hold Congress accountable. Dawn, can we count you in?
In Solidarity,
Team AFL-CIO