Budget austerity trims library staff and hours, as Mayor Emanuel and AFSCME trade accusations

Sara Doe was hired as a page at a Chicago library in 2007, and immediately fell in love with the job. Earning $11.18 an hour without benefits for shelving books, directing customers and other basic tasks might not be glamorous work, she told In These Times, but she loved the human interaction and the chance to spend time in libraries, which since she was a kid have been “like museums for me”—oases of calm and knowledge.

Doe’s mother worked in a city library, and since her parents were divorced, Doe considered the library her “third home” and has fond memories of stamping due dates in books. But this year visiting the library has been a somewhat painful experience since December 31 was her last day on the job at the northwest side library where she had worked since fall 2009. She was one of 181 library staff laid off because of city budget cuts that hit the library system particularly hard. Along with the layoffs, libraries are now closed on Mondays, cutting total weekly hours from 48 to 40.

After an intense campaign by the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31, some library staff were called back to work and Monday afternoon hours were restored, bringing the weekly total to 44 hours. But more than 100 library staff including all the pages are still out of work.

The library cuts—along with planned layoffs at city mental health clinics and Chicago O’Hare International Airport—have become part of a protracted and bitter battle between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and public-sector unions, as Emanuel has blamed AFSCME for forcing schedule cuts and using the library system as a bargaining chip.

The union held “People’s Library” hours with book readings outside several libraries during the Monday morning hours when they are now shuttered. Late last month, popular longtime library commissioner Mary Dempsey resigned amidst the controversy. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote of her departure:

She met her match in Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was more concerned about cutting spending than he was about preserving library services…She was apparently unwilling to preside over the dismantling of a library system she helped to build, but agreed to postpone her departure to minimize the impact of the cuts. The only surprise was that she didn’t walk out the door sooner…

Doe, 30, is desperately hoping to be called back to her library job. She has been applying for other positions—”anything and everything,” including food service at the city’s Wrigley Field baseball stadium—but she hasn’t had any luck. She qualifies for disability payments and has applied for unemployment, but she would rather be working at the job she loves so much that “the hours go by too fast.”

She told In These Times:

It’s not just a job, it’s something I really enjoyed. Even though it was low-status I felt really good and made some good money…Now I feel like I’m work-sick. I’m one of those people who like to work their butts off.

AFSCME Council 31 spokesman Anders Lindall said Doe’s attitude is typical:

People don’t give their working lives to public service to get rich. Library employees love their communities, their patrons and the role of their libraries as hubs of learning, research, culture, community and much more.

Like other layoffs resulting from city budget cuts, the library cuts have disproportionately impacted minorities and women. Lindall said 72 percent of the staff initially laid off were women and 77 percent were people of color, including 78 African Americans and 40 Latinos.

Library workers and patrons said they think the city administration is underestimating the important role that libraries play for city residents, even in the digital age. Mother Natasha Nicholes attended the People’s Library protest and has been blogging about the library cuts, which were a major disappointment for her four kids, including her three-year-old daughter whose weekly story hour was cut.

The library is an especially valuable resource for Nicholes, since she homeschools her daughter, providing needed books and also a social outlet. As a child in Chicago, Nicholes spent almost every Saturday at the library with her younger sister. She told In These Times:

I won’t let this pass without saying something, especially since libraries played such a large role in my growing up…I don’t think it’s a dying art, and I definitely don’t think eReaders will replace the feel of having a book in your hand.

Lindall said the Monday morning cuts are a serious impediment to customer service, and he noted that several years ago city libraries were open 64 hours a week, compared to 44 now. He told In These Times:

Any reduction in hours is a barrier to access…Weekday morning hours are especially popular with families and caregivers for preschool-aged children, seniors, shift workers and the unemployed. Monday mornings are the most crucial time for people looking for work, as new job postings come out in the Sunday paper but libraries are closed on Sundays. Unemployed folks line up at the branches waiting for the libraries to open on Monday morning, to look at the job listings in the Sunday paper or most commonly, to search them online, then submit resumes.

During a “Facebook town hall” I blogged about last month, Mayor Emanuel portrayed his executive order that restored some library hours as a way to bypass an out-of-control union. But Lindall said he thinks the union and library supporters should be thanked for the avoidance of more severe cuts:

In October, Mayor Emanuel introduced a budget that would have cut $10 million from the library budget, forcing 363 layoffs and untold reduction to hours. After a huge public outcry galvanized 28 aldermen to send a letter opposing these and other cuts, the mayor restored funds to rescind half his proposed layoffs.

As public criticism continued from all corners in January, he “found” money to restore more hours and positions. So he has taken two steps in the right direction. Our union and the people of the city want to work with him to finish the job, fully open and fully staff the branches.

Doe, whose first library job came after a promised position with the city park service helping special needs people fell through, said the mayor’s actions on the libraries don’t jibe with his high-profile push to lengthen the school day at public schools. She says:

I don’t know why he wants to extend the school day and short-change the library system. And with shorter library hours the longer school day makes it harder to get there on time. It doesn’t make sense.

This blog originally appeared in Working in These Times on February 10, 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.

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.”

As 2011 progressed, Americans overall saw a slowly decreasing unemployment rate, ticking down from 9.1 percent in January to 8.5 percent in December. However, a new report from UC Berkeley reveals that the unemployment rate for African Americans stayed almost exactly the same. In January of 2011, the unemployment rate for African Americans stood at 15.7 percent. In December, it stood at 15.8 percent.

Even as the underlying factors affecting the overall unemployment rate (employment level, unemployment level, and number of people not in the labor force) changed, African-Americans saw “virtually no movement” in their official rate. The report compares the unemployment rate change by race:

Many factors are contributing to the stubbornly high unemployment rate of African-Americans. Since the recession began, at least 600,000 public sector jobs have been sacrificed for budget cuts. These layoffs fall heaviest on African-Americans, as “about one in five black workers have public sector jobs, and African-American workers are one-third more likely than white ones to be employed in the public sector.” Economists also note that the younger age of the African-American workforce, the lower number of college graduates, and the larger number living in low-income areas that were harder hit by the recession are all keeping the rate as high as it is.

Whatever the reasons, the trend is certainly disturbing. As the report notes, “Black male unemployment rates have fallen slightly and Black female unemployment rates have risen. In contrast, unemployment rates for white men and white women have fallen over the same time period.”

This blog originally appeared in ThinkProgress on January 19, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Tanya Somanader is a reporter/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Tanya grew up in Pepper Pike, Ohio and holds a B.A. in international relations and history from Brown University. Prior to joining ThinkProgress, Tanya was a staff member in the Office of Senator Sherrod Brown, working on issues ranging from foreign policy and defense to civil rights and social policy.

So the unemployment rate’s drop last month means we’re heading out of this tunnel, right? If only it were as simple as that.

There’s more to the nation’s unemployment situation than December’s decline to 8.5 percent joblessness. The fact is, the economy we live in today has become far too complex to be measured the same way we do when we step on a scale.

That’s because a number of forces have changed the workplace reality for American workers. Some of these are short-term changes, though even then, it’s not clear how their impact will play out in the long-term. And some are significant long-term changes that first began to take off and which are likely to affect workers for a long time to come.

Young vets’ job woes

Take the worsening job plight of veterans of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, something that deserves attention by policymakers. The jobless rate for these vets in December, according to government figures, was 13.1 percent, up from 11.7 percent a year ago.

But the real jobs problem is the one faced by young vets, the ones who have came home looking for new lives rather than staying on in the military. The unemployment rate for these veterans between 20 to 24 years old averaged 30 percent last year, up from 21 percent in July 2010, according to the New York Times.

This may seem to some as a short-term problem, but it has the marking of a dilemma that may linger on.

We have traditionally expected veterans to find their way back into the job market, after slogging through a bout of joblessness. That is not exactly what happened, however, after the Vietnam War, and the mark left from Iraq and Afghanistan may turn out to be an even far more difficult one to overcome.

That is because the physical and psychological scars left on so many who took part in fighting that lasted almost a decade. A large brunt of military service fell upon workers plucked out of their jobs because of their National Guard and Reserve obligations.

So, too, the long-term changes that have rippled across the job market continue to play and broaden in ways not seen a few years ago.

Public service workers lose their protections

The wind carrying blue-collar factory jobs away for unskilled workers blows as strong as ever. Not only have jobs vanished at stunning levels, but also the downward slide in wages and loss of benefits is a worrisome omen for those left behind in the factories.

But now we can begin charting the rapidly expanding downward slide of government jobs, a process that seems likely to roll on for some time from Washington to the state capitals and to local communities, spurred on by budget-minded Republicans and financially desperate Democrats.

One measure of the decline is the loss of state jobs across the U.S.

Employment levels among state workers dropped 1.2 percent in 2011, according to the New York Times. That, according to the newspaper, is the steepest drop since recordkeeping began over 55 years ago.

For a long time, public workers were immune from such severe job cuts as well as attacks on their security. But now that immunity has vanished, putting them in the same downward spin as workers in the private sector.

Many of these public service jobs are held by black and Latino workers and their foothold on the job market has only grown more tenuous lately.

Indeed, the construction industry bust, factory-shutdowns and shrinking wages for most workers have had disastrous results for black and Latino workers. As the Economic Policy Institute has pointed out, the jobless rate for black and Latino workers grew dramatically higher and dramatically apart, as well, from white workers during the last decade.

Combine these forces and you have a job market not only under terrible stress, but facing stresses not seen before. That’s why the good news concerning the joblessness rate leaves the nation only so much to cheer about.

This blog originally appeared in Working in These Times on January 10, 2012. Reprinted with permission.

About this Author: Stephen Franklin, former labor and workplace reporter for theChicago Tribune, is ethnic news director for the Community Media Workshop in Chicago. He is the author of Three Strikes: Labor’s Heartland Losses and What They Mean for Working Americans(2002), and has reported throughout the United States and the Middle East.  He can be reached via e-mail atfreedomwrites@hotmail.com.

Last month, there was finally some good news on the jobs front, as the unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent and the economy created 140,000 private sector jobs. However, the continued slow-burning crisis in housingcould easily short-circuit any burgeoning labor market recovery, as the Wall Street Journal detailed today:

Some economists fear the continued slump in housing could short-circuit the recovery in jobs by making it harder for Americans to relocate to find work.

In theory, as the economy improves, people tend to relocate from places where jobs are scarce to areas where companies are hiring…While some relocation continues, economists believe mobility overall has been muted in part because of the housing bust.

Low home values have made it much harder for Americans to move because selling a home is so difficult. That is especially true for the 10.7 million Americans—or 22% of homeowners with a mortgage—who owed more than their homes were worth as of the end of September, according to figures from real-estate firm CoreLogic.

According to work by Prof. Joseph Gyourko of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, homeowners who are underwater — meaning they owe more on their mortgage than their home is currently worth — are 30 percent less likely to move than non-underwater borrowers. So the housing crisis is locking people in place, even if moving could help them find a job and increased mobility could alleviate the unemployment crisis.

Borrowers being stuck underwater is bad enough, but adding to the bad news is the fact that, after slowing down their foreclosure processes to deal with the fallout from the foreclosure fraud scandal, banks have picked it back up, with foreclosure jumping 21 percent last quarter. And there’s little reason to believe things are going to get much better in 2012, as scheduled foreclosure hit a nine-month high in November, meaning a slew of foreclosure is right around the corner. Continued foreclosures will drag home prices down even further, sinking those already underwater down even deeper, in a vicious cycle that will weigh down the wider economy.

This blog originally appeared in ThinkProgress on December 28, 2011. 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.

The headline news on Friday that the unemployment rate in November dropped 0.4 percent to 8.6 percent may help President Obama avoid losing his job next year. But the reality behind the figures will not—and that reality includes a big dose of stress, anger, despair and insecurity even beyond the ranks of the unemployed, according to two new reports.

The number of jobs in the country grew by 120,000 in November, slightly below the rate of the past year (though it could be revised upwards as the Labor Department just did for the previous two months). That’s barely enough to cover the growth of the labor force, and it reflects the loss of 20,000 public sector jobs–a continuing erosion of anemic private sector growth as a result of budget-cutting.

The bad news behind the lower unemployment rate is simply that the labor forcce last month shrank by 315,000 workers, who presumably have given up searching for a job. Although the Great Recession has been particularly rough for men, women–unmarried and disproportionately African-American–more than accounted for November’s labor force decline.

Other trends reinforce the bad news:

* long-term unemployment as a share of joblessness rose, approaching record levels, and the average duration of unemployment reached a record 40.5 weeks;
* underemployment remains fairly steady and high;
* wages are declining for those who have jobs;
* although health care continues to add jobs, most of the new jobs are low-wage, insecure openings in retail and services.

Since the 1980s each recovery from a recession has been slower and more “jobless” than its predecessor. This much deeper recession is no exception; at the current growth rate, economist Dean Baker projects it will take 16 years to return to the less-than-fabulous pre-recession state of the job market.

But the hardships of the recession extend beyond the ranks of the jobless.

Wider Opportunities for Women, just released a report, Living Below the Line: Economic Insecurity and America’s Families. The “line” defines an “economic security” budget level for different households that is higher than the official poverty line but far short of what most Americans might describe as a middle-class standard. (For example, the budget assumes a family of four rents an apartment for $821 a month and has no immediate prospects for buying a house.)

WOW’s study finds that 45 percent of U.S. residents live in a household that lacks economic security. Women, especially single mothers, and then particularly African-Americans and Hispanics, are  most likely to live in economic insecurity. But the study concludes that although it does not directly address the condition of the middle class, there are “fundamental financial weaknesses in the ‘middle’ and problems with the very conception of a middle. That nearly 40 percent of the nation’s adults and 45 percent of adults are their children lack basic economic security incomes suggests that the nation’s economic middle is not very broad and may not, in fact, exist.”

Losing a job is extreme economic insecurity, especially when Republicans are playing “protect the rich” games. In response to the Democratic proposal to finance programs that extend the duration of unemployment compensation through a surtax on millionaires, for example, Republicans reportedly advocate instead funding it by continuing to freeze federal workers’ pay and eliminating many of their jobs.

USAction, a national coalition of citzen groups, captures some of the suffering of the unemployed in a new report based on stories from nearly 1,200 of its laid-off members, “Hardly Working; Stories From Un- and Under-Employed Americans.”
They found three broad themes: frustration at discrimination in hiring (with discrimination on age and against the unemployed standing out, in addition to the usual discriminations; emotional and financial distress; and despair about their futures and the future of the country.

For example, 59-year old Wayne Persons of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, had a successful career as a sales manager until his company went out of business two years ago. “Between the fact that we were in a bad economy with too many people out of work with not enough jobs to go around, combined with my age, combined with the fact that I was unemployed, it became almost impossible for me to get a job interview, let alone get a job,” he said at a teleconference on release of the report, “and I was looking very hard for over two years.”

“I just don’t understand what happened to this country,” says Molly Wasserman, who lost her successful job track when she moved from New York to Ohio to care for her mother, who was ill with cancer. “I don’t recognize my place in it any more. More and more of us are marginalized, ignored or happily forgotten because we’re not working….What exactly is a person supposed to do who is not being hired? Are we just supposed to die? Are we supposed to commit suicide? Are we supposed to die, homeless in the streets?”

Steve Hanken, 61, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told In These Times his career has felt like “a steady roll downhill.” Now he has a temporary, part-time job at the local office of the state Department of Human Services where he watches a shrinking staff deal with increased demands as the recession’s toll accumulates. A college drop-out, he moved from one skilled machinst job to another as employers downsized, then switched to an unpredictable career executing archaeological digs, often supervising large crews and doing lab work.

Hanken, a former Democratic party central committee member, now feels like a man without a party—until a third party emerges. “Obama promised to do a lot and did nothing,” he laments. “The other side says they want to do nothing and they will. They’ll protect the wealthy and the rest of us can go to hell.”

“I don’t know where democracy went to in this country,” says Hanken, who wants to see banks more regulated, more bankers and CEOs in jail, and more of the nation’s wealth shared with those who need it and will spend it. “I used to think people in government were looking out for me,” he says. ”Now it seems they’re looking out for themselves and their friends. I’m baffled. I don’t know what to do. I think  it’s a matter of time before we little people are all under the bridge.”

This blog originally appeared in Working in These Times on December 2, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: David Moberg, a senior editor of In These Times, has been on the staff of the magazine since it began publishing in 1976. Before joining In These Times, he completed his work for a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked for Newsweek. He has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Nation Institute for research on the new global economy. He can be reached at davidmoberg@inthesetimes.com.

There is new evidence of the cost of right-wing austerity policies in the latest report on downsizing activity from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., which headlines the fact that there have been more layoffs in the first 11 months of 2011 than in all of 2010. A key reason, according to the report: Cuts in government spending.

“For the year, government agencies have now announced 180,881 job cuts, 30 percent more than the 138,979 job cuts announced by these employers through November 2010,” the firm said in a news release, and a significantly higher percentage than the percentage of cuts announced overall in the private sector.

“With one month remaining in 2011, job cuts for the year total 564,297, officially surpassing the 2010 year-end total of 529,973. The 11-month total is 13 percent higher than the 497,969 job cuts announced over the same period a year ago,” the firm said in its statement.

This chart shows how the cuts break down by sector, compared to 2010:

The report notes that a series of automatic budget cuts in domestic and military spending, triggered by the failure of a deficit-reduction supercommittee to come to an alternative agreement, is destined to make things worse, although perhaps not as bad as some proposals for a “grand bargain” that would have made even deeper cuts and promoted even more layoffs. In addition to the job losses from those automatic cuts, the report notes the looming threat that economic problems at the U.S. Postal Service could result in an additional 200,000 layoffs in the coming months.

The facts in the report underscore the impact of the austerity agenda that conservatives have successfully foisted onto the nation at both the state and federal levels. By pushing premature federal budget cuts during a period of economic stagnation and by blocking aid to state and local governments that would have prevented their adding to the ranks of the jobless, conservatives have not only set the stage for nearly the 181,000 public sector layoffs counted in the Challenger Gray report, but have helped worsen the private sector job market as well as the effects of the government layoffs ripple through the economy.

Don’t be surprised if the “layoffs getting worse under President Obama” line shows up in conservative talking points in the coming days. Also, don’t be surprised if they fail to mention that 34 percent of the layoffs this year are layoffs they advocated and encouraged—and are actively working to increase.

This blog originally appeared in Campaign for America’s Future on November 30, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Isaiah J. Poole has been the editor of OurFuture.org since 2007 and also directs the Campaign for America’s Future’s online communications. Previously he had worked for 25 years in mainstream media, most recently at Congressional Quarterly, where he covered congressional leadership and tracked major bills through Congress. He also served as a founding member of the Washington Association of Black Journalists and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.

Last month, President Obama announced that the United States will complete a troop withdrawal from Iraq, bringing home 39,000 troops by year’s end. America’s heroes will be returning home to a stagnant economy, a persistent housing crisis, and declining wages. It is fair to say that America is facing an unemployment epidemic that will continue into the foreseeable future if there is not a concerted effort on the part of the government to incentivize job growth in the private sector.

According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, the national unemployment rate is 9.1 percent. What’s more, service members who left the military in the last decade are unemployed at a rate of 12.1 percent, up drastically from a year ago when the rate was 10.2 percent. The number for post-9/11 veterans is even more staggering at 13.3%. The October jobs report was discouraging for recent service members who saw their situation worsen while the overall workforce saw a decline in their unemployment.

When soldiers returned from WWII they were welcomed with employment opportunities in industries that are now bleeding job loss. Those who did not seek a college education through the GI Bill could secure a good manufacturing job that would allow them to enter the middle-class.  According to the Economic Policy Institute, the picture is quite different in 2011, with 2.8 million American jobs lost in the last decade.  Roughly 70 percent of these came out of the manufacturing sector.

A USAToday article on the post 9/11 veteran unemployment crisis explains that many former soldiers worked in mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, and utilities, all of which are industries that have been deeply affected by the recession.

In order to combat this pervasive unemployment, the Obama administration has taken action to incentivize the hiring of former service members including the “Returning Heroes and Wounded Warriors Tax Credit” which will give businesses tax credits if they hire unemployed veterans. In a nod to the increasing role of social media in the labor market, the Labor Department has partnered with Facebook to provide job training and search resources to those looking for work. Other tools already exist to connect jobseekers and employers via LinkedIN, using referrals, and almost half of employers suggest they use social media sites to screen employees. What’s more, as recently as October 2010, 86% of job-seekers admitted to looking online during their job searches. Although the Facebook and Labor Department partnership is new, it is a positive step towards fully harnessing the potential of the Internet to help the unemployed find good jobs.

Efforts from the administration to spur veteran hiring are steps in the right direction, but they are not sufficient on their own. Obama acknowledged the importance of the private sector when he challenged American firms to hire or train 100,000 unemployed veterans or their spouses by the end of 2013.  Programs such as Helmets to Hardhats, established by the union construction industry to offer returning soldiers the opportunity to enter construction trade apprenticeship programs in an earn-while-you-learn environment, will hopefully make a dent in the sad trend of veteran unemployment.

A nuance often overlooked in the veteran re-employment conversation is employer resistance to veteran hiring.  A recent Raw Story article highlighted the resistance many veterans face, especially in the private sector where employers are accustomed to hiring through strict channels of discovery and rehearsed indicators of skill.  To combat this kind of prejudice, AT&T is launching two new online resources: a custom military skills translator which will enable servicemen and women to use their current Military Occupation Code or Military Occupation Specialty to find corresponding civilian career opportunities at AT&T, and the Careers4Vets program which connects interested veterans with mentors within AT&T.

Mark Siegel, a company spokesmen, said, “For decades, we have aggressively recruited military talent from both enlisted and officer ranks. The technical skills and leadership experience gained in the military transfer well to our company and culture.” America, a country that has always been on the cutting edge of innovation and technology, should be emulating AT&T’s efforts to hire veterans.

Just as the post-WWII generation enjoyed the rewards of a booming economy and increased college enrollment, America should strive to create an era that is marked by widespread job growth in the technology sector. Deloitte predicts that next generation wireless broadband build out will create 371,000-771,000 jobs and GDP growth between $73 billion and $151 billion by 2016. Now more than ever, employment opportunities must be made available to brave veterans who are returning home in increasing numbers. It is simply not fair to expect our soldiers to fight for America, only to return home to fight for a job.

About the Author: Steve Cooper is the editor of We Party Patriots, a labor and political blog with a national focus. He educates union members on the benefits of social media, offering instruction on engaging on Facebook and Twitter. When not ruining his posture and finger muscles through endless computer use, Cooper is an avid chef and musician.

The 2012 campaign trail is already littered with silver bullets and peppy slogans about boosting America out of its unemployment slump. But for the most part, the plans that politicians have trotted out–from Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 mantra to the GOP’s latest corporate welfare formulas, to Obama’s limp blend of free-trade policies and woefully inadequate stimulus–stick faithfully to the path of neoliberalism, paving the way for more outsized corporate profits.

So does anyone have a plan to steer industry toward the needs of communities? Researchers at Cornell University have located a few novel ideas, well outside the Beltway, that are blazing small trails in economic disaster zones. Their study focuses on project labor agreements that are designed to meet workers’ needs for decent wages and working conditions, while upholding principles of equity in local hiring practices.

Community workforce provisions in labor agreements have been used in various cities to help low-income and working-class people land solid jobs with opportunities for advancement, while building in corporate accountability, to prevent employers from exploiting local workers or undermining labor rights.

The Cornell report points to key policies established by pro-worker labor agreements:

• Requirements or goals for hiring of local residents
• Hiring and workforce development of economically disadvantaged and so called at-risk individuals, who are local residents
• Hiring and workforce development of women and members of minority groups, including African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and others
• Hiring of veterans or Helmets-to-Hardhats Programs
• Apprentice Utilization requirements, and requirements or goals for percent of employed apprentices that should be local residents
• Utilization of women/minority-owned and local small businesses
• Utilization of union-supported Pre-Apprenticeship Programs, as well as of community-based pre-apprenticeship programs
  Involvement of community-based Organizations in the recruitment and monitoring efforts
• Development of an implementation and monitoring process or plan

To be sure, many project labor agreements fail to include all or even most of these principles. But the report’s basic thrust is that such elements can be successfully incorporated into broader jobs programs that leverage public resources for local development.

Take a look at a labor accord between the Cleveland University Hospital and the local construction trades union. The plan outlined goals for hiring graduates of a local vocational school’s pre-apprenticeship program, and emphasized creating ‘contracting opportunities for minority, female, and local-small business enterprises in Northeast Ohio.” The plan ran into various obstacles, including a trend of workers and small business fleeing the devastated area altogether. But in the end, according to the report, “The projects created more than 5,200 construction jobs and generated more than $500 million in wages and benefits,” while meeting guidelines for diversity and local hiring. Not bad for a city where economic decline over the past few years has driven people from their homes and deepened vast income inequalities.

In New York City, the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, which represents about 100,000 local union workers, has entered into project labor agreements that promote hiring of veterans, women, public high school graduates and public housing residents, along with other “adults in need of economic opportunity.” The agreements studied, applied to public construction projects estimated to generate tens of thousands of jobs, have exceeded targets for inclusion of women, public high school graduates and new local apprentices (with most of them coming from communities of color). In one of the country’s most segregated urban landscapes (and ground zero of a new anti-corporate grassroots movement), any jobs program premised on social equity marks a modest step toward constructing a fairer economy.

A separate report by the National Employment Law Project outlines various state and local job-boosting initiatives that show how public funds can be leveraged to help raise labor standards, generate sustainable employment, and even streamline the state budget:

• In Portland, an initiative to upgrade home energy efficiency using a federal grant is paying median wages of $18.00 per hour, drawing on firms that are 100 percent Oregon-based and nearly 30 percent minority- or women-owned. A similar statewide initiative is now underway to upgrade 6,000 homes over the next three years and create or retain 1,300 jobs….
• More than 140 cities and one state—Maryland—have adopted living wage standards for businesses performing government contracts. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have set minimum wage rates above the federal level of $7.25 per hour, and 10 states increase their rates annually to keep pace with inflation.
• Currently, 23 states have work-sharing programs, which, according to the Department of Labor, saved 265,000 jobs between 2009 and 2010.

These initiatives don’t offer the structural reforms that would be necessary to truly rebalance the country’s corrosive wealth imbalance. Nonetheless they demonstrate a more innovative approach to the jobs crisis than the low-hanging fruit of tax cuts and fiscal austerity that Washington bandies about every election cycle. If state and local policies that can create good jobs aren’t percolating up to the national debate, it’s not because results don’t speak for themselves, but because Washington just doesn’t want to listen.

This blog post originally appeared in In These Times on October 15, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Michelle Chen’s work has appeared in AirAmerica, Extra!, Colorlines and Alternet, along with her self-published zine, cain. She is a regular contributor to In These Times’ workers’ rights blog, Working In These Times, and is a member of the In These Times Board of Editors. She also blogs at Colorlines.com. She can be reached at michellechen @ inthesetimes.com.

Some 25 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed or have stopped looking for work, and wages are essentially flat. Workers are struggling to get the few jobs that are available—there are 4.7 unemployed people for every one job open.

As if those odds weren’t difficult enough, jobless workers face another obstacle: Many employers are discriminating against the jobless by prohibiting them from even applying for open positions. Their “Help Wanted” signs come with a caveat—if you are unemployed, you need not apply.

American Rights at Work alerts to an action by the advocacy group USAction, which is taking a stand against this unfair policy. Click here to sign a petition and join USAction in asking the popular job search sites CareerBuilder and Monster.com to stop promoting ads for companies that discriminate against the unemployed.

Last month, The New York Times reported that its review of job vacancy postings on sites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder and Craigslist revealed:

hundreds that said employers would consider (or at least “strongly prefer”) only people currently employed or just recently laid off.

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) also released a report last month that found:

employers and staffing firms continue to expressly deny job opportunities to those workers hardest hit by the economic downturn, despite increased scrutiny and strong public opposition to the practice.

The report coincided with the introduction in the House of the Fair Employment Opportunity Act of 2011, a measure sponsored by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) to create a level playing field for unemployed job seekers by prohibiting employers and employment agencies from screening out or excluding job applicants solely because they are unemployed.

This blog originally appeared in AFL-CIO Now Blog on August 22,2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: James Parks – My first encounter with unions was at Gannett’s newspaper in Cincinnati when my colleagues in the newsroom tried to organize a unit of The Newspaper Guild. I saw firsthand how companies pull out all the stops to prevent workers from forming a union. I am a journalist by trade, and I worked for newspapers in five different states before joining the AFL-CIO staff in 1990. I also have been a seminary student, drug counselor, community organizer, event planner, adjunct college professor and county bureaucrat. My proudest career moment, though, was when I served, along with other union members and staff, as an official observer for South Africa’s first multiracial elections.

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