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| Workers from across the country are winding up an eight-day Show Us the Jobs tour in Washington, D.C., where they'll talk with lawmakers about the need for good jobs. |
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March 31—The Show Us the Jobs™ tour arrives in Washington, D.C., today for a hero’s welcome from the union movement and a day of telling lawmakers that America needs new policies that will create and retain good jobs. The 51 riders—one from each state and the District of Columbia—will join Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and other members of Congress for a special Capitol Hill session on the jobs crisis. They also will take part in a rally to save overtime pay and good jobs and visit AFL-CIO headquarters. In Washington, D.C., Linda, a rider from Nevada, knows what she plans to tell lawmakers: “People are desperate for work, and employers are rolling back salaries. Unemployment and underemployment are up in Nevada and all over the country, a fact our president seems oblivious to.
“After all, here we are spending ridiculous amounts of money overseas when our citizens are suffering right here in America. It’s an understatement to say that this president’s priories are dangerously out of line.”
On Tuesday, the riders discussed how workers are coping without health care after losing their jobs in Pittsburgh and talked with college students in Morgantown, W.Va., about the tough job market even for college graduates.
At every stop along the eight-state, 18-city Show Us the Jobs tour, the workers have been embraced by members of each community as they talked about the impact of joblessness on their lives and their communities. The AFL-CIO and WORKING AMERICA, a new national organization for nonunion working people, sponsored the tour.
3 Million Jobs Lost Since the Bush Administration Took Office
The United States has lost nearly 3 million private-sector jobs since President George W. Bush took office in 2001, including 2.8 million manufacturing jobs. Faulty trade and tax policies that make it profitable to send U.S. jobs abroad have encouraged many employers to ship jobs overseas.
At the same time, long-term unemployment—when a worker has looked for work six months or more—is at its highest rate in 20 years. Yet after this week, workers no longer will receive long-term emergency unemployment insurance because the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress have refused to renew federal temporary emergency unemployment insurance.
Sharing Personal Stories and Meeting Workers Struggling to Make Ends Meet
Beginning with a massive sendoff rally in St. Louis March 24, the riders traveled throughout the nation’s heartland sharing their personal stories and hearing about the human impact of the jobs crisis. They held roundtable discussions with workers in Toledo, Ohio, on Bush’s failed job training and educational policies. They also attended a barbecue in Cleveland with workers who are among the 8 million U.S. employees whose overtime pay is threatened by the Bush administration’s efforts to gut the nation’s basic wage and hour law.
They met with workers in Greenville, Mich., who are losing their jobs at an Electrolux plant. The plant is scheduled to shut down and move to Mexico, putting nearly 3,000 people out of work. Meeting with the workers was an emotional experience for Trudy, a rider from Indiana. In her daily blog, or Web log, she writes, “Today we heard a little girl tell the story of both parents out of work and time they have to go without food. There was not a dry eye in the house. The stories have brought tears to all of our eyes and have weakened the strongest of men.”
The riders also posed for pictures outside the Herbert Hoover library in West Branch, Iowa, to illustrate that Bush is the first president to preside over a net job loss since Hoover in the Great Depression. They volunteered at a food pantry outside Minneapolis to help those who need food aid for their families after losing their jobs.
They talked with workers in Des Moines, Iowa, about how joblessness strains families and can lead to violence and divorce. And they participated in several town hall meetings about the effect of jobs moving overseas on the communities left behind.
“We as a country have experienced a record pace of corporate mergers, an enormous amount of product manufacturing and services outsourced to foreign soil and lastly but not least, some of the most historical examples of companies pillaged, liquidated or simply robbed blind by greedy corporate executives,” says Demetrius, a rider from Virginia.
“When enough is enough, one seeks ways in which to fight back, and that’s what this bus trip is doing for me. It is a vehicle to highlight the job crisis and to carry the message of the overall economic plight and the injustice we face in this country.”
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