The New American Economy: Win the Lottery, Get a Job
Stunning, just stunning. Nearly 17,000 people applied for jobs at a Ford plant in Kentucky, according to USA Today. The applications are now going into a lottery and Ford will determine who gets to proceed to be considered for the 1,800 jobs that pay $15.51 an hour. No doubt not everyone who applied is unemployed, to be sure–but it’s likely a good number don’t have jobs.
So is this what it’s come to for America’s unemployed workers–they need to win a lottery to get work to support themselves and their families?
Derek Thompson nails it on the head in the Atlantic:
With every month’s employment survey, economists and journalists have to find new ways to write the headline “Job Report Surprises and Disappoints.” It’s getting difficult because the news is so dependably awful and the Thesaurus is only so thick. But it’s time to at least drop the word “surprises” and understand that the private sector does not work for workers the way it used to.
Two years after the start of the recession, there still are 4.7 workers for every ONE job available. Meanwhile, corporations sit on trillions of dollars. Rather than putting some of that Read the rest of this entry »
March to Stop the Freeloaders
The nation’s greedy corporations and insatiable wealthy are fattening themselves on workers. There’s no trickle down. It’s the opposite; the rich have been sucking the economic lifeblood from the middle class for decades.
When reckless Wall Street banksters get taxpayer-funded bailouts, billionaires get tax breaks and gigantic corporations like GE and Bank of America pay absolutely no federal income taxes, they’re getting for free the very public services that enable them to make massive profits in this country—the courts, the roads, the trade regulators, the patent enforcement.
The middle class doesn’t get those big time special deals and loopholes. Workers pay their taxes. As a result, it’s workers footing the bill for the government services that enrich the rich. Greedy corporations, their CEOs and the right-wing politicians they buy with tens of millions in campaign cash are freeloaders.
It’s time workers stood up to the freeloaders. Join Monday’s We Are One rallies. These demonstrations across the country by religious groups, social justice organizations and labor unions will illustrate that the middle class is mad as hell and not going to take trickster economics anymore.
Give Now to Expose the Chamber’s War on Workers
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Want to get in the ring and help battle the Chamber of Commerce? American Rights at Work is holding a fundraiser to help expose the Chamber’s war on workers. The $7,000 in seven days campaign doesn’t aim to compete with the mega-millions the Chamber collects from its Big Business patrons. But your donation can help the workers’ advocacy organization spread the truth about the Chamber. Donate here.
Last year, the Chamber spent more than any other lobbying organization in the country: $144,496,000. And it plans to spend $50,000,000 to influence the upcoming elections. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s April 15: Time to Tax Wall Street. We Need Good Jobs Now
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Allison Fletcher Acosta, Communications & Technology coordinator at Jobs with Justice, is joining activists who are calling on Congress today to tax Wall Street and make it pay for jobs for the rest of us.
Today, Jobs with Justice activists and allies are protesting at banks and post offices in 40 cities across the country to highlight the need for good jobs—and a way to pay for them. Activists will hold rallies calling on Congress to create millions of good new jobs, tax the Wall Street speculators who broke our economy, reign in the Big Banks and protect consumers. We are demonstrating support for legislation like the Local Jobs for America Act (H.R. 4812), which will create 1 million jobs, and for the Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act (H.R. 4191).
A tax on the speculators of the Wall Street casino could put 3 million people to work fixing our infrastructure, teaching our children, making our factories more sustainable and improving our public services.
Danger: Falling Middle Class
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Jack Cafferty at CNN this week asked viewers one of his seemingly routine questions. But the responses to: “How has definition of ‘middle-class American’ changed?” reveal a cataclysmic shift in our nation’s economic identity.
Gary from El Centro, Calif., summed up the vast majority of the nearly 200 responses when he replied:
You should ask this question of the three or four people in the country still remaining in the middle class.
The comments reflect more than the run-of-the-mill griping about taxes or middle-aged discontent. They demonstrate a visceral understanding of the deep forces underlying the dramatic change that in recent decades has eroded the solid financial footing of America’s working families—America’s middle class.
In short, the American public knows what most lawmakers in Washington and policymakers around the country have yet to figure out: The nation is losing its middle-class backbone and bifurcating into a have/have not country.
Made in America: Corporate PR, Not Practice
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Big Business wants it both ways: It wants to wrap itself in the ol’ red, white and blue while feeding the decline of the U.S. economy through its actual practices.
Here’s the latest example of such corporate hypocrisy. Over the Memorial Day weekend, J.C. Penney advertised a silkscreen T-shirt bearing the slogan, “American Made.” Yet when Joe Allen, a retired apparel manufacturer in the Dallas area, bought the T-shirt, he found it actually was made in Mexico—”of USA fabric.”
Allen didn’t just shrug off such a blatant sleight of hand. He took action, contacting Steve Capozzola at the Alliance for American Manufacturing. Capozzola sent an e-mail to J.C. Penney, saying that the ad was deceptive and asking why the shirt “was emblazoned with an ‘American Made’ slogan when it was in fact made in Mexico.”
Wal-Mart: Recession Profiteer
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Bank and insurance CEOs aren’t the only ones getting rewarded for horrendous behavior in this recession. There’s Wal-Mart, whom Newsweek now has anointed as “Our Corporate Savior.” (Hat tip to dakine01.)
“Wal-Mart recently announced that its same store sales in January were up 2.1 percent, which was more than forecast. With the company’s huge network of stores and ability to strong-arm suppliers, Wal-Mart offers shoppers good merchandise at prices which becomes more and more attractive as the downturn continues.”
The brutal truth is that Wal-Mart is profiting in the midst of misery because of policies that, like those of the financial services industry, fueled the nation’s economic disaster. While banks rolled up and peddled collateralized debt packages like cheap tuna wraps, Wal-Mart’s assault on America’s economy came from another angle–everyday low wages. By paying the vast majority of its workers little more than the minimum wage and offering health care plans most can’t afford, Wal-Mart shifted its corporate expenses to taxpayers.
America’s Real Patriot Act: The Employee Free Choice Act
When America’s founders crafted the Constitution, they knew more was needed to ensure the survival of democracy. So they created the Bill of Rights. They made sure that at the top of the list, the First Amendment included such rights as the freedom of assembly. That is, the freedom of all of us to gather together in groups of our choosing. Like, say, unions.
Some opponents of workers’ freedom to form unions seem to have forgotten that forming groups outside government—and corporate—purview is critical to a free nation. In Big Brother-speak, these corporate hacks are attacking the proposed Employee Free Choice Act—which would enable more employees and workers to have the freedom to form unions—as unconstitutional.
Here’s what’s really outrageous:
- Managers following employees and workers to the bathroom and around the workplace to harass them for seeking to form a union.
- Workers so intimidated by employers, they become scared of voting in a ballot for a union so they vote against the union or don’t vote at all, fearing that if they do, they’ll lose their job.
