The year 2012 will be pivotal in the fight for jobs and the direction our country takes on progressive ideas. Will the GOP, under the influence of the Tea Party, continue to chip away at our social safety net and workers rights? Not if we stand up and be heard – through our unions, community groups, Occupy, in the voting booth and wherever else we can. Even though job creation is better under Obama than it was under Bush, we still have a huge fight ahead of us. The good news is, the wind is at our backs and workers are getting active all around the country to make this a banner year!
A ‘Jobs State of the Union’ Speech
Tuesday night President Obama gave a State of the Union address that was a jobs speech. At the heart of his address were important concrete steps aimed at restoring jobs and opportunity. The speech framed an industrial policy for our country. It outlined big steps towards revitalizing manufacturing and creating new green energy and manufacturing sectors. The President keyed in on the need to repair our crumbling infrastructure and build modern transportation and energy systems, putting millions back to work. It included important educational and job training initiatives, including making college and advanced training more accessible for low and middle income students.
What the Unemployed are Currently Facing
Working people know that the Great Recession has devastated our country – all the while the 1% profit from it. Teens are seeing the highest unemployment rate since statistics have been kept. More than one in five veterans are coming back from wars overseas and not able to find work. And though we see signs of a recovery in several areas, it has not been helping the poor very much. Long-term unemployment has visited upon many millions of workers – so much so that a documentary series, “F__ked: The United States of Unemployment,” has been made about their plight. Here is the home page which includes a trailer of the upcoming documentary series.
Action for the Unemployed
Congress narrowly averted cutting off millions of Americans from unemployment insurance when it passed a stopgap two-month extension just before the holidays. But that extension is set to expire at the end of February, so millions of unemployed workers are again at risk of losing their federal unemployment insurance – unless Congress acts to fully renew the program through 2012.
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Scott Marshall is a vice chair of the Communist Party and chair of its Labor Commission. Scott grew up in Virginia where he first became active in the civil rights movement in high school, working on voter registration and anti-Klan projects in rural Southern Virginia and Tennessee. He was also active against the war in Vietnam.
Scott has been a life long trade unionist and was active in rank and file reform movements in the Teamsters, Machinists and Steelworkers unions in the 1970s and '80s. He was co-chair of the Save Our Jobs committee of USWA local 1834 at Pullman Standard in Chicago and active in nationwide organizing against plant shutdowns and layoffs. He was a founder of the unemployed organization Jobs or Income Now (Join), in Chicago, and the National Congress of Unemployed Organizations in the 1980s.
Scott has worked for the Communist Party since 1987 when he became the district organizer for the party in Illinois, a post he held until he was elected chair of the National Labor Commission in 1997. Scott remains active in SOAR (Steelworkers Active Organized Retirees). He lives in Chicago.
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