Jobs Now: States and Cities Need Our Help
 |
|
During an economic crisis like the one we’re in now, the squeeze on state and local budgets is brutal. Even as the revenues that are coming in from citizens and businesses decline, residents’ demands for services and assistance increase.
The resulting strain can result in even greater unemployment as teachers, firefighters, police officers and other essential public workers get laid off. To balance their budgets, states often turn to tax hikes or service cuts—at a time when working people can least afford them.
The AFL-CIO’s five-point plan for job creation includes a call for aid to state and local governments because the situation in our states, cities, counties and towns is dire. This year alone, state and local governments are looking at a $178 billion budget shortfall.
Obama: Let’s Invest Now to Create Jobs, Rebuild Economy
|
|
In a speech today at the Brookings Institute, President Barack Obama said restoring job growth and putting people back to work is a top priority of his administration.
Obama noted that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, enacted this past spring, prevented an even deeper crisis and added jobs at a critical time, but with unemployment at a 26-year high, more needs to be done to replace the millions of jobs lost as a result of the recession and of years of failed economic policy:
Our work is far from done. For even though we have reduced the deluge of job losses to a relative trickle, we are not yet creating jobs at a pace to help all those families who have been swept up in the flood. There are more than 7 million fewer Americans with jobs today than when this recession began. That’s a staggering figure and one that reflects not only the depths of the hole from which we must ascend, but also a continuing human tragedy. And it speaks to an urgent need to accelerate job growth in the short term while laying a new foundation for lasting economic growth.
Renewing Unemployment Insurance: A Moral, Economic Must
|
|
To tackle our nation’s ongoing jobs crisis, the AFL-CIO has put forth a five-point plan to put people back to work and restore our economy. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka presented this five-part plan at the White House Jobs Summit last week.
The first step in this plan is to extend a lifeline to the people who have been hit the hardest by the jobs crisis. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, unemployment benefits were extended for millions of workers. Those who lost jobs got added food aid and assistance in getting COBRA health coverage. That was the right policy—but even as the crisis continues, those benefits are expiring.
Unless Congress acts now, supplemental unemployment benefits, additional food assistance and expansion of COBRA benefits will expire at the end of the year. When more than one in 10 people are out of work and millions more are underemployed, that’s unacceptable.
Job Summit Tomorrow: What Do We Need to Create Jobs?
|
|
Tomorrow, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other national leaders will meet with President Barack Obama at the White House jobs summit, where they’ll start a much-needed conversation about what to do for the 26 million workers who are unemployed or underemployed.
Across the country, union members and Working America members are joining the conversation by holding roundtable discussions in Ohio, New Mexico and Minnesota on the jobs crisis and the need for quick action.
Trumka will be joined by union leaders, academics, corporate heads and elected officials from across the country. They’ll work to identify what we can do to create jobs and start turning our economy around. The summit will run from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. EST.
Trumka, Union Leaders Headed to Jobs Summit Dec. 3
|
|
President Barack Obama this week is convening a jobs summit to address the urgent need to create jobs for the more than 26 million unemployed or underemployed workers looking for work in an economy in which there are more than six workers for every one job.
An economy in which one in three Americans have either lost his or her job or live in a household with someone who has.
The summit, set for Thursday, Dec. 3, will include more than 100 experts and leaders from business, labor, government and community organizations, including AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.
