Extended jobless benefits start running out

On June 1, an estimated 325,000 eligible unemployed workers were denied extended unemployment benefits. By the end of June, if Congress does not pass the latest emergency unemployment benefits extension bill, this number is expected to mushroom to at least one and a quarter million workers, according to government figures.

Why is it that in the midst of the worst capitalist economic crisis since the Depression of the 1930s desperate workers can’t receive even a measly amount of money from the government? This money represents a withheld percentage of their wages, so why aren’t they automatically entitled to it?

The immediate answer is that while the bill passed the House of Representatives on June 11, the millionaire Senate, including both Republicans and Democrats, has stalled its passage due to a certain provision within the same bill. No measure can become law unless both houses of Congress approve it.

That provision centers on whether the wealthiest people living in the U.S. will continue to enjoy enormous tax breaks and pay at most just 15 percent of their income, or will have to pay more to narrow the tax loophole that exists. Since the Senate majority’s priority is to represent the interests of mainly Wall Street investors, these lawmakers are doing everything they can to save their clients a reported $25 billion in earnings over the next decade. Most workers have to dole out close to 50 percent of their incomes, if not more, in various taxes, whether there is an economic crisis or not, whether they are unemployed or underemployed.

This is not the first time that the Senate has stalled on passing extended unemployment benefits. Their excuse for doing this repeatedly, even using the filibuster tactic, is their “concern” for the federal deficit. If this concern were truly genuine, they would not be bending over backwards to bail out their ruling-class masters with billions of dollars in so-called stimulus money and tax breaks.

State budgets pay for 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. After that time, the federal government pays for extended benefits, up to 99 weeks in total. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there are currently 15 million jobless workers. Unofficially, however, there are millions more, considering those who have given up looking for work and those who are excluded, including youth, the undocumented, prisoners and others. Forty-six percent of the official 15 million have been out of work for more than half a year. This is the highest level recorded since 1948, when these statistics were first compiled.

Jobless rates overall and state by state create a false notion of what is really going on underneath. For instance, in May the U.S. government claimed in one breath that jobless rates fell, but in the next breath stated that this was due to two important factors: one, more unemployed people became so discouraged that they stopped looking for work, and two, the government created temporary jobs working for the 2010 U.S. Census.

According to this report, Nevada has the highest official unemployment rate of any state, at 14 percent, with Michigan a very close second at 13.6 percent. Detroit still has the highest unemployment rate of any city. It is officially 22 percent, but it is at least double that rate among African-American youth.

In fact, for Black workers in general, the depression did not begin at the end of 2007 when the current economic crisis began to intensify for most workers. These oppressed workers have been victims of a last-hired, first-fired racist policy for many decades. Due to deindustrialization caused by the restructuring of the capitalist economy over the past 25 years, Black workers have lost their unionized jobs disproportionately — especially in auto and steel — at a much faster pace than white workers.

The Institute for Southern Studies gives these statistics on Black unemployment based on January 2010 figures: Eight percent of African-American men have lost their jobs since November 2007, and while the June 2010 unemployment rate is officially 9.7 percent, for African Americans it is 16.4 percent. The state with the highest unemployment rate for African Americans is South Carolina at 20.4 percent, which amounts to more than one out of every five Black workers.

These statistics alone should be motivation enough for the national labor leaders to put resources into mobilizing the unemployed and employed, the unorganized and organized, in the hundreds of thousands to go to Washington, D.C., and stay there to demand a government-funded jobs program for all. Another demand should be no-strings-attached, extended unemployment benefits, for however long the workers need them.