|
|
By Fran Tobin, on August 23rd, 2010  The economic news continues to demonstrate that workers are facing a jobs state of emergency. Some pundits call it the “horror show” and many economists predict a ‘double dip’ recession.
Corporate America calls it a “jobless recovery,” – and likes it. Wall Street bailout bandits are making bumper earnings, and corporations are sitting on so much reserve cash that only 20% of that money could hire 5 million Americans at $70,000/year … for 5 years! But the private sector cannot and will not put America back to work without government intervention.
For the past year, JwJ has brought together community, religious, student and labor organizations to challenge bank greed and foreclosures, fight plant closings and layoffs, oppose outsourcing and call on congress to act on the jobs emergency with the same urgency as the financial crisis. JwJ coalitions and our allies won financial reform and a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saved jobs at Hugo Boss and Hartmarx, won several extensions of emergency unemployment benefits, and federal funding for needed medical aid and keeping 140,000 teachers in the classroom.
But the crisis is far from over. With Congress immobilized
Continue reading Who Will Build the Base to Fight for Jobs with Justice?
By Fran Tobin, on August 20th, 2010 A core practice of progressive organizing is to build power by bringing together people directly affected by a problem, developing solutions and taking action together to demand change.
With jobless Americans currently numbering 15 million and (official) unemployment rates projected to be as high as 13% by 2020, Jobs with Justice coalitions are developing models for organizing the unemployed, empowering these voices and faces of the crisis to be a visible and powerful component of winning Full and Fair Employment and a New Economy.
The JwJ approach weaves together unions, community agencies and religious congregations into a project that no group could do on its own. Though on-line approaches can be very useful (e.g. see here, here, here, here and here), JwJ member groups reach out to laid-off workers for in-the-flesh, “jobless potlucks,” workshops on “surviving unemployment” or moving “From Anger to Action.” Some cities do weekly canvasses of unemployment offices or food banks and other recruitment activities, collecting surveys or “I’ll Be There” pledges. Unemployed workers councils identify obstacles to good jobs and help plan local organizing to demand new programs at the city, state and national
Continue reading Jobless, Not Voiceless: Labor and Community Unite to Organize Unemployed
By Fran Tobin, on June 1st, 2010 
Leroy Smith leads chants at a Chicago JwJ Unemployed Workers Council action outside the unemployment office on June 1. Jobless activists and JwJ member groups rallied and collected "applications" for the 1 million jobs that would be created by the Local Jobs for America Act.
Congress still doesn’t get it. During the Congressional recess this week, Jobs with Justice coalitions across the country are sending them a message: There is no such thing as a “Jobless Recovery”.
America is 28 months and 8 million fewer jobs into a major jobs crisis — caused by Wall Street recklessness and corporate greed. Unemployment levels are deeper and longer-lasting that any post-war recession, there are nearly six people looking for every job opening, yet Congress has yet to enact a serious job-creation program, like the “Local Jobs for America Act”. And pundits are telling us we should just wait a few more years til we can put America back to work.
The House of Representatives even stripped health care benefits for the jobless from its recent unemployment extension bill, passed on Friday. Efforts to restore the jobless benefits for long-term unemployed will be
Continue reading Ramping Up the Pressure for Jobs and Benefits
By Fran Tobin, on May 11th, 2010 Maybe we’ll finally see who got the trillions
Under pressure from Jobs with Justice coalitions and their partners like NPA and PICO, the US Senate adopted the Sanders amendment to the banking reform bill (S3217), 96-0, that would bring about an audit of the Federal Reserve.
This is a major step towards accountability, as Fed Head Ben Bernanke has repeatedly refused to tell even members of Congress which financial institutions received trillions of dollars in low or no cost loans from several “special” programs. Despite being broadly popular with voters (like breaking up the big banks and an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency), Wall Street’s grip on Congress made the audit an uphill battle. But Sanders agreed to compromise language that limited the audit to a one-time examination of the “special” loan programs. Similar language is already in the House version of banking reform.
The Senate is continuing to take up other amendments, to strengthen and weaken the reform bill. Even the New York Times editorialized, “They Have to Do Better” on financial reform.
Let’s keep up the pressure!
Send a message to your Senator
Sign up to join us on K Street in
Continue reading Amendment Adopted to Open the Fed’s Books
By Fran Tobin, on May 5th, 2010 As the Senate takes up its banking reform bill (the House passed its bill 5 months ago), Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the number 2 Democrat, spoke in favor of an amendment to cut down the size of “too-big-to-fail” banks. JwJ mobilized thousands of letters to Senators last week in support of this amendment, known as the “Safe Banking Act,” sponsored by Senators Sherrod Brown (OH) and Ted Kaufman (DE).
For 2 years, Jobs with Justice coalitions have been calling for a break-up of the big banks, a tax on the Wall Street speculators that drove our economy into ruin, and a major federal program to save and create millions of good jobs.
We’re generating pressure, but Senate leaders have not yet agreed to even allow a vote on the amendment to limit the size of the banks.
Three things you can do:
1) Send a letter to the Senate to break up the banks
2) May 17: Showdown on K street in DC, the political center of Wall street and corporate greed
3) June 22-26: come to the United States Social Forum in Detroit to build the movement for good jobs and a new economy that
Continue reading Yes we CAN break up the big banks!
By Fran Tobin, on May 3rd, 2010  Just a few days after Jobs with Justice joined Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s campaign for a criminal investigation of Goldman Sachs — the kind that can lead to jail time, not just ’slap-on-the-wrist’ fines — and another week of nationwide mobilizations demanding bank reform and good jobs, the Obama Justice Department has agreed to open a criminal investigation of Goldman Sachs.
This investigation is overdue, like the payment Wall Street owes America for wrecking our economy and pushing people out of homes and jobs.
Let’s keep the momentum going!
By Fran Tobin, on April 23rd, 2010 Building Momentum for Bank Reform and Jobs
For decades, the big Wall Street banks had Congress in their back pockets while they wrecked the economy and pushed millions out of jobs and homes. But momentum is building to break them up, rein them in and make them pay for their corporate crimes. In March and April, hundreds of protests across the country at banks, on Main Streets and at post offices on Tax Day are starting to make an impact.
After the SEC charged Goldman Sachs with civil fraud, Re. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and others sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder to start a criminal investigation — the kind that can result in jail time, not just the fines that these banks consider a cost of doing business.
The banks are losing their grip on Congress … let’s keep it up! Some candidates have been forced to return campaign cash from Goldman Sachs and others. The big banks were toxic to our jobs and homes. We need to continue to make them politically toxic as well.
Jobs with Justice is continuing to mobilize with our partners in the coming weeks:
April 27 in San Francisco, CA: JwJ is working
Continue reading Are the Banksters Too Big to Jail?
By Fran Tobin, on April 8th, 2010 Tax them, break them up, rein them in – www.taxwallstreet.org.
“Trust-buster” Teddy Roosevelt understood. Jobs with Justice has been calling it out. Even Robert Reich seems to get it.
This whole “too big to fail” idea is more than just a threat to our economy. So much economic power in so few hands is a fundamental threat to democratic process. “Too Big To Fail” lets these Wall Street speculators turn our national financial system into their personal casino, where they get the winnings and pass the losses to us taxpayers. “Too Big To Fail” lets them accumulate obscene amounts of money, with which they seduce Congress to further weaken consumer protections and job-killing trade and economic policy. When a Senator can say the banks “own” the Congress, we’ve reached a crisis indeed.
As Reich, Dean Baker, and others note, even if all the banks pay back their TARP money,
- They still got a massive public subsidy from those below-market interest loans and the Fed;
- They still leave us the wreckage of the economy they broke.
As Reich said, “as long as the big banks are allowed to remain big, their political leverage over Washington will remain big. And
Continue reading Big Banks are a Threat to Democracy
By Fran Tobin, on March 2nd, 2010 The fight-back is growing
Whirlpool refrigerators. Hugo Boss suits. Toyota Corollas. What do they have in common?
They’ve all been made by U.S. workers who will soon lose their jobs — if the corporate CEOs get their way. All these major corporations work hard (and spend a lot) to promote a positive corporate image. But they all plan to shut down their U.S. plants and shift production overseas — devastating our communities and taking advantage of workers abroad – even though these plants are profitable. If Corporate America gets its way, good jobs with benefits and economic security will be a distant memory.
But the fight back is growing. Jobs with Justice coalitions and our partners vow to make every plant shut-down costly and to challenge every major lay-off until we win Full and Fair Employment and a New Economy that Works for Everyone.
Last week, JwJ joined the AFL-CIO and IUE-CWA in challenging corporate greed at Whirlpool in Evansville, IN. Thousands of workers and community residents delivered 70,000 petitions to Whirlpool, protesting Whirlpool’s plan to send these jobs to Mexico — after taking millions of dollars in federal economic stimulus funds.
“We’re sending a message to Whirlpool and the rest of these companies that
Continue reading Stop Shut-Downs. Stop Lay-Offs. Stop Corporate Greed.
By Fran Tobin, on December 7th, 2009 As President Obama considers his proposals to respond to the jobless crisis and Wall Street prepares to shower executives with record bonuses, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has put a hold on Ben Bernanke’s re-nomination as Federal Reserve Chairman.
Bernanke is widely seen as one of the causes of the financial crisis. In his efforts to keep his job, Bernanke testified that he was committed to the Fed’s “dual mandate, which is growth and inflation.”
In fact, the Fed has a “dual mandate” to promote full employment and stable prices.
Bernanke and the rest of the banker crowd seem to have long ago forgotten that full employment (defined as 3% unemployment for persons age 20 and over) is supposed to be a fundamental goal of federal reserve and government policy.
Corporate bigwigs and Wall Street financiers are selling us the idea of a ‘jobless recovery,’ telling the unemployed to wait while they give themselves record bonuses. They want policy makers to accept high unemployment, low wages and economic insecurity as the new normal.
For the 1,500+ organizations that make up Jobs with Justice coalitions around the country, it’s long past time to take full employment seriously, beginning with the government creation of
Continue reading Does Bernanke Know What the Fed is Supposed to Do?
|
Sign Up for Jobs with Justice
RSS Feeds from Local JwJ Coalitions
|
