IFPTE President Joins AFL-CIO Executive Council Meeting with the Federal Reserve

IFPTE President Matt Biggs joined AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, Secretary Treasurer Fred Redmond, and other members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, at a meeting this week with members of the United States Federal Reserve (Fed).

The meeting, which was attended by several members of the Fed, including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, was an opportunity for labor to inform the Federal Reserve of the true impact that rising interest rates are having on American workers.

President Biggs commented that, “the meeting was a good, productive exchange between labor and the very federal reserve members who create our nation’s monetary policy. This meeting came at a pivotal time, as the Federal Reserve’s policies of drastically increasing interest rates, coupled with quantitative tightening where nearly $100 billion a month is being pulled out of the economy, has a high potential of not only negatively impacting workers’ wages, but could also send our economy into a recession in which tens, if not hundreds of thousands of workers could suffer job losses. It was a good opportunity for IFPTE, and others, to impart upon the Federal Reserve that workers salaries have not nearly kept up with inflation, nor have they increased over decades as production has increased.”