November 2009

Families across the state of Oregon will be gathering over this holiday season to share updates, latest news, gossip and whose side are you on in the upcoming greatest civil war football game between the Oregon Ducks and the Oregon State Beavers.  (For full disclosure, Go DUCKS!)

On many people's minds, but less talked about, are our worries.  Jobs security, health care cost, and our family's future.  In January, in a special election, Oregonians will decide on two very important ballot initiatives, measures 66 and 67 which would fund vital services, preserve jobs, and safeguard working families from this recession.  Measures 66 and 67 would increase the corporate minimum tax from $10 – which has not been changed since 1931 – to $150.  Two out of three corporations pay just $10 a year in income tax.  Just $10! 

Thanksgiving is a time to gather family and friends to appreciate and enjoy the bounty of the harvest.  And it’s been a really great year -- if you happen to work on Wall Street, where CEOs are expecting record bonuses.  But the rest of us are in the trough of the worst economic crisis in a generation.  Millions more Americans are suffering hunger, joblessness and the loss of our homes. 

November brought bleak reports on the state or our economic health.  This month unemployment officially topped 10%, and while job loss has slowed, the economy continues to lose about 200,000 jobs per month.  Meanwhile, nearly 1 in 10 homeowners is delinquent on their mortgage, while home values have dropped an average of 7.1 percent. 

In a big policy shift, the Tacoma, WA City Council questioned subsidies for a Hollander-Marriott luxury project that may not benefit the community, bucking developer lobbyists and the City Manager.  For weeks, City Council-members led by Connie Ladenburg held off indemnifying Hollander and sticking taxpayers with toxic liability at the privately owned site.  The hotel is sited for the Thea Foss Waterway next to the bankrupted and nearly empty luxury Esplanade condos, also government subsidized and built on the backs of low-wage workers.

The shift occurred while Urban Grace Church organized for a recent candidate forum on Responsible Development and amidst a now three-year JwJ free speech campaign to press the City Council to embrace justice values linked to the City's luxury subsidy policy.  Now six candidates are referring to "sustainable development" in two Tacoma Weekly articles although not all seemed to include economic justice in the term.  Some candidates prefer Bush trickle-down welfare that doesn’t address poverty-wage jobs, a root cause of environmental unsustainability.  In their minds, low-wage downtown hotel workers should just commute to homes in affordable places like Sumner.

An estimated three thousand people rallied for health care reform in Austin, TX on November 14.

The Texas AFL-CIO formed a very progressive coalition for health care reform under the slogan, "Health Care Can’t Wait!" A great many organizations, including North Texas Jobs with Justice, joined in.  JwJ's role was to organize transportation to the rally at the Capitol. We were extremely fortunate to be able to partner with the Texas Progressive Center, Organizing for America, and especially with Jacqueline Ban of MoveOn. By combining our efforts we transported 39 people in a chartered bus, and helped fill the buses from the Tarrant County AFL-CIO and another bus from the Dallas AFL-CIO and UAW.  Dr. David Brockman did the research on other forms of transportation, which added to the crowd in Austin.

Our publicity efforts resulted in pre-action ink in the Ft Worth and Houston newspapers. Univision covered our bus launch from Oak Cliff. Our statewide publicity may have helped get major coverage in the state's news agencies.

The featured speaker at the rally was Congressman Lloyd Doggett of Austin. He reviewed the fight that ended November 7 when the House passed a fairly good health care bill. You can see Brent Herndon’s video of his speech here.

If you're one of the 57 million workers in the U.S. without paid sick days, chances are the answer is "yes". Thirty-nine percent of us have a difficult choice to make when we're sick: go to work and risk infecting our co-workers (and risk making our illness worse), or stay home and put our finances and our jobs in jeopardy.

Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Rosa DeLauro are leading the charge to pass the Healthy Families Act first introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy last spring. The Healthy Families Act would provide 7 paid sick days to all workers at companies with at least 15 employees, and would prevent employers from retaliating against workers who get sick. The bill has 113 sponsors in the House and 21 sponsors in the Senate, and has been endorsed by the Obama administration.