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Unemployment - The Rhetoric of Disinformation

I have been studying the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports on January and February unemployment. Each month they issue a six page press release. After spending several hours studying these releases, the only conclusion I can draw is that the government is deliberately misleading people about US joblessness.

The first paragraph of the March 10, 2010 release states that non-farm payroll employment was "essentially unchanged" - as only 36,000 jobs were lost (following a loss of 20,000 in February. In then states that this loss of 56,000 jobs resulted in a net decline in the official unemployment rate from 10.0 to 9.7 percent. This is because people are only counted as unemployed if they actively searched for work in February. This means about 2.5 million people who haven't worked in over a year aren't counted in the official unemployment rate if they didn't look for a job last month.

The press release concedes that the total number of individuals unemployed for longer than 12 months is up 500,000 over February 2009. It also points out that the number of "involuntary" part time workers (individuals unable to find full time jobs or with recent cutbacks in their hours) increased by 500,000 in February.

What I find interesting is if you add the official number unemployed (14.9 million), to the 2.5 million permanently unemployed and the 8.8 involuntary part-timers, you come out with a total unemployment rate closer to 20 percent - or one fifth of the civilian work force.

Unfortunately the mainstream media doesn't consider these figures when they report on unemployment. Instead they point to the 0.3 percent improvement in unemployment since December 2009 (which actually reflects people who have stopped looking for work) as proof the US economy is beginning to recover. They also point to fractional (0.2%) in the GDP over the last few months. The problem with using GDP as an indicator of economic recovery is that it's mainly based on business and corporate earnings. And the main strategy businesses used to increased profitability last year (in a severe recession) was to downsize and lay-off workers (thus increasing unemployment).

The Unemployed as a Pressure Group

The implications of a true unemployment rate close to 20 percent are staggering. With one out of every five Americans unemployed, there is enormous potential for the rebirth of the unemployed workers movement active during the Great Depression. Its main role would be to fight for crucial reforms the Obama administration refuses to address. According to a number of social historians, it was mainly America's success in organizing the unemployed that pushed President Roosevelt to enact wide reaching New Deal reforms - a significant package of legislation that for the first time benefited ordinary workers rather than business interests.

Even before the advent of giant multinational corporations, merchants and businesses have always had far more influence over the federal government than ordinary citizens. In fact close examination of the US Constitution reveals our founding fathers meant our government to be set up this way. They deliberately created a government structure that would favour business. In fact with the important exception of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin, many of them admit this in their writings about the first Constitutional Convention.

No One is Born with Rights

Many Americans mistakenly believe they are born with inherent "rights" as a condition of US citizenship. Nothing could be further from the truth. People must win their rights by fighting for them. Corporations have a vested interest in opposing reforms that might potentially affect their profitability. As a result the US government has never granted popular reforms - in health care, education, work and food safety, environmental protection or voting rights for women and African Americans - simply because it was the right thing to do. Without exception, every reform benefiting working people, including the 40 hour work week (in 1900 people worked 72 hour weeks), the minimum wage and the abolition of child labor - has been won by the long hard work of grassroots organizing.

At present corporate interests (such as health insurance and drug companies worried about their profit margins) seem to carry far more weight with our new president than the American people. However a robust unemployed workers' union would force Obama to redirect his attention from the wars in the Middle East to critical issues that prevent millions of Americans from seeing real evidence of economic recovery in their everyday lives.

Existing Unemployed Workers Organizations

There are community-led efforts underway in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Maine to organize the unemployed. In February 2009 Tom Lewandowski, a laid off electrician, founded the Unemployed and Anxiously Employed Workers Initiative (UAEWI). The group was instrumental in passing state legislation to replenish Indiana's unemployment insurance fund and appropriating $16 million for job retraining programs. At present they are demanding a voice in how these funds are spent - via a seat on the Northeast Indiana Regional Workforce Board.

In 2002 former UNITE organizer Jack McKay organized laid-off workers in Maine to form Food AND Medicine (FAM) - largely in response to a mass exodus of manufacturing jobs from eastern Maine. FAM began as a health care advocacy organization for low income and unemployed workers who were forced to make a choice between buying groceries or paying for doctors' visits and prescriptions. paying for health care or paying for food. It continues to lobby for universal health care and workers rights legislation, including and the Employee Free Choice Act - a federal bill that would amend the Labor Relations Act to speed up and simplify the process of forming a union. FAM has also formed a cooperative with area farmers to provide affordable, locally grown food to its members.

The Philadelphia Unemployment Project (PUP) is even older, formed during the mid-1970s OPEC recession. Aside from working on employment related issues, PUP also represents homeowners facing foreclosure. Their efforts led the Philadelphia courts to establish a program in April 2008 requiring lenders to participate in mediation with homeowners seeking to renegotiate their mortgage payments. An initial survey shows they prevented foreclosure among 80 percent of homeowners who participated.

Where is the AFL-CIO?

The support offered by the AFL-CIO to these fledgling jobless organizations - a resource website and wiki - is token support at best. The website "Working America" was launched in April 2009 to help struggling families track down local resources, such as benefit entitlements, retraining, child care and food banks.

While an excellent resource, it is really disappointing to see the AFL-CIO take on a social work role and neglect a critical organizing opportunity. Their current efforts fall far short of the support the unemployed movement received from organized labor in the 1930s. During the Great Depression it was local union activists - the efforts of the United Auto Workers and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) are the best described - who organized the unemployed. It's obviously in the self-interest of unions to organize the jobless. With an immense pool of potential scab labor desperate enough to cross union picket lines, the ability of workers to strike for higher wages and better working conditions evaporates. Employers know this, of course, which makes significant gains (in wages or working conditions) impossible during a period of high unemployment. In fact many employers take advantage of a recession to demand substantial "claw-backs" (reduced wages and benefits, longer hours, less favorable working conditions).

Organized labor is already significantly weakened thanks to an aggressive union bashing strategy pursued under Ronald Reagan and both Bush administrations. The "claw-backs" resulting from a long period of unemployment could cause organized labor to lose any voice in the US political process.

What the AFL-CIO Could (and Should) Do

What is needed from the AFL-CIO is paid organizers working out of union locals to reach out to laid off union members and other unemployed workers - and training them how to organize and lobby collectively for jobs creation legislation, universal health care and protections against foreclosure and eviction if they fall behind in their mortgage payments.

There is already a strong tendency for Americans to blame themselves when they lose a job. Thus an essential component of the outreach process is helping them understand that their situation stems from major flaws in the current US political and economic system - as opposed to some personal failing. Unfortunately the Working America website conveys a somewhat paternal, condescending attitude in the way it dispenses advice. Instead of empowering the jobless to organize for major changes in a financial system that rewards recklessness, irresponsible speculation and greed, this type of paternalism tends to be quite disempowering - mainly because it reinforces a jobless worker's underlying sense of personal failure.

http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com

Dr Bramhall is an American child and adolescent psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand seven years ago for political reasons. She is a long time activist. In addition to working for the New Zealand National Health Services, she is active in her union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, and serves on the the National Executive of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand.