The High Cost of Low Wages Last summer I undertook an unusual journalistic experiment: I set out to see whether it is possible to live on the kind of wages available to low-skilled workers. The math wasn't very promising, but since no one seems to pay much attention when I rant about low wages in print, I decided to test it in person. I structured my experiment around a few rules: I had to find the cheapest apartment and best-paying job I could, and I had do my level best to hold it—no sneaking off to read novels in the ladies room or agitating for a union.
So, in early June, I moved out of my home near Key West and into a $500 efficiency apartment about a 45-minute drive from town. I would have preferred the trailer park right on the edge of town, but they wanted over $600 a month for a one-person trailer. Yes, these are frightfully high rents, but no higher than you'll find in most places where tourists compete for lodging space with the people who fry their hash browns. Finding a job turned out to be a little harder than I'd expected, given all the help-wanted signs in town. Finally, at one of the big corporate discount hotels where I'd applied for a housekeeping job, I was told they needed a waitress in the associated family restaurant.
Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of more than a dozen books on politics and society, most recently, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War. In the following essay, Ehrenreich describes her attempt to survive as a low-wage worker—an experience that shows why too many full-time workers can barely pay the rent.
The pay was only $2.43 an hour, but I figured with tips, I would do far better than I would have at the supermarket, which was offering $6 an hour and change.
I was wrong. Business was slow, and tips averaged 10 percent or less, even for the more experienced girls. I was curious as to how my fellow workers managed to pay their rent on this kind of income and soon found out that a lot of them didn't. The immigrant dishwashers (from Haiti and the Czech Republic) mostly lived in dormitory-type situations or severely overcrowded apartments. As for the servers, some were technically homeless. They just didn't think of themselves that way because they had cars or vans to sleep in. I was shocked to find that a few were sharing motel rooms costing $40 to $60 a night, and I'm talking about middle-aged women, not kids. When I naively suggested to one co-worker that she could save a lot of money by getting an apartment, she pointed out that the initial expense—a month's rent in advance and security deposit—was way out of her reach.
Meanwhile, my own financial situation was declining perilously. The money I saved on rent was being burned up as gas for commuting. Without a well-stocked kitchen, I couldn't make up big, economical dishes and freeze them ahead for the week, so I was spending too much on fast food. I began to realize it's actually more expensive to be poor than middle class: You pay more for food, especially in convenience stores, you pay to get checks cashed, and you can end up paying ridiculous prices for shelter.
Even in an economy celebrating unequaled prosperity, a person can work full-time or even more, and not make enough to live on.
—Barbara Ehrenreich
I decided to redouble my efforts to survive. First, I got a waitressing job at a higher-volume restaurant, where my pay averaged about $7.50 an hour. Then I moved out of my apartment and into the trailer park, calculating that, without the commute, I'd be able to handle an additional job. A few of my fellow workers held two jobs, and they didn't look any stronger than I am. For a total of three days altogether, I did work two jobs—including a hotel housekeeping job I finally landed.
This did not, however, turn out to be a viable lifestyle. Exhaustion was only one part of the problem: I never could figure out how to get my various uniforms laundered in the short time I had between shifts, and you only get one uniform per job.
At the end of the month, I had to admit defeat. I had earned less than I spent, and the only things I spent money on were food, gas and rent. If I had had children to care for and support—like the many women now coming off welfare—I wouldn't have lasted a week.
But my experiment did succeed in showing that, even in an economy celebrating unequaled prosperity, a person can work hard, full-time or even more, and not make enough to live on, at least if she intends to live indoors. I left thinking that if this were my real life, I would become an agitator in no time at all, or at least a serious nuisance.
Congratulations to author Barbara Ehrenreich for the 10th anniversary re-issuance of her classic study of the working poor, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America.” Ehrenreich didn’t just write a theoretical study, she based the book on her experiences working as a waitress, a Wal-Mart “associate,” a nursing home aide and a maid employed by a cleaning service. At the time the book came out, Ehrenreich wrote a piece for us based on her experiences. She concluded:
…even in an economy celebrating unequaled prosperity, a person can work hard, full-time or even more, and not make enough to live on.
That was in 2001. The U.S. unemployment rate at mid-year was 4.5 percent. There were 150,400 home foreclosures in the first quarter of that year, as reported in Aug. 17, 2001, by The New York Times, which noted that home sales were on track to make 2001 the second-best year ever.
Today, the 2001 economy seems like a dream. America’s jobless rate has hovered between 9.1 percent and 10.1 percent for more than a year, with foreclosures in July alone totaling 221,763—and that figure is a 44-month low.
Working at low-wage jobs during the dot.com boom when the economy was buzzing, Ehrenreich wrote that while employed as a waitress,
The money I saved on rent was being burned up as gas for commuting. Without a well-stocked kitchen, I couldn’t make up big, economical dishes and freeze them ahead for the week, so I was spending too much on fast food. I began to realize it’s actually more expensive to be poor than middle class: You pay more for food, especially in convenience stores, you pay to get checks cashed, and you can end up paying ridiculous prices for shelter.
Today, millions upon millions of America’s working don’t even have a paycheck. Yet as Ehrenreich points out in an article on CNN today, the nation doesn’t just need jobs—some 12 million, in fact, to make up what’s been lost—it needs good jobs, jobs that support a family.
She also points out that the economic decline of America’s middle class began some 40 years ago, when fewer unionized workers resulted in an increasing gap between wages and productivity. The decline, accelerated in this latest recession, has been non-stop since the 1970s. Ehrenreich describes the “sad trajectory of the American middle-class spirit from the late ’70s to the present day.”
We’ve gone from Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It” to begging the sleek-suited “job creators” for whatever they can throw our way.
Ten years ago, Ehrenreich stated that after her experiences as a low-wage worker,
if this were my real life, I would become an agitator in no time at all, or at least a serious nuisance.
Today, she sees such signs of hope, some “courageous exceptions” to the notion of groveling for corporate crumbs.
Forty-five thousand Verizon employees are walking picket lines to defend their hard-won union wages and benefits. Thousands of Wal-Mart employees have signed up as members of an association (“Our Walmart”) to demand respect from the company.
Even the most isolated and “invisible” workers—nannies and maids—are organizing themselves into a National Domestic Workers Alliance. As anyone in these groups could you tell: We don’t just need more jobs, we need more jobs that treat employees like humans and pay what you could actually live on.
The Labor Department's June jobs report was a mess of bad news. The jobless rate increased to 9.2 percent, job growth was anemic (a measly 18,000 new jobs were created), hourly wages decreased, 272,000 workers left the labor force, and more.
The report was cause for alarm—and within moments of its release partisans on all sides were yelling (via email press releases). The reaction boiled down to this: Republicans and conservatives are blaming Democrats for failing to slash the federal debt, lower taxes, and wipe out regulations, all of which, they claim, stifle job creation (even if taxes are at a historic low and President Obama and the Republicans negotiated a deal last December that extended the Bush tax cuts). Congressional Democrats are blaming GOP obstructionism. And progressives are excoriating the GOP's obsession with deficit reduction and the Obama administration's acceptance of this misplaced focus on the debt. In a statement, Obama acknowledged that the debate here in Washington has been dominated by issues of debt limit, not jobs creation. But he did not assume any blame for that and called for continuing negotiations on debt reduction and for jobs-related programs, including an infrastructure initiative, patent reform, and trade deals.
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From that swirl of finger-pointing, here's a sampling of reactions:
Heather Boushey, an economist at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, says cutting jobs spending, which the GOP wants, will only hurt the labor market more:
New data show that the labor market is floundering. Private-sector employers added only 57,000 new jobs in June while layoffs in government brought the total new jobs to a mere 18,000. This is grim news for workers and should be seen as a serious wake-up call to policymakers. We cannot get our fiscal house in order until we get America back to work. The economy will not be able to withstand the shock of running into the debt ceiling, but it will be a tragedy if the negotiations lead to reductions in public spending while the job market is so weak.
Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, says virtually every single measure [in the jobs report] was devastatingly weak:
This is a remarkable, across-the-board backslide. The President and Congressional leaders need to stop talking about deficit reduction and start talking about job creation.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) says the weak figures show that the White House's policies had failed and that major spending cuts without tax hikes were needed to reboot job creation:
The stimulus spending binge, excessive government regulations, and our overwhelming debt continue to hold back job creators around our country. Tax hikes on families and job creators would only make things worse.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) used the jobs numbers to repeat his demand for a balanced approach to shrinking the federal deficit:
I hope the news that our economy is not creating jobs at an acceptable rate will cause Republicans to start taking job creation seriously. So far this year, Republicans have derailed every common-sense, bipartisan jobs bill we have brought to the floor. Democrats will continue to fight to put Americans back to work and we hope Republicans will join us.
...Most of all, we need to make sure we avoid the economic catastrophe that would result from letting the United States fail to pay its bills for the first time in our history. This would cause the markets to plummet and harm the economy as Americans see their savings and retirement funds depleted. That is something the middle class cannot afford.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told CNBC that June's job numbers are proof that Obama's economic policies have outright failed:
[The American people] really know that the number one issue right now is turning the economy around and creating jobs, and clearly the president's policies haven't worked and are a failure. I wish it was otherwise, but it has not worked and the stimulus has only brought us deeper in debt with nothing to show for it.
Former Obama White House economist Jared Bernstein wrote on his blog that the American jobs machine has stalled:
Washington needs to quickly and aggressively shift from its long-term debt obsession to the much more immediate jobs problem.
To do otherwise at this point would be deeply irresponsible....
Look, I'm not trying to be unduly negative here. Obviously, a stall is better than the massive job losses that characterized the Great Recession. But if policy makers fail to recognize that our most pressing problem right now is job creation, they are a big part of the problem. We need them to be part of the solution.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) says Washington lawmakers must not raise taxes as part of a deficit reduction deal, even more so in light of the jobs report:
If you look at the jobs report, the results of current policies, and where we are in this economy, that is why the Biden talks had to end. Because the discussion in those talks turned to the other side insisting that we raise taxes. Now it just does not make sense for Americans to suffer under higher taxes in an economy like this. As the Speaker said, there is no way that the House of Representatives will support a tax increase.
Chad Stone, the chief economist for the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, contends that Washington is on the wrong road:
Today’s very disappointing employment report shows that two years after the technical end of the recession and after 16 straight months of private-sector job creation, the jobs deficit remains huge (see chart). The depth of the job losses from the recession is unprecedented since the Great Depression, and the length of time it will take just to get out of the jobs hole—much less to restore full employment—will dwarf that of the sluggish jobs recovery from the 2001 recession.
It makes no sense that in an economic recovery still struggling to gain momentum, policymakers are easing up on the gas and threatening to slam on the brakes. But that is just what is happening.
Mary Kay Henry, head of the Service Employees International Union, blamed the GOP's cut-and-grow agenda for June's terrible jobs numbers:
Today’s disappointing jobs report is proof that Congressional Republicans' plan to hold our economic recovery hostage for their own political gain is working at the expense of millions of Americans who are still looking for work. The right wing is using the uncertainty caused by the potential of defaulting on our financial obligations as leverage to institute their cut and gut economic policies.
We cannot accept any deal on the debt limit that harms seniors, low-income Americans or adds one more worker to the unemployment rolls. That means we cannot accept billions in cuts to Medicaid and Medicare.
The lousy jobs numbers—no surprise—have reaffirmed the economic views on all sides. But perhaps they will add even more urgency to the ongoing debt/deficit negotiations. They do seem to have reminded the president that it could be politically perilous for him to be sucked into a deficit-over-all-else black hole.
More evidence that Republicans are determined to grab as much power as they can at the expense of everyone but the rich. Not satisfied with attacking the rights of workers, Republicans in 36 states are going after the most sacred American right—the right to vote. The We Party reports that through a myriad of proposals, they are trying to suppress the votes of traditionally Democratic voters, including minorities, the poor, people who live in rural areas, seniors and students.
Last week, the Wisconsin Senate added another chapter to its anti-democratic record by passing a voter ID bill that the non-partisan state Legislative Fiscal Bureau says would disenfranchise 20 percent of the state’s voters, especially in rural areas. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University estimates that 11 percent of voters nationwide do not have official IDs that would pass muster for these new and proposed state laws.
Here are examples of similar legislation being enacted or considered in other states. For more information, click here:http://wepartypatriots.com/wp/2011/05/22/with-voter-suppression-the-right-wing-rolls-out-a-dubious-nationwide-attack-on-americans/• In South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley signed into law a voter ID bill that would take away the right to vote for 178,000 people, including minorities, and eliminate student IDs as a valid form of voter identification.
•Florida Gov. Rick Scott last week signed sweeping election reforms into law, changes the Orlando Sentinel says “dramatically overhauls state voting laws by changing longstanding procedures that allow a person to change his or her registration or name at the polling place, puts in new requirements for third-party voter registration groups and shortens the number of days available for early voting.”
•In Minnesota and North Carolina, Democratic Govs. Mark Dayton and Beverly Perdue, respectively, are expected to veto voter ID legislation if it passes the state legislatures.
As if finding a job isn’t hard enough, unemployed workers now face the added hurdle of being discriminated against because they don’t have a job. Speaking today before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), said that practices barring the unemployed from job availabilities have been growing around the country—and place a disproportionate burden on older workers, African Americans and other workers facing high levels of long-term unemployment.
“There is a disturbing and growing trend among employers and staffing firms to refuse to even consider the unemployed for available job openings, regardless of their qualifications,” said Owens.
Excluding unemployed workers from employment opportunities is unfair to workers, bad for the economy and potentially violates basic civil rights protections because of the disparate impact on older workers, workers of color, women and others. At a time when we should be doing whatever we can to open up job opportunities, it is profoundly disturbing to see deliberate exclusion of the jobless from work opportunities.
The EEOC, which is responsible for handling complaints of employment discrimination, began to receive reports of systematic and often blatant exclusion of unemployed workers from consideration for jobs early last summer. Many ads for jobs often specify that only currently employed candidates will be considered, or that no unemployed candidates will be considered, regardless of the reason for unemployment, or that no candidate unemployed for more than a certain period will be considered.
The job market is tough because the economy is not creating enough jobs. There are still roughly five officially unemployed job seekers for every new job opening. The economy would need to add roughly 11 million jobs just to return to employment levels at the start of the recession.
Refusal to consider candidates simply because they are unemployed imposes an especially harsh burden on people of color, especially African Americans. In January 2011, when the official unemployment rate overall was 9.0 percent, the unemployment rate for African Americans was 15.7 percent, compared with only 8.0 percent for white workers.
Similarly, long-term unemployment is far more severe among older Americans than younger workers, which means the impact of excluding unemployed workers from job consideration is greater for older workers.
Owens told the commission:
The dire job market has made it essential that Congress and the administration maintain the most robust program of unemployment insurance benefits in the nation’s history. But what’s needed most—and what all unemployed workers most want—is jobs
Click here to see Owens’ full testimony before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Across the country, state politicians are in “States of Denial. Click Here:http://www.aflcio.org/issues/states/ Instead of creating jobs and solving the problems of middle-class working families, newly elected Republican legislators and governors are pushing legislation to cut good jobs and benefits, lower wages, threaten job safety and weaken unions.
These attacks are a payback to the CEOs who financed their campaigns and will help swell already record-size corporate profits and keep those CEO bonuses coming.
The AFL-CIO’s new States of Denial website gives you the latest news on these state-level battles and what you can do to fight back. It includes facts about so-called “right to work” proposals, attacks on public workers and public services, proposals to end prevailing wage laws and Project Labor Agreements, silencing workers with paycheck deception, and interference with collective bargaining.
Take action by signing a petition (Click here: (http://act.aflcio.org/c/18/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1317) to tell your state legislators to focus on creating good jobs with fair pay—not playing politics and harming working people. Connect with other working family activists in your state. Stay on top of the action by texting STATES to 225568 (message and data rates may apply) for AFL-CIO rapid action alerts in your state.
Find out the State of Play with the latest headlines from around the nation and watch videos from workers describing the effects of the attacks. The videos include Ohio child care worker Ella Hopkins, responding to Republican Gov. John Kasich’s move to take collective bargaining rights away from child care workers, and retired New York City Fire Fighter Bill Romara, whose pension and health care, like those of hundreds of thousands of other public employees, are threatened.
The House leadership continues to show its “blatant lack of concern for American workers who have lost their jobs because of unfair trade deals,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today. In the latest bold move against working people, House leaders abruptly refused to schedule a vote yesterday on extending expiring Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) programs.
TAA programs, which enjoyed bipartisan support in the past, provide aid and training to workers who lose their jobs or see their hours or wages reduced due to unfair trade deals and increased imports.
Take action now. Click here: http://act.aflcio.org/c/18/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1384 to send a letter telling House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that it’s inexcusable our leaders keep promoting policies to encourage outsourcing. Doing nothing for the victims of these policies is totally unacceptable.
“This is just more of the same old politics that voters don’t want,” Trumka said.
First it was blocking unemployment benefits, now it’s fighting TAA programs for workers whose jobs have been outsourced. Apparently the Republican leadership thinks that workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own due to trade deals are living too high on the hog. Instead of working to solve our economic problems, these leaders are determined to pay back corporate CEOs who are offshoring jobs, cutting wages and giving themselves bonuses.
The Hill news service reports the House leadership backed off setting a vote on the extension after the Republican Study Committee said the bill would cost $620 million for the remainder of 2011 and $6.5 billion over 10 years and that money would be better spent on deficit reduction. Other reports say the Republicans are holding the TAA extension hostage until they get a commitment from the Obama administration to send three pending trade deals—with Korea, Panama and Colombia—to Congress.
“TAA has been a good-faith effort for nearly 50 years to assist workers who have lost their jobs through trade and globalization,” House Ways and Means ranking member Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) said.
Tens of thousands of displaced workers in our country will be affected, and I strenuously urge my Republican colleagues not to let this vital program lapse.
Not only did Congress give zillionaires billions of dollars in tax breaks, they also told the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, “tough luck.” With unemployment at nearly 10 percent and 19 million Americans currently living in “deep poverty” (below half the poverty line), federal funds for the Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF) program, the federal program that replaced welfare, have entirely dried up for the first time since 1996.
That leaves states, whose budgets are already overburdened, with an average of 15 percent less federal funding for the coming year to help an ever-increasing number of needy families.
Writing in Huffington Post, Laura Bassett. says TANF provides a lifeline for families and workers who have exhausted all of their unemployment benefits. According to a new report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, (CBPP) the lack of funds means more homeless families will go without shelter, fewer low-wage workers will receive help with child care expenses, and fewer families involved with the child welfare system will receive preventive services.
Congress passed legislation that will end funding for the TANF Contingency Fund in 2011. Congress also failed to reauthorize an emergency fund for a subsidized job program that would have allowed states to provide emergency help to needy families and place low-income people in subsidized jobs.
Without additional federal funding, states will now have a much harder time meeting the increased demand for assistance at a time when unemployment remains high and poverty continues to climb, say the report’s authors Liz Schott and LaDonna Pavetti.
In fact, several states are considering cutting the already-low amount of assistance they provide to very poor families with children, tightening eligibility rules so as to reduce or eliminate benefits for some groups of needy families with children, and cutting other services, such as child care, that are funded in part or in whole with state or federal TANF dollars.
Schott and Pavetti say:
This is not what Congress intended when it reformed the welfare system in 1996. Helping welfare recipients find work in this economy requires more help from the federal government, not less.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka today issued a statement opposing the Korea–U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). See the entire statement below. AFL-CIO President Trumka:
For more than a decade, the labor movement, environmental groups, development advocates and others have advocated for a new trade policy that is part of a more coordinated and coherent national economic strategy. The proposed U.S.-Korea trade deal does not live up to that model and does not contribute to a sustainable global future. We believe we must move towards a more democratic, sustainable and fair global economy with broadly shared prosperity for working people around the world. Reaching that goal will require deep-seated reforms in current trade policy, as well as in our own domestic labor laws and other policies.
We welcome the tremendous efforts by the Obama administration and particularly Ambassador Ron Kirk and his team to address the urgent concerns of autoworkers and auto companies with respect to market access, safeguard provisions and some non-tariff barriers. Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin and Ranking Member Dave Camp also pressed hard for key improvements in the auto provisions, and we appreciate their strong efforts. These newly negotiated provisions will give some much needed breathing room to the auto industry, and we appreciate the hard bargaining that was necessary to win these important changes.
However, the labor movement’s concerns about the Korea trade deal go beyond the auto assembly sector to a more fundamental question about what a fairer and more balanced trade policy should look like. In particular, the labor movement has consistently and for many years argued that the investment and government procurement provisions in the Korea deal will encourage offshoring. And despite the progress made in improving the labor chapter in 2007, it is clear that in both the United States and South Korea, workers continue to face repeated challenges to their exercise of fundamental human rights on the job – especially freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively. This deal does nothing to improve or strengthen the provisions negotiated by former President George W. Bush in these crucial areas. It is essential that both countries bring their labor laws and practice fully into compliance with international standards prior to implementation of the agreement. And for American workers to benefit from trade deals, we must strengthen U.S. labor law to harmonize social activity. Going forward, we hope to work closely with the Obama administration to address all of these concerns in any future deals, particularly the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.
The Korea deal also fails to address the potential problem of currency manipulation and contains lax provisions on rule of origin (allowing up to 65% foreign content in autos eligible for the lower tariff treatment, in contrast to the EU-Korea agreement, which allows only 45% foreign content) and duty drawback (which disadvantages domestic parts production). These provisions will undermine both S. Korean and American workers. There is significant opposition by many S. Korean unions to the trade agreement, as the agreement fails to address key offshoring and outsourcing issues facing S. Korea. In fact, the weak offshoring protections and rule of origin make the agreement a backdoor for increasing offshoring to China and other countries from South Korea, as well as from the United States.
We are also concerned that the trade agreement leaves open the possibility that goods produced in the North Korean free trade zone, the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), could in the future gain access to the United States. We shouldn’t leave open the possibility of including these goods for two reasons: 1) grave concerns over the atrocious labor rights record in the KIC and 2) the impact on jobs and wages of the exports of these goods — produced at perhaps the lowest wage levels in the world.
In addition to much needed reforms in trade policy, the United States must implement a well coordinated industrial strategy that includes tax policy, infrastructure, skills development and technology investments to support a vibrant, growing and modern manufacturing sector.
The experiences of union members and working people with too many flawed trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization do not justify optimism that this deal will generate the promised new jobs. We’ve seen U.S. multinational companies take advantage of the investment and other corporate protections in past trade deals to shift production offshore, while maintaining access to the U.S. consumer market and undermining the jobs, wages and bargaining power of American workers. And the results have been catastrophic, with chronic and unsustainable trade deficits that sap economic growth and domestic job creation.
So long as these agreements fall short of protecting the broad interests of American workers and their counterparts around the world in these uncertain economic times, we will oppose them.
Senate Republicans this morning continued their unprecedented obstructionism by using Senate rules to block long-sought and vital health care services for the 9/11 first responders and recovery workers who are suffering alarming rates of health problems, including several deaths of Ground Zero workers.
The 57-42 vote fell three votes short of the 60 needed to end the Republican filibuster on the James Zadroga Health and Compensation Act (H.R. 847). The bill is named after a New York City police officer who died in 2006 from lung ailments tied to his exposure to the toxic mix of chemicals, jet fuel, asbestos, lead, glass fragments and other debris at Ground Zero. The bill would have provided long-term medical care and monitoring for the first responders, recovery workers and others exposed to the Ground Zero.
This morning’s action follows last night’s blockades of a bill to protect the collective bargaining rights of public safety officers and legislation that would have provided a much needed $250 cost of living supplemental payment for Social Security recipients. They have gone two years without a cost of living adjustment.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says these “cheap politic tactics…mark a new low for Senate Republicans.”
Senate Republicans have escalated their obstructionism, with a devastating impact on working people. Fixated on ensuring tax giveaways for the rich, they refused even to debate a series of bills to address some of the most pressing issues facing working families.
Impeding passage of the James Zadroga Health and Compensation Act denies long-term medical care and monitoring for the heroes who answered our nation’s call on September 11.
More than 13,000 World Trade Center responders are sick and receiving treatment. Nearly 53,000 responders are enrolled in medical monitoring. Some 71,000 are enrolled in the World Trade Center health registry indicating that they were exposed to the toxins
The House passed the 9/11 health care bill in September 268 to160, with 13 Republican votes. But Senate action stalled amid reports that minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was the major stumbling block.
America’s voters are angry about the economy and the lack of jobs, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this morning during a discussion at the National Journal’s “The Day After” conference. And if Republicans don’t listen to what the voters were saying, they will be thrown out in 2012.
Trumka said the Republicans would be making a big mistake if they believe voters endorsed the Republican agenda. The votes in fact were a rebuke to the party in power, he said. Speaking to Mike Duncan, chairman of American Crossroads, the Republican mega political action group, Trumka said:
The America people know the economy doesn’t work. They’re suffering and they’re angry because of that and you’re going to have to come up with a way to create jobs and get the economy back on the move. They’re frustrated not because too much was done, but too little was done. But now that you’re in the governing structure, you just can’t say no.
He pointed out that 63 percent of voters in the 100 congressional races that swung the election oppose tax breaks for people who make more than $250,000—a key plank in the Republican’s Pledge to America. Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) oppose privatizing Social Security—another Republican proposal, and a large number do not want the retirement age raised to 70.
The union movement’s massive mobilization effort worked, Trumka said. Union members received information or contact with their union 15 to 20 times during the election cycle. As a result, unions counteracted the huge sums spent by corporate front groups like American Crossroads, which spent tens of millions on the election, including $3 million alone on a dozen House races. When union members heard the real facts, they voted for progressives in large numbers.
Duncan even acknowledged that the Republicans this year copied the union movement’s model for getting out the vote, although he told Trumka, “We’re not as good as you are on the deployment.”
Trumka advised Democrats and President Obama to do “what we’re going to because beginning today we’re going to have three priorities: jobs, jobs and more jobs.”
We are going to be pushing our five-point plan to create jobs. I think the President should do that and put these guys to the test. They said they could do it. Now let’s make them do it. And I wish you success because for every job you create there’s an American out there who’ll be able to make a living.
He said he would tell Obama and Democrats to work with Republicans, but not to compromise their principles.
The U.S. jobless rate worsened to 9.6 percent in August from 9.5 percent in July, with 54,000 jobs lost, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data out today. The private sector created only 67,000 jobs in August, far below the 150,000 jobs a month needed to keep up with the population and extremely far below the hundreds of thousands of new jobs needed each month to return to pre-recession employment levels. Government employment fell by 121,000, largely reflecting the loss of 114,000 temporary workers hired for U.S. Census 2010.
The number of people who are underemployed, which includes those who are too discouraged to look for work or are working part-time out of economic necessity, worsened to 16.7 percent from 16.5 percent in July. More than 26 million U.S. workers are without jobs or full-time work. The long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) declined by 323,000 over the month to 6.2 million. In August, 42.0 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more.
Jobs increased in health care (28,000), mining (8,000), and construction (19,000). Manufacturing employment declined by 27,000 in August.
Maybe when Congress gets back in town, lawmakers—especially those Republicans who repeatedly have blocked extending unemployment insurance and funding for jobs programs—can finally figure it out: The private sector is not creating jobs.
Discussing the “Be nice to us or we’ll quit investing,” threats by Big Business to Congress and the White House if they pass regulations to rein in corporate greed, Yves Smith writes:
Guess what? As we’ve indicated, big businesses were net disinvesting even during the corporate-friendly Bush Administration.
And it’s getting worse. Big Business isn’t creating jobs and yet corporate mouthpieces have the gall to attack unemployed workers. In one such screed this week, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed slamming unemployment insurance. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in rebuttal:
A majority of the jobless typically have moved from job to job before they failed to find a new one, or have held a number of part-time jobs.
So it’s hard to make the case that many of the unemployed have chosen to remain jobless and collect unemployment benefits rather than work.
And then there’s the not-so-small fact that there are more than five workers for every one job in this country.
As Reich writes, extending unemployment insurance is a basic action of a civil society. In addition, lawmakers need to move federal funding to create more jobs.
Mark Weisbrot at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), is among many economists calling for more immediate federal aid to address the nation’s jobs crisis.
Republicans have successfully promoted the idea that we already tried a stimulus and it didn’t help. There are few, if any, economists who would agree. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that between 1.4 and 3.3 million more people were employed by mid-2010, because of the stimulus.
The American public knows how such job creation can be funded: A clear majority of those polled favors federal spending to create jobs, and letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling on Congress to “take up and pass legislation that will create jobs and rebuild America, starting with the Surface Transportation bill, Clean Water Authorization, clean energy infrastructure spending, and expansion of nuclear power loan guarantees.”
We will not allow Republicans, who continue to say no to jobs, say no to unemployment benefits and want to privatize and cut Social Security, to derail our efforts to fight for a middle class economy. The future that we leave for our children depends on our success in beating back these barriers.
Today’s jobs data, combined with a new study showing that four of the five fastest growing occupations between 2006 and 2009 pay below the median wage ($15.95 an hour in May 2009) and a report that an appalling one in six Americans now is enrolled in an anti-poverty program, it’s long past time for Congress to act.
The last word goes to Reich:
A record number of Americans is unemployed for a record length of time. This is a national tragedy.
After months of Republican obstruction in the Senate, vital aid to states facing massive budget shortfalls and layoffs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, public employees, police officers and firefighters is on its way to the White House for President Obama’s signature. The bill just passed the House by 247-161 a few minutes ago. A pathetic number of Republican representatives–two, count ‘em, two–voted to support working families. Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
Simply put, this vote keeps us on the path to economic recovery….Republicans who continue to fight for tax cuts for the super rich did everything in their power to defeat funding for teachers and firefighters, adding to the laundry list of anti-jobs votes they’ve taken.
BTW, it’s fully paid for in part by closing costly corporate tax loopholes that allow corporations to ship American jobs overseas. Works for us. Too bad so many Republicans think it’s a bad idea.
For months, we in the union movment have been calling for Congress to do more—much more—to create jobs. Now, the long-term jobless rate for workers is the worst since the 1930s Depression—some 45 percent of unemployed workers have been without jobs for more than six months—and calls for federal action on jobs are coming from across the nation. Check out New York Times columnist Bob Herbert here and here who blasts congressional inaction, as does his employer, here. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich puts it bluntly: We have a jobs emergency.
As Herbert says in his devasting portrait of a Congress out of touch with the suffering of America’s workers:
We’re not heading toward the danger zone. We’re there. The U.S. will not remain a stable society if this great employment crisis is not addressed head-on—and soon. You cannot allow joblessness on this scale to fester. It’s wrong, and the blowback will be as destructive and intolerable as it is inevitable.
* Massive state cutbacks on jobs and services may not mean much to the wealthy but they sure do for the rest of us. As Washington Monthly points out:
When bus systems are shut down, wealthier folks with cars are fine, but low-income workers who need a way to get to work are out of luck. When street lights are turned off and police officers furloughed, families in gated communities and private security are probably feeling a lot better off than everyone else.
* President Obama reiterated his call to “Make it in America” yesterday. In a speech at the University of Texas at Austin, Obama said:
We need an economy that puts Americans back to work, an economy that’s built around three simple words—Made in America. Because we are not playing for second place. We are the United States of America, and like the Texas Longhorns, you play for first—we play for first. (h/t to the Alliance for American Manufacturers.)
Too bad most Republicans in Congress don’t want to keep jobs in the United States. They opposed closing tax loopholes that encourage corporations to outsource U.S. jobs. Three cheers to the Dems in the House and Senate who got the measure passed anyway
President Obama today told the AFL-CIO Executive Council, “We are going to keep fighting for an economy that works for everybody, not just a privileged few.” He also said that with the help of working families and their unions,
We are going to rebuild our economy stronger than before, and at the heart of it will be three simple words: made in America.
Speaking on his 49th birthday at the Washington (D.C) Convention Center, the president told the council that this fall’s election is a choice between
polices that encourage job creation here in America or encourage jobs to go elsewhere…The choice is whether we want to go forward or we want to go backwards to the same policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
President Obama spoke today at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting. Seated (from left): AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker.
He spoke about the need to invest in clean technology, like solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear plants, clean coal and new car batteries.
Instead of giving tax breaks to corporations that want to ship jobs overseas, we want to give tax breaks to companies that are investing right here in the United States of America.
Obama said that after nearly a decade of failed economic policies that “drove America’s economy into a ditch….We’re on the right track.”
Instead of losing millions of jobs, we have created jobs for six straight months in the private sector. Instead of an economy that is contracting, we’ve got an economy that is expanding. So the last thing we would want to do is go back to what we were doing before.
Responding to a question from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Obama said “We are going to keep fighting for the Employee Free Choice Act.” Recalling Franklin D. Roosevelt’s comment that if he were a factory worker, he’d join a union, Obama said:.
Well, I tell you what. I think that’s true for workers generally. I think if I was a coal miner, I’d want a union representing me to make sure that I was safe and you did not have some of the tragedies that we’ve been seeing in the coal industry. If I was a teacher, I’d want a union to make sure that the teachers’ perspective was represented as we think about shaping an education system for our future.
In the political showdown between Wall Street and Main Street, California is a key battleground. With the third highest jobless rate in the country and a towering budget deficit, California needs leaders who can create and save jobs, not just spout ”more of the same corporate bull,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told a crowd of thousands at a mass jobs rally in Los Angeles today.
“How are we going to rebuild America? With jobs! Who’s going to rebuild America? Working people with jobs!”
The choice for voters is clear in California, said Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation. The Republican candidates for governor and U.S. senator, respectively, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, are mirror images of each other.
Both are failed CEOs. Both slashed thousands of jobs to make themselves richer. And both have a dangerous agenda that will douse any hope for economic recovery. They want to slash jobs. Eliminate pensions. Scale back overtime pay and meal breaks for workers. They’re part of the greed is good crowd. I think it’s pretty clear that’s the wrong direction.
It is crazy that Wall Street would destroy our economy and rob us of millions of jobs, Trumka said, and the Republican response is: “Great! How about more of the same?”
We’re done with that kind of deal for America.
Delegates to the Letter Carriers (NALC) convention, meeting in nearby Anaheim, joined the rally along with union members from the building trades, public employees and other trades to send a strong message: “Paychecks Pay the Bills.”
Participants carried signs highlighting the need for jobs as the top answer to the economic crisis and to push for the 30/10 Initiative to build 30 year’s worth of mass transit in the next 10 years.
They also called for the U.S. Postal Service to continue six-day mail delivery and keep thousands of postal jobs and for more money for public safety, schools, mass transit and health care.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D), NALC President Fredric Rolando, Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and community and labor leaders also spoke at the rally in front of city hall.
