Unemployed Worker: We Need Help Now

by James Parks, Feb 6, 2009

Liz Freeberg and her son Darryl.

Liz Freeberg knows how devastating the economic collapse can be for the average American family. In the past two and half years, she and her husband both lost their jobs, they are losing their home and they can’t afford health insurance.

Freeberg, who lives in Circle Pines, Minn., a suburb of the Twin Cities, is a member of Working America, the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate. She came to Washington, D.C., to implore Congress to help her and millions of other average Americans by passing President Obama’s economic recovery package. In a Capitol Hill press conference Thursday, Freeberg said:

With so many American’s continuing to struggle, we must do something to get our economy moving. This economic recovery package will help create much-needed jobs that would benefit families like mine.

Freeberg and Brian, her husband of 20 years, have four adopted children, three of whom are former foster children. Even though both of them are college graduates, they cannot find a decent job. Brian trained to be an airline pilot and was to receive his instructor’s license the week after 9/11. Due to the number of unemployed pilots let go by the airline industry, he was never able to get a job.

In 2007, he went back to school to train to become a nurse. He’s taking one class at a time because that’s all he can afford. Liz lost her job as an independent sales rep about two years ago and hasn’t found work yet.

The couple put their home on the market in 2006 and moved into a town house with her mother, who’s paying the mortgage. Their house still has not sold, and they face foreclosure. Her mother’s retirement and investment income has tanked, and she may not be able to keep up the payments on the town house much longer.

Freeberg says she only wants the same help that the government is giving the wealthy fat cats:

We’re bailing out the banks. We’re bailing out the car industry. Who’s bailing out the average American family who’s struggling? We’re the ones that help stimulate the economy. You can’t stimulate the economy by giving more to people who already have  a lot. You can’t save the auto industry by selling a few luxury cars  to the rich. It’s all those Ford pickups they sell to the average American family and all the minivans they sell to families like ours. We stimulate the economy.

Freeberg says a good job would solve her problems. But there are no jobs available.

Companies in my area have put on hiring freezes or are laying off. I’m doing what I can. But like everybody else, we’re exhausting what we have. I don’t have life insurance. We have health insurance, but it costs a third of what my husband makes a month.

Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, Dave Johnson, a construction worker from New Jersey, and Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.), Frank Lautenberg (N.J.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.) joined Freeberg at the press conference to discuss the urgent need to pass an economic recovery package.

Said Johnson:

America has a lot of work to do, and Americans desperately need work. The only thing missing are the jobs.

“The time to act boldly is now,” Van Roekel said.

We urge the Senate to act quickly to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, because investing in schools is good economics. Timely action by the Senate will go a long way toward providing students with 21st century learning environments and ensuring great public schools for all students.

Freeberg, who says she now has to sell her blood plasma to make ends meet, says it all boils down to realizing the American Dream:

The dream was that we would do better than our parents and our children would do better than we did. But that’s not happening. We need help and we need it now.

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