Labor & Employment Law

Tell Congress: Maintain Jobless Aid. Call TODAY

By Mike Hall

Join today?s national call-in to Congress (1-877-662-2889) and tell your senators the very first item on their agenda must be maintaining emergency unemployment insurance (UI) benefits program that is a lifeline for the millions and millions of long-term jobless workers.

If lawmakers don?t act by Nov. 30, 800,000 people who have not been able to  find work in an economy where there are five job hunters for every open job will lose this critical help that keeps a roof over their heads and food on the table. By the end of the year, 2 million jobless will be without help and another 1 million a month will lose their benefits beginning next year.

Not only does it look like Congress will leave town this week for its long Thanksgiving break, but outrageously, Republican senators say that their first item of business is extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich that carries a $700 billion price tag.

Call 1-877-662-2889 and ask for your senator?s office and then tell the person who answers the phone:

Across America, unemployment is at record levels. Emergency benefits for workers who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks are scheduled to expire Nov. 30. I urge you to renew them immediately!

Then log your calls here.

Long-term joblessness continues to be a crisis, with 6.2 million workers jobless for six months or more. Nearly 42 percent of unemployed workers have been jobless for 27 weeks or more.

Never before has Congress decided to cut off extended unemployment benefits when the jobless rate was so high, 9.6 percent. And not since the 1930s have so many unemployed job-seekers been out of work for so long.

Tell your senators we must maintain help for the long-term unemployed. Call 1-877-662-2889 now.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on November 16, 2010 (boomark / email).