New Era of Social Justice? It's Up To Us

“We must commit to a new era of social justice.” Juan Somavia, director general of the International Labor Organization, declared in a message this month marking February 20 as the World Day of Social Justice.

“The world has choices,” Somavia concluded. “We can continue to apply policies which produced the present crisis and wait for at least 88 years to eradicate extreme poverty at the present rate. Or we can begin to conceive and realize a vision of society and of growth based on the dignity of human beings capable of delivering economic efficiency, sustainability and decent work for all in a new era of social justice.”

While acknowledging the many problems in the global and national economies, Somavia sees hope in a positive trend:

“The motifs of injustice and indignity are woven into the protests on streets, squares, blogs and tweets, and in less public expressions. The root causes may differ. But there is a widespread feeling that too many people, economies and societies have been on a rigged course leaving them on the losing end. “

On the negative side, he cited these statistics:

-- one out of three workers in the world -- some 1.1 billion – are either unemployed or living below the US$2 a day poverty line
-- 75 million youth are unemployed and nearly three times as likely as adults to be jobless
-- half of total employment is some form of vulnerable employment where women are worse affected

The World Day of Social Justice is a relative newcomer on the UN list of annual observances, having been established by the UN General Assembly in 2007.

The full text od Somavia’s message can be found at
http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/press-and-media-centre/statements-and-speeches/WCMS_173451/lang--en/index.htm Read more!

Jobless crisis: its catastrophic impact on the whole country

Persistent high unemployment in the United States is having a “catastrophic” long-term impact on the entire country. In other words, the negative impact is not limited to workers who are currently unemployed (14,000,000 men and women), but is also affecting the rest of the population, even those with jobs.

The grim facts about the nation’s job crisis are detailed in a new briefing paper, “Sustained, High Joblessness Causes Lasting Damage to Wages, Benefits, Income, and Wealth,” just released by the Economic Policy Institute.

Current discussion of unemployment and the need for job creation “vastly understate both the damage done…and the extent of the population affected,” say the authors of the paper, Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz.

They debunk the claim that the problem is just “structural” – that employers can’t find the workers with the skills needed in the current economy. “It is not that this country is lacking the right workers; it is lacking work,” they write, and supply the supporting data illustrating “a profound lack of demand for workers, not that employers can’t find the people they need.”

Among the evidence they present on the pain of the crisis:

 The share of children with an unemployed or underemployed parent has doubled in three years – from 6,400,000 in 2007 to 13,000,000 in 2010).
 The monthly jobless rate puts one month’s unemployed workers in the foreground. In the background are the unemployed the other months. For the workforce overall, almost one in three workers were unemployed or underemployed at some point in 2009.
 For more than a year, the share of the unemployed who have been without a job for over six months has hovered around 45%.
 All education categories – college-educated workers included – have seen their unemployment rates roughly double over the last four years.
 Forecasters do not expect export growth sufficient enough to substantially reduce unemployment in the next few years. The Congressional Budget Office expects the unemployment rate to be over 8% well into 2014.

In their concluding paragraphs, Mishel and Shierholz briefly supplement their factual analysis with judgments. The persistence of high unemployment, they write, “is unacceptable in a modern, developed economy, and the means to address it are no mystery: stimulate demand which will create jobs.”

They list the programs that Congress could adopt to rejuvenate the labor market. Some of them are: repair and upgrade the nation’s 100,000 public school buildings; additional spending on transportation infrastructure, and fiscal relief to the states.
But they recognize a huge obstacle: the debt ceiling agreement of August 2011, which “all but rules out deficit-financed stimulus of an appropriate magnitude.” Renegotiate or repeal it, they advise.

“All of these policies,” they write in their final paragraph, “are in our power to accomplish as the world’s largest economy. We can make the choice to pursue them and deflate the high unemployment that will otherwise scar the country and its workers for a generation.”

Will we make the right choice? I fear that we won’t, and one reason is the negative role of some powerful Catholics in Congress. A new campaign has the potential to become a movement that could bring people’s attitudes and actions more in line with Catholic principles. See my blog posting of September 1 on the St. Francis Pledge to Care for God’s Creation.

For information about this campaign, see the Website of the Catholic Climate Covenant at http://catholicclimatecovenant.org/.
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Investment in U.S Infrastructure Shrinking

Lulled by a policy of “out of sight, out of mind,” the United States has long neglected to maintain its bridges, sewers, and transportation facilities. In fact, according to a report released this week, infrastructure investments this year are falling further behind under pressures to cut government spending.

Meanwhile, “in most of the developing world and in many of the emerging markets, countries have committed to fulfilling infrastructure objectives as essential for sustaining or enhancing living standards in an increasingly competitive global marketplace,” says the report of the Urban Land Institute.

So far, neither the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse nor Hurricane Katrina served as a wake-up call, the report, “Infrastructure 2011: a Strategic Priority,” points out.

America’s 15.000,000 unemployed need jobs. The nation needs to repair its infrastructure. “Why is it so hard for lawmakers to connect the two?” the Institute asks. Read more!

Gloomy jobs picture for U.S.

They are not on the U.S. payrolls of American multinationals, but they are employed in other countries by subsidiaries and affiliates of U.S. multinationals operating in China and elsewhere abroad.

In 2008 that employment stood at 11,900,000 -- an increase of 729,000 in two years – according to the August report of the U.S. Commerce Department, which tracks such employment data.

Our de facto global labor force is likely to increase, meaning that more and more U.S. jobs will continue to go “off shore.” A preview of that trend is evident from the number of Americans who get federal assistance because off-shoring cost them their jobs.

As I learned from an article by Don Lee of the Los Angeles Times:

“For the six months that ended September 30, workers at about 1,200 offices and plants nationwide were approved for federal Adjustment Assistance. That’s about 20% more approvals than in the same six-month period last year, according to the U.S. Labor Department.”

In an analysis of a Bureau of Labor Statistics September report on U.S. employment and unemployment, the Economic Policy Institute wrote: “The labor market is now 1l,500,000 jobs below the level needed to restore the pre-recession unemployment rate (5.0% in December 2007)."

The September jobless rate was 9.6%. See
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/september_jobs_picture
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We wuz robbed!

A study of how corporate America treated its workers during the 2007-2009 recession concludes that the workers could justifiably say “We wuz robbed!”

In the study, published in July, its two authors charge that the latest recession is really a Great Recession for Workers because corporations pocketed unprecedented profits while slashing employment, working hours, and hourly pay.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, told New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. Sum has published research on labor market trends for at least 20 years.

His latest study, conducted with senior research associate Joseph McLaughlin, is titled “How the U.S. Economic Output Recession of 2007-2009 Led to the Great Recession in Labor Markets.”

“The economic recovery in the U.S. over the past 15 months has seen the most lopsided gains in corporate profits relative to real wages and salaries in our history,” the study says.

Also especially noteworthy: “The greatest deterioration in the U.S. unemployment rate took place among men, largely as a result of the great depression in blue-collar jobs.” The U.S. jobless rate, 10.3 percent in 2009, was the highest of ten leading industrial countries.

Herbert, in his column titled “A Sin and a Shame,” commented:

“It doesn’t have to be this way. Germany and Japan, because of a combination of government and corporate policies, suffered far less worker dislocation than the U.S. Until we begin to value our workers, and understand the crucial importance of employment to a thriving economy, we will continue to see our standards of living decline.”

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President's agenda for jobs: is it populist enough?

I didn’t watch or listen to President Obama’ State of the Union address. I read it the morning after. And I re-read large chunks of it, focusing on what he said about jobs.

“Jobs must be our number-one focus in 2010,” he declared. Here are his plans.

One way is to “put Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow” and “building clean energy facilities.” These steps, however, “won’t make up for the seven million jobs that we’ve lost over the past two years.”

So “it’s time to get serious about the problems that are hampering our growth.” One of a series of initiatives proposed by the President: “Double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support two million jobs in America.”

In aggressively seeking new markets, the U.S. must make sure that other countries are playing by the rules. “And that’s why we’ll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia.”

Some pundits attributed Obama’s new emphasis on jobs to a need to become more “populist” after a Republican won the U.S. Senate seat held by the late Senator Kennedy. But how populist is President Obama’s position?

A few weeks ago Gallup asked 1,017 Americans this open-ended question: “In your opinion, what would be the best way to create more jobs in the United States?”

The top prescription was “Keep manufacturing jobs here/Stop sending overseas,” favored by 18% of respondents. Another 4% chose “higher taxes on imports/Buy American.” So in effect 20% deemed globalization to be the chief obstacle to ending U.S. unemployment.

The Gallup poll findings were consistent with those in a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. Its respondents were asked to prioritize a prepared list of 11 long-range foreign policy goals. Surprisingly, “protecting the jobs of American workers” shared the top place with “taking measures to protect the U.S. from terrorist attacks.” Both were given 85% “top priority," and 13% “some priority."

If these findings do reflect public opinion, Obama’s jobs agenda may not turn out to be a winner on voting day. It could depend on the unemployment rate at that time.

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