indiana unemployment Our Newest Special Interest Group - The Unemployed
Unemployment - The Rhetoric of Disinformation
I have been studying the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports on January and February unemployment. Every month they issue a six page press release. After spending several hours studying these releases, the only real conclusion I can draw would be that the government is deliberately misleading people about US joblessness.
The first paragraph from the March 10, 2010 release states that non-farm payroll employment was "essentially unchanged" - as only 36,000 jobs were lost (following a loss of 20,000 in February. In then states that this loss of 56,000 jobs led to an internet decline within the official unemployment rate from 10.0 to 9.7 percent. The reason being individuals are only counted as unemployed when they actively looked for operate in February. This means about 2.5 million individuals who haven't worked in over a year aren't counted within the official unemployment rate when they didn't locate a job recently.
The press release concedes the total number of individuals unemployed for over Twelve months is up 500,000 over February 2009. Additionally, it highlights that the number of "involuntary" part-time workers (individuals not able to find full-time jobs or with recent cutbacks in their hours) increased by 500,000 in February.
Things i find interesting is if you add the state number unemployed (14.9 million), towards the 2.5 million permanently unemployed and also the 8.8 involuntary part-timers, you come forth with an overall total unemployment rate closer to 20 % - a treadmill fifth from the civilian work force.
indiana unemploymentUnfortunately the mainstream media doesn't consider these figures once they set of unemployment. Instead they point to the 0.3 percent improvement in unemployment since December 2009 (which actually reflects people who have stopped looking for work) as proof the united states economy is beginning to recover. They also point to fractional (0.2%) within the GDP during the last few months. The problem with using GDP being an indicator of economic recovery is that it's mainly based on business and corporate earnings. And also the main strategy businesses used to increased profitability last year (in a severe recession) was to downsize and lay-off workers (thus increasing unemployment).
The Unemployed as a Pressure Group
The implications of a true unemployment rate near to 20 % are staggering. With one inch every five Americans unemployed, there's enormous possibility of the rebirth from the unemployed workers movement active during the Great Depression. Its main role would be to fight for crucial reforms the Obama administration refuses to address. Based on numerous social historians, it had been mainly America's success in organizing the unemployed that pushed President Roosevelt to enact wide reaching New Deal reforms - a significant package of legislation that for the first time benefited ordinary workers rather than business interests.
Even before the advent of giant multinational corporations, merchants and businesses have always had far more influence over the federal government than ordinary citizens. In fact close examination of the united states Constitution reveals our founding fathers meant our government to become set up this way. They deliberately made a government structure that would favour business. Actually with the important exception of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin, most of them admit this in their writings concerning the first Constitutional Convention.
No One is Born with Rights
Many Americans mistakenly believe they are born with inherent "rights" as a condition of US citizenship. Nothing could be more wrong. People must win their rights by fighting for them. Corporations have a vested interest in opposing reforms that may potentially affect their profitability. Consequently the federal government has never granted popular reforms - in health care, education, work and food safety, environmental protection or voting rights for women and African Americans - due to the fact it had been the right thing to do. Without exception, every reform benefiting employees, such as the 40 hour work week (in 1900 people worked 72 hour weeks), the minimum wage and the abolition of child labor - has been won through the long effort of grassroots organizing.
At the moment corporate interests (such as health insurance and drug companies worried about their profit margins) seem to carry far more weight with our new president than the United states citizens. However a robust unemployed workers' union would force Obama to redirect his attention from the wars in the Middle East to critical issues that prevent millions of Americans from seeing real evidence of economic recovery within their everyday lives.
Existing Unemployed Workers Organizations
There are community-led efforts underway in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Maine to arrange the unemployed. In February 2009 Tom Lewandowski, a let go electrician, founded the Unemployed and Anxiously Employed Workers Initiative (UAEWI). The group was instrumental in passing state legislation to replenish Indiana's unemployment insurance fund and appropriating $16 million for job retraining programs. At present they're demanding a voice in how these funds are spent - via a seat on the Northeast Indiana Regional Workforce Board.
In 2002 former UNITE organizer Jack McKay organized laid-off workers in Maine to create Food AND Medicine (FAM) - largely in response to a mass exodus of manufacturing jobs from eastern Maine. FAM began as a health care advocacy organization for low income and unemployed workers who have been instructed to make a decision between buying groceries or spending money on doctors' visits and prescriptions. spending money on healthcare or spending money on food. It continues to lobby for universal healthcare and workers rights legislation, including and the Employee Free Choice Act - a federal bill that would amend the Labor Relations Act to speed up and simplify the entire process of forming a union. FAM has also formed a cooperative with area farmers to supply affordable, locally grown food to the members.
The Philadelphia Unemployment Project (PUP) is even older, formed throughout the mid-1970s OPEC recession. Apart from focusing on employment related issues, PUP also represents homeowners facing foreclosure. Their efforts led the Philadelphia courts to establish a program in April 2008 requiring lenders to sign up in mediation with homeowners trying to renegotiate their mortgage payments. An initial survey shows they prevented foreclosure among 80 percent of homeowners who participated.
indiana unemploymentWhere's the AFL-CIO?
The support provided by the AFL-CIO to those fledgling jobless organizations - an origin website and wiki - is token support at best. The website "Working America" was launched in April 2009 to help struggling families find local resources, for example benefit entitlements, retraining, day care and food banks.
While a great resource, it really is disappointing to see the AFL-CIO take on a social work role and neglect a critical organizing opportunity. Their current efforts fall far lacking the support the unemployed movement received from organized labor in the 1930s. During the Great Depression it had been local union activists - the efforts from the United Auto Workers and also the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) are the best described - who organized the unemployed. It's obviously within the self-interest of unions to arrange the jobless. With an immense pool of potential scab labor desperate enough to cross union picket lines, ale workers to strike for higher wages and working conditions evaporates. Employers know this, obviously, making significant gains (in wages or working conditions) impossible in a period of high unemployment. Actually many employers make the most of a recession to demand substantial "claw-backs" (reduced wages and benefits, longer hours, less favorable working conditions).
Organized labor has already been significantly weakened thanks to an aggressive union bashing strategy pursued under Taxation and both Bush administrations. The "claw-backs" resulting from an extended period of unemployment could cause organized labor to get rid of any voice in america political process.
Exactly what the AFL-CIO Could (and Should) Do
Precisely what it takes in the AFL-CIO is paid organizers exercising of union locals to reach out to laid off union members and other unemployed workers - and training them how to organize and lobby collectively for jobs creation legislation, universal healthcare and protections against foreclosure and eviction if they fall behind in their mortgage payments.
There's already a strong tendency for Americans responsible themselves when they lose employment. Thus an essential component of the outreach process is helping them understand that their situation comes from major flaws in the present US political and economic climate - instead of some personal failing. Unfortunately the significant America website conveys a somewhat paternal, condescending attitude in the manner it dispenses advice. Rather than empowering the jobless to arrange for major changes in an economic system that rewards recklessness, irresponsible speculation and greed, this type of paternalism is commonly quite disempowering - simply because it reinforces a jobless worker's underlying feeling of personal failure.