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Coalition
Bi-Annual Report
Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg, Chair
Founded in 1994 as the only national organization whose goal
is full employment, the National Jobs for All Coalition has consistently
informed the public of the size and consequences of unemployment--a
problem far more widespread and serious in its consequences than
the official undercount reported by the US government. In addition
to defining the problem, the Coalition has maintained that the
solution—jobs for all at living wages—is both highly
desirable and economically feasible. The barriers to full employment
are political, not economic.
This report points out the ways in which the Coalition raises
consciousness of the magnitude and peril of unemployment and the
benefits of full employment. It discusses NJFAC’s action
on some issues like Social Security that are related to its central
focus on the availability and quality of jobs. Finally, it discusses
the Coalition’s current Drive for Decent Work*, a simultaneous
attack on the country’s “double deficits”—the
chronic shortfall of jobs and public investment, the latter tragically
demonstrated by the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the tragic
collapse of the Minnesota bridge-- not to mention the failure,
unique among developed nations, to insure the health care of nearly
50 million people. .
Raising Consciousness of Unemployment and Full Employment
The founding of the Coalition was marked by a book, Jobs for
All: A Plan for the Revitalization of America,, an up-to-date
conception of the full employment ideal first developed during
the 1940s Among other things, the concept first referred to a
fully employed male labor force, whereas the current goal includes
women and perforce, affordable, quality child care At the same
time, the value of work in the home is recognized and adequate
provision for those who provide this vital service is part of
the Coalition’s definition of decent work. A recent project
of the Coalition was a survey of full employment advocates in
North America, Europe and Australia that provides current definitions
of full employment and estimates of its desirability and feasibility.
The results of that survey were presented at two conferences of
social scientists in Europe, published in the Journal of Economic
Issues in December 2007 and made available on the NJFAC website
(http://www.njfac.org/FEsurvey.pdf). This short piece serves as
an introduction to thinking about the meaning and prospects for
full employment on the part of women and men-- varying in discipline
and nationality-- who are its advocates.
One roadblock to action is the unemployment undercount. Official
statistics exclude more than half of the people who are jobless
or forced to work part-time when they want full-time work. Part
of the Coalition’s program is to break through this barrier.
The NJFAC website follows up the monthly announcement of unemployment
by the Labor Department with the “whole story.” (
see http://www.njfac.org/jobnews.html
).Whereas most official and newspaper reports confine their
count of the unemployed to people who work less than one hour
a week in paid employment and are actually seeking a job, the
Coalition’s count is more than double this figure because
it includes workers who are involuntarily employed part-time and
those who are want work but had not looked for it because they
didn't expect to find any, or weren't able to work for a variety
of reasons, such as lack of child care or transportation Our count
also includes an estimate of the working poor, people who work
year round, full-time for less than the four-person poverty standard.
That standard is itself another underestimation of the problem,
a much lower standard of poverty than that of nearly all the other
wealthy nations of the world. The working poor number almost as
many as the expanded unemployment count. Thus, while the number
of officially unemployed people was 8.5 million in June 2008,
the estimated total number who are unemployed, underemployed or
disadvantaged workers was four times that much or 36.5 million.
Since the Labor Department began its monthly Job Vacancy Surveys,
the Coalition also reports those figures. At this time, there
are about five times the number of job seekers as there are available
jobs. The Coalition lobbied Congress for job vacancy surveys and
indeed succeeded in getting the Department of Labor to undertake
demonstration vacancy surveys in selected locations that were
succeeded by what is now a permanent, national program
The underestimation of unemployment and the undercount of the
poor that results from a unrealistically low poverty standard
have the political effect of supporting the status quo and discouraging
political action. These government standards trivialize serious
social problems and reduce the concern and political mobilization
that would be more likely if the true size of the problems were
known. A public aroused and organized on behalf of the unemployed
and the poor would force officials to take steps to rid the nation
of conditions that lead to other social ills—family violence
and breakdown, mental and physical illness, substance abuse and
crime. Not to mention the waste of the vital goods and services
that unused labor could produce. One of the Coalition’s
Quizzes, “Can You Count the Unemployed?” is, in addition
to our unemployment report, a way of educating the public about
the unemployment undercount (http://www.njfac.org/quiz-unem.htm).
Full Employment and Other National Problems
The Coalition has never ceased to call attention to unemployment
and to propose full employment as a solution to many of the nation’s
serious social problems. Yet, when the public was more concerned
with some other problems that were related to unemployment and
underemployment, NJFAC concentrated on those problems, always
making a clear connection to joblessness. Two of these problem
were the alleged Social Security “crisis” and welfare
“reform.” Another was the disastrous government failure
in public investment both before and after Hurricane Katrina.
The Coalition stepped up to the plate to protect Social Security
because we believe that pension rights are essential to decent
work. We also hold that the best economic insurance for Social
Security is decent work for all who want it—more people
working at better wages and paying taxes and fewer forced to retire
early or collect disability insurance. At the headquarters of
the National Conference of Churches, an organization with which
NJFAC has cooperated since our inception, we convened representatives
of organizations concerned with preserving Social Security in
its present form as well as improving it, for example, by increasing
benefits to lower-wage workers. We published Uncommon Sense pieces
on the fraudulent claim of Social Security “crisis”,
on its importance to women, to minorities and to young people
and a Quiz: “Social Security: What’s in It for Young
People?” both in English and Spanish (http://www.njfac.org/socialsecurity.php
[English] and http://www.njfac.org/segurosocial.php
[Spanish]). The Spanish version is still one of the most visited
spots on our website.
The Coalition’s website continues to be a resource for
information regarding Social Security, both our own pieces and
the work of other scholars and think tanks. It has been lauded
for this service, including by the office then Minority leader
Nancy Pelosi. The opposition to Social Security, led by members
of Congress and the White House, is a hydra that regenerates after
every setback. It threatens the retirement income of many of the
elderly and younger people who have little or no other source
of income. We must continue to the struggle against this hydra.
Nor did the Coalition sit on the sidelines when welfare “reform”
required work without providing jobs or sufficient childcare.
One of our earliest issues of Uncommon Sense was entitled “Welfare
Reform: Where Are the Jobs?” It was their work with the
Coalition that inspired two members of its executive committee
to write Washington’s New Poor Law, a book tracing
the history of employment and public assistance policy from the
time of the Great Depression until the present.
The Coalition was also stirred to action by Hurricane Katrina—the
storm that demonstrated that the conservative mantra-- “Government
is the problem, not the solution”—had become a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Katrina showed that a government that neglects its people
as well as the nation’s physical and environmental resources
does become the problem. Our response to Katrina—“No
More Katrinas: Uncle Sam We Need You” was a checklist of
the federal government action needed to rebuild the stricken area
and to reduce the effects of similar natural disasters. It was
a chance to demonstrate the need for affirmative government on
which so much of the progressive agenda hinges. That piece, too,
directed to rebuilding and expanding the nation’s infrastructure
and public investment, is in both English and Spanish (http://www.njfac.org/KatrinaChk.pdf
and http://www.njfac.org/katrinaEsp.pdf
). .
The Drive for Decent Work: The Heart of the Coalition’s
Agenda
In contrast to these other important initiatives, the Coalition’s
current, major project, the Drive for Decent Work (http://www.njfac.org/sharedpros.pdf),
is directly related to NJFAC’s central goal of living wage
jobs for all. At the same time, it carries forward the concern
for both public investment and job creation that were part of
our response to Katrina, and its rationale includes our ongoing
effort to “tell the whole story of unemployment.”
Thus, in developing the rationale for this proposal, the Coalition
calls attention to the nation’s “double deficits”:
the chronic and sometimes acute shortage of jobs for all who want
to work and the neglect of public investment in our physical and
human infrastructure. The examples of this latter neglect are
rife:
• Neglect of child, elder and health care, education, housing…
• Neglect of public transit, bridges, levees, schools and
other infrastructure
• Neglect of renewable energy and energy efficient production
• Neglect of environmental sustainability.
An important feature of the Coalition’s Drive for Decent
Work is its identification of numerous proposals, including legislation
pending in Congress, that would begin the task of reconstruction
and simultaneously create millions of jobs.
The
National Jobs for All Coalition is a project of the Council on
Public and International Affairs.
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