(Bloomberg News circulated the following story on August 31.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A majority of U.S. workers say the economy is on the wrong track and that wages aren’t keeping pace with the cost of living, according to a new poll taken for the Change to Win labor federation.
Sixty-three percent of workers said the economy is headed in the wrong direction, while 51 percent said their earnings aren’t keeping up with daily expenses, according to the survey conducted Aug. 14-20 by Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling firm.
Almost one-third of those polled have taken on debt to pay for necessities such as food, utilities and gasoline in the past year, the poll found. Health care and retirement topped the list of workers’ concerns, with 77 percent saying that losing health care benefits and not having enough money for retirement are serious worries.
“One thing that’s very clear is that people think there needs to be change,” Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and the president of Lake Research, said at a news conference Wednesday in Washington. “Americans are united in their belief that the American dream is in jeopardy.”
The poll questioned 800 nonsupervisory workers nationwide by telephone and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Twenty-nine percent of respondents identified themselves as strongly backing the Democratic Party, compared with 15 percent who said they were solidly Republican, according to the poll. Twenty-three percent said they were independent.
Change to Win Chairwoman Anna Burger urged lawmakers to take action on issues important to workers, including raising the federal minimum wage.
“The economy is on the top of everybody’s mind,” Burger said. “Congress should get together and act.”
Change to Win is a labor federation of seven unions representing about 6 million U.S. workers. It was formed last year after unions including the Service Employees International Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters split from the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest labor federation.