Labor & Employment Law

IAM Initiative Helps the Jobless ?Cube by Cube?

By Mike Hall

If you’re one of the nation’s 15 million officially jobless workers?or one of the more than 16 million who are underemployed or have dropped out of the job market?there are likely times you feel isolated and powerless.

A new community service program by the Machinists (IAM) can put you in touch with other men and women struggling to cope with the stress and pressure of being jobless in America. It also is designed to give jobless workers the opportunity to mobilize and make their voices heard.

Called “Ur Union of Unemployed,” or UCubed for short, the IAM initiative will function as an online community, with small groups of unemployed activists in a single ZIP Code forming “cubes” and ultimately becoming a linked network with considerable political and economic influence.

IAM President Tom Buffenbarger says UCubed’s goal is to provide:

“a measure of relief and an end to the isolation, frustration and depression that so many unemployed workers experience. Working together, they can build a network of mutual support and help each other to get through the next few years.”

The UCubed website (click here) gives unemployed workers a means to connect and share experiences. Also, with links to allow activists to pressure state and federal lawmakers to respond more effectively to the jobs crisis, jobless workers will have the opportunity to speak with a single voice on critical political issues that directly affect them.

The site includes action links on topics such as:

• Unemployment benefit extensions;
• Food stamps;
• COBRA benefits; and
• JOBS NOW!, the IAM’s effort to draw attention to the need for a national industrial policy.

Buffenbarger says the UCubed initiative “will add a real sense of urgency to efforts to get all Americans back to work.”

Everywhere we turn, we see the personal devastation this Grave Recession has caused. And we hope UCubed provides a measure of relief?an end to the sense of being all alone, a chance to build something useful and unique, and an opportunity for the unemployed to change things for the better.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 15, 2010 (boomark / email).