Europe's present experience, past U.S. and world history, and U.S. federal budget cutting show that "austerity doesn't work" as a way to pull the U.S. and the world out of the Great Recession and its aftereffects, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says. Instead, what the nation and the world need is a massive new New Deal to put the Earth's 202 million unemployed back to work.

Trumka blasted budget cutting and proposed a jobs program - with infrastructure construction as one centerpiece - in a June 6 speech here to the Executive Council on Diplomacy. He ruefully noted he gave almost the same exact speech to the same group almost two years ago. "Quite a bit has changed, and yet the debate on jobs and debt remains stuck, both here and around the world," he said.

"Maybe I'm trying to say that I'm not the only one who's stuck in a rut. We all are. The politics of austerity still hold the world in a vice-like grip. The gap between the world's wealthiest people and the rest of us -- already at a historic high -- continues to grow. Joblessness plagues almost every country on the globe and is actually rising worldwide, even as we see modest improvements here in the U.S.

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"Overall, our economies need fewer low roads and more high roads. It's time for all of us to embrace labor market policies that support and train unemployed people, and help them find jobs, and enforce our right to a collective voice on the job. That's the best way to raise living standards, improve workplace safety and build broad prosperity, not just for working people but for everybody. But most of all, it's time for all of us to stop wishing for a short cut to a prosperous future.

"Austerity doesn't work-under any name or by any measure. Eurozone leaders are beginning to accept this idea, almost as we speak. We should do the same."