Let’s Tell President Obama to Declare
An Immediate Moratorium on Layoffs

While President Obama’s economic advisers point to various statistical data that the recession is coming to an end, the number of officially unemployed people has risen to 15.1 million, which, The Wall Street Journal notes, is larger than the population of each of 46 of the 50 states..

More than one-third of the 15.1 million have been without a job for more than 27 weeks. In the 27 months since the recession began in December 2007, there has never been a month when the number of jobless didn’t jump substantially above 200,000.

The Obama administration has not reacted to the massive suffering of jobless families with the same alacrity, intensity and the hundreds of billions of bailout money it showered on ailing banks and corporations. The President can claim that his $787 billion recovery package has had positive results, but it clearly doesn’t come near the funding that is needed to create even a fraction of the required jobs. Yet, the Obama economic team is resisting the public cry for a second stimulus package.

To make finding a job more difficult, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of full-time jobs has shrunk by 8.2 million or 6.9 percent in the past 12 months.. Weekly earnings fell $1.54 (a quarter of 1 percent).

The situation is even more grim for jobless workers in the years ahead, when presumably the economy will be back to “normal.” Then, U. S. employment would have to increase by an average of 573,000 jobs every month for two years to return to pre-recession rates, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

A Moratorium on Layoffs with an Expanded Jobs Program

With more than 30 million Americans looking for work, including five million who have been jobless for two years or more, the United States faces a crisis of epidemic proportions. That massive, suffering population is living, in effect, through a new Great Depression, Yet, neither the White House nor Congress has offered any dynamic proposals to deal with unemployment, beyond extending benefits to those who have been out of work the longest.

The jobs crisis is a life-and-death issue for organized labor. Whatever power it has is being drained by the prospect that millions of working people may never find jobs, in a restructured, post-recession economy. And those who are lucky enough to still be employed will continue to be fearful that they may be next in line to be laid off.

Unemployment has become a monumental problem and requires extraordinary, unprecedented solutions. The first step that must be taken is to turn off the spigot that washes away hundreds of thousands of jobs each month. Let the Obama and Congress enact this measure and “save” those jobs from extinction.

Then, job creation can proceed along the lines of the New Deal of the 1930s. Several properly-staffed employment divisions should be created, including an infrastructure component, each with a list of public works projects. Unemployed workers would be hired and trained for specific programs to improve roads, highways, bridges, dams, sewage disposal and electric grid systems.

Young workers would be hired to work on fire and flood control in selected states (like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s. Jobs would be available to build and improve schools, upgrade health-care facilities and expand mass transit. An important priority would be slum clearance in many of our major cities. There could be an art and culture division to provide work for jobless actors, musicians, painters, writers and other professionals.

The net effect of all this job-creating activity would increase the buying power of ordinary people, whose wages would be reinvested in the economy and who would become taxpayers. Besides supplying jobs to millions of unemployed, the vast network of projects would change the face of America for the better and make it a more attractive country to live in.

I witnessed the New Deal as a reporter and I marveled at the ingenuity of President Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust” in providing the millions of jobs that helped America rise out of the Great Depression. The New Deal was the finest example of what an enlightened government can accomplish for its citizens.

If there is a better plan to provide jobs for millions of working people, let’s hear it. The worst thing that the AFL-CIO and Change to Win can do is to do nothing.—Harry Kelber

LaborTalk (5) will be posted on Tuesday, October 13.