In December, after being battered in the arena of public opinion, House Republicans reluctantly agreed to a short extension of unemployment insurance (UI) for the nation’s jobless workers. That reprieve runs out Feb. 29 and House Republicans are set to relaunch their attack on UI.
A conference is now underway between the Senate and House over two very different one-year extensions of the UI program passed late last year and the Republican bill would “slash federal benefits, impose harsh new restrictions and move to dismantle the essential lifeline of unemployment insurance,” writes Mitchell Hirsch of the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
Among other things the Republican UI bill would:
Slash federal UI by more than half in the highest unemployment states;
Allow mandatory drug testing of unemployment insurance claimants, stigmatizing jobless workers;
Make jobless workers pay for their reemployment services;
Deny benefits to those not fortunate enough to finish high school or GED; and
Let states reduce benefits and divert unemployment benefit funds to other uses.
Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee says House Republicans:
are threatening another round of brinksmanship by insisting on starting with a rerun of the approaches within the House Republican bill… Department of Labor data shows that 2.8 million Americans would lose unemployment benefits under the House Republican proposal compared to current law… Democrats won’t start from the premise that the unemployed are to blame for unemployment, that weeks can be slashed without harming workers in the hardest hit states.
NELP has published a detailed legislative analysis of the Republican bill, click here and you can click here to send a message to your member of Congress to reject the drastic cuts and restrictions in the Republican UI bill.
Now, the Working for America Institute has set up a new, user-friendly website to help workers apply for the TAA program. TAAHelps.org gives clear direction on when and how applications must be filed, even providing a printable checklist for needed tasks and video testimonials of successful applicants.
Winkie Brown was laid off from an assembly line at Johnson Controls in Ohio in 2009. In a web video on TAAHelps.org, she says, “As far as the chance and the opportunity to go back to school – if it weren’t for TAA I wouldn’t have been able to afford it…so that’s the blessed part of this.” Another Ohioan featured on the site, Jeannine Pummill, used TAA resources to become a certified Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) after 31 years in manufacturing.
While we’re glad these new resources are available for transitioning workers, we’re still keeping the pressure on Congress and the President to make good on their talk of keeping jobs in the United States. First, we’re keeping everyone up to date on the off-shoring practiced by companies in their area by maintaining and updating our Job Tracker tool. Second, our 9 Demands for the 99 Percent petition, signed by over 26,000 people and counting, demands that corporations “stop sitting on their profits and start hiring again in America.”
Luckily, it seems like they are starting to listen. Rep. Tim Bishop (R-NY) introduced a bill earlier this year to crack down on overseas outsourcing in call centers; President Obama made manufacturing, clean energy jobs, and “insourcing” key parts of last week’s State of the Union speech, proposing tax incentives for companies that bring jobs back from abroad. The Administration has also proposed a “manufacturing communities tax credit” to encourage businesses to move into areas where there has been a mass layoff.
Having narrowly averted cutting off unemployment insurance to millions of Americans right before the holidays, Congress now returns to take up what should be a relatively simple task even for this Congress — a full reauthorization of federal unemployment insurance (UI), the payroll tax reduction and other provisions through 2012. But, as they did in December, some lawmakers are looking to revive House efforts to slash federal benefits, impose onerous new restrictions and move to dismantle the essential lifeline of unemployment insurance.
The stopgap two-month extension of the federal UI program will expire February 29th unless Congress acts on a full-year renewal. This week, the Joint Economic Committee issued a report on the benefits of continuing unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut. The report estimated that more than 3.3 million unemployed workers would be cut off of their UI benefits by June 2 without a renewal of the program (see page 4 for state-by-state estimates).
A 20-member Conference Committee of the House and Senate convened for the first time this week to begin work on a full year extension. The Committee is chaired by Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the lead sponsor of H.R. 3630, the House Republican bill that’s designed to drastically slash federal UI benefits while erecting harmful new barriers to benefits, making it harder for ordinary Americans to access their unemployment insurance.
The House H.R. 3630 proposals would:
* Slash federal UI by more than half in the highest unemployment states
* Allow mandatory drug testing of unemployment insurance claimants, stigmatizing jobless workers
* Make jobless workers pay for their reemployment services
* Deny benefits to those not fortunate enough to finish high school or GED
* Let states reduce benefits and divert unemployment benefit funds to other uses
The National Employment Law Project has published a detailed legislative analysis of these and other provisions being sought by House Republicans in H.R. 3630.
Public outcry, meanwhile, has been growing in support of a full renewal of unemployment insurance and against both the reckless cuts and the proposed new barriers to benefits. An Unemployedworkers.org action page has already generated a combined 96,000 email and fax messages to the members of the Congressional Conference Committee, and another 34,000 to Congressional leaders and other Members of Congress.
Tens of thousands of calls have been made to Congress through our dedicated toll-free line 888-245-3381.
House leaders had to, finally, accede to public pressure and drop their obstruction when Senate Republicans refused to take up the House version of H.R. 3630 back in December. Now, only strong public pressure will keep the Conference Committee from doing real damage to jobless workers, their families and the unemployment insurance system.
Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) gets it and is fighting for unemployed workers in the Conference Committee. Watch what Sen. Reed had to say about the unemployment extension issues during the Committee’s first meeting this week:
We hear a lot of talk about job creation, and bringing jobs back to America. We hear nothing about the kind of jobs we need the most: jobs that provide decent wages.
While productivity has grown by more than 80% over the last 30 years, wages have effectively been flat for 80% of Americans. So, although we’re making stuff faster and more efficiently, the benefits of that hard work have not trickled into the pockets of the people who do it.
First, companies are coming back to the United States because wages here are dropping, in real terms. At the same time, lower-wage corporate nirvanas such as China are no longer as cheap an alternative as they once were, partly because the sea of people who worked for next to nothing for so long have had enough and are rising up in protest.
The US is becoming the place to outsource low paying jobs to.
Second, most of the jobs coming back are not high-wage, union jobs with full healthcare and pensions. In fact, with concerted efforts by Republican governors in the Midwest to eviscerate union rights, times have never been better for corporate leaders seeking to lower labor costs. With labor costs in the U.S. dropping relative to those in the Third World, the president’s offer of tax incentives to other companies that in-source is unnecessary. As Citizens for Tax Justice points out, using a 2007 Bush administration study, corporations based in the United States already have plenty of tax incentive to locate here because “the United States takes a below-average share of corporate income in taxes compared to other developed countries.”
and
If you add those people to the people who have full-time work at or just above the minimum wage, at least 1 in 5 Americans — 30 million people — does not have a decent job. Which explains why, according to the Census Bureau, 46 million people — or about 15% of Americans — live in poverty, the highest percentage since 1993.
This is a nasty reality that politicians shy far, far away from, when they talk about jobs. Many of us (I’m one of that 15 percent) are relying on part time jobs, or low paying jobs that result in us not having enough to live on. This means more people relying on the shrinking safety net, and the kindness of family and friends.
We need the kind of jobs that will rebuild the middle class.
The US Conference of Mayors is meeting in Washington, and expressing their disgust with the ongoing spending cuts that leave their cities firmly mired in the ongoing economic crisis.
Only 26 of the nation’s 363 metropolitan areas had recovered their lost jobs by the end of 2011, and only 26 more are projected to recover them by end of this year, according to the report, which was commissioned by the United States Conference of Mayors. It will take at least five years for the 80 hardest-hit areas to recover the jobs they lost, the report forecast.
and
Not only has Congress failed to overcome partisan gridlock to agree on a way to created much-needed jobs by spending more money on infrastructure, mayors said, but even the small sources of federal support that cities rely on — whether the Community Development Block Grants that were devised by Republican administrations in the 1970s or more recent federal programs that help struggling cities pay for more police officers or firefighters — are being scaled back as Washington has made cutting the deficit a priority.
Now, here’s a thought:
Mayor James Brainard of Carmel, Ind., a Republican, said that the country must get to a point where it spends less than it collects in revenues, but that it must be done over years, carefully.
“We have to recognize that it can’t be done in one year without throwing us into a huge, much worse depression than we’ve had,” he said. “It needs to be a multiyear plan that doesn’t create terrible hardship.”
The report commissioned by the mayors can be found here.
The opening lines of the introduction:
No one has been hit harder by the Great Recession than the 8.8 million Americans who have lost their jobs during the most significant economic downturn in generations.
Our nation’s mayors are focused on doing everything we can to help the jobless, the underemployed, and those worried about losing their jobs.
That kind of concern is a real contrast to all the unemployed bashing we’ve seen by members of Congress and the presidential candidates. Let’s hope that folks in Washington are paying attention while the mayors are in town.
That’s why we’re cheering Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) and his new bill H.R. 3596, The United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act. Not only does the bill keep taxpayer-funded loans and grants from going to companies who outsource call center jobs, it would also require those companies to report their outsourcing in advance to the Department of Labor.
While we love incentives for companies to act more responsibly and hire workers here at home, but it’s the reporting requirement that caught our eye. Job Tracker, our online resource to track corporate local corporate abuses, relies on Department of Labor data sets to help inform users of outsourcing, mass firings, and a variety of other labor law violations. This bill would help us help you, the American consumer, support companies that follow the law and treat workers well.
But you don’t think corporate-backed interest groups and their allies in Congress are going to take this lying down, do you? Huffington Post quoted one official saying a “strong lobby team” should be sent to DC to stop the bill’s progress.
In response, Rep. Bishop, a Democrat, has enlisted two Republican Congressmen as co-sponsors: Dave McKinley (R-WV) and Michael Grimm (R-NY). The Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents over 150,000 call center employees, called the bill “an actual, honest-to-God, bipartisan bill focused on U.S. jobs.”
CWA backed up their support of the bill with a report that details the damage done to the U.S. economy by call center outsourcing: “Why Shipping Call Center Jobs Overseas Hurts Us Back Home.” The idea that has entered popular culture is that U.S. consumers are routed to a call center in India – but the report exposes how many Indian firms have begun to “sub-outsource” calls to countries with even cheaper labor costs, such as the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The report also talks about companies that took local and state “job creation” incentives but shipped the jobs overseas anyway, essentially billing the taxpayer for the destruction of their own livelihoods.
Remember, this bill doesn’t fine call center companies for shipping jobs to other countries. It just says that your taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be directed toward those companies in the form of guaranteed loans or federal grants. It also would require call center companies to be open about their off-shoring, and have employees disclose their location and give the option of being transferred to a U.S. based employee if requested.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s small. But we urge you to watch your representatives, and see where they come down on this issue. What do they value more – the creation of American jobs? Or perhaps the support of multinational corporations who fill their campaign coffers?
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.
We’re all familiar with the mythos: America is the land of the meritocracy, not the aristocracy. The place where every boy can grow up to be president. Where the janitor can become the CEO.
The reality looks rather different. From the New York Times:
“It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much mobility as most other advanced countries,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will argue with that.”
One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.
To put it a different way:
“The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom fifth in other countries,” said Scott Winship, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review. “Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor.”
Poor Americans are working their way up from lower bottom than other countries? Why isn’t this front page news? Why aren’t the presidential candidates currently invading NH talking about this?
Oh, wait. Here’s why:
Perhaps another brake on American mobility is the sheer magnitude of the gaps between rich and the rest — the theme of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which emphasize the power of the privileged to protect their interests. Countries with less equality generally have less mobility.
The privileged have the power to protect their interests. The non-privileged just get trickled on. This is grim news, coming on the heels of the recent report showing that one in every two families has either fallen into poverty or qualifies as low income.
The best way to turn this around is to continue to push for more jobs, better pay, and stronger unions.
The nation gained 200,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate improved to 8.5 percent from 8.6 percent in November, according to Department of Labor data out this morning. The unemployment rate has declined by 0.6 percentage points since August and the number of unemployed workers dropped to 13.1 million from close to 14 million.
The data also show the:
unemployment rate for adult men decreased to 8 percent in December. The jobless rates for adult women (7.9 percent), teenagers (23.1 percent), whites (7.5 percent), blacks (15.8 percent) and Hispanics (11 percent) showed little change. The jobless rate for Asians was 6.8 percent.
Most industries added jobs, with the exception of construction and government. In 2011, 280,000 jobs were cut in local government, state government, (excluding education) and the U.S. Postal Service.
In December, employment in transportation and warehousing rose (50,000) and manufacturing (23,000). Retail trade continued to add jobs in December, with a gain of 28,000. Health care added 23,000 jobs in December and mining employment rose by 7,000 over the month. Over the year, mining added 89,000 jobs.
The jobs report is a “step in the right direction,” according to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which pointed out that data also show hours and wages were up, underemployment dropped and the duration of unemployment declined.
The organization cautioned, however that
The jobs deficit left from losses in 2008/2009 remains well over 10 million jobs; even at December’s growth rate, it would still take about seven more years — until around 2019 — to fill the gap and get back to the pre-recession unemployment rate. We need reports this strong and stronger for many years to come to bring our labor market back to health.
In the December 20th edition of Clocking Out was yet another story about the nutty NH legislature. Some members of the NH House are in favor of putting WARNING signs near the Massachusetts border, so that the good folk of NH know when they’re about to enter into that socialist republic. The best part of this inspired bit of lunacy, is that Rep. Jennifer Coffey, the lead sponsor, moved to NH in 2005. Guess what state she moved here from?
House Bill 1580 is the product of such a brainstorming session this summer between three freshman House Republicans: Bob Kingsbury of Laconia, Tim Twombly of Nashua and Lucien Vita of Middleton. The eyebrow-raiser, set to be introduced when the Legislature reconvenes next month, requires legislation to find its origin in an English document crafted in 1215.
“All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived,” is the bill’s one sentence.
Yes, that’s right. These three state representatives want quotes from the Magna Carta; an 800 year old British document, in new bills going before the NH legislature.
I’ve been told by legislators that the average cost to the NH taxpayer for filing a bill is about $1500. Each bill that is filed by a state legislator goes to Legislative Services, where the bill is checked for compliance with other NH laws. Then it is printed up. So far, the members of the NH House have filed 840 potential bills.
Kingsbury said the “primary motivation” for the bill was to honor the Magna Carta’s upcoming 800-year anniversary in 2015. Citing quotes from the document will bring its historical importance to the public’s attention, he said.
And if they have to waste taxpayer dollars to bring that anniversary to the public’s attention, they will!
The majority of the people in this state don’t read ANY of the bills that go before the legislature. This is truly a bizarre vanity exercise by a trio of freshman legislators.
A translation of the Magna Carta certainly provides some interesting fodder for the 2012 legislative session:
19] No constable or his bailiff is to take corn or other chattels from anyone who not themselves of a vill where a castle is built, unless the constable or his bailiff immediately offers money in payment of obtains a respite by the wish of the seller. If the person whose corn or chattels are taken is of such a vill, then the constable or his bailiff is to pay the purchase price within forty days.
and
21] No sheriff or bailiff of ours or of anyone else is to take anyone’s horses or carts to make carriage, unless he renders the payment customarily due, namely for a two-horse cart ten pence per day, and for a three-horse cart fourteen pence per day. No demesne cart belonging to any churchman or knight or any other lady (sic) is to be taken by our bailiffs, nor will we or our bailiffs or anyone else take someone else’s timber for a castle or any other of our business save by the will of he to whom the timber belongs.
and
[34] No-one is to be taken or imprisoned on the appeal of woman for the death of anyone save for the death of that woman’s husband.
I can hardly wait to see these quotes worked into New Hampshire law.
