Labor & Employment Law

Workers to Senate Republicans: Stop Political Games with Jobless, State Aid

By Mike Hall

Four times this year, Republican senators have blocked bills to keep alive extended unemployment insurance benefits for long-term jobless workers?most recently last week, when they blocked a bill that also contained desperately needed aid for states facing huge budget shortfalls.

Some 1.2 million workers who have been without jobs for six months or more have lost their unemployment benefits since the program expired May 31. Tomorrow, most states will enter a new fiscal year without the emergency financial help that would prevent some 900,000 layoffs.

Today, union activists in more than a dozen cities will tell the obstructionist Republican lawmakers their actions are outrageous and shortsighted. Not only are they cutting an economic lifeline for millions of jobless workers, but as the economy struggles to return to life, more teachers, police officers, firefighters and others will lose their jobs.

AFSCME President Gerald McEntee told delegates to the union?s convention in Boston on Monday that when Senate Republicans blocked the UI and state aid bill last week:

They again decided to play politics with our lives and our jobs.

Today, the more than 5,000 delegates and other workers will rally in Boston Commons to demand Congress extend the benefits before the July 4 recess. AFL-CIO union members in 17 states with Republican senators who have blocked the legislation will demonstrate outside their district offices.  The states include Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee.

In Atlanta, some 50 demonstrators rallied outside Sen. Johnny Isakson?s downtown office. A delegation of 10 union members, including Georgia State AFL-CIO and Atlanta/North Georgia Labor Council leaders, met with Isakson staffers.

Also, a jobless worker who had just run out of benefits happened by and asked to join the demonstration.

There are reports that the House and Senate will try again before they leave for the July 4 recess to pass an extension of the long-term jobless aid, but it is not clear if help for the states will be included. We?ll keep you updated.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 30, 2010 (boomark / email).