When I saw the headline in my local paper, I wanted to laugh out loud. But that’s really hard to do when you’re gritting your teeth.
The headline proclaimed, “Jobs lost during slump regained.” It was another smiley-face sticker that the establishment media keeps trying to slap over America’s jobs crisis. This story gushed that the private sector, which had punted 8.8 million jobs after Wall Street greed crashed the economy in 2007, has now reached the “milestone” of restoring those jobs. So see, everything is okey-dokey – and all of you hard-hit workers should quit bellyaching.
Beneath the headline, though, is a much grimmer reality, for what has happened to America’s workaday majority is not a “slump,” but a full-blown financial disaster. First, while private-sector jobs are are up, public service jobs are still short of the number we had before the crash. Also, population growth since 2007 means that several million new job seekers have entered the market. So, happy headline aside, job creation is nowhere near the growing demand for employment. That is truly teeth-gritting news, especially for the millions of long-term unemployed Americans who’ve been jobless for half a year, two years or more.
Second, most of the positions added by the private sector are temporary, part-time “jobettes,” with low-pay and no benefits. In fact, the hiring report that prompted the joyous headline shows nearly half of the new jobs were added by temp agencies, restaurants, hotels, and retailers – all notorious, low-wage employers.
The only thing more shameful than these hopeless media attempts to put a rosy glow on America’s unabated jobs crisis is the crisis itself. The headline this story deserves is: Wall Street Executives, Corporate Lobbyists and Their Congressional Hirelings Continue to Undermine America’s Middle Class.

“Jobs lost during slump regained,” Austin American Statesman, April 4, 2014.


US Postal Service selling out workers and ... America

You know what America needs? More jobs, that’s what.
Not Walmart-style “jobettes,” but real jobs, stable ones with a good salary and benefits, union jobs so workers have a say in what goes on, jobs that have strong protections against discrimination. A job you could make a career, do useful work, take pride in it, earn promotions, and be respected for what you do.
Believe it or not, there is at least one place where such jobs still exist. But – and you really aren’t going to believe this – those in charge are pushing like hell to eliminate them, turning positions that ought to be a model for American job growth into just another bunch of jobettes. The place? Your local post office.
Right-wing government haters in Congress, along with the corporate executives now sitting atop the US Postal Service, claim that in order to “save” this icon of Americana, they must decimate it. These geniuses are privatizing the workforce, selling off the invaluable community facilities, and shrinking services. Hello – the workers, facilities and services are what make the post office iconic and give it such potential for even greater public use.
Their latest ploy is a “partnership” with Staples, the big-box office supply chain. In a pilot program, 82 Staples outlets have opened “postal units” to sell the most popular (and most profitable) mail products. Rather than being staffed by well-trained and knowledgeable postal workers, however, the mini-PO’s will have an ever-changing crew of Staples’ low-wage, temporary sales clerks with weak performance standards and no public accountability.
Cheapening postal work might be good for a few profiteers like Staples, but it will diminish postal service – and it’s exactly the wrong direction for America to be going.

For info and action go to www.apwu.org.
“Staples Plucks Postal Jobs,” www.labornotes.org, January 27, 2014.