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TRAVELING THE COUNTRY, talking with our members, it’s clear why there is so much anger. Beyond ICE terrorizing people and President Trump’s expensive war in Iran, which the AFT opposes, working people are hurting—being crushed by rising costs. And our AFT/Protect Borrowers survey of more than 7,500 AFT members released in February shows just how deep the affordability crisis goes.
The survey results are heart-wrenching: Members relying on food pantries. Unable to afford gas to get to work. Delaying retirement to help their adult children pay for housing. Forgoing medical care. Fearing foreclosure. Taking on second and third jobs. Despite Trump’s promises to “bring prices down, starting on day one,” more than half reported being worse off financially since he returned to office.
As one member put it, “I cannot sleep, [I am] waking up worrying about money. I have to charge groceries on my credit card to buy food for my child.... I’m a stressed-out mess.”
It is not their fault. These workers are doing everything right—working hard, caring for their families—yet life keeps getting more and more expensive. At the grocery store, the pharmacy, the gas pump. It’s real. Anybody pretending that it isn’t—from the president on down—does not know how to walk in the shoes of regular Americans.
What happened to the American dream? If you work hard and play by the rules, your family should have a decent life, and the next generation should have a real shot at doing even better.
It’s far from the golden age the current president has promised and promoted. We are seeing more and more working folks, including our members, rely on debt to get by. Over the past year, families paid an average of $1,700 because of Trump’s tariffs. The Republican tax bill last summer gave $1 trillion in tax cuts to the top 1 percent of households, while cutting social programs like Medicaid. The typical age for first-time home buyers is now 40, a historic high. Medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy.
Trump has called affordability “a con job.” He’s walked away from this crisis and from millions of struggling Americans.
The AFT is stepping up to meet this challenge. We must fight against letting the chance at a decent life slip away. That’s why we launched our Fight for Affordability campaign. It’s a three-pronged campaign:
- Empowering our members: Our work tackling student debt secured hundreds of millions of dollars in relief for AFT members. Now we’re taking on the challenge of helping our members navigate other debt and cost-of-living issues that stand in the way of a better life. We’ve created real-life tools and strategies—from online financial literacy clinics, to ways to appeal a medical bill, to guidance on avoiding financial traps like “buy now, pay later.”
- Advocacy: We’re demanding that Congress and the president take concrete steps to address affordability and inequity: rein in healthcare costs, put buying a home in reach again, and fight the current Gilded Age–level inequity. Enough of the rich getting richer while the middle and working classes suffer. We have been working on a federal working-class tax cut—paid for by the multimillionaires who should be paying their fair share. When we mobilize, progress is possible; remember, just over a year ago we helped pass legislation restoring earned Social Security benefits to millions of American workers penalized by a federal loophole.
- Collective bargaining: Our relentless fight for a better life for all has made the AFT the fastest-growing union in the country. Contracts matter, like the new one United Educators of San Francisco negotiated with premium-free health insurance for members and their families after a four-day strike. Then there are recent groundbreaking first-contract wins in higher education in Maryland and Michigan, including raises, stable health insurance, and pathways to promotions.
Of course, mobilizing and voting matter. Seven million people participated in the last “No Kings” protests across the country. Join in to ensure a huge turnout for the next “No Kings” day on March 28. Our message: It’s time for the federal government to help people forge a better life, not create fear and chaos. We’ll carry that momentum into November’s midterms, to elect lawmakers who get that working people are suffering and will do something about it.
Our union is showing up in all these different fights for the America we envision. (We’re fighting in the courts too, as you’ll see in the article I wrote with Todd Wolfson.) What could be more American than people being able to take care of their families and having a shot at the American dream again? That’s what this campaign is all about. I hope you’ll be a part of it. It’s the fight of our lives, for a better life for all.