Unemployment

November 05 – November 11, 2011

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture.
Today, it’s… all about us.

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Popular Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

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November 05 – November 11, 2011

Published throughout the Week

The OWS Movement is not the ‘Arab Spring’, but it may be ‘America’s Salvation’.

The LA Free Press brings a unique perspective to a Movement that may change your life forever…

The State of the American Worker

First published on September 6, 2010

Dumb Labor Day advice to workers: “Roll over”

By Eve Tahmincioglu (CareerDiva.net)

The headline in my local newspaper today reads: “Jobless must set sights lower.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if your local newspaper or radio station has a similar story today. This is the kind of sensational angle the media loves to focus on during all types of holidays. For example, a Christmas day massacre or a Halloween candy poisoning will get endless attention by editors, especially in this Internet age where all most media care about is how many times you guys click on a story.

But on this Labor Day, a time when we’re supposed to be celebrating the advances workers have achieved in the workplace, let’s not just roll over and accept what has become the standard employer line — you have to take less money for more work — and let’s concentrate on what needs to be done to bring back a job market with better quality jobs for the working stiff.

Today, President Obama is expected to announce a series of steps to stimulate the economy. Yes, the pundits will be tearing him apart today, saying it’s just a government bailout and the free market needs to do its thing. But if we look back in history, these types of measures the administration is touting are what brought workers back from the brink during another bad economic down turn, the Great Depression.

During that time there was a segment of society doing quite well while the regular guys and gals suffered, and during this recession many of those telling workers to accept less and do more are also doing quite well.

This from a great opinion piece in the New York Times last week called “How to End the Great Recession,” by Robert Reich, the former labor secretary under Clinton:

Where have all the economic gains gone? Mostly to the top. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty examined tax returns from 1913 to 2008. They discovered an interesting pattern. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income.

It’s no coincidence that the last time income was this concentrated was in 1928. I do not mean to suggest that such astonishing consolidations of income at the top directly cause sharp economic declines. The connection is more subtle.

Reich has some suggestions how to make things better:

THE Great Depression and its aftermath demonstrate that there is only one way back to full recovery: through more widely shared prosperity. In the 1930s, the American economy was completely restructured. New Deal measures — Social Security, a 40-hour work week with time-and-a-half overtime, unemployment insurance, the right to form unions and bargain collectively, the minimum wage — leveled the playing field.

In the decades after World War II, legislation like the G.I. Bill, a vast expansion of public higher education and civil rights and voting rights laws further reduced economic inequality. Much of this was paid for with a 70 percent to 90 percent marginal income tax on the highest incomes. And as America’s middle class shared more of the economy’s gains, it was able to buy more of the goods and services the economy could provide. The result: rapid growth and more jobs.

By contrast, little has been done since 2008 to widen the circle of prosperity. Health-care reform is an important step forward but it’s not nearly enough.

That’s where Obama’s proposals may come in.

This news alert just in from Politico.com, Read more…

Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. Read more…

Per the New York Times, August 2, 2010:
99 Weeks Later, Jobless Have Only Desperation (with update)

The New York Times, on August 2, published an article entitled 99 Weeks Later, Jobless Have Only Desperation by Michael Luo.

In brief, it was the sad tale of Alexandra Jarrin, who had spent her last dime.  Her situation, as Michael Luo wrote, was a stark and tragic comparison to when she had been last employed nearly 2 years before, and earning more than $1,000 a week.

At this point, it appeared that her next move was into her car – and all because she had just joined the ‘99ers’.

What are the 99er’s?  Formerly employed Americans, now out of work for nearly 2 years – at the end of their 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits.

The article has a small graphic that says exactly how incredibly large this group was – then it had almost 1.4 million members, and now it has 200,000 more!

The New York Times article in its entirety may be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/us/03unemployed.html?_r=1&ref=michael_luo

Rosie: By Any Other Name – The Riveting True Story of the Labor Icon

Certainly, one of the more readily recognizable icons of labor is “Rosie the Riveter,” the indefatigable World War II-era woman who rolled up her sleeves, flexed her arm muscles and said, “We Can Do It!” But, this isn’t the original Rosie.

In 1942, as World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific and the song “Rosie the Riveter” filled radio waves across the home front, manufacturing giant Westinghouse commissioned artist J. Howard Miller to make a series of posters to promote the war effort. One such poster featured the image of a woman with her hair wrapped up in a red polka-dot scarf, rolling up her sleeve and flexing her bicep. At the top of the poster, the words ‘We Can Do It!’ are printed in a blue caption bubble. To many people, this image is “the” Rosie the Riveter. But it was never the intention to make this image “Rosie,” nor did many Americans think of her as “Rosie.” The connection of Miller’s image and “Rosie” is a recent phenomenon.

The “Rosie” image popular during the war was created by illustrator Norman Rockwell (who had most certainly heard the “Rosie the Riveter” song) for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943 — the Memorial Day issue. The image depicts a muscular woman wearing overalls, goggles and pins of honor on her lapel. She sports a leather wrist band and rolled-up sleeves. She sits with a riveting tool in her lap, eating a sandwich, and “Rosie” is inscribed on her lunch pail. And, she’s stepping on a copy of Adolph Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf.”

The magazine cover exemplified the American can-do spirit and illustrated the notion of women working in previously male-dominated manufacturing jobs, an ever-growing reality, to help the United States fight the war while the men fought over seas.

The cover was an enormous success and soon stories about real life “Rosies” began appearing in newspapers across the country. The government took advantage of the popularity of Rosie the Riveter and embarked on a recruiting campaign of the same name. The campaign brought millions of women out of the home and into the workforce. To this day, Rosie the Riveter is still considered the most successful government advertising campaign in history.

After the war, numerous requests were made for the Saturday Evening Post image of Rosie the Riveter, but Curtis Publishing, the owner of the Post, refused all requests. The publishing company was possibly concerned that the composers of the song “Rosie the Riveter” would hold them liable for copyright infringement.

Since then, the J. Howard Miller “We Can Do It!” image has replaced Norman Rockwell’s illustration as “Rosie the Riveter” in the minds of many people. Miller’s Rosie has been imprinted on coffee mugs, mouse pads, and countless other items, making her and not the original “Rosie” the most famous of all labor icons.

See more at: http://www.dol.gov/laborday/history-rosie.htm