Check Out Visits by Jobless Workers to Lawmakers’ Capitol Hill Offices
Jobless workers and members of the faith and labor communities visited lawmakers in Congress yesterday to urge them to extend unemployment insurance (UI) for the long-term unemployed. Hundreds gathered for a rally on Capitol Hill before fanning out to talk with individual lawmakers.
Check out these video clips of visits to lawmakers from New Hampshire, Colorado, Florida and North Carolina.
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Report: Austerity Measures Will Lead to ‘Permanent Recession’
Here’s mandatory reading material for lawmakers returning to Capitol Hill this week. A new United Nations study “savages” U.S. and European economic policies that call for austerity measures and deficit cuts, which the report says is pushing the world economy toward disaster “in a misguided attempt to please global financial markets.” The report called for:
wage increases, stricter regulation of financial markets, including a return to a system of managed exchange rates, and a conscious break with market-led thinking.
The report’s author, Heiner Flassbeck, is head of the globalization and development strategies division at the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and a former deputy finance minister in Germany. Flassbeck says:
If interests rates everywhere are zero, and if governments stick to the policy of not only keeping fiscal deficits where they are but retrenching, cutting public expenditure, then we will end up in permanent recession.
Or, as UNCTAD Secretary General Supachai Panitchpakdi put it:
The message here is very pragmatic: We need to reverse our course quickly.
New Jobs Created Are Nearly All Low-Wage
So, even as there are still 4.7 workers for every one job, the jobs that are being created are primarily low-wage—and the wages in those jobs have fallen disproportionately, according to a new report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
From the first quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011, the most recent data available, lower-wage occupations grew by 3.2 percent, with retail salespersons, office clerks, cashiers, food preparation workers and stock clerks topping the list. Mid-wage occupations, including paralegals, customer service representatives and machinists, grew by only 1.2 percent, while higher-wage occupations declined by 1.2 percent, which includes occupations like engineers, registered nurses and finance workers.
While overall, wages have fallen 0.6 percent since the start of the recession, lower-wage jobs Read the rest of this entry »
Health Care Action Week: Calling, Writing and Meeting with Congress
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The health care reform fight rolls on this week on Capitol Hill and working families, local and state union activists and leaders are making sure Congress hears from those who aren’t singing from the health insurance industry’s hymnal.
The Senate Finance Committee, which voted down a public health insurance option last week, is expected to vote and pass its bill tomorrow or Wednesday. The next step is to merge that bill with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee legislation that includes a public option and doesn’t tax workers health benefits. That could be on the Senate floor as early as next week. House action will likely come soon after the Senate mover.
On Wednesday and Thursday, more than 125 labor activists and leaders from 27 states will be on the Hill telling lawmakers that a final bill must, like the HELP bill, include a public option and not tax workers’ health care benefits.
Bailout Billionaires, Kill the Middle Class
We know how the bridge loan to automakers is being spent because the Bush administration made sure they only got aid after agreeing to tough stipulations.
So that accounts for $14.5 billion of our taxpayer money. But what about the rest of the $335.5 billion that went to Wall Street financial firms?
On “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough pointed out today that we do know how Wall Street spent $1.6 billion: on chauffeurs, company jets, home security, country club memberships and stock options.
