Last week, Senate Republicans killed the “Buffett Rule,” which would have made sure that the wealthiest pay their fair share in taxes. Today, shockingly, many of the richest Americans pay  lower rates than the middle and working class. The death of the Buffett Rule represents another unconscionable break for the rich — and highlights the continuing failure of Congress to help Americans in need, including the unemployed.

A recent Gallup poll found that roughly 60 percent of Americans support the Buffett Rule. Half of all Republicans support the Buffett Rule. Even two-thirds of millionaires — the people the measure would supposedly harm — support it.

Americans are clearly sick and tired of watching the rich get richer while they struggle to pay their monthly bills. By failing to enact the Buffett Rule, Congress aided and abetted those who need help the least.

Mark Twain once wrote that “there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress.” Now we know why. Little wonder that nearly 80 percent of Americans disapprove of Congress!

The GOP Senators opposed to the Buffett Rule claim that it would deprive the rich of money that they could use to create jobs. If you believe those Senators, there’s lots of valuable swamp land with a waterfront view in Florida you can buy.

For evidence, look no further than the fact that corporations and wealthy Americans are sitting on more than $2 trillion in cash! The proverbial spigot of trickle-down economics has been shut off at the source. And all we’re seeing is an occasional drip, drip, drip. This should infuriate everyone.

The approximately $47 billion in revenue the Buffett Rule would generate could have gone immediately into public programs dedicated to getting Americans back to work. We could have funded a WPA 2.0 for the next five months!

How did your senators vote on the Buffet Rule? Were they on the side of America’s middle and working class, or the leisure class? Find out by clicking here!

UCubed has partnered with Rock The Vote to give America’s jobless a chance to change the direction of this country. Click here to participate!

Recently, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) unveiled the “REAL Unemployment Calculation Act.” If passed, it could provide some much-needed clarity and sophistication to the official government unemployment rate.

That rate is generally seen as a bellwether for America’s economic health. But it’s grossly incomplete. It doesn’t provide a full picture of the job market. The REAL Act helps fix this by expanding the rate to include not just people that currently don’t have a job but want one, but also people that dropped out of the labor market after spending months or even years fruitlessly looking for employment.

The REAL Act, if enacted, will make the government unemployment rate a much more accurate reflection of the true size and scale of America’s employment crisis. People need to know that there is still much to be done in order to restore this country to its pre-recession stature.

Major media outlets tend to take the current unemployment rate prima face. Most reporters don’t realize it doesn’t include people that have dropped out of the labor market entirely. And it’s not like those people have fallen off the planet – they’ve given up hope of ever finding a job.

As a result of the scope of these incomplete official unemployment figures, people tend to have an overly optimistic picture of the jobs recovery.

Both Republicans and Democrats alike have taken to using even slight drops in the unemployment rate as a means of illustrating their success in creating jobs. Rep. Hunter has acknowledged his bill would not do Republicans any favors. The new figure would be much higher — and both parties would have to answer for that.

Leo Hindery, Chairman of the Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation, provides a summary of the real U.S. unemployment situation each month. Hindery estimates that when you include Americans that have been forced to work part-time and those who have given-up on finding employment, the real unemployment rate is nearly 17 percent.

Imagine the uproar if Americans saw a figure that high after being told for months that unemployment was inching to a more manageable rate.

Using more accurate national unemployment figures is a vital step in getting politicians and the general public to recognize the magnitude of America’s jobs crisis. That recognition would spark the debate over more expansive public policies that would actually drive down that rate and get people the jobs they so desperately need.

UCubed has partnered with Rock The Vote to give America’s jobless a chance to change the direction of this country. Click here to participate!

Dear UCubed Leaders:

After 52 months of dismaying unemployment reports, the media, most economists and political leaders of both parties want to move on. I really can’t blame them. Nothing they have said or done since December 2007 has worked.

So now the most pressing issue for 27.3 million Americans – getting back to work – is on autopilot until after the November election. The conventional wisdom is (a) nothing will be done, (b) nothing can be done, (c) nothing should be done, and (d) all of the above. And like most of what passes for conventional wisdom these days, it is absolutely wrong!

For  jobless households, this massive bipartisan FAIL is reason enough to go vote. Those 40 million voters live in unbearable pain every day. And they just cannot wait for a chance to make their votes count.

UCubed placed a photo on its Facebook page. All it said was “put the politicians on minimum wage and watch how fast things change.” Nearly 90,000 people have liked, shared or commented on that photo, according to Facebook’s own metrics in the last 24 hours. That means roughly  25 million of their friends will see that photo when they scroll through their Facebook page.

A Works Progress Administration 2.0 could put millions to work before the polls open in November. But Congress would have to act – and enact – on a fast track. And the Administration would have to hire more than 120,000 Americans each week to alleviate the real pain jobless families face. Doable? Yes. Likely to happen? Nope.

And why is that? As the comedian Milton Berle once reminded us, “You can send a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think.” Flying on autopilot is a mindless exercise, and fun while it lasts. But in a crisis, the autopilot ought to be  disengaged quickly … and decisive actions taken to avert disaster.  Unfortunately, even today’s dismaying employment report will not be enough to disengage that autopilot.

FYI, UCubed posted Milton Berle’s quote as a black and white photo on Facebook (see link below). Over 70,000 of our fans liked or commented on it and 17 million of their friends saw it.

My guess – and it is only a guess – is that the traction gained by those two quotes should be a red flag for incumbents. When the voters are laughing at you – and not with you – that is never a good sign.

In Unity — Strength,

Rick

Rick Sloan
Executive Director

On Friday, the Labor Department released its new national jobs figures. The unemployment rate is now down to 8.2 percent, the lowest in three years.

But hold off on the confetti. That number is misleading. Official unemployment only counts people that don’t have a job and are actively looking for one. If you’re a member of the long-term unemployed — meaning that after fruitlessly searching for employment for many months, you became disheartened and stopped looking — government number crunchers think you just don’t exist.

And an astounding number of Americans fall into that “stopped-looking” category. Right now, 88 million Americans have dropped out of the labor force. That figure has been growing for months and is now at an all-time high.

So a big reason the Labor Department’s unemployment rate “dropped” is that many people have left the job market entirely. Plus, the official jobless rate doesn’t account for the growing ranks of the underemployed — people that are working part time when they want full-time employment, and people who are overqualified for the job they’ve secured.

The private market just isn’t generating enough jobs to dig us out of the recession. Included in today’s report was also the startling figure that employers only added 120,000 new positions last month. That’s well below the total that was expected and the smallest uptick in months.

Today’s unemployment rate announcement masks a historic, unprecedented employment crisis in this country. And it should now be beyond doubt that the country’s job woes aren’t going to work themselves out organically. Private businesses can’t do it on their own.

Policymakers need to shake off their apathy and invest in the modern-day Works Progress Administration (WPA) I’ve suggested so many times before. We need concerted, targeted government spending that will make up for the lag in private-market job growth.

Over the span of eight years, the WPA employed 8.5 million Americans. They worked to rebuild this country’s infrastructure and set the stage for the private market flourishing that followed. A 21st century WPA would do precisely the same thing for America today.

UCubed has partnered with Rock The Vote to give America’s jobless a chance to change the direction of this country. Click here to participate!

Many states are shortchanging the unemployed by distributing unemployment benefits on debit cards loaded with extraneous fees.

Prepaid bank cards provide the jobless easy access to their benefits and can help those without a bank account avoid check cashing fees and the risk of carrying cash. However, Big Banks are stinging too many unemployed Americans with unnecessary and hidden costs.

Of the 40 states that have switched from paper checks to prepaid debit cards, 22 states charge ATM fees, 24 charge balance inquiry fees, and 28 charge inactivity fees. Cards in Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, Ohio, and Oregon come with overdraft fees ranging from $10 to $20. Tennessee has the most fees with $1 for initial ATM withdrawals, 40 cents for balance inquiries, and 25 cents for each swipe. Other banks have even been known to place monetary holds on benefits that last for up to a week.

The fees are being charged by some of the very same banks responsible for the economic crisis.

Big Banks should not be allowed to turn unemployment benefits into a profit center. The unemployed should have access to every penny they get.

States must eliminate the debit fees, provide the jobless better access to their account information, and give the unemployed the option of a paper check or having the funds directly deposited into their own bank account.

Click here to tell your state lawmakers to stop unemployment insurance debit card fees today!

The United States has come a long way in preventing discriminatory hiring practices based on gender and race. Yet, with the Great Recession keeping millions out of work, a new kind of employer discrimination has emerged — bias against the unemployed.

Hunting down a job is never easy. For some, it takes up as much time as full-time employment. And American jobseekers range from professionals with decades of experience to recent college graduates trying to break into the market for the first time.

There are all too many documented cases of prospective employers counting a jobless applicant’s lack of employment against them. For some unemployed job-seekers, even if they are lucky enough to land an interview, they face flat-out rejection as soon as the interviewer finds out they’re out of work.

Increasingly, employers are discriminating against the long-term unemployed when reviewing applications. Many job ads explicitly require candidates to be currently employed.

As this pernicious practice becomes more common, the stigma attached to joblessness grows, which in turn makes it even harder for the unemployed to bust through the wall of discrimination, show what they’re truly capable of, and land an offer.

Fortunately, Congress plus a handful of state legislatures are considering bills that would make it illegal to post job opening ads that require applicants to already be employed or to make hiring decisions based on a candidate’s employment status.

This is a start. But lawmakers need to make sure that the penalties for discrimination are more than just a slap on the wrist. They need to be big enough to truly affect behavior.

In Oregon, for instance, proposed legislation would fine businesses $1,000 for posting a discriminatory job advertisement. But that is not enough to deter large companies from violating the law.

Being unemployed shouldn’t be a Scarlett letter. There are millions of people who are willing and able to get back to work. They’re the unfortunate victims of extreme economic circumstances. They just need a chance to compete fairly for the jobs that do exist.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has introduced new sweeping legislation to restore the U.S. economy, revitalize the middle class, put unemployed and underemployed Americans back to work and help our nation compete globally.

The Rebuild America Act includes a litany of pro-worker measures including a provision to save and create jobs, modernize our nation’s infrastructure, create a national manufacturing strategy, pursue fair trade, give more workers the right to join a union, increase the minimum wage and make sure it rises with the cost of living, require employers offer paid sick days, improve the private retirement system, strengthen Social Security and support great teachers.

The Rebuild America Act is intended to do exactly that – rebuild America. This bill is the long-awaited answer to our nation’s economic crisis, our jobs crisis, the decline of America’s middle class and unfair trade.

Click here to tell Congress to pass the Rebuild America Act today!

AFL-CIO has two great positions open—Website Editor/Manager and Blog Editor—and are looking for extraordinary individuals to fill them.

These two positions are critical to making the totally revamped AFL-CIO website and blog as dynamic and effective as possible — and as helpful as possible to our affiliates and all working people.

People who are interested in applying should send resumes and samples by e-mail to jobpost@aflcio.org or by mail/fax to:

AFL-CIO Human Resources Department
815 Sixteenth Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20006
202-637-5256 Phone
202-508-6961 Fax

If you’re interested:

Click here to view the Website Editor job description.

Click here to view the Blog Editor job description.

As the Republican primary continues to play out, only one thing has proven as consistent as the electorate’s indifference: the rate of gaffes from the contenders. And more often than not, the verbal slip-ups of Romney and Santorum have revealed just how deeply out-of-touch they are with the nation’s unemployed.

A new blunder came last week, when Santorum said he doesn’t care about the unemployment rate. Obviously, Santorum just doesn’t get how painful that rate has been for millions of American families.

This isn’t the first time Santorum has come off as ignorant of the plight of the jobless. Last year, he made the bizarre claim that President Obama’s 2009 Jobs Recovery act had actually cost the nation 30 million jobs. Of course, Santorum offered no proof of the assertion.

It’s difficult to imagine that jobless voters could support a man who so clearly doesn’t understand what kind of policies will put people back to work. His priorities are elsewhere.

Romney has been quick to pounce on Santorum’s slips. The former Bay State governor clearly realizes he needs to take advantage of every chance he can to wash away the American electorate’s memory of his own atrocious public gaffes — chiefly the statements that he enjoys firing people and isn’t concerned about the “very poor.”

I suppose it’s easy to be insensitive to the plight of 27.5 million unemployed and underemployed Americans when you make more money in a single day than the average unemployed person makes in a year. But it’s still abhorrent.

With Santorum and Romney continuing to spout off insensitive remarks, it’s no wonder neither has been able to definitively lay claim to the Republican nomination. After all, joblessness isn’t a partisan issue. There are plenty of political conservatives in this country who are looking for a job, can’t find one, and are rightly turned off by the rhetoric of the Republican frontrunners.

As November approaches, it’s critical that America’s unemployed and underemployed band together to let every politician know that it’s time to rethink job creation. A unified voice of this country’s jobless would be impossible to ignore.

UCubed has partnered with Rock The Vote to give America’s jobless a chance to change the direction of this country. Click here to participate!