“The Lack of Jobs is Taking its Toll ...”
by Jennifer on 01.25.2010
Last night I was on Facebook accounts and read a message from a friend from the Cincinnati local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He said to me:
“. . . the lack of jobs is taking its toll. In Cincinnati we (the IBEW) have approximately 600 electricians unemployed and 3000 unemployed across Ohio with nothing in sight or out of town.”
Even though the recession is officially over, we’re still waiting for the jobs to return. Right now, unemployment in Ohio is at 10.9% for December, and this doesn’t reflect the additional numbers of people who have given up or are not looking for a job but still don’t have one.
In December, Congress approved yet another extension in unemployment benefits for those still without work and looking.
Now is a tumultuous time. Many are struggling or upset with where we are as a country. That’s why, in part, we have the outgrowth of groups like “tea party” members who are siding with neither Republicans nor Democrats. Many party regulars shake their heads, but maybe out of unbiased human respect we should look deeper into their passions and see what drives their and others’ dissatisfaction.
Tumultuous times sometimes call for radical change. And when we have the courage to make radical change, we must stand by our convictions to see it through. The health care reform effort started out that way but was weakened not by compromise but by capitulation—something detested by people, whether they’re left or right.
Now the “hue and cry” is that health care reform was not the issue President Obama and Congress should have tackled first (despite the fact that reigned in health care costs helps our economy)—but rather they should be turning away from health care reform and focusing on jobs. The focus was on jobs—first thing—with the stimulus package that bailed out banks and the out-of-balance budgets of the states and directed funds toward jobs in the states in health care, energy independence and education. But clearly, this hasn’t been enough.
Others and I have suggested Congress take unspent bailout money and use it for infrastructure jobs in our states. Infrastructure building is one of the most direct ways to get people working again quickly, especially skilled workers in the building trades, which is often called the “tip of the spear” to jobs recovery in any area. My friends in the IBEW and many others like them could use that help, and our communities would benefit from it.
But we can do more. Why don’t we move our focus to the issues at the center of people’s lives, like what’s happening to people on unemployment and how to get them back to work?
People who’ve lost their jobs want to get back to work to take care of their families, keep their homes and restore some normalcy to their lives. Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke appeared before Congress last month and said he was committed to an "exit strategy" on bailouts and stimulus programs that would provide a “smooth return to normalcy.”
At that time new jobless claims had dropped for a fifth straight week and third-quarter productivity gains suggested companies had been finding ways to reap profits with fewer workers, called “another ominous sign for the nearly 16 million unemployed Americans.” At the same time, Bernanke said that “entitlement programs” also need to be brought under control, noting: "At the rate we're going, in 10 or 15 years, the budget will be nothing but entitlements."
A “return to normalcy” means returning Americans to work, not just banks returning to profit-making so CEO’s can recoup their forgone bonuses. The indignation out there is about the evisceration of the middle and working class and Wall Street’s hold over our government.
Our policies should be centered on opportunities to create jobs and get people back to work. Health care was part of the stimulus package for new American jobs. It still is part of the solution.
Congress got bogged down as more and more special interests who financially benefit from the status quo waded into the swampy health care reform battle, throwing grenades of doubt and fear into the pockets of Americans who have health care coverage, playing to their uncertainty created when the change so many wanted now stares them in the face.
This is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Simply put, when the dam is breaking, we not only have to shore it up, assess why it broke and rebuild it to withstand future storms, we have to help people get themselves and their families to safety until the dam can be rebuilt.
In Ohio and many other places in the U.S. we need some common sense solutions—like letting people work part time when they can find it but not cutting off their unemployment benefits. Few states allow this, so why not pick up this regulation from the states for now and get people working again, even if only part time?
Most people on unemployment are receiving just a portion of what they were earning. They still have their mortgages to pay, prescriptions to pay for, cars to fuel and repair, and kids’ lunches to buy—so why not let them do it with reduced benefits? They would have longer to find a sustainable job for the same overall benefit cap while small businesses could safely begin to grow right now.
The wages they receive would most likely be substantially less anyway than their weekly benefit but if they could take the job, it could lead to a full-time position and they could still receive partial benefits while working without giving up their unemployment benefits completely.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s website is clear that unemployment insurance programs (created in 1935 in response to the Great Depression) play a key role in helping businesses, communities and the nation’s economy by providing temporary income support for laid off workers.
Allowing those laid off workers to start working part time, for instance for up to 6 months, would be a good start. The USDOL’s Trade Adjustment Assistance program that provides a variety of re-employment services and income support for jobs lost by increased imports or “shifts in production to foreign countries, due to trade and business tax policies” (better known as “outsourcing”) sets a similar time frame.
I applaud some of the more long-term steps being proposed like:
1. Unfreezing the credit market for small businesses and manufacturers,
2. Helping small and mid-sized manufacturers (especially former auto suppliers and auto component manufacturers – Ohio’s largest industry) retool for the clean energy economy,
3. Fostering entrepreneurialism and the creation of new jobs through business incubators like I’ve seen in Beachwood, Ohio,
4. Preparing our workforce for new jobs through tailored, regional workforce development programs to support high-growth industries, and
5. Enforcing trade laws to invest in domestic manufacturing and production, like Senator Sherrod Brown’s Trade Enforcement Priorities Act, to give the federal government more authority to address trade barriers and require the U.S. Trade Representative (Ohio Republican Senate candidate Rob Portman’s former job in the Bush administration) to analyze trade barriers that have the most adverse effect on U.S. exports and employment to crack down on the unfair practices that have killed American jobs and drained our country of our sources of prosperity.
Since the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Ohio ranks first in the nation in clean energy jobs created from federal recovery dollars. As I have traveled the state for my Senate campaign’s “Innovation Tour for Ohio Jobs”, it’s clear that Ohio needs to move in a new direction—and we’re doing it.
But while we’re doing all this to rebuild the dam, we need to shore up growing innovators and small businesses and get workers to “safety” by allowing part-time work while they look for jobs that will return them, their families and our communities to normalcy.