January 2010

Goldman Sachs’ speculation and profiteering was a major cause of the recession and now their CEO is giving out $16.7 billion in bonuses. They got a bailout, what do all of us get? 

On January 21, Boston community leaders and activists marched on Goldman Sachs to demand that Executive Bonuses be used to fund the Ellison Jobs Bill.  The amount of Goldman Sachs' bonuses would cover more than half of the $30 billion jobs bill that would put unemployed people to work improving our communities.

Cross-posted from Vermont Workers' Center/JwJ.

A large crowd of over 350 people attended the joint hearings held by Vermont Senate Health & Welfare Committee and House Committee on Healthcare at the Statehouse last Tuesday.  Dozens of Vermonters testified urging lawmakers to pass the single-payer healthcare bill, S.88 and H.100 (see summary of the bills here). Senator Bernie Sanders joined hundreds of members of the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign, which is coordinated by the Vermont Workers' Center.

"We come to you tonight to demand a healthcare system that is based on principles that recognize that healthcare is a human right," spoke Margaret Dunne from Rutland, reading testimony on behalf of her wife Bela Schrug.

Two exciting scholarship opportunities have come to our attention recently.

UNION PLUS SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
Deadline:  January 30, 2010

Union members and their children are eligible for $500 - $4,000 scholarships for college graduate and undergraduate programs.  Since 1992, the Union Plus Scholarship Program has awarded more than $2.4 million to students of working families who want to begin or continue their post-secondary education.  You can learn more and download the application here.

DAVIS-PUTTER SCHOLARSHIP FUND
Deadline: April 1, 2010

So we didn’t win the Public Option.  It has been replaced with a vaguely defined government-regulated insurance exchange.

Additionally, labor leaders were not able to completely remove the tax on working people to generate money for that program.  As of now, they were able to:

• delay the tax for those of us who are state/local government employees or who have collectively bargained agreements, 
• to increase the thresholds for premiums taxed for women, seniors and those with high risk occupations—whose health insurance premiums tend to be higher, and 
• to exclude dental and vision from the calculations for the tax (starting in 2015).

Nevertheless, the inclusion of any tax on working people instead of taxing the corporate interests that got us in this situation in the first place is a qualitative loss from what we started with.

This is not the bill we fought for.

Single-payer advocates and many others might argue that we did not demand enough in the first place.  And there is definitely validity in the notion that organized labor should have done more to support the single-payer movement outside of the beltway, even if they were pushing the public option on Capitol Hill.

A new year is here.  Usually this means new resolutions, new hopes, and new goals are being set. Some things, however, are hard to shake off.  Take for example the great recession and jobs crisis.  Today the official numbers came out, and they’re a sad reminder that 2010 is going to be a bumpy ride.

From the AP:

Lack of confidence…led employers to shed a more-than-expected 85,000 jobs in December… The unemployment rate held at 10 percent. The rate would have been higher if more people had been looking for work instead of leaving the labor force because they can't find jobs.

The sharp drop in the work force - 661,000 fewer people - showed that more of the jobless are giving up on their search for work. Once people stop looking for jobs, they are no longer counted among the unemployed.

For reasons unknown to me, media outlets are writing about something relevant and covering one of the biggest issues affecting the nation – the lack of jobs.  Not only are they covering jobs, they’re writing about the impact of the crisis on young workers!