"The Ghost of Full Employment" (9/29 American Prospect)

The Ghost of Full Employment
by Jefferson Cowie
American Prospect, September 29, 2010

In the 1970s, Americans also faced a global recession and double-digit unemployment -- but back then politicians had the courage to think big.

Hubert Humphrey, 1974 (AP Photo)

"..After nearly two years of bad economic news, which topped off three decades of economic insecurity, perhaps it's understandable that we've grown indifferent to labor-market pains. We shrug at long-term double-digit unemployment. We greet the news of record-breaking poverty with a national yawn. We've come to believe that unconscionable levels of inequality are something natural to the social order.

The government's direct response to the jobs and poverty crisis has been simple indifference. Wedded to the idea that propping up the market will naturally lead to job growth, officials have responded with "solutions" drawn only from the narrow menu of economic fundamentalism -- tax cuts and stimulus. Now that gross domestic product is positive, the unemployment problem is mostly considered "structural" -- a skills mismatch -- and thus beyond our capacity to solve.

Yet not that long ago, in the midst of another long-term economic meltdown, politicians dared to think beyond the idea that growth alone would solve all problems. National leaders, including mainstream politicians in both parties, went so far as to propose a federally mandated and legally enforceable right to a job for every American.

That's right -- the federal guarantee of a job.

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Like New Deal, Stimulus Should Create Jobs Directly

Economic View - Like New Deal, Stimulus Should Create Jobs Directly - NYTimes.com:

By ROBERT J. SHILLER

Published: July 31, 2010

"ACROSS the United States, thousands of federally financed stimulus projects are under way, aimed at bolstering the economy and putting people to work. The results so far have not been spectacular.

"Why not? There’s nothing wrong with the idea of fiscal stimulus itself. We need more stimulus, not less — but we need to focus much more on actually putting people to work..."

"...So here’s a proposal: Why not use government policy to directly create jobs — labor-intensive service jobs in fields like education, public health and safety, urban infrastructure maintenance, youth programs, elder care, conservation, arts and letters, and scientific research?"

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Conyers' Deficit-Neutral Jobs Bill - Blog - OpenCongress

Conyers' Deficit-Neutral Jobs Bill - Blog

cross-posted from OpenCongress:

July 14, 2010 - by Donny Shaw

"...If I had to pick the top three factors in U.S. politics right now I would say the unemployment situation, concern about the deficit, and distrust of the financial industry. Remarkably, Rep. John Conyers [D, MI-14] (pictured) has introduced a bill this session that seems to fall on the popular side of all three of these issues. It would be deficit neutral, dramatically reduce unemployment, and levy a new tax on the riskiest Wall Street transactions.

The bill is called the 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act. (HR 5204) Here’s how it would work.

First, the bill sets a series of binding unemployment-rate targets that over a ten-year period would bring the rate down to 4%. Here are the targets:

• 9% unemployment after 6 months of the bill being enacted
• 8% unemployment after 2 years
• 6% unemployment after 5 years
• 5% unemployment after 8 years
• 4% unemployment after 4 years

If, according to data from the Labor Department, any of the above targets are not met, money would be automatically disbursed from a new “National Full Employment Trust Fund” that would be set up under the bill to fund new job positions around the country."

That money would go primarily to city governments in areas with exceptionally high unemployment rates, but some of it would also go to state governments (30%) and indian tribes (5%). Those funds would then be disbursed to public and private projects that directly address the needs of their communites. Examples spelled out in the bill include repairing schools, revitalizing abandoned property, expanding emergency food programs, and increasing staff at programs that help disadvantaged youth.

All jobs created under the bill would have to be designed to last for 12 months or more at at least 30 hours per week. They would also have to meet some minimum pay requirements to ensure that employees funded by the bill earn rates equivalent to regular employees.

You’re probably wondering how anything like this could possibly be deficit neutral. Well, the answer is that the bill calls for a new financial transactions tax to be levied on companies that engage in high-risk trades. Stock trades, futures contracts and credit default swaps would all be included. More exotic transactions would likely be taxed several times over under the bill, and the impact on short-term, risky speculation would be more significant than that on long-term investing and hedging. The idea behind this financial transaction tax is twofold — it raises money to fund the jobs trust fund and it discourages financial companies from getting involved in too much short-term speculation.

This bill has not moved an inch in the legislative process. It was introduced on May 4, 2010 and has been stuck in committee since. But that’s really no surprise. Congress right now can hardly pass a 6-month extension of unemployment insurance, let alone a massive new jobs program. And they can’t pass a financial reform bill that contains a relatively modest $19-blilion-over-ten-years tax on big banks and hedge funds, let alone a sweeping financial transactions tax that could cost the industry as much as $100 billion per year. But support for the bank tax is steadily growing — see the work of Dean Baker and Bankster USA — and the unemployment situation is set to take a turn for the worst, so a legislative package like this may look different to us in the coming months and years.

Read HR 5204

Posted by Chuck Bell at 12:10 AM    

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Economic Crash, Economic Democracy, and the Economics of Empire

Economic Crash, Economic Democracy, and the Economics of Empire

Lecture by Rev. Gary Dorrien, introduced by the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, Senior Pastor Emeritus, Riverside Church of New York, Pres., Healing of the Nations Foundation, Interchurch Center, New York, NY11/13/09, posted at www.jobsforall.blip.tv

Gary Dorrien is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary, New York, NY, and Professor of Religion, Columbia University.

The National Conference to Create Living Wage Jobs, Meet Human Needs and Sustain the Environment was attended by over 125 people and took place over two days at the Interchurch Center and District Council 37 in New York, NY on November 13-14, 2009.

To learn more, endorse the Conference Call to Action and become active in the campaign for living wage jobs, visit www.JobsConference.org

Camera & Editing: Tim Bruce
Logistics and Distribution: Logan Martinez
Originally aired on DATV, Dayton, OH - www.DATV.org

Posted by Chuck Bell at 9:44 AM    

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Mass Movement Needed to Raise Wages, Create Good Jobs for All

Jobs Crisis
By GREGORY N. HEIRES
Public Employee Press, January 2010
District Council 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

With the unemployment rate at 10 percent, workers are growing increasingly anxious over the disappearance of secure jobs with decent wages and benefits.

“Good jobs are the central economic issue of our times,” said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. “The high rate of unemployment is a wake-up call about the need to make the economy work better for ordinary people, not just the bankers and Wall Street elite.”

With a rebound of stock prices and modest economic growth, many mainstream economists are saying the Great Recession may be ending. But no recession is over until working people who want a job are back at work.

The jobs crisis facing our country is undeniable:

· one in five Americans is unemployed or underemployed, or has given up hope and stopped looking for work;
· only one job is available for every six Americans seeking work;
· unemployment now lasts for an average of six months, the longest since the 1930s, and
· when workers find a new job, it usually pays less than their old one.

Trade unionists, academics and religious and community activists gathered at the Interchurch Center on Riverside Drive Nov. 13 and at DC 37 Nov. 14 for a national conference on jobs. The National Jobs for All Coalition, a full-employment advocacy group, organized the conference with the support of DC 37 and other unions and organizations.

“...Change will not come about without a mass movement,” said Coalition Chair Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg, who heads the Ph.D. program in Social Work at Adelphi University.

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To sign on to the Jobs Conference revised Call to Action -- visit National Conference to Create Living Wage Jobs

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Jobs Crisis Charts

Source: Heires, Greg. Jobs Crisis, January 2010 Public Employee Press, DC 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO.

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11/13-14 Jobs Conference Presentations

Much thanks and gratitude to all who attended, endorsed and supported the November 13-14 National Conference to Create Living Wage Jobs, Meet Human Needs and Sustain the Environment. We hope to post more materials from the conference program very soon, along with photos and video.

In the meantime, here are copies of speeches and presentations from some of the conference speakers that we've collected so far.

Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg, Our Practical Dream (Opening remarks)

Robert Pollin, The Economic Logic and Moral Imperative of Full Employment

Bill Barclay, A Permanent Jobs Program for the U.S.: Economic Restructuring to Meet Human Needs

Chloe Tribich, Green Jobs New York

Bill Quigley, Human Rights and Living Wage Jobs

Mel Rothenberg, Presentation on Political Strategy

Philip Harvey, Learning from the New Deal (Powerpoint)

Philip Harvey, Learning from the New Deal (Draft Paper)

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Unemployment = $1 Trillion in Lost Output

Wake up America!! Underinvesting in jobs is costing us a fortune.

To see just how much, check out this great Uncommon Sense piece by Helen Ginsburg, first published in 1994 by the National Jobs for All Coalition.

The piece quotes the great Nobel-Prize winning economist Robert Eisner, who was a steadfast proponent of smart fiscal stimulus and full employment.

UNEMPLOYMENT MEANS LOST OUTPUT AND HUMAN DEFICITS

By Helen Ginsburg, Professor of Economics, Brooklyn College of the City of New York and Executive Committee, National Jobs for All Coalition

Unemployment adds to the federal deficit,* and to the already oversized human deficit. And, although it is hardly ever mentioned, unemployment alsomeans a tremendous loss of potential output.

In plain language, jobless workers and unused capacity do not turn out goods and services that couldbe used to raise living standards.

Houses that are not built, urban transit systems that are not produced, and child-, health-, and eldercare workers who are fired or not hired cannot meet the housing, mass-transit,andhuman-service needs of our people.

LOSS OF OUTPUT. The magnitude of this loss is not trivial.

For example, suppose unemployment in 1994 had been 4 percent--the interim 5-year goal of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of1978--instead of the 6.1 percent experienced in that year. In that case, the nation would have produced roughly $280 billion in additional goods and services--more than $1,000 for every man, woman and child.

Current estimate (2009): "We’ve taken a huge step back here," said James Glassman, senior economist at JPMorgan & Co. He said elevated levels of unemployment and underemployment are costing the economy about $1 trillion in gross domestic product a year.

"We’ve lost several decades of progress that was going on in terms of the people number of people coming into the workforce," said Glassman.

As noted economist Robert Eisner, former President of the American Economic Association, commented on the staggering loss caused by unemployment: the nation is "literally throwing away potential output."

OUR REAL DEFICITS. Eisner also brings a much-needed correction of the deficit hysteria that has dominated the political agenda by pointing outdeficits that are more serious than the budgetary one.

Over the long haul, he says, "our deficits are in our rundown infrastructure of roads, bridges, airports, waste disposal facilities" and inadequate environmental protection.

They are also in our neglect of "a significant part of a generation growing up semi-literate in an unending cycle of poverty, in an educational system moreand more clearly behind that of the World's other developed nations, in our ...gaps in child care and health care and in inadequate housing for tens ofmillions of Americans. These are our real deficits. They are large. They pose awesome dangers to the future of our economy and our nation." ["Deficits:Which, How Much and So What?" American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, May, 1992]

*See Uncommon Sense #1: "Increasing Unemployment Increases the Deficit; Reducing Unemployment Reduces the Deficit (1994)."

Cross-posted from National Jobs for All Coalition, http://www.njfac.org/

Save the date!! Join us for the NATIONAL CONFERENCE TO CREATE LIVING-WAGE JOBS FOR ALL, MEET HUMAN NEEDS & SUSTAIN THE ENVIRONMENT, New York City, Friday & Saturday, November 13-14, 2009.

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Save the Date: Nov 13-14 National Conference for Full Employment

SAVE THE DATE !!

NATIONAL CONFERENCE TO CREATE LIVING-WAGE JOBS FOR ALL, MEET HUMAN NEEDS & SUSTAIN THE ENVIRONMENT

Friday & Saturday, November 13-14, 2009
New York, NY

Our country is in the throes of an economic crisis—the most severe since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unemployment is at the disaster level. And even before the onset of our current, deep recession, chronic unemployment, low and stagnant wages, myriad unmet needs and unprecedented environmental degradation were endemic.

Current Job Crisis

Nearly 30 million workers fully or partially jobless (June 2009). This is the most rapid job less of any downturn since the Great Depression. There are 5 million fewer jobs in the U.S. economy since the onset of the recession. High unemployment is expected to persist, even if the economy “recovers.” Many of the long-term unemployed will lose benefits, their savings, their homes and more.

Weak Stimulus

By the Administration’s own estimate, the economic stimulus will make up for a fraction of the millions of jobs lost since the recession began. Nor will the Stimulus stem the continuing job hemorrhage.

“Good Old Days”

Even in “good” times: 5 million or more women and men were officially jobless; hidden unemployment afflicted many millions more; and poverty wages were rampant. Inequality reigned, our infrastructure was crumbling, and human services fell far short of needs. We must not go back to those “Good Old Days.”

Instead, we should be guided by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933): We cannot be content, no matter how high the general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people … is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

Real Reform

Now is the time to organize and mobilize to create a just economy--one that assures living wage jobs for all, sustains the environment, and repairs our social and physical infrastructure.

JOIN A COALITION of LABOR, RELIGIOUS, ANTI-POVERTY, COMMUNITY ACTION ORGANIZATIONS … & CONCERNED PEOPLE

ATTEND & SUPPORT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE IN NEW YORK

HELP TO ORGANIZE SIMILAR CONFERENCES ALL OVER THE UNITED STATES & PLAN A MASS DEMONSTRATION FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE IN WASHINGTON

For more information, to make reservations, and to participate in planning the conference and subsequent action:

Visit the website of the National Jobs for All Coalition, http://www.njfac.org/

Telephone, 212-972-9877 to register for the November Conference or
E-mail njfac@njfac.org

Cross-posted to http://www.drivefordecentwork.org/

Read Shared Prosperity and the Drive for Decent Work

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Expanding the Boundaries of Public Debate

Last week, the National Jobs for All Coalition, the National Council of Churches and other groups held an organizing meeting to plan to a national conference on job creation and full employment in the fall. We expect the conference will take place in New York on Nov. 19 and 20, and we hope it can become a model for meetings in other parts of the U.S.

Here's the call we sent out for the meeting. We'd welcome your thoughts, ideas, sponsorship and financial support!

EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF PUBLIC DEBATE & ACTION:
Creating Decent Jobs, Meeting Human Needs & Sustaining the Environment

The Problem and the Goals: Temporary and Permanent

Even before the onset of our current, deep recession, we faced chronic unemployment, low and stagnant wages, myriad unmet needs and unprecedented environmental degradation.

Today’s rapidly escalating unemployment has put job creation back on the public agenda for the first time in recent history. Over 13 million people were officially unemployed in March 2009, and hidden unemployment brings total joblessness up to an appalling 28 million with 9 seekers for every available job. If it is possible to ignore the chronic unemployment that besets millions of people in normal times, it is much harder to ignore this current, mass unemployment and its staggering social and economic costs.

What should Progressives do about mass unemployment? What long-term goals should we have for the economy? A strong economic stimulus is imperative to meet the current emergency. Yet, a stimulus that achieves its promise-- to create 4 million jobs--would only reduce official unemployment by a third! Nor is it good enough to return to official unemployment of 5 million women and men and millions more working poor even in the “best” of recent times or to be satisfied with the host of unmet needs with which this recession began. In the words of FDR, “We cannot be content, no matter how high the general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people … is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.”

Crises present opportunities for progressive change. This is the time for Progressives to mobilize and to develop goals for an economy that provides living wage jobs for all, sustains the environment and repairs our social and physical infrastructure. This is the time for Progressives to devise economic and political strategies for achieving these short- and long-term goals.

The Proposal: A National Conference to Create Living-Wage Jobs, Meet Human Needs and Sustain the Environment, New York City, November 19-20, 2009.

Participation and sponsorship for this National Conference would be broad--including not only institutions with a primary focus on the quality and quantity of jobs, economic justice, social security, the safety net and poverty. Other critical participants are organizations not primarily concerned with employment whose goals for health care, education, child care, elder care, disability rights, housing, eco-restructuring, public transportation and the arts would be furthered by job creation in their areas of interest. The hope is to gain their ongoing commitment to conquering unemployment and low wages-- even after the crisis subsides. This would build on a plan of the National Jobs for All Coalition to simultaneously create living wage jobs for all and, through a renewed public sector, to repair our deeply deficient social and physical infrastructure.

We propose establishing a Steering Committee consisting of representatives of the New York City Central Labor Council, National Jobs for All Coalition, National Council of Churches and other potential leaders. The tasks of the Steering Committee are to: secure a paid, conference coordinator; choose and acquire a conference site; recruit other potential sponsors, both grassroots and mainstream; select outstanding speakers to present solutions and strategies for progressive change; develop a plan for gaining the widest possible participation and the widest possible publicity for the conference and its outcome; and initiate plans for ongoing action such as follow-up conferences in cities throughout the nation and a mass Mobilization for Living Wage Jobs and Public Investment in Washington DC.

Posted by Chuck Bell at 9:10 AM    

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Rep. John Conyers calls for full employment legislation

Last week Rep. John Conyers called for stimulus measures to restore the US economy to FULL EMPLOYMENT. Conyers joined the Keep in Made in America Tour organized by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, Mayors & Municipalities Automotive Coalition, and the United Steelworkers.

Apparently due to collapse of the newspaper industry, and/or the laziness of the corporate media, the only newspaper that appears to have covered Conyers' remarks so far was the People's Weekly World.

Keep It Made in America Tour: Stand up & fight for jobs, communities:

"To keep manufacturing in America, we must “change this rotten system” that Wall Street has created, said another Michigan Democrat, Rep. John Conyers. We need an “economic system that puts everyone to work,” Conyers said.

He proposed a new full-employment act similar to the 1978 Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act to retrain workers and create jobs to get the economy moving. “What we need now is a full employment stimulus,” the veteran lawmaker said."

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The Case for A Full Employment Policy

On his blog, Economic Reform, 2008, Ben Leet has published a wide-ranging essay that gives an overview of past government policies to address unemployment, and options for creating a full employment program. In his essay, The Case for a Full Employment Policy, Leet writes:

We are a very wealthy nation, and we can well afford to employ all unemployed and willing workers through public employment. The social benefits would be revolutionary...

On December 1, 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced to the public that the U.S. economy has been in economic recession since a year ago, December, 2007. We face a possible social breakdown similar to 1932. In October of 2008 6.5% of the workers are unemployed (10,100,000 workers), 7.1% are underemployed or discouraged from looking for work (11,700,000 workers), and still another 16.2% are working full-time for wages that pay less than the poverty rate for a family of four (17,600,000 workers). The combined total is 29.8 % of the workforce, or 39,400,000 workers. Many economists expect additional workers to fall into these categories in the coming months.(1) For every job opening listed there are six unemployed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

When there are more workers than jobs, or fewer jobs than workers, what should society do? Should society let joblessness skyrocket with all the negative social hardships, or provide jobs through public expenditures? Private business owners downsize their operations during economic downturns. The surplus labor force --- the unemployed --- demand the right to earn a living. The practical interests and property rights of affluent business owners conflict with the human rights of workers and non-owners. Owners cannot be forced to hire unneeded workers. Citizens cannot be left to starve. Public adjustments must be made. A social choice has to be managed.

Toward the end of Leet's essay, there's a good typology of different types of public service jobs that could be created through public job creation.

Government Sponsored Jobs
A national public full employment program is proposed by Professor L. Randall Wray in his book Understanding Modern Money. He calls for the federal government to be the “Employer of Last Resort” and the jobs it creates would pay workers a “Basic Public Service Wage.” The following are job positions that could be created:

1. Companions to the elderly, orphans, physically disabled and mental health patients. Each companion would attend classes or seminars in caregiving, and perhaps also attend group discussions with other ELR companions. This position would serve as a preparation for private sector jobs.

2. Public school classroom assistants who tutor in reading, writing and math. Field trip aides for classes on out-of-school excursions. After-school assistants in academic support and/or art and recreation programs.

3. Child care assistants, and Head Start and preschool assistants.

4. Safety monitors and facilitators assigned to public schools, playgrounds, transit hubs, downtown areas.

5. Neighborhood clean-up crews for abandoned properties, and highway clean-up crews.

6. Auxiliary assistants in low-income housing restoration projects such as home insulation projects.

7. Public library assistants.

8. Environmental safety monitors testing for lead paint contamination, water quality, beach contamination. Aides for restoration of ‘super fund’ clean-up sites and other environmental clean-up projects.

9. National and state park improvement teams.

10. Artists, musicians and performers in community beautification projects, and performing in schools.

11. Community and cultural historians.

12. Public assistants collecting information and monitoring compliance with government regulations.

13. Prison education assistants, and liaisons to juvenile detention facilities.

This list is drawn mostly from L. Randall Wray’s book Understanding Modern Money. Wray concludes that, “The federal government would simply provide as much funding as necessary to let every state and local government hire as many new employees as they desired, with only two constraints: these jobs could not replace current employment, and the could only pay BPSW [basic public service wages] (or at least the federal government could reimburse wages at BPSW rate). Finally a similar offer could be made to qualifying non-governmental non-profit organizations, such as AmeriCorps, VISTA, the Student Community Service Program, the National Senior Service Corps, the Peace Corps, the National Health Service Corps, school districts, and Meals on Wheels.”

As we think about all the work in the US that needs doing, let's bear in mind that the people who do it should be compensated fairly. Most advocates for full employment would agree that wage levels for jobs created in a public job creation program should at least be living wages, as suggested by Wray and others.

In our job creation plan, The Drive for Decent Work, the National Jobs for All Coalition has called for new publicly-created jobs that "pay prevailing wages for comparable work in the private sector, with collective bargaining rights, labor protections and vacation time." (p. 11) Also, Robert Kuttner has called for making every human service job in the United States a decent job with good wages and benefits.

Thanks very much to Ben Leet for his efforts to inform and activate the public on full employment issues.

Posted by Chuck Bell at 8:26 AM    

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