SEARCH
Inequality Could Keep Economy from Full Recovery |
|
 |
||||
|
||||
The federal stimulus package is a good way to jump-start our economy, but it is not enough to solve the deep crisis of inequality that has been building in this country for decades. A recent article says the government needs to act quickly to start addressing the growing income gap.
In an article in The Nation online, Christine Owens and Annette Bernhardt, executive director and policy co-director, respectively, of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), say working families were struggling to survive even before the current recession. Although U.S. workers are more productive than ever, they are faced with stagnant wages, disappearing benefits and little job security. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that eight of the top 10 occupations projected to generate the most jobs by 2016 are low-wage jobs in the service sector.
Owens and Bernhardt write:
Policies focused only on job growth will simply put us back on the path toward greater inequality. If we truly want to rebuild a good jobs economy to “create jobs that sustain families and sustain dreams,” as President Obama recently put it—we have to act now to lay down the institutional and regulatory framework.
Click here to read the full article.
According to Owens and Bernhardt, there are four low-cost things the government can do right now to put more money into the pockets of low-income families:
- Fully enforce minimum wage and overtime laws. Growing numbers of employers are ignoring even these most basic laws and retaliate against workers for reporting violations. The reports cites the example of Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest employer, which announced in December 2008 that it would settle 63 cases in 42 states charging unpaid wages, totaling at least $352 million and involving hundreds of thousands of current and former workers.
Kim Bobo agrees. In her book, Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid—And What We Can Do About It, Bobo, executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, says wage theft is “an epidemic” in the nation, especially in the low-wage labor market.
“Wage theft is a national crisis,” she writes. “As many as 2 or 3 million workers are not being paid minimum wage; millions are denied overtime pay.”
Owens, Bernhardt and Bobo all say the Department of Labor must return to its core mission of safeguarding workplace standards by increasing the number of inspectors, targeting industries with high rates of violations, protecting workers who file complaints and cracking down on employers that misclassify their employees as independent contractors.
Recommendations in the NELP article include:
- Raising the federal minimum wage. A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that an increase in the minimum wage boosts consumer spending more than tax cuts, as families spend their paychecks at local businesses. The NELP article calls for an increase in the federal minimum wage, starting next year and phasing in over multiple years to make up lost ground.
- Using federal contracts to create living-wage jobs. Every year, our government spends $400 billion on contracts with a wide range of companies for goods and services, financing more than 2 million jobs. But significant numbers of these jobs pay low wages and provide no benefits, in industries such as utilities and housekeeping, property maintenance and repair, clothing and apparel and food preparation. NELP says federal contracts should favor employers that pay living wages, provide health benefits, offer quality training and obey labor laws.
- Enacting the Employee Free Choice Act to guarantee that workers can form unions and bargain free of intimidation and abuse. They say the unions transformed manufacturing into a middle-class industry after World War II; today, it is doing the same for low-wage workers such as janitors, child care workers, home care workers and hotel room cleaners.
Owens and Bernhardt conclude that continuing on the path of rising inequality is not inevitable. Saying our country responded to the Great Depression by putting into place the policies that formed the basis for several decades of strong economic growth and shared prosperity, we can do the same today.
We now face another deep economic crisis, and another opportunity to set the bar higher. Let’s not just stimulate the economy; let’s rebuild it with good jobs.
2 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
IT IS TIME FOR A ‘REALITY CHECK’ ON SIMPLISTIC ARTICLES SUCH AS THIS.
THERE ARE NO JOBS! THERE ARE NO ‘GOOD JOBS”.
THERE ARE NO LIVING WAGE JOBS.
WITH NO JOBS, THERE IS NO RENT MONEY, NO FOOD MONEY!
Check out this video:
Video: Workers interviewed at Detroit jobs fair
14 March 2009
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/vide-m14.shtml
The World Socialist Web Site sent a team of reporters to speak to workers who were lining up for jobs and job training at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit, Michigan on Thursday, March 12. Many spoke about homelessness, especially among children, widespread hunger and the extreme difficulty of finding jobs
———————————————————————–
See this article (link below), with interviews and photos.
“Thousands line up at Detroit job fair”
Thousands of unemployed people attended a job fair held at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit Thursday, hoping to put in their applications for the handful of jobs on offer.
While nominally an education and career development expo, the event attracted thousands of unemployed workers. Colleges advertising adult education programs and small-business consultants took up most of the showroom floor, but these tables had almost no clients. Inside the convention hall, however, workers stood in long lines in front of temp agencies, waiting to fill out applications.
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/fair-m13.shtml
=========================================
The crisis we face today cannot be fixed with EFCA, even if it does pass Congress and is actually signed by Obama. All these fixes are based on the false idea that good jobs are possible under capitalism today. Good jobs are IMPOSSIBLE under a collapsed capitalism. Working people in Europe are facing the same problem for the same reason: capitalism has collapsed in Europe.
CAPITALISM IS CONCERNED WITH MAKING PROFIT. IT CANNOT MAKE ENOUGH PROFIT USING UNION LABOR IN LIVING WAGE JOBS. NOR CAN IT PROVIDE HEALTH CARE, SAFE WORKING CONDITIONS, RETIREMENT, ETC. BECAUSE ALL SUCH BENEFITS CUT INTO AND DESTROY PROFIT MARGINS. THIS IS WHY MILLIONS OF JOBS OVER THE LAST 30 YEARS HAVE LEFT THE U.S.
U.S. CORPORATIONS AND LOCAL MEXICAN EMPLOYERS WANT TO MAKE BIG PROFITS IN MEXICO. THUS THE PEOPLE ARE FOREVER IMPOVERISHED, AND INVADE THE U.S. FOR ANY JOB POSSIBLE AS IT IS BETTER THAN STARVATION AND DEATH.
A program for the labor movement to finally lead the working people of the U.S. in this crisis.
1. The U.S. (and global) capitalist economy must be transitioned to a socialist economy that is dedicated to providing jobs that fill the needs of the vast majority of society, not just to maximize the profit of a tiny minority.
2. U.S. labor and working people must issue a call for a new socialist political party. A platform to redirect the wealth created by working people to the needs of working people.
Some platform planks.
Socialize (i.e. make them into a public utility) the banks. Put the credit cards under a nonprofit bank to minimize interest rates. End the student loan interest rack. (Free education for all through college.)
Socialize the energy industry (oil, gas, coal, nuclear, etc.) to phase in sustainable energy (solar, wind,etc)
End the foreign wars for oil and resources. Shut own the 700 plus foreign bases. Cut back on defense budget by at least 50 percent.
Establish a universal single-payer health care system not dependent upon employers.
Jobs for all with the “living wage” with formerly employer benefits secured through universal health care, education
grants, etc.
Jobs that are worker managed.
3. Break with the corporate controlled Democratic party. No corporate money and agendas!
4. Start a national media campaign to inform, educate and organize all working people to the need to end capitalism.
MILLIONS OF WORKING PEOPLE, THEIR FAMILIES AND CHILDREN IN THE U.S. WILL BE LITERALLY STARVING TO DEATH UNLESS THE LABOR MOVEMENT DOES SOMETHING NOW!!!
WITHOUT A PROGRAM SUCH AS ABOVE, SOCIETY WILL DESCEND INTO CIVIL WAR AND ANARCHY AS PEOPLE BECOME SO DESPERATE IN NEED OF FOOD, WATER, SHELTER ETC.
CAPITALISM CAN NO LONGER PROVIDE THESE ESSENTIALS.
SOCIALISM IS ESSENTIAL FOR SURVIVAL OF HUMANITY!
Read http://www.wsws.org
We should start with those in ‘command’ at AIG, and other ‘Wallstreet Harpees’. American tax payers bailed out these greedy corporate scumbags. (We own them; I want to collect!) We should sell off their assets to pay for the loans they have just received, including not giving them a dime for their irresponsibility, since obviously they have no idea just what an economic recession really means and do not know what is at stake here. They have no intention to ‘trickle down’ the bailout to help the millions of Americans that they have recklessly fleeced; yet this is what the original idea was supposed to represent. The Republicans in office (Bush and cronies) pushed this through so fast, it made everyone’s head spin, and Congress just assumed the recipients of the bailouts would do the right thing. All they have proven is that the only thing that matters is how much money they could continue to amass, with no regard for the people they were hired to serve. Then after all is said and done, these execs should be fired, and be offered minimum wage jobs as their only means of support.