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AFL-CIO Unveils 2010 State Jobs Agenda
Last night in his State of the Union message, President Obama called on Congress to pass a jobs bill to help put millions of Americans back to work. But the U.S. Congress is not the only lawmaking body that can fuel job creation. State legislatures have important roles to play.
The AFL -CIO has developed a State Jobs Agenda that union and community allies and working family lawmakers can use as a guideline in developing legislation and policies to protect and create jobs, address budget issues and protect the safety net.
The agenda offers dozens of innovative and effective ways to develop job-centric laws and policy that put working families first.
Following are just a few examples.
Restoring Jobs and Holding Corporations Accountable
Some states continue to hand out taxpayer dollars to companies in economic development subsidies but don’t hold the companies accountable for creating the promised jobs or stronger tax bases. Some firms have even used state funds for investments in other states or countries.
Activists and lawmakers can hold corporations accountable in several legislative or regulatory ways such as:
- Attaching job quality standards to subsidies and contracts;
- Establishing clawbacks that allow states (and localities) to get their money back from subsidized corporations if they fail to create the number and quality of jobs promised; and
- Passing legislation to ensure that state tax dollars are used to create in-state jobs by prohibiting states from contracting with or providing economic development assistance to companies that ship the work offshore.
The State Jobs Agenda also examines methods to:
- Establish contracting-out standards to ensure that when states contract out services, the contracts go to high quality, law-abiding companies with good workplace practices;
- Create jobs by investing in infrastructure repair and green Jobs development;
- Monitor how investment/stimulus funds are spent; and
- Ensure that U.S. firms and workers have the opportunity to bid on work before a firm with a waiver to Buy American rules is awarded the contract.
Repairing the Safety Net
Unemployment insurance (UI) benefits are the first line of economic defense for jobless workers. But many states have yet to qualify for some $7 billion in federal funding to modernize their UI systems and provide the expanded and improved benefits required to receive the federal funds. Others are facing funding problems. To address these issues, state legislative activists can:
- Expand UI eligibility by actions such as covering part-time workers, including most recent earnings in determining eligibility, providing additional weeks of benefits to laid off workers pursuing job training or other improvements.
- Increase the taxable wage base on which employers must pay UI taxes from the federal minimum of the first $7,000 in income and index to inflation.
Shoring up State Budgets
States are facing a $350 billion budget gap now and in the next fiscal year, in addition to the massive shortfalls from FY 2009. Already, states have cut vital services—and the jobs lost because of the budget cuts are in both the public and private sectors. If states balance their budgets entirely with spending cuts, it could cost the economy 900,000 jobs. Instead, states can use a variety of measures, including use of reserve funds, revenue raisers and appropriate spending cuts.
For example, Oregon voters this week approved two measures to raise income taxes on the state’s wealthiest earners and increase the $10 minimum annual corporate tax—that hadn’t been changed since 1931—to $150 a year. That extra income will be used to pay for education, health care, public safety and other vital services.
Other solutions include strengthening tax enforcement programs, eliminating tax loopholes that let corporations take taxable profits out of state and tightening rules to prevent employers from avoiding payroll taxes by misclassifying workers as independent contractors instead of employees.
The 2010 AFL-CIO State Jobs Agenda also provides steps to ensure that green jobs created by state funding and grants are good jobs and the corporations who receive grants for green jobs and environmental services are held accountable.
In addition, the state jobs blueprint outlines several initiatives states can take to provide the type of education and training needed to prepare current and jobless workers, along with students, for the 21st century.
For more information or a complete copy of the AFL-CIO State Jobs Agenda contact:
Christine Silvia-DeGennaro, state legislative issues coordinator, AFL-CIO Government Affairs Department, at 202-637-5177 or csilvia@aflcio.org.
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4 Comments
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Wait a second. If you increase a businesses costs for state unemployment insurance (raising the wage base and indexing to inflation), doesn’t that increase the cost of hiring or keeping an employee? If something costs more, don’t we buy less of it? Maybe this is why businesses, large and small, are reluctant to hire or take extraordinary risks.
That’s a tired argument that misrepresents the fundamentals of job creation and commodity pricing. No one bases hiring on wage only but on market and productivity. Plus if everyone shares the burden and the benefit, more money is availible to be spent in the economy which lowers the overall risk. We Americans are the most productive workers in the world but fear based conservative marketing and propaganda has made the business class the “victims” if they have to fairly share the increased profits our increased productivity. Most data shows stagnant middle class earnings while the top percentages have left us way behind. Don’t let the BS scare you that prices all go up if we do better. That’s only true for monopolies our Govt. supports, like Health Care! and if you check it out, Nurses, Technicians and clerical workers are falling behind the Managers and CEO’s meteoric pay acceleration for virtually doing NOTHING!
And no subsidies for nuclear reactors. Invest in solar, wind, conservation, weatherization, not poison, pollution, and radiation.
Friday I read a quote from Rep. Pence(R), stating that basically no company will hire unless they need to. I have to agree with that, productivity is up as profits, doing more with less. Why hire to get a payroll tax break, if you don’t need them. I have an idea that is sooooooo way out of the box and won’t cost the budget a penny. What needs to be done is change the wording in one bill that all ready on the books. Wage and hour law, change anything over 40 hours a week be paid at 1.5 to anything over 8 hours. Cuts the 12 hour and 10 hour shifts and they would need to hire to keep going around the clock.
Comments please