There’s a lot of good news in today’s jobs report—a net 227,000 jobs added to our economy and other indicators pointing in the right direction. We’re encouraged by the steady growth in jobs.
But it’s too early to get complacent. An unemployment rate of 8.3 percent is still unacceptably high, and millions are still stuck in long-term unemployment. The continued loss of public-sector jobs is dragging down what should be a stronger recovery even as it hurts education and public safety in our communities. Republicans in Congress have held back jobs bills and can’t seem to pass a routine highway bill that construction workers depend on.
There’s a recovery underway, and we’re climbing out of the deep hole the recession put us in, but our 3 million members are looking to their elected officials to move the economy forward, not hold it back through inaction or misguided cuts.
The following is a statement from Working America.
The increase in jobs growth reported today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics—200,000 jobs gained as unemployment fell to 8.5 percent—is a modest improvement but one that remains virtually invisible to Working America’s 3 million members. Small improvements in jobs numbers are welcome news, but they are not enough.
Working America members are among the nearly 6 million people who have been jobless for more than six months. Employment in communities of color remains an ongoing catastrophe. And many workers have given up looking for work, leaving them uncounted in the statistics we read every month.
As corporations sit on huge piles of cash, they refuse to hire, devastating the economy. Not only are millions without work, there are 7.5 million homes that have entered into the foreclosure process, with 4.8 million more homes at risk.
Lawmakers should be calling for robust investment in infrastructure to rebuild crumbling roads, schools and bridges. They should be protecting homeowners and consumers from runaway banks and a financial system that favors the 1%. They should be holding accountable corporations who hoard their profits, rather than hire in the United States. Those would be the modest improvements to our economy worth celebrating.
The following is a statement from Working America.
The recent move to block unemployment insurance, which is set to expire December 31st, will devastate millions of working families already struggling to get by in this Wall Street-created economic crisis.
As House Republicans take leave of their duties to the American people, and big banks and financiers enjoy their bailouts and record profits, jobless Americans will continue this holiday week and next to demand responsible governance from their lawmakers who claim to hold their interests at heart.
In places like New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon and more, working families will gather together, make phone calls, and send messages to lawmakers pushing for immediate extension to unemployment insurance – an uncontroversial measure that keeps jobless people afloat in this scant job market and provides immediate economic stimulus to communities.
Any time our economy adds jobs, it’s a good thing, and the decline in the unemployment rate is a step in the right direction. But we’re still not adding jobs at the rate we need to recover from the devastating recession, and our elected officials need to focus all of their energy on putting America back to work. Our 3 million Working America members are paying attention to what goes on in Congress and in state legislatures. At our conversations at the doors every night, we still hear that job creation is the number one issue for our members and their families.
Despite the addition of 120,000 net jobs, thousands of people are discouraged from entering the work force. A minority in the Senate has repeatedly blocked bills that would inject much-needed money into our economy and put hundreds of thousands of people back to work—all in the name of protecting historically low tax rates for the very wealthy. At the same time, in less than a month, unemployment insurance is set to expire for millions of jobless workers.
At the state level, the picture looks similarly bleak for working families. Short-sighted budget cuts have put thousands of public servants like teachers, nurses and firefighters out of work, depriving our communities of much-needed services. That needs to change.
Working America members have a message for their elected officials: end the delays and immediately pass extensions of job-creating tax relief and unemployment insurance for the millions without jobs. Today’s job numbers are positive, but they show how far we have to go to get our economy working again for everyone.
Working America members, the heart of the 99 percent, are deeply disturbed by the recent actions to silence the Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park and elsewhere around the country. These protestors, who have awakened the 99 percent movement, have a right to peaceably assemble, and have already inspired peaceful growth of this movement across the country. We believe that they are fighting for the same common sense values that are held by our 3 million Working America members across the country and they should not be silenced. Their voice is vital to the national dialogue, and they deserve to be heard.
Working America joins millions across the country to continue to stand in solidarity with the Occupiers in Wall Street, K Street, Oakland, Portland and elsewhere. We’ve collected thousands of letters of support from working class people across the country, who continue to encourage the Occupy protestors to stand up for the values of economic fairness and corporate accountability. We’ll be delivering these letters of support, and we demand that local law enforcement authorities in New York City and across the country allow these demonstrations to continue uninterrupted.
It started in Wisconsin with a rejection of an assault on workers’ rights and carried on throughout this fall with the energy of the 99% on display all across the country. With tonight’s defeat of Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s anti-worker legislation SB-5, our country is turning the corner on the attack on working families and the 99%. This is a confirmation that the people of Ohio, whether union or nonunion, whether Democrat or Republican, overwhelmingly support the fundamental right of workers to have a say in their working conditions.
The defeat of SB-5 is a victory for all working people– from Lancaster to Toledo, Canton to Cincinnati –who were part of a massive grassroots effort to overturn this bill. Working America organizers, members and volunteers visited the homes of nearly 400,000 working class people across Ohio. Members, who don’t have a union on the job, sent thousands of emails and letters to lawmakers and their local news media, friends and neighbors, all in an effort to protect jobs and democracy by shutting down this legislation.
Tonight, Ohioans showed that scapegoating teachers, firefighters and other public sector workers won’t work, and that the 99 percent want politicians who work for them. Anything else, they will reject.
Tonight at the ballot box, clearly and loudly, they did just that.
(The following is Working America’s statement on the October Jobs Report)
Working class families are facing the toughest economy in decades and a job market that is stagnant. Among other things, today’s jobs report demonstrates that the unemployment rate is still too high and new jobs are not being created fast enough.
Regardless of what the numbers and statistics say, working Americans in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Mexico and all across the country need help urgently. These workers are the heart of the 99 percent movement and they expect Congress to follow through on their pledge to focus on job creation. Just recently, Congress blocked several sensible measures within the American Jobs Act that would have created jobs, invested in building new roads and bridges, and helped jumpstart our economy. What will it take for leaders in Washington and in statehouses across the country to get serious about putting America back to work?
It’s past time for Congress to stop sitting on the sidelines and start working together to create jobs. The 3 million members of Working America are part of the 99 percent, and we are watching closely to see when Congress will finally wake up. If Congress keeps ignoring the lingering jobs crisis in our communities, they might themselves be looking for new jobs come next November.
I talked to Ed Schultz last night on MSNBC about Occupy Wall Street. I told him the key issue for me – and for Working America – is that we can’t be divided.
Don’t be fooled: We talk to 20,000 people every week, and the words they say are the same as those being shouted in Zucotti Park, on K Street in DC, and all across the country. Corporations have too much control of our government, politicians cater almost exclusively to the super-wealthy, and the voices of the 99 Percent are being drowned out.
The protesters in the parks of Portland and Los Angeles and the working class people on their porches in the neighborhoods of Zanesville, Ohio and Benton Harbor, Michigan, feel the same way. Keep that in mind, and don’t let anyone divide us.
“The sign said ‘No Solicitors –Working America Welcome,’” Terry, a canvass organizer in Columbus told me on the latest leg of my tour this Fall. The gentleman at the door said he had the sign up for a few years now, since a Working America organizer originally visited him.
Leslie told me of a woman who brought a jar full of dimes to the door once Leslie introduced herself as being from Working America. Turns out the last time a Working America organizer had visited her, he suggested she set aside a dime a day for a contribution – and she had been doing just that.
Our members are INTO us in Columbus. And I saw it when I met with a group of our members, mostly retirees.
Our activists are topping the charts as volunteers on phone banks and neighborhood walks in Cleveland and Columbus, clocking in more volunteer shifts than anyone else.
Why? Jeff spoke for everyone in the Community Action Team meeting when he said, “I met Jay, he came to my door. I’m always for the underdog, and I want to make a difference.” John is a retired corrections officer. “I’ve got 3 daughters in college and they are up to the hilt in debt. I just took the last $100 out of my bank account to keep my daughter’s phone on. I was promoted 5 times in 9 years and now I’ve been cast aside. That’s why I phone bank.”
A roofer, a nurse and a library worker all wanted to know how Working America could help on an issue important to them in a workshop at the Oregon AFLCIO convention this week.
“If you’re a 49 year old tradesman and you break your hip, you’re probably done – you’ll never work again,” the delegate from the Roofers union told us. But workers’ comp in Oregon is rigged against employees –how can we change it? The nurse told of bullying in the hospital industry. There are policies against it but management doesn’t enforce them. And the library worker told of a ballot initiative to create a new library district in Multnomah County. What would it take to win?
The 150,000 Working America members in Oregon frequently weigh in on important issues and we’ve got a long history of working closely with the unions in Oregon. Working America members supported the Worker Freedom Act which expanded workers’ rights in Oregon and an increase in minimum wage for tipped workers. Working America’s members put Jeff Merkley over the top to become a U.S. Senator in a very tight 2008 race. So making their voices heard on workers’ comp reform, employer accountability and public services is right up our alley.
Right after the workshop, we all marched to the post office where postal workers, along with Rep. Peter DeFazio, called out the Congress for creating the postal “crisis.” The postal service is actually in good financial health, if they didn’t have an extraordinary burden recently imposed by Congress to fund pensions far into the future – further than any other public or private entity in the country. “They’ve got to fund pensions for workers who have yet to be born,” joked Arlene Holt-Baker, AFLCIO executive vice president who addressed the 100 or more people at the rally. “They’ll take away Saturday service now, and then they’ll privatize the whole thing, and before you know it postal jobs will be WalMart jobs,” she shouted to the crowd.
In Oregon, Working America really comes together with a strong labor movement. You can see it all in the t-shirts – the labor t-shirts here have both Oregon AFLCIO and Working America printed on the back.
