Labor & Employment Law

Bold Action Needed to End Unemployment Crisis

By James Parks

America’s economy is not working for everybody and progressives must demand our elected leaders fight for economic justice?and economic justice begins with good jobs, said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. This afternoon, Trumka spoke at a press conference and later on a panel at the America’s Future Now conference here in Washington, D.C.

Americans of all political persuasions are angry, and rightly so. We need political leaders to speak to that anger, to harness it to attack the plutocracy that has run our country into the ground, to build an economy that works for all. But instead our politics seems to be about a choice between apostles of hate masquerading as populists, and voices of complacency masquerading as progressivism.   

In an emotional presentation, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert said he was “infuriated at the attitude” of the media and political leaders that the unemployed are suffering, “but that’s just too bad.” The nation is wasting its most valuable resource?its people, he said.

There is no real sense of urgency. The media and the government are clueless as to the scope of the problem.

Robert Borosage, president of the Campaign for America’s Future, the conference sponsor, said creating good jobs is the centerpiece of the progressive agenda. “It’s time to put people back to work now,” he said.

Women and people of color are especially hard hit by the jobs crisis. Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, said single mothers face a double problem when they lose their jobs. They have few savings because of wage discrimination against women, even as the recession has caused state and local governments to cut back on the very services they need, such as child care.

Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, said lawmakers and others inside the Beltway don’t grasp the depth of the unemployment problem.

Unemployment is not a social problem, it’s a catastrophe. There will be no real economic recovery unless and until we solve the unemployment crisis.    

During the forum, “The New Economy: Demanding Jobs and Justice,” Trumka continued his call for bold action on jobs, noting that “while President Obama’s recovery plan did a lot of good,”

it was underpowered compared with the strength of President Bush’s economic catastrophe?in large part because it got pared back in a vain effort to satisfy hypocritical congressional Republicans and weak-kneed Democrats. So now we face long-term mass unemployment if our government does not act, and act boldly. 

Saying “we need political leadership that talks about creating jobs, fights to create jobs, and then talks about creating jobs again,” Trumka called for the Senate to not only pass but improve the jobs bill just approved by the House, by restoring health care for long-term jobless workers and aid to our states and cities.

He also urged quick action bills to keep more than 200,000 teachers from being laid off and one that would create more than 1 million good new jobs, with labor rights protections targeted at the communities across our country hardest hit by Wall Street’s economic crisis.

But we cannot keep closing our eyes, he said, because long-term joblessness and such huge individual debt are recipes for instability and unrest.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 08, 2010 (boomark / email).