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EXCERPTS,
FALL 1998
Bruce
Springsteen on the Right to a Job
From
the Chair
Campaign
to Raise Minimum Wage
Welfare
Reform Hurts
Sweden's
Unemployed Organize
Bruce
Springsteen on the Right to a Job
"People deserve the
right to work, and when you rob someone of that right, you're
robbing them of an enormous part of their life. The entrepreneurial
vision has taken our country a long way, but it's done so on the
backs of lot of working people who've gotten stiffed in the end.
So at some point--and we may be reaching that point--that vision
may have run its course. When the manufacturing jobs disappear,
is the new economy going to produce enough jobs for the people
who need work out there? I don't know. And I think it's the responsibility
not just of the government, but all of us, to make sure no one
is left out."
Rolling
Stone, May 28, 1998.
From
the Chair
The Coalition's Founding
Conference in June 1994 was full of hope even though we had no
staff, no office, no money. On June 17 we celebrated our fourth
anniversary. In addition to launching Jobs for All Season we gave
thanks to three of the "angels" whose invaluable support has helped
establish the only national organization dedicated solely to pursuing
the full employment ideal: Rhoda Karpatkin, President of Consumers
Union, Ward Morehouse, President of the Council on International
and Public Affairs and Rev. Charles Rawlings, director of the
Urban Initiatives Program of the National Council of Churches.
Background
Prior to establishing
the Coalition, its founders spent seven years developing their
plan for full employment in a global, late 20th century economy.
As veterans of the disappointing struggle for full employment
two decades ago (culminating in the largely symbolic Humphrey-Hawkins
full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978) we realized that
to achieve jobs for all at decent pay we must build popular support
and a powerful social movement to change the nation's economic
priorities. The Coalition is prepared to wage the struggle for
its widespread acceptance and enactment. If we are to go beyond
symbolic achievement, this ideological and organizational push
must precede the inevitable legislative struggle.
The Coalition has
used its resources to reconceptualize full employment and tailor
it to contemporary economic and political realities. The Right's
successful mobilization to persuade the public to accept its agenda
underscores the critical importance of work done by intellectuals.
In the short, pithy pieces that comprise our Uncommon Sense series
(now 20 in number), in our newsletter, our speeches, letters to
the editor, op-ed pieces, position papers and scholarly articles,
members of the Coalition are taking on the ideological challenge.
Why Full Employment
We believe that full
employment is necessary for the amelioration of many social ills
which have become the focus of single issue advocacy organizations.
Problems such as crime, substance abuse and domestic violence,
among others, would be much easier to solver if there were jobs
for all at decent wages.
Fair Work, Not
Workfare
We were among the
first to condemn welfare "reform" and call for its repeal, we
have seized the opportunity presented by its harsh work requirements
to demonstrate the chronic shortage of jobs for welfare recipients,
as well as millions of other men and women, and to encourage welfare
advocates to become full employment advocates. The Coalition consistently
emphasizes the difference between "workfare" and fair work, and
we condemn work requirements for welfare recipients in the absence
of sufficient employment opportunities, decent wages and availability
of affordable, quality child care. The debate and protest over
implementation of welfare repeal has had the paradoxical effect
of stimulating interest in job creation at an unlikely time, a
period of declining unemployment.
Current Strategy
The Coalition currently
targets its limited resources on the ideological battleground.
Affiliates such as Ohio's Miami Valley Unemployed Committee and
the Campaign to Abolish Poverty/Full Employment Action Coalition
[San Francisco] engage in direct organizing.
The labor and minority
rights movements are natural allies and potential sources of substantial
support for full employment. A new issue of Uncommon Sense,
"Why Unions Matters, Why Full Employment Matters to Unions," by
Elaine Bernard, executive director of the Harvard University Trade
Union Program, will help us to reach more trade unionists. Advisory
Board member Manning Marable wrote "Full Employment and Affirmative
Action" (Uncommon Sense #7, October 1995) which the Coalition
is currently mailing to hundreds of persons who have been prominent
in the struggle for affirmative action.
The Full Employment
Vision
The full employment
vision encompasses the goals of the diverse organizations that
constitute the progressive movement. The Coalition's goal is a
just, decent society - one in which the highest priority is assigned
to meeting human needs. Our vision includes social and economic
equality, affordable housing, nutritious and safe food, a clean
environment, enough time for leisure and learning, the opportunity
to develop and exercise one's skills and the social connections
that come through work.
Jobless workers meet
neither the infrastructure nor human service needs of our nation.
Unemployment means the nation is throwing away potential output
and harming unemployed people and their families. Full employment
expands output and enhances individual lives. As we move into
our fifth year, the Coalition is committed to helping progressives,
as well as mainstream America, to recognize the incalculable value
of jobs for all at decent wages.
Gertrude
Schaffner Goldberg
Campaign
to Raise Minimum Wage
The benefits of economic
expansion are not fairly distributed. While the richest five percent
of families watched the value of their investments soar in recent
years, even with wages edging slightly upward recently, the average
American worker still earns considerably less per hour (adjusted
for inflation) than in the early 1970s. Low-wage workers have
been especially hard hit. A new Campaign for a Fair Minimum Wage,
spearheaded by Americans for Democratic Action, a Coalition affiliate,
could bring some relief.
A modest two-step
increase enacted in 1996 lifted the minimum wage from $4.25 an
hour to its current $5.15 an hour. A single parent of two who
works at the minimum wage full-time for the entire year earns
only $10,700--$2600 less than the government's meager poverty
standard for a three-person family. To equal its 1968 peak buying
power, the minimum hourly wage would have to be $7.33.
President Clinton
recently proposed raising the minimum wage by $1 an hour in two
steps. Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. David Bonior introduced identical
bills to do just that. S1805 and HR3510 have 21 Senate and 122
House co-sponsors so far. Sixteen prominent economists, including
Nobel Laureate Lawrence R. Klein and six Coalition Advisory Board
members, wrote to the President that "Billions in added consumer
demand helped fuel our economy....Given the nation's unemployment
rate and the strong economy, now is the time to deepen our commitment
to a decent minimum wage."
Opponents of the 1996
raise predicted that a higher minimum wage would fuel inflation
and have a negative impact on employment. Actually, after the
raise, employment increased while the unemployment and inflation
rates declined.
Kennedy's legislation
was defeated in September but the Campaign will continue. So far,
more than 60 organizations, including the Coalition, have joined
the Campaign for a Fair Minimum Wage.
Contact Jane O'Grady,
Executive Director, Campaign for a Fair Minimum Wage, 202-785-5980
Helen
Lachs Ginsburg
Welfare
Reform Hurts
When the President
proposed to "end welfare as we know it," the Coalition warned
that unless good jobs at living wages were assured, this proposal
would prove a fraud, inflicting enormous harm on mothers and small
children for whom the welfare program--Aid to Families With Dependent
Children (AFDC)--was an indispensable lifeline. Significant harm
has already been done to these families, although a booming economy
and the law's timetable have not yet revealed the full extent
of the damage.
A recent headline
reads: "Competition is Fierce for Welfare-to-Work Jobs Even in
the Booming Midwest". The story reports a study done at Northwestern
Illinois University showing two to four applicants for each low-skill
job in six Midwestern states, and a ratio of job-seekers to jobs
"much higher for entry level jobs that would support a family
of three."
New York City's official
unemployment rate was 8.9 percent in January 1998, almost double
the national rate of 4.7 percent. New York's rate was higher than
Los Angeles, Chicago, or Miami. In New York City, nearly nine
out of ten young black men (aged 16 to 19) are without gainful
employment, up from 35 percent in 1967. The city's program focuses
on cutting welfare rolls and forcing welfare mothers into the
"workfare" program, the largest such program in the nation with
42,000 participants in mid-1998, and climbing. The city refuses
to estimate how many people forced off the roles found jobs. In
this labor market it is nearly impossible to place welfare mothers,
and the city officials know it. And the official US unemployment
level conceals more than it reveals:
- Millions of
full-time workers--including one in four women--earned less
than the poverty line for a family of four.
- One in four
young black men is in prison, on parole or on probation.
- Stagnant real
earnings for the great majority of working people are below
levels reached twenty-five years ago.
- Continuing large-scale
corporate downsizing directly affects many experienced workers
and builds insecurity and anxiety among the millions more
not yet affected. Many of those who lose these jobs remain
unemployed; more find work at lower earning levels.
- Fifteen million
people in the US today either want jobs and don't have them
or are forced to work fewer hours than they want and need
to. Some are discouraged and have stopped looking. Others
would work if jobs were more plentiful. Job growth is what
the Clinton administration boasts about, but the rate of growth
remains well below what it was during the first quarter century
after World War II.
In order to illustrate
the extent of the problem, the Coalition organized a successful
campaign which persuaded Congress to fund Job Vacancy Surveys in
selected labor markets, including those with large numbers on welfare.
Once this work is done, we believe that the evidence will be irrefutable.
The number of available jobs which pay a living wage and provide
job security and decent benefits is far below the number of people
being required to seek work as a condition of continued eligibility
for income support. Public understanding of this contradiction is
essential to building a movement to amend or repeal a law that former
Administration official Peter Edelman called "Clinton's worst mistake."
In the meantime there are important steps that people can demand
of governments--state, local and federal:
- no work requirements
for income support unless job availability is assured;
- direct government
job creation, using the funds that the law provides for "welfare
to work;"
- full protection
under the labor laws for workfare participants: the right
to organize, health and safety protection, paid holidays and
vacations, unemployment compensation, workers compensation,
and minimum wage;
- access to education
for those qualified and reinstatement of workfare participants
forced out of college classrooms;
- an end to displacement
of regular employees by workfare participants;
- adequate child
care.
These are demands that
can be made on state and local governments wherever welfare 'reform'
is being carried out. In New York and many other places the objective
conditions are clear--the jobs are not there for these mothers of
small children. The Coalition will provide back-up materials and
support for your efforts to disseminate information and to organize.
Please tell us what is being done in your area in the name of 'reform'
so that we can build greater national awareness and unity to oppose
this destructive and fraudulent program.
Sumner
M. Rosen, Vice-chair
Sweden's
Unemployed Organize
I spent mid-January
in a small town in Northern Sweden. Therese Rajaniemi, a Coalition
Advisory Board member, had invited me to speak at the founding
conference of the Swedish Alliance for Jobs, a once unimaginable
organization of the unemployed.
As recently as 1990,
Sweden had a commitment to full employment, less than 2 percent
unemployment, a budget surplus and an unassailable welfare state.
But internationalization of Swedish capital and European Union
membership changed policies: draconian budget cuts, slashed benefits
and mass unemployment became the norm. (See reprint of my "Sweden:
Fall From Grace.")
In 1996, 32-year old
Therese, an unemployed mother of four, organized and led grass
roots demonstrations that got extensive media coverage. Until
then, protest was generally expressed through dissension within
unions and the Social Democratic Party--and by an exodus from
that party. Returning to power in 1994, it had continued Conservative
austerity policies.
Most conference attendees
represented small local networks of the unemployed who hope to
build a popular movement for full employment. My new Swedish friends,
eager for information about US unemployment and the Coalition,
were grateful for our publications.
Unemployment remains
a hot issue. So despite the Allianceþs small size and lack
of establishment ties, top politicians from all parties as well
as labor leaders participated in a debate, covered by media, with
Alliance leaders, who stressed their desire for real jobs, not
special programs for the unemployed.
I canþt predict
the future of the Alliance. But what could be more important in
Sweden--or in the United States--than keeping issues like unemployment
and the need for jobs for all on center stage?
Helen
Lachs Ginsburg
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