With the graduation of seven newly certified weatherization technicians from its Eastern New York Laborers Training Center, the New York State Laborers’ Union (NYSLIUNA) is blowing holes in several right-wing myths all at once, proving that jobless people do want to work, government programs can spur the creation of good jobs and labor unions can lead the way to prosperity.

Working in partnership with Peter Young Housing, Industries & Treatment (PYHIT), a non-profit that provides treatment, housing and vocational training to disadvantaged people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, the Laborers trained these first members of Green Jobs Local 58, chartered by the Laborers (LIUNA) as the first local in the Albany, N.Y., region dedicated exclusively to green jobs. Participants in the training had to be clean and sober for at least six months in order to be accepted into the program.

Thanks in part to the state’s 2009 Green Jobs/Green New York Act and a new program launched by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the demand for the retrofitting of homes to be more weather-resistant and energy-efficient is expected to climb. (Through the NYSERDA program, residents will be able to finance the weatherization of their homes via their monthly utility bills.)

The new Local 58 members will work for Eagle Street Construction, one of PYHIT’s vocational enterprises. Local 58 Business Manager Frank Marchese Jr. told the Albany Times Union that the workers would earn $14 per hour, plus a benefits package. He told the paper:

We are taking people involved in social programs who are now moving into being viable taxpayers.

Pete Wilcox, one of the local’s new members, expressed his enthusiasm to the Times Union this way:

I am very thankful for the opportunity to get green jobs training. I live in Albany and it means a lot to me to be able to have the skills to weatherize homes in my own backyard.

Sounds like a win for everybody.

This blog originally appeared in AFL-CIO Now on February 6, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Adele Stan writes: “My first union job was as a cashier at a New Jersey supermarket when I was 17, where I fell in love with the labor movement. My journalism career began at Ms. magazine (where, in the 1990s, I represented freelancers on an NWU arbitration team). I’ve covered the right wing of American politics for Mother Jones, The Nation, The American Prospect and, currently, for AlterNet, where I report on the tea party movement and cover the presidential campaign. I also served as a communications specialist for AFGE, 2001-2005.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Last week, in a small victory for guest workers activists, the State Department announced that it had debarred guest workers recruiter Council for Educational Travel USA (CETUSA) from the J-1 cultural exchange guest worker visa program. CETUSA had provided student guestworkers to work in Hershey warehouses in Palmyra, Penn. As I reported last summer, these workers went out on strike with the help of local unions to protest being paid only $20-$40 per week after having pay deducted for high rent and other services.

“The State Department’s ban on CETUSA is a big win for the students, and a blow against the larger trend of labor recruiters and companies using guestworkers to hollow out industries and undercut wages and conditions all over America,” National Guest Worker Alliance (NGA) Director Saket Soni said. “Corporations like Hershey’s and labor recruiters like CETUSA have turned the J-1 cultural exchange program into the country’s largest guest worker program, and profited from captive workers earning low wage.”

The debarment of CETUSA is a small victory for NGA, as there are many other recruiters still operating in the J-1 guest worker visa program that abuse workers, according to the organization. Advocates say that in order to stop further abuses of guestworkers the J-1 program needs to be reformed to provide greater rights to guest workers and more oversight of recruiters and companies using guest workers.

“I hope this sends a clear message to other recruiters like CETUSA: we will NOT be your captive workers,” said Harika Duygu Ozer, an NGA member and former J-1 student worker  at the Hershey’s plant from Turkey. “Now the State Department needs to make laws so that the next group of workers that are made captive by recruiters don’t have to risk being fired and deported or go on strike, just to get their basic rights respected.”

The State Department also announced that it will begin a review of how to restructure the oversight and will announce new regulations of the guest workers programs this summer.  It’s unclear what the rules or regulations will be.

Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Rick Ruth, however, told The New York Times that the new rules will expand the list of occupations that cultural exchange guest workers would be barred from working, including “construction and roofing” and other hazardous industries. State Department officials also told the Times “they were also considering a ban on most factory and industrial jobs” for cultural exchange guest workers. The State Department also pledged to increase their staff overseeing the cultural exchange guest worker program by 15 from its current level of 40.

“The real question, though, is whether the State Department going to include real workers’ protections in the regulations—in particular, workers’ right to organize” says NGA Communications Director Stephen Boykewich. “What we found is that the ability of guest workers to organize without fear of intimidation is the most important thing necessary to prevent what we saw at Hershey.”

In an effort to pressure the State Department to crack down on more guestworkers who violate the program, the NGA is releasing a list this week of 10 companies that have abused guestworkers that they would like to see the State Department crack down on.

“Getting CETUSA debarred is an important short-term victory but a larger fight is just beginning,” says Boykewich.

This blog originally appeared in Working in These Times on February 6, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Mike Elk is an In These Times Staff Writer and a regular contributor to the labor blog Working In These Times. He can be reached at mike@inthesetimes.com.

The nation’s unemployment rate in January fell to 8.3 percent, down from December’s 8.5 percent, and the economy added 243,000 jobs, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The nation’s unemployment rate continues it steady decline, dropping by 0.8 percentage points since August and to the lowest  point since February 2009. The number of jobless workers dropped to 12.8 million, down from December’s 13.1 million. But the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 5.5 million, about 42.9 percent of the unemployed.

The unemployment insurance program for the nation’s jobless workers expires Feb. 29.  A conference is now under way between the Senate and House over two very different one-year extensions of the UI program passed late last year and the Republican bill would slash federal benefits, impose harsh new restrictions and move to dismantle the essential lifeline of unemployment insurance.  Click here for details.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Heidi Shierholz says today’s figures show “a labor market where all the moving parts seemed to be moving in a solidly good direction.”

Strong payroll employment growth was matched by a falling unemployment rate, strong employment growth in the household survey and a growing share of the population with jobs…It’s important to keep this growth in context, however—the jobs deficit is so large that even at January’s growth rate, it would still take until 2019 to get back to full employment.  We need reports this strong and stronger for the next several years to get back to good health in the labor market.

Private-sector jobs grew by 257,000, and government employment was essentially unchanged, but over the past 12 months 276,000 public employee jobs have been lost.

In January, professional and business services add about 70,000 jobs. The leisure and hospitality industry added 44,000 jobs and health care jobs grew by 31,000.

Manufacturing saw an increase of 50,000 jobs, mostly in durable goods, and the construction industry added 21,000 jobs.  There were 10,000 new jobs in the mining industry in January.

The unemployment rates for adult men (7.7 percent) and African Americans (13.6 percent) declined in January. The unemployment rates for adult women (7.7 percent), teenagers (23.2 percent), whites (7.4 percent) and Hispanics (10.5 percent) were little changed.

This blog originally appeared in AFL-CIO Now blog on February 3, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Mike Hall is a former West Virginia newspaper reporter, staff writer for the United Mine Workers Journal and managing editor of the Seafarers Log. He came to the AFL- CIO in 1989 and has written for several federation publications, focusing on legislation and politics, especially grassroots mobilization and workplace safety. “When my collar was still blue, I carried union cards from the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, American Flint Glass Workers and Teamsters for jobs in a chemical plant, a mining equipment manufacturing plant and a warehouse. I’ve also worked as roadie for a small-time country-rock band, sold my blood plasma and played an occasional game of poker to help pay the rent. You may have seen me at one of several hundred Grateful Dead shows. I was the one with longhair and the tie-dye. Still have the shirts, lost the hair.”

In one way or another, we agree to contracts with fixed terms every day: before downloading music on iTunes, buying a cell phone plan, or taking out a student loan. More and more, another area in which the terms of contracts may be non-negotiable is in the area of employment, as individuals desperate for a job agree to an employer’s conditions or risk not being hired. But what if—in addition to a set number of vacation days and an agreement not to publically disparage the employer—potential employees were also asked to commit to other, more fundamental provisions?

In fact, many employees already do.

For example: When Christa Dias of Cincinnati, Ohio, was hired as a part-time technology teacher in 2008 at Holy Family School, and in 2009 at St. Lawrence Catholic School, she had to sign employment contracts agreeing to comply with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

Ms. Dias is not, herself, Catholic.

In October 2010, shortly after Ms. Dias asked for maternity leave, she was fired from both schools for breaching her employment contracts. Her violation? Well, it’s confusing.

Ms. Dias alleges that the schools first informed her she was being dismissed “for becoming pregnant outside of marriage,” but upon realizing that this might violate federal and state anti-discrimination laws, the schools quickly changed their tune. They now claim that they fired her for having undergone artificial insemination, which the Church views as a grave immoral act, and, they say, is in direct violation of her employment agreements, which require employees to “comply with and act consistently in accordance with the stated philosophy and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church,” part 1F. (According to Catechisms 2353, 2366, and 2376, premarital sex and pregnancy outside of marriage are frowned upon, but only artificial insemination is labeled “gravely immoral.”)

In response, Ms. Dias filed an employment discrimination suit against the two schools and the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in the U.S. District Court in April.

Does Ms. Dias have a case? Are these employment contracts enforceable? If a teacher can be fired for engaging in behavior that violates Catholic teachings, can she lose her job for using birth control? What if she has an abortion? How do courts balance employment discrimination laws against the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom? Questions the press did not tackle. LASIS will.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employers from firing employees because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. In 1978, through the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Congress amended Title VII to include pregnancy discrimination within the definition of sex discrimination; women can’t be fired solely because they’re pregnant.

To make a case of sex discrimination based on pregnancy, a woman must show that she was pregnant, she was qualified for the job, she was fired, and there is a connection between her pregnancy and the termination of her employment. If she makes her case, then the burden shifts to the employer to provide a nondiscriminatory justification for firing her, maybe because she bribed her students, fell asleep in class, or posted inappropriate comments on Facebook. You can figure out how things play out from here. If the employer can’t come up with a legitimate reason for firing the employee, she wins. But if the employer offers a legitimate reason, the employer wins . . . unless the teacher proves that the school’s explanation was merely an excuse to hide its discriminatory conduct.

If she weren’t working for religious institutions, it appears that Ms. Dias would have a clear case of sex discrimination: she was pregnant, by all accounts she performed her job well, she was fired, and there is a connection between her termination and pregnancy.

But Ms. Dias did work for religious institutions, and so we continue our way through this legal maze, and ask: When a religious institution claims that it fired an employee for a religious reason, should courts look into whether the stated reason is just a pretext to hide its discriminatory conduct? This investigation into the employer’s motivation can entangle the government in religious issues, and some courts are not so keen to engage in this inquiry. For example, in 1991 the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that, under the First Amendment, a court must accept a church’s religious justification for dismissing an employee without question. Fortunately for Ms. Dias, the Sixth Circuit is more willing to explore whether an employer’s stated reason for firing its employee is genuine.

In cases when a school initially told its teacher she was being fired for certain conduct and then changed its reason to a religious one, some courts are more likely to disbelieve the school’s “on-second-thought” religious reason for dismissal. This may bode well for Ms. Dias.

In addition, the provision of Ms. Dias’ employment contract in which she agreed to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church doesn’t necessarily doom her case. Employment contracts and handbooks requiring employees to follow specific church teachings are common in religious schools, but the terms of the contracts are still subject to Title VII. A court will refuse to enforce a contract if an employee can show that it was not applied equally to men and women, in which case the court will view the policy as a ploy to engage in sex discrimination.

In a 1999 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case, the court explained that for a school to enforce its policy against premarital sex solely by observing the pregnancy of its female teachers would constitute a form of pregnancy discrimination. So Ms. Dias can win if she demonstrates that the schools only enforced this provision against women. The fact that in 2002 the Archdiocese of Cincinnati suspended, rather than fired, a teacher (who was also a priest) accused of sexual misconduct with two male students might weigh in her favor. We think it’s safe to wager that this kind of behavior went against church teachings and would have been prohibited under his employment contract.

Now let’s take things a step or two further. Could an employer of a religious institution regulate whether an employee uses birth control? Has an abortion?

Unlike premarital sex or artificial insemination, which may result in pregnancy, these activities are private matters that are probably difficult for an employer to discover. But suppose a teacher in a Catholic school confides in a coworker that she had an abortion and this coworker tells the school administration. Under Title VII, could the school fire the teacher, if the teacher agreed to these terms when she was hired? If the policy is applied equally to men and women, the answer will most likely be “yes.”

You may be thinking, “But doesn’t the fact that men can’t have abortions automatically make any policy against abortions discriminatory?” Not necessarily (!)

If the policy doesn’t target abortions specifically but rather requires employees to abide by Catholic teachings in general, it’s not discriminatory on its face. So the only way to maintain an employment discrimination claim is to show that, although the policy is “facially neutral,” it’s not applied equally to men and women. This can be demonstrated with proof that a male teacher who also violated the employer’s policy was not fired even though the school was aware of his misconduct as well.

But before you start breaking out the champagne for Ms. Dias: There is an ever-expanding exception to employment discrimination cases against religious institutions that may negate the possibility of Ms. Dias winning her case altogether. In 1972, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals first recognized the “ministerial exception” to Title VII, holding that the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment prohibit the government from interfering in a church’s decision to fire a minister. Basically, religious institutions must be free to dismiss ministers for any reason, without worrying whether their decision will subject them to employment discrimination claims.

If the schools can prove that Ms. Dias served as a minister, she will be barred from bringing a Title VII claim. And courts have expanded the ministerial exception to include many employees who aren’t ordained ministers, as long as their primary duties are ministerial.

Unfortunately for Ms. Dias, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2011 decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission broadened the definition of ministers under the exception even further. In that case, the plaintiff, a teacher, instructed her students on mostly secular subjects with the exception of approximately 45 minutes each day, when she taught religion and led the students in prayer. The plaintiff also completed eight college-level theological courses in order to obtain the title of “called” teacher (as opposed to “lay” teacher). According to a unanimous Supreme Court, those activities were sufficient to label the teacher a minister and dismiss the suit based on the ministerial exception to employment discrimination claims.

In her complaint, Ms. Dias states that she worked as a technology coordinator, teaching computer classes and overseeing the computer systems at the schools. There is no indication that she instructed the students on religious topics or led them in prayer. So Ms. Dias will probably not be considered a minister and the school won’t be able to use the ministerial exception as a defense to her discrimination claim.

Regardless of the outcome of her case, Ms. Dias has no regrets about having artificial insemination, and is delighted with her little girl. “I would do it all over again for her,” she said.

This blog originally appeared in Legal as She is Spoke on January 25, 2012. Legal as She is Spoke is a blog produced by New York Law School’s Program in Law and Journalism. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Katherine Lazarow is a staff editor for the New York Law School Law Review, a member of the Justice Action Center, and an intern at the Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project. Katherine graduated from McGill University in Montréal with a Bachelor’s in Sociology.

City has lost three-fourths of its manufacturing jobs since 1960s

MILWAUKEE—Wisconsin’s economic problems are only deepening the political crisis for Gov. Scott Walker, already the target of a massive recall campaign that gathered 1.1 signatures from Wisconsinites.

Despite Walker’s pledge to preside over the creation of 250,000 jobs by 2015, Wisconsin has lost jobs for the past six months as the rest of the country has added them, and job losses have totaled more than 35,000 since he signed his highly controversial state budget last June.

But there is a more specific economic (and social) crisis facing Milwaukee: Just 44.7 percent of African-American males are still part of the workforce, reflecting the long-term decimation and relocation of the city’s industrial based and the lingering effects of the Great Recession.

Even for African-American males in their prime working years (25 to 54), only 52 percent were in the workforce. “That took me aback,” stated Marc Levine, author of the new study illuminating the appalling level of joblessness in the city’s black community.

“The most striking finding was the extent to which black employment rate has declined across all the heavily-industrialized cities of the Northeast and Midwest, like Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo,” said Levine, director emeritus of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center on Urban Development.

These cities have been hit by three waves of industrial shifts, first to the suburban ring, then to “the right-to-work states of the anti-union South,” and finally offshoring to low-wage, repressive nations like China and Mexico, said Levine.

With 54 percent of Milwaukee’s black workers employed in manufacturing in 1970, “The unraveling of manufacturing affected blacks here more than in other cities,” Levine noted. “All of the old industrial cities have been hit across the board, but Milwaukee with its especially large industrial base was really affected.”

As the study documents,

No metro area has witnessed more precipitous erosion in the labor market for black males over the past 40 years than has Milwaukee. The 2010 data, however, revealed a new nadir for black male employment in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee has lost a three-fourths of its manufacturing jobs since the 1960s, representing a giant canyon of destroyed opportunities. In the city long called “the Machine Tool Capital of the World” in recognition of its highly-skilled industrial workforce, only about 26,000 manufacturing jobs remain.

The loss of these jobs has been accompanied by a substantial drop in family incomes in the city. Milwaukee’s median household income, adjusted for inflation, plummeted
a stunning 21.9 percent since 1999, according to new U.S. Census data. That’s well over twice the national average of 8.9 percent.

But along with the impact of de-industrialization and de-unionization affecting the entire working class, African Americans in Milwaukee have faced “hyper-segregated conditions, with 88 percent of the blacks in the metro area concentrated in the central city, said Levine. With many lacking cars and public transportation to the suburbs—where almost all employment increases have occurred—the inner city economy has radically changed over the past four decades.

“In the new economy of the inner city, there are only 4,800 blacks employed in production now,” a small fraction of a once-huge African-American industrial working class, said Levine. “At the same time, every year we have about 5,000 African-American males entering the prison system. … We’ve seen the twin phenomena of the loss of factory jobs and a poorly-conceived war on drugs. As a result, almost 50 percent of Milwaukee’s black males are in jail, in prison, on probation, on parole, somewhere in the system.”

Milwaukee’s corporate leaders and media have continued to promote job training as the central solution to both high unemployment in the central city and a shortage of skilled workers:

The new chairman of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s biggest and most vocal business lobby, … vowed to tackle an issue that’s infuriated plant managers for years: a chronic inability to fill manufacturing jobs for lack of qualified or willing candidates.

Todd Teske, president and chief executive of Wauwatosa-based Briggs & Stratton Corp., said he would make the skills mismatch his top priority during the two-year rotating chairmanship of the 101-year old business group….

Industrial jobs are the core of Wisconsin’s middle class, Teske said: “But those jobs are threatened by a number of factors including a shortage of skilled industrial workers to fill existing and expected job vacancies.”

But for Levine, the training strategy championed by Teske and WMC is bound for failure. “It represents the tried and true approach for those who won’t face up to the fact that the private sector isn’t filling the need for jobs, but don’t want to challenge the private sector or their investment decisions.”

Briggs, for example, has moved thousands of jobs to Mexico and China.

“It’s not a skills shortage, it’s a shortage of private-sector job creation,” Levine says.

With Corporate America clearly opting out of domestic job creation—2.9 million jobs were eliminated in the United States since 2000, while 2.4 million were created offshore—local, state, and federal officials could confront the jobs crisis with a strategy that directly creates jobs, boosts consumer demand, and repairs America’s deteriorating infrastructure.

“We need Keynesian measures to build consumer demand, said Levine. “We need direct government involvement to rebuild the infrastructure, renovate our transportation systems, and update our communications system. All of these will also build broader consumer demand.”

The absence of jobs and income so acutely afflicting blacks in Milwaukee—and Americans of all colors across the nation—will not be cured by wishful thinking about the “insourcing” of jobs hailed by President Obama in recent speeches.

“Insourcing is a very, very minor trend,” Levine, pointing out that Milwaukee’s Master Lock (also see here ), although much celebrated (sometimes incorrectly) has only brought back a small share of the jobs it sent to Mexico. Still, the vastly-downsized United Auto Workers Local 469 is grateful for the addition of about 100 jobs over the last year;  a minimum of 800 Master Lock jobs had been shipped off to Mexico and China.

The depth of suffering in Milwaukee’s African-American community and elsewhere caused by the jobs shortage demands urgent action, not hope that “the private sector” to step forward. But when President Obama has talked about the need for job creation in recent months, he has stressed the need for private-sector” involvement.

Meanwhile, indifferent CEOs of major corporations sit on unprecedented trillions in reserves, and continue exporting jobs south of the border and overseas.

This blog originally appeared in Working in These Times on February 1, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and progressive publicity consultant whose work has appeared in numerous national publications and websites, including Z magazine, Dollars & Sense, Yes!, The Progressive, Multinational Monitor, The American Prospect and Foreign Policy in Focus. Bybee edited The Racine Labor weekly newspaper for 14 years in his hometown of Racine, Wis., where his grandfathers and father were socialist and labor activists. His website can be found here, and his e-mail address is winterbybee@gmail.com.

Colorado newspapers have covered extensively the recent trial, conviction and sentencing of former 7th Judicial District Attorney Myrl Serra on extortion and unlawful sexual contact charges. The conviction against Serra stemmed from his illegal maltreatment of three female employees in his Montrose and Delta, Colorado western slope offices – sexually harassing and assaulting them, threatening their jobs, and forcing them to provide sexual favors.

This case, of a public official and lawyer breaking the law, reminds us that sexual harassment continues to occur in all types of occupations and workplaces. There are steps everyone can and must take to stop and prevent it.

If you experience sexual harassment on the job, remember that you’re not alone. Trust your instincts, and don’t blame yourself. Be assertive and say no clearly. Document every incident in detail. Look for witnesses and other evidence from co-workers or former employees. Research your employer’s and your union’s channels for reporting sexual harassment, and use them. As Serra’s staff found out, addressing sexual harassment in the workplace is difficult, so seek emotional support. If all else fails, take legal action.

If you are not the one being harassed, support your co-worker by validating that harassment is wrong, affirming her feelings, and listening without judgment. Be sure that your behavior isn’t part of the problem. Challenge the harasser’s inappropriate behavior. Work with others toward a harassment-free work environment, whether that harassment is sexual in nature or based on someone’s race, sexual orientation or other characteristics.

If you’re a manager, you have special responsibilities. You also have special opportunities to be part of the solution. Be a role model. Be a good listener. Be objective and consistent. Be informed, and be willing to ask for help when you need it. Be vigilant, and don’t wait for a crisis.

Employers can develop, update and uniformly implement policies to stop and prevent sexual harassment. Emphasize prevention through education and training. Clearly define procedures, give several options for reporting, and be sure that investigations are prompt and fair. Administer appropriate discipline, regardless of the position of the harasser.

To learn more about what you can do at work and what your legal rights are concerning sexual harassment, call the 9to5 Job Survival Helpline at 1-800-522-0925 or visit us online at www.9to5.org.

About the Author: Linda Meric is the Executive Director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, a multi-racial membership organization founded in 1973 to strengthen the ability of low-wage and low-income women to win economic justice through grassroots organizing and policy advocacy on workplace and safety net issues. Linda helped found 9to5 Colorado in 1996 and served as the chapter’s Director until the Fall of 2004 when she became 9to5’s national Executive Director. Under Linda’s leadership, 9to5 has won important victories in the arenas of work-family, anti-discrimination, wages, good jobs, welfare, unemployment and child care.

Sunday marked the third anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first legislation signed into law by President Obama. The law, which expanded the statute of limitations on fair pay lawsuits, was a response to a Supreme Court ruling against Ledbetter in her fair pay case.

Though the law expanded the legal remedies available to women who have been victims of discriminatory pay, little has been done to address the pay gap that exists between male and female employees. Since the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was signed into law, the pay gap has closed at less than half-a-cent per year. That trend is continuing, as the pay gap barely closed from 2009 to 2010.

Women made 77 percent of men’s earnings in 2009, the year the law passed. In 2010, that wasvirtually unchanged, as women’s wages rose to 77.4 percent of men’s. The gap is even larger for African Americans and Latinos: black women made 67.5 percent of all men’s earnings in 2009, while Latino women made 57.7 percent. In 2010, those figures ticked up to 67.7 percent and 58.7 percent, respectively.

Women make up half of the American workforce, and in two-thirds of American families, the mother is the primary breadwinner or a co-breadwinner. But they make less than their male counterparts in all 50 states, though the size of each state’s wage gap varies. While the gap continues to close in places like Washington, D.C., where women make 91.8 percent of men’s earnings, it is growing in others, like Wyoming, where women’s earnings dropped from 65.5 percent of men’s in 2009 to just 63.8 percent in 2010.

Because of the gender pay gap, women with the same education doing the same job as men earn far less over their working lifetimes. The wage gap costs $723,000 over a 40-year career for women with college degrees. In some industries, the gap can cost women close to a million dollars.

In November 2010, Senate Republicans killed efforts to close the pay gap when they unanimously voted to block the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have updated the Equal Pay Act, closed many of its loopholes, and strengthened incentives to prevent pay discrimination.

This blog originally appeared in ThinkProgress on January 30, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Travis Waldron is a reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Travis grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and holds a BA in journalism and political science from the University of Kentucky. Before coming to ThinkProgress, he worked as a press aide at the Health Information Center and as a staffer on Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s 2010 Senate campaign. He also interned at National Journal’s Hotline and was a sports writer and political columnist at the Kentucky Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s daily student newspaper.

According to data from the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation that was highlighted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, nearly 25 percent of American workers are in low-wage jobs, defined as “earning less than two-thirds of the national median hourly wage.” This is higher than many other industrialized nations, including the U.K., Canada, and Australia. CEPR found that the developed world’s high number of low-wage jobs “may contribute to broader income and wealth inequality and constitute a threat to social cohesion.”

This post originally appeared in ThinkProgress on January 26, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Pat Garofalo is Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Pat’s work has also appeared in The Nation, U.S. News & World Report, The Guardian, the Washington Examiner, and In These Times. He has been a guest on MSNBC and Al-Jazeera television, as well as many radio shows. Pat graduated from Brandeis University, where he was the editor-in-chief of The Brandeis Hoot, Brandeis’ community newspaper, and worked for the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life.

Teen employment rate of 26 percent is lowest since World War II—and much worse for African Americans

Even as the economy slowly picks up, finding a job is harder than ever for teenagers, according to a national study released on Tuesday. That’s likely because the jobs that are being “created” in recent months are being snapped up by adults—often people over age 50 who were laid off from other positions or forced out of retirement during the economic crisis. Meanwhile, funding for youth jobs has suffered because of state and local budget crises, and significant “stimulus” funding for youth jobs and training under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has now expired.

The study, by researcher Andrew Sum at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston,looks at teen employment over time through “jobless” numbers rather than “unemployment” numbers, since unemployment figures don’t include youth who are not actively looking for work. As with adults, since it has become harder and harder to get a job many youth have given up and hence dropped from the unemployment figures.

A press release for the report says:

The teen employment rate declined by 19 percentage points, or more than 40%, nationally from 1999-2000 to 2011, falling to 26, the lowest rate since World War II… The figures are bleakest for African-American teens in the city of Chicago, of whom 90 percent are jobless, including 93 of every 100 teens from families with incomes under $40,000; upper-middle-income whites were nearly four times as likely to hold a job, the data show.

Ironically, the growing dearth of employment opportunities for youth—particularly low-income and minority youth—has come just as families most need that extra income, and as the experience the jobs provide is more important than ever for youth to get a leg up in an increasingly competitive labor market. Jack Wuest, executive director of the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, told me:

If you’re an employer and have a choice between a 56-year-old man or woman who’s worked a lot, you’re probably going to take the adult; you might not want a ‘surly teenager.’

Wuest added that even before the economic crisis, automation, downsizing, the increase in part-time and contract work and other factors in the larger labor market have either eliminated the jobs once filled by youth or funneled adults into them. As a kid, Wuest was one of an army of newsboys in Chicago’s far north side Rogers Park neighborhood, each delivering a separate paper on their specific routes. He told me:

Now one guy delivers all the newspapers – The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Chicago Sun-Times – across the whole neighborhood…It’s another example of an adult taking a job that would’ve employed four or five kids back in the 1950s or 1960s.

Also in tighter economic times, companies are less willing and able to invest in future workers by hiring teens for the summer. This trend probably especially hurts in terms of professional jobs that offer more specific training and opportunity to advance than the fast food and other service-sector jobs that youth are most likely to get.

Congress has introduced legislation, namely the Pathways Back to Work Act sponsored by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), that would provide significant funding for youth employment and job training. But passing the bill will be an uphill battle, given Republican opposition and the distractions of the election year.

A press release from the Alternative Schools Network and partners explains:

The proposed Pathways Back to Work Act would create a $5 billion fund that provides $2 billion for subsidized employment programs for unemployed, low-income adults, $1.5 billion for summer and year-round employment opportunities for low-income youth, and $1.5 billion for a competitive grant program for work-based training and education programs for both adults and youth.

At an event in Chicago Tuesday, teens described the frustrating process of applying for job after job with little luck, often being told they will get a call back, but that call never comes. One bright note was provided by Deshon Carr, an 18-year-old senior at Community Christian Alternative Academy in Chicago who started a landscaping and snow removal business that employs other teens, working full-time in the summer and on weekends and over holiday break during the school year.

Carr, who is also enrolled in a culinary arts program at the Washburne Culinary Institute at Kennedy King city college, is proud he is able to create jobs for other teens in his North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. In the course of looking for jobs himself several years ago, he would call landscaping and construction companies and seek out mentors, ultimately leading to his own business, called Top of the Line Landscaping Inc.

“If you can’t find a job, make a job,” he told me. “If you want something bad enough you won’t give up on it, you just have to keep striving. I want to be a leader in bringing jobs to my community.”

This blog originally appeared in Working in These Times on January 26, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Kari Lydersen, an In These Times contributing editor, is a Chicago-based journalist whose works has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Reader and The Progressive, among other publications. Her most recent book isRevolt on Goose Island. In 2011, she was awarded a Studs Terkel Community Media Award for her work. She can be reached atkari.lydersen@gmail.com.

Last July, Major League Baseball blew an opportunity to make a difference. With 28 players who were either Hispanic or of Hispanic descent participating in the league’s annual All-Star Game in Phoenix, Arizona, and the eyes of the sports world watching, nary a one spoke out against the radical anti-immigration law Arizona had passed a year before, even though it could have directly affected the players and will directly affect many of their fans. “I ain’t Jackie Robinson,” David Ortiz, one of baseball’s biggest characters, said.

Over the next 10 days, the National Football League will have a similar chance to make a difference.

Just two weeks before Super Bowl XLVI kicks off at Lucas Oil Field in Indianapolis, more than10,000 people marched through the city to protest right-to-work legislation that is being pushed through the state’s legislature. The legislation passed the state Senate this week and the state House today, and is backed by Gov. Mitch Daniels (R). Considering the NFL nearly lost its 2011 season, and Super Bowl XLVI with it, to a labor dispute, Indiana Republicans’ assault on workers is a cause the players should be familiar with.

Fortunately, there are signs that the NFL players aren’t going to repeat Major League Baseball’s mistake. Several players have spoken out against the legislation, and NFL Players Association President DeMaurice Smith said his organization is already taking action. “We’ve been on picket lines in Indianapolis already with hotel workers who were basically pushed to the point of breaking on the hotel rooms that they had to clean because they were not union workers,” Smith told the Nation. “We’ve been on picket lines in Boston and San Antonio. So, the idea of participating in a legal protest is something that we’ve done before.”

That’s a good first step. But it’s not enough. Indiana union officials are contemplating disrupting Super Bowl-related events to draw attention to their cause, clogging city streets and slowing down events around Lucas Oil Stadium (which was built and is maintained by union workers). Labor leaders are hesitant, though, fearing that such actions could give the city and their cause “a black eye” with people who think sports and politics don’t mix. If some of the league’s top players, particularly those participating in the Super Bowl, spoke in support of those efforts, however, that perception could change.

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, one of the NFL’s most recognizable players, felt strongly enough about his own rights that he signed on as a plaintiff in the players’ antitrust lawsuit against the league last year. So did Logan Mankins, Brady’s teammate, and Osi Umenyiora, a prominent defensive end for the New York Giants. Those players were willing to risk backlash from the league, public scrutiny, and their own images to fight league owners for better benefits and wages. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, they should do the same for workers who don’t have the luxury of multimillion-dollar contracts, rich endorsement deals, and the good fortune of playing a game for a living.

Sure, with Super Bowl week ahead of them, political causes may be the furthest thing from the minds of most players. But with thousands of reporters conducting hundreds of interviews before, during, and after the big game, the players will have the chance to stand up for the rights of people they should be fighting for. Unlike their counterparts in baseball, they shouldn’t blow it.

This blog originally appeared in ThinkProgress on January 25, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Travis Waldron is a reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Travis grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and holds a BA in journalism and political science from the University of Kentucky. Before coming to ThinkProgress, he worked as a press aide at the Health Information Center and as a staffer on Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s 2010 Senate campaign. He also interned at National Journal’s Hotline and was a sports writer and political columnist at the Kentucky Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s daily student newspaper.