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Right to a job
A Gallup Poll released on Feb. 23 revealed that in January 30 million workers
in the U.S. were either on forced part-time or out of work altogether. This
number, based on a poll of over 20,000 adults over the age of 18 and conducted
from Jan. 2 to Jan. 31, amounts to 20 percent of the workforce....
Posted Mar 3, 2010
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The jobless recovery has been declared official by the New York Times, the
newspaper of record for the U.S. ruling class. Its edition of Feb. 21 —
the Sunday paper that is read in every capital, finance ministry, embassy,
consulate, department of state, etc., in the capitalist world — carried
the following two-column banner headline in bold: “Despite Signs of
Recovery, Chronic Joblessness Rises — The Unemployed Face Years Without
Jobs, Exhausting Savings and Benefits.”...
Posted Feb 28, 2010
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With snow on the city sidewalks the summer still seems a long way away, but for
many New York City students the anxiety over where they will find summer
employment this year is inescapable. ...
Posted Feb 15, 2010
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On Feb. 4, hundreds of Wayne County workers protested forced weekly unpaid
furlough days that were to begin the next day. This 20-percent pay cut will
affect 700 selected workers, many making less than $30,000 per year....
Posted Feb 10, 2010
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The news that while the economy grew at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the
last quarter, there was simultaneously a net loss of 208,000 jobs, indicates
that U.S. capitalism has entered a new phase — the phase of the
“jobless recovery” with increasingly intractable and growing
long-term mass unemployment....
Posted Feb 3, 2010
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The latest job reports for December should convince workers that all the talk
about economic recovery coming from the media pundits is just hot air. The only
recovery is the bankers’ bonuses and the corporations’ profits. And
the time to fight back against layoffs, foreclosures and cutbacks is now....
Posted Jan 13, 2010
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Protesters converged on the White House on Dec. 3—the day President
Barack Obama was holding his “jobs summit”—to demand a
comprehensive jobs program, not more war....
Posted Dec 13, 2009
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Excerpts from a talk by Sharon Black at the WWP National Conference,
Nov. 14....
Posted Nov 24, 2009
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In the crisis now unfolding, a revitalized workers’ movement, in order to
be effective, will have to draw in all the sectors that have either been left
out or marginalized....
Posted Nov 13, 2009
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Over 1,000 unionized and laid-off workers came from across New England for a
massive march for jobs here on Oct. 1. With unemployment at record levels and
no end in sight, organized labor in Massachusetts stirred the local movement
for economic justice to a new height....
Posted Oct 12, 2009
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The grim numbers are in. In September, 263,000 more jobs were lost. Official
unemployment edged closer to 10 percent, going from 9.7 to 9.8. This was larger
than predicted by capitalist economists and is the result of 21 consecutive
months of economic downturn, the longest streak in 70 years....
Posted Oct 7, 2009
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The leaders of the big imperialist powers met in Pittsburgh in September to
argue over how to protect capital. They didn’t put forward one credible
proposal to solve the crisis of the hundreds of millions of unemployed and
underemployed workers around the world....
Posted Oct 1, 2009
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Protesters marched through the streets of Pittsburgh on Sept. 20
demanding a real jobs program, like the public works program the Roosevelt
administration enacted during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
It was the first demonstration related to the G-20 summit....
Posted Sep 23, 2009
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The recent mass mobilization of racists and right-wingers of all stripes in
Washington, D.C., and in cities around the country requires the attention of
the working class, white workers especially. In the face of mounting racism and
efforts to divide the workers during an economic crisis, the struggle for class
unity is more pressing than ever. While these right-wing demonstrations are numerically small, and may eventually
die down, they are politically significant because they represent a de facto
bloc between important sections of big business and the racist ultra-right,
based upon an immediate common objective: to push back the program of the Obama
administration....
Posted Sep 23, 2009
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WORKERS WORLD PARTYand newspaper endorse and are actively
helping to build the Jobs March to take place in Pittsburgh on Sept. 20, as
well as the Tent City that follows.
Why is this march, which begins in the historically African-American section of
a city that once was the steel center of the United States, so important?...
Posted Sep 16, 2009
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With the Sept. 4 announcement that unemployment in the U.S. has hit an official
high of 9.7 percent, organizing for the National March for Jobs on Sept. 20 in
Pittsburgh and the Tent City in Solidarity with the Unemployed has reached a
critical stage. Unemployed workers and their allies will be in Pittsburgh at
the same time the G-20 Group of major capitalist countries will be holding
their summit in that city....
Posted Sep 13, 2009
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Guess what? There is a slight rise in some corporate profits. The corporations
and biggest banks are doing a bit better. So the experts see a
“recovery.” No big surprise, however. If the government spent $10 or $12 trillion to buy up the workers’
unpayable debts and guaranteed their loans, the way they have done for Wall
Street, workers would still be exploited and underpaid, but things would not be
quite so bad. Instead there are 30 million workers either unemployed or underemployed, with
depression-level rates of joblessness in the African-American and Latino/a
communities, and things are getting worse for them and their families, not
better....
Posted Sep 3, 2009
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At a time when millions are laid off and unemployed throughout the country
during the worst economic crisis since the depression of the 1930s, the Boston
School Bus Union—Steelworkers Local 8751—has succeeded in round one
of a long fight to protect jobs and vital services to the communities the union
serves....
Posted Sep 2, 2009
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Hundreds of city employees and community residents gathered Aug. 19 outside
City Hall in Detroit to protest budget cuts. Newly elected interim Mayor Dave Bing
has already placed over 300 workers on indefinite layoff and is preparing the
public for the idling of another 1,000 employees....
Posted Aug 26, 2009
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Capitalist economists, experts and stock market gamblers cannot make up their
minds as to whether or not there is a “recovery.”
For workers who are losing their jobs, their homes, their health care, their
wages and are deeply in debt, there is no ambiguity. There is no recovery.
However, at the slightest hint of less-bad news—news that is not as bad
as the news from the period before—the well-paid experts are quick to
declare that a recovery is in sight....
Posted Aug 19, 2009
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What do the July unemployment statistics mean for the working class? Most
bourgeois economists expressed undue optimism. They’re optimistic mostly
because the rising stock market and jump in banking profits has brought
optimism back to the capitalists, who pay the economists’ salaries....
Posted Aug 13, 2009
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On July 9 workers and many community supporters staged a militant street rally
in Rock Island, Ill., in front of a Wells Fargo bank to protest the closing of
the Quad City Die Casting plant in Moline, Ill.
Putting their bodies on the line to challenge the bank’s business as
usual, the rally moved into the street to blockade traffic. Nearly a dozen QCDC
workers and other workers refused to leave and were arrested in defiance. When
asked by local FOX 18 News why she took such bold action and got arrested, QCDC
worker Deb Johann stated, “Because I wanna save my job!”...
Posted Aug 12, 2009
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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published a report on July 2 confirming the
growing economic disaster facing the working class. In June 14.7 million people
were unemployed and the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent. Since the start of
the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed workers has increased
by 7.2 million and the unemployment rate has risen by 4.6 percentage points....
Posted Jul 22, 2009
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Advocates for a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions and utility shutoffs
joined environmentalists and supporters of single-payer health care on July 14
when President Barack Obama visited metro Detroit. ...
Posted Jul 22, 2009
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When the U.S. scientific-military establishment,
through NASA, put a person on the moon, it was a very big deal. It generated
such excitement and optimism; somehow this technological breakthrough would
usher in a better, more enlightened period in human history
Well, that was four decades ago, when the United States military was involved
in another horrible war that brought nothing but suffering and misery to the
peoples of Southeast Asia and the U.S. In fact, the Apollo moonwalk may have
prolonged that catastrophe, because it bolstered the sagging prestige of the
U.S. at a time when rejection of imperialist war and plunder was growing around
the world....
Posted Jul 22, 2009
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More than 20 million workers find themselves stranded without
the paychecks needed to pay for daily expenses in addition to debts: medical
bills, credit card debt, mortgages and car payments. The media are right about one thing. This IS capitalism. This IS how it works.
It’s a hellish system, especially in a period of economic
crisis....
Posted Jul 8, 2009
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Bob Herbert, who is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times and also an
African American, wrote in a recent piece: “There are now five unemployed
workers for every job opening in the United States. The ranks of the poor are
growing, welfare rolls are rising” and young male workers over a broad
front “are falling into an abyss of joblessness.”...
Posted Jul 3, 2009
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A. Philip Randolph, a great union and civil rights leader, met Franklin D.
Roosevelt and told him he had the power to take action against racism.
Roosevelt told Randolph, “Make me do it.” And it is said that
Roosevelt told CIO head John L. Lewis, “Make me,” when Lewis
demanded jobs for the unemployed. If a progressive, class-consciousness movement of workers and activists does
not try to intervene to fight for real jobs, then the right wing will take
advantage of unemployment....
Posted Jun 13, 2009
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More than a million and a half workers in the United States have lost their
jobs since last December. Some 345,000 lost their jobs in May. Unemployment is
at 9.4 percent and headed up to more than 10 percent.
Well over 25 million workers are out of work or underemployed. Long-term
unemployment is at a record.
Nevertheless, Washington has given General Motors and Chrysler $17 billion as a
reward for shutting down 22 plants, tearing up union contracts and closing
3,000 dealerships. And the government has promised billions more to the auto
barons.
These cruel measures will sharply aggravate the unemployment crisis across the
country and bring further hardship to those still working.
They must be stopped....
Posted Jun 10, 2009
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When North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue announced that all state workers would
be mandated to take 10 unpaid hours off to help balance the budget, many
workers began discussing how they could collectively withhold their labor by
organizing to take the same time periods off.
Then the state legislature began discussing furloughs of up to 20 days for all
state workers. But that plan was soon taken off the table after seeing the mass
outrage it caused....
Posted May 31, 2009
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The crisis in the auto industry is spreading like wildfire. Beside the 25,000 workers laid off because of the latest wave of plant closings
at General Motors and Chrysler, many others are impacted. Notices have gone out
to 800 Chrysler and 1,100 GM dealers that their franchise agreements will not
be renewed. A total of 103,000 mechanics, salespeople and other workers could lose their
jobs....
Posted May 20, 2009
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There are so many people eager, desperate, to find work. And we’ve all
heard about the trillions of dollars given to Wall Street to pep up the
economy—which hasn’t worked. Trillions! Who ever heard of such huge
numbers before this crisis!...
Posted May 3, 2009
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Workers on the shop floor know what is in store when they hear “lean,
mean and competitive.” It was the bosses, now crying poverty, who paid
auto workers to attend compulsory classes on “lean manufacturing.”
What they call lean—which is supposed to mean less fat—in reality
means tearing out the heart of shop floor operations: the hourly worker....
Posted Apr 12, 2009
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While talk about signs of a possible economic recovery drove the stock market
up for four weeks in a row, beginning March 10, it is clear that the recovery
being talked about was a recovery of the bosses and bankers, not the
workers. Three quarters of a million workers lost their jobs during those four weeks....
Posted Apr 9, 2009
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The loss of 651,000 more jobs in February and the jump in the official
unemployment rate to 8.1 percent have produced important admissions in the
capitalist press that every worker should pay close attention to....
Posted Mar 12, 2009
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The global financial crisis is forcing emerging and underdeveloped economies
throughout Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia to take a double whammy.
Economic instability and corresponding job losses at home are compounded by a
severe decline in remittances from the migrant workers who serve as a
super-exploited segment of the working class in the industrialized capitalist
economies of the United States, Western Europe and Japan....
Posted Feb 12, 2009
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The record wave of layoffs that seemed to peak in December is continuing into
2009.
At the same time, hundreds of billions of dollars in aid are flowing from
Washington to the banks and corporations, not to the unemployed. Reviving
corporate profits has taken precedence over providing desperately needed jobs
or calling for an immediate end to foreclosures and evictions....
Posted Jan 25, 2009
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In the first week of January, as the number of workers filing new claims
reached a 26-year high and the U.S. unemployment rate climbed to 7.2 percent,
the job center computer systems in New York, North Carolina and Ohio
crashed....
Posted Jan 18, 2009
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The intensifying capitalist crisis, which is bringing greater and greater
suffering daily, is leaving the workers and the oppressed with no alternative
but to organize a fightback. The deadly waves of unemployment, foreclosures,
homelessness, hunger and repression are spreading while the ruling-class
politicians and experts debate over the terms of the so-called “stimulus
package.”...
Posted Jan 15, 2009
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Three-quarters of a million workers have already been laid off this year,
bringing the official total of unemployed to over 9 million. Trillions of
dollars in retirement funds have been wiped out in the stock market in the last
few months. Over 10,000 households a day are being foreclosed, and evictions
are rampant. Money for student loans has dried up. Credit card debt is at a
record high. Unemployment is rising along with food, utility and gas prices.
Production and sales are falling relentlessly. The forecast is for things to
get worse—a lot worse....
Posted Oct 26, 2008
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You need a job to keep a roof over your head, feed yourself and your family,
and pay the bills. Everyone needs a job or other source of income to
survive.
Having a job is a basic necessity. It's a simple human right....
Posted Apr 12, 2008
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Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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