Median Income Down, Poverty Up
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More troubling news on the downward economic spiral of America’s working families. In 2010, median household income declined and the poverty rate increased, according to U.S. Census Bureau data announced this morning.
Running counter to the American tradition of ever-rising prosperity, real median household income in the United States declined by 2.3 percent from 2009 to 2010 and now stands at $49,445. Further:
The nation’s official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009—the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. There were 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009—the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.
Behind the bad data are two factors, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). First, the unemployment rate increased from 9.3 percent in 2009 to 9.6 percent in 2010. Second, long-term unemployment, or the percent unemployed 27 weeks or more, grew from 31.2 percent in 2009 to 43.3 percent in 2010.
Privatization Would Bankrupt Amtrak
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Ever since the Reagan administration, conservative Republicans have been trying to rip apart the nation’s passenger rail system, Amtrak, and sell its assets to Wall Street. The latest effort, led by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) and Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), would privatize Amtrak’s most profitable Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., and sell the rest of the system to the highest bidder.
With Amtrak doing better today than at any time in its history, breaking up the system would bankrupt the railway, cost thousands of jobs and defeat the purpose of a national passenger rail system.
Take action now. Tell your elected representative that the purpose of running a national passenger rail system isn’t to help Wall Street and private investors make money. Tell them that privatizing Amtrak will bankrupt it and destroy thousands of good jobs.
Stimulus Money Creates Jobs, Rebuilds Rail Cars
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In Delaware, 50 union workers, including 20 Electrical Workers (IBEW) members, are at work and paying their bills and mortgages, thanks to economic recovery money that is also saving Amtrak millions of dollars in new equipment.
Those jobs are part of as many as 3.3 million jobs that President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act saved or created since it was signed into law in February 2009. In the three months prior to passage of the legislation, the nation had lost 2.2 million jobs—more than 8 million jobs disappeared during the Bush administration.
The Delaware workers are converting old and abandoned dining cars into money making Amtrak passenger cars. IBEW member Tom Rapposelli, standing in one of the cars being refurbished, says in this IBEW video:
This car would have probably been totaled and left outside to rot. And with that stimulus money we were able to put it back together with new people being hired.
UTU Leader Picked to Head Federal Railroad Administration
Joe Szabo, United Transportation Union’s (UTU‘s) Illinois state legislative director and a vice president of the Illinois AFL-CIO, was nominated last week by President Obama to serve as head of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). A Senate confirmation vote is expected soon.
The FRA administers and enforces federal rail safety laws and writes and enforces federal rail safety regulations.
Szabo is a fifth-generation railroader who began work with the Illinois Central in 1976 as a yard switchman and also worked as a road trainman and commuter passenger conductor. He was elected UTU Local 1290 secretary-treasurer in 1984 and began serving as UTU state legislative director in 1996. UTU President Mike Futhey says Szabo is
the first FRA administrator to come out of the ranks of rail labor. It is a validation that the Obama administration is a friend of organized labor.
