DEC-Holiday-2010:Holiday Issue
12/14/10
9:53 AM
Page 13
...Help is available while waiting for recovery to arrive
(From Page 1)
thing from food and shelter to clothing,
health care, utility assistance, child
care, job training, veterans benefits and
more. In Oregon and Southwest
Washington, it can be reached by di-
aling 2-1-1 on the phone, or visiting
online at 211info.org.
The recession is especially severe in
the construction trades, where unem-
ployment is up to 30 percent in some
cases.
“In the trades, I think we’ve seen
more people [seeking assistance] in the
last six months than in the 16 years I’ve
been here combined,” Burns said.
“There’s an anger out there. A lot of
times I talk to people and say, ‘What do
you need?’ and overwhelmingly the re-
sponse is, ‘I need a job. I need to go
back to work.’ They’re not thinking, ‘I
need to get on public assistance.’”
But for union members in need, by
far the two biggest sources of help are
public: unemployment insurance and
food stamps.
Unemployment insurance is the
number one source of support for the
out-of-work, but it doesn’t totally re-
place lost income, and it eventually
runs out. Weekly benefits are supposed
to equal 1.25 percent of the wages a
worker earned in the 12-month period
that ended three months before appli-
cation. That works out to be about two-
... U.S. political system has been hijacked by super-rich
(From Page 8)
White House, and then more conserva-
tive in the late ‘70s, even with a Demo-
crat [Carter] in the White House and
Democratic majorities in Congress.
Sometimes what matters in Wash-
ington is not the laws that get passed
but the laws that don’t get passed. So
much of what happens in Washington
is driven by organized pressure, and
business became more organized at the
same time that unions were declining.
Unions are the only organized presence
that is really focused on the economic
concerns of a broad spectrum of Amer-
icans.
People nowadays often see unions
as a narrow interest representing just
the members. But the truth is that the
middle class and working class broadly
have a huge stake in having strong
groups that focus on lunch pail issues.
DECEMBER 17, 2010
Are we more unequal now than
ever before in our history?
Well we don’t have good data for
the 19th century, but most people who
look at it think we weren’t generating
the kinds of wealth in the 19th century
that could produce this kind of inequal-
ity. You’d have to look at 19th century
Latin America, where you had a hand-
ful of property owners, to find this kind
of income distribution. But we do have
good numbers for the 20th century, and
what we find is the peak years [for eco-
nomic inequality] are 1928 and 2007.
Your book raises some uncom-
fortable questions. We like to think
of the American political system as
democratic, yet it’s not reflecting the
preference of the majority on this is-
sue. What will it take to reverse this?
A lot of people see this as a deeply
pessimistic book, but we don’t see it
that way. The pessimists are the ones
who say, “We just have to get used to
this. This is part of the global economy.
We can try to soften it around the edges
by improving education or whatever.”
Henry Paulson, when he was Secretary
of the Treasury under Bush, acknowl-
edged that inequality is a problem, but
said it’s simply an economic reality and
there’s no point in blaming either polit-
ical party.
What we’re saying is that it’s not
simply an economic reality. It’s some-
thing that was created to a very sub-
stantial extent through politics. And that
means if you can fix the politics, you
can actually move toward a system that
is much less skewed in the way it dis-
tributes rewards. Now how you fix the
political system … that is a challenge.
We make some effort in this book to re-
mind people of the importance of or-
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
ganization on economic issues. Obvi-
ously this means unions. Anything that
can be done that strengthens unions,
that’s going to be a positive step from
our perspective.
So is it fair to say it might not hap-
pen if we organize, but it won’t hap-
pen if we don’t?
Yes. We don’t see the Democrats
and Republicans as being identical on
this. We spend a lot of time talking
about the political parties and how
they’ve both been affected by the
changing organizational balance in so-
ciety but we don’t think they’ve been
affected in the same way. So it matters
who wins these elections, but it’s not
enough to have Democratic majorities
if you have powerful sources of ob-
struction and don’t have enough organ-
ized pressure pushing to confront these
issues.
thirds of a workers’ previous income.
In normal times, unemployment
benefits run out after 26 weeks (six
months.) But high unemployment lev-
els triggered the addition of 20 more
weeks. And, seeing long-term unem-
ployment on the rise, Congress created
the Emergency Unemployment Com-
pensation program, which eventually
added four extension periods (totaling
53 extra weeks) for those who exhaust
the initial 26 weeks. Altogether it
means a worker can collect unemploy-
ment benefits for up to 99 weeks — al-
most two years.
But in Oregon, 600 workers a week
are exhausting even that, and being
dropped off the rolls. That number will
rise to 10,000 a week in three to four
months if Congress fails to reauthorize
the Emergency Unemployment Com-
pensation program.
After unemployment insurance, the
biggest source of support is food
stamps, and workers shouldn’t be leery
of receiving them, says Gene Evans,
spokesperson for the Oregon Depart-
ment of Human Services. Food stamps,
now known as SNAP, are part of a so-
cial safety net that’s there to prevent
people from hitting bottom. It’s a fed-
eral entitlement — not charity. In other
words, any household earning below a
certain income (185 percent of the
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