The unemployed, organized online, look to the midterms
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 8:06 am
- 8 Comments
Workers march to protest for jobs legislation. Photo: Rasdourian, Flickr
Sometime this spring, Republicans turned against unemployment. In Nevada, Sharron Angle (R), the candidate facing incumbent Sen. Harry Reid (D), told local reporters, “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job.” (Untrue.) Angle also called the unemployed “spoiled.”
Rand Paul, a candidate for a Kentucky Senate seat, made similar statements, and politicians in Washington followed suit. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said on C-SPAN that extending unemployment would discourage “individuals that are out there to actually go out and go through the interviews.”
But unlike most comments from politicians, these criticisms did not diffuse into the generic noise of political chatter. They began reverberating in what might be termed the unemployed netroots — a system of highly trafficked, influential blogs and sites connecting the jobless and updating them, often in minute detail, about ins and outs of Congress’ work on unemployment issues.
When Jordan, a former programmer living in Nevada, lost his position with a local university, he began sending out resumes, but he also found himself following the eight-month battle for an unemployment extension closely — each failed Senate vote, each new House proposal. (He requested I withhold his last name to avoid impeding his job search.) Online, he started surfing list-servs, posting on message boards and using resources from the unemployed. A few times, he has worked up the courage to call his legislators’ offices.
Jordan has searched hard for a job and is now considering moving away from his family for a few months, if it means he can send home a paycheck. “I have voted Republican my entire life,” he says. “I don’t want to vote for Harry Reid. But I don’t want to be told I’m lazy, and I’m dumb, and I’m living high on the hog, collecting [unemployment insurance] because I want to.”
There are more than 30 million people left without work at some point during the course of the recession; 14.6 million are currently unemployed. As many as 4 million people have exhausted the maximum weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits. In each case, Jordan is among these millions, and for an uncountable number of people like him, the experience with income insecurity has led to a political awakening.
Among the biggest sites in the unemployment netroots is LayoffList, managed by Michael Thornton, a native of Rochester, N.Y. Thornton stared LayoffList in 2008; five months ago, he began writing articles and posting legislators’ information. He now receives hundreds of emails and has logged more than a million hits. Thornton is finding that, rather than losing interest in politics since the end of the fight for extended benefits, the unemployed are “energized and motivated” and have started looking forward to the fall.
“Even Republicans say they aren’t voting Republican anymore,” the soft-spoken former technical writer says. “You have millions of unemployed people out there. If even half of them voted, they could swing a nationwide election.”
Paladinette — the online “zealot for the unemployed” also known as LaDona King — has taken the battle over the unemployment extension as more of a call to arms. She routinely publishes phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses of lawmakers to target, rallying her thousands of online supporters to the cause. King personally calls 25 or 30 legislators’ offices a day. Sometimes, when she posts lawmakers’ numbers or picks out a particularly egregious example of a legislator blocking a vote or putting down the unemployed, her followers flood a Senate or House office with phone calls. The same goes for LayoffList. At one point, Thornton published the name and number of a House staffer working on unemployment legislation. Soon after, the staffer called and begged him to take it down, he says.
“They’re all concerned about their re-election,” King says. “We’re making sure the Republicans get blasted for their obstructionist behavior. … We have tons of people calling, faxing, emailing.”
“We’re lobbyists in training,” she laughs. “Without all that money!”
During the eight month battle to extend unemployment insurance, with the unemployment rate peaking over 10 percent, huge online networks of the unemployed came into fruition. Now, coming into the fall and the midterms, King and other grassroots organizers for the unemployed are hooking up with formal organizing groups to add institutional oomph to the effort. They say they do not want to let the long battle for simple extensions go to waste.
Already, a number of unions and other organizations have created dedicated working groups or online organizations for the jobless. Last year, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a labor union, founded the Ur Union of Unemployed, or U-Cubed, for jobless workers. Additionally, the AFL-CIO’s Working America affiliate has launched Unemployment Lifeline, an online site to rally and organize the unemployed.
Working America is “the biggest organization for the unemployed,” according to spokesman Robert Fox. By the union’s own count, 500,000 of its 3.2 million members are currently jobless, and the group is going door-to-door, recruiting more members from the ranks of the unemployed.
“We spend most of our time demanding the reform of banks, demanding good jobs, and trying to make sure that there’s investment being made in our communities,” says Fox. But come this fall, “We’re going to be engaging our members fully, making sure they’re aware of which candidates to support.”
“We have the ability to make sure a lot of unemployed folks know where politicians stand, who is voting against making investments in jobs, who needs to hear from unemployed workers and who needs to hear from them twice,” he says.
Likewise, U-Cubed is readying unemployed workers to call out politicians and candidates stumping in their home states during the August recess, planning to visit events in Wichita, Ks., and the west coast.
The push from the unemployment netroots has already started. Upon hearing that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) might attempt to move legislation for unemployed workers who have exhausted their benefits this week, Paladinette urged her followers to start calling possible swing votes — Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe (Maine), Susan Collins (Maine), Scott Brown (Mass.) and Charles Grassley (Iowa).
And she says she is gearing up to push her followers to attend rallies starting next week. “We don’t want to be like the Tea Partiers,” she says, noting their small-government views, “Just sort of.”
8 Comments
Comment posted July 28, 2010 @ 2:18 pm
The problem is party the seeming inability of conservatives to sympathize with problems they haven’t personally experienced, partly that the unique abuse of the filibuster engaged in by Republicans has changed the Senate to a super-majoritarian body. It’s the only legislative body in the world where 41% beats 59%. Republicans have made the Senate dysfunctional and blithely ruined other people’s lives.
Comment posted July 28, 2010 @ 3:30 pm
Eric – What there are no unemployed republicans?
When it comes to job creation, the democrats in congress have done nothing worth supporting. Why would anyone with a rudementary understanding of how jobs come about in a free market economy support measures that only extend unemployment compensation? That’s not a solution, that’s kicking the can down the road and the American people recognize it.
Comment posted July 28, 2010 @ 9:53 pm
Dennis – What, there are no unemployed Democrats?
When it comes to job creation, the Republicans in Congress have done nothing worth supporting. Literally.
Comment posted July 29, 2010 @ 1:12 pm
Well, you know, Lane. When you’re in the minority, you only get to vote on what the other party proposes. You don’t a chance to even have your ideas come to Nancy Pelosi’s floor. But cheer up, that will change.
Comment posted July 29, 2010 @ 10:44 pm
Dennis, the Democrats don’t see extending unemployment insurance as “a solution,” as you put it. Rather, they recognize the devastating circumstances facing the hundreds of thousands of unemployed people who face unprecedented competition for the relatively few jobs that are available. For many, unemployment insurance is the difference between feeding families, making rent/mortgage payments and more.
Conversely, Republican office-holders have made the political calculation that opposing an extension to unemployment will only satisfy their base and that the affected unemployed mean little to them at the polls. Yes, Republicans might regain majority control of the house, but they haven’t shown a shred of leadership or vision about what they’ll do once they regain power, other than continue the tax-repeal, entitlement-repeal policies that feed the well off and neglect those beneath them. And the cycle will begin all over again, with voters recognizing that, at the very least, Democrats try.
Comment posted July 30, 2010 @ 12:00 am
Well, you know, Dennis. This article focuses on the U.S. Senate – not Congress which generally refers to the U.S. House of Representatives where Speaker Pelosi reigns. The Senate has been described as one of the very few legislative bodies in the world where thanks to the filibuster and the cloture rule, the minority – currently the Republicans – have most of the power. And how do the Republicans use this power? By being as obstructionistic as possible rather than have a hand in the legislation being crafted. So of course, “when [the do-nothing Republicans are] in the minority, [they] only get to vote on what the other party proposes” and only after the Democrats succeed in getting cloture which seems like a battle each and every time. Who wants to vote for legislators who go out of their way to do nothing for as long as possible no matter how serious the issues are?
Comment posted July 30, 2010 @ 4:42 pm
7/30/10
Dear Parents, Grandparents and Students;
Please consider my thoughts.
Last year I picked up a local paper, the “Herald News” 3/5/09, and on the front page two articles about
unemployment caught my attention. One, a story about fewer job openings for college grads, and the second described skyrocketing unemployment in New Jersey. I also know there was a healthcare summit at the Whitehouse on 3/5/09. On 3/13/09 USA TODAY ran feature articles linking health to wealth.
As a vo-tech instructor I aspire to set a good example and I hope my students will live happy, productive
and fulfilled lives.
Unfortunately, unless there is continued reform to the present employer based health insurance system,
the next generation of workers will find it very difficult to establish wealth and maintain a home and family.
The U.S. Dept. of Education repeatedly tells us because of globalization workers in the future will need to
re-train more frequently to stay abreast and their jobs will be more demanding. Also, many Americans will
need to make one or more career changes in order to maintain a decent standard of living.
The U.S. Dept. of Labor is forecasting the same. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also tells us average job
tenure today is about 5 years and job separations (quits, layoffs, etc) are near 40% each year.
If you think the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor are wrong, they’ve been making these forecast for years and look at the current state of the economy and the unemployment rate.
I urge you to research these websites yourself. You’ll also find the most job openings will be for low
paying jobs and the better jobs will require lots of training, education and a variety of skills.
The implications are clear. When health insurance coverage is only as good as your current job and job or
career changes are more frequent, medical bankruptcies will continue to rise. Even if not bankrupted, no
hard working family should see their savings, education for the kids and retirement wiped out because of a
gap in medical insurance brought on by employment changes which are forecasted to be more frequent in the future.
Current laws such as COBRA, HIPAA or ERISA have repeatedly proven inadequate to working families. We all know businesses don’t make money off of sick employees. Recently, in USA TODAY, businesses complained that extended COBRA coverage would make their health insurance cost go up. What does that tell us most companies would like to do to employees once they take sick?
Most American workers have seen their job based health insure cost go up while coverage is being decreased as employers struggle to reduce cost. Projections indicate this condition will get worse, unless YOU take action now.
Considering the instability and insecurity of the present and future job markets it is ludicrous to force
American workers to rely solely upon job based health insurance. It is even more frightening when we
consider how our private sector financial institutions failed in their responsibility to manage prudently.
The administrative overhead of our employer based health system is over 35%. Probably the most inefficient in the industrialized world. The pressure of global competition does not permit a society to be wasteful or inefficient.
American workers are still the most productive in the world, but this will not be the case if we permit
inefficiency in a major sector of our GDP.
If you are to have the opportunity to aspire, start-up a new business, or the freedom to speak up at work, we need to continue real health insurance reform.
Over the past eighteen months we’ve seen and heard Republican/teabaggers wish America ill. They demand tax cuts for the rich while fighting unemployment benefits for workers who have paid into UI for years. They accuse the unemployed of being lazy while making excuses for corporate polluters. They stall recovery by refusing to reinvest in America unless they get their way.
Please actively campaign to end the Republican strangle hold on Congress.
Thank you.
Daniel Buckley
Comment posted August 2, 2010 @ 5:38 pm
Sheesh, I guess that wealth didn’t trickle down as promised by those claiming that nothing should “interfere” with corporations maximizing their profits (for example by sending jobs overseas when the cheap labor is). To a certain extent, Americans are reaping what they sowed. Maybe a switch to socialism would help?
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