By GREGORY N. HEIRES
A national jobs advocacy group recently unveiled a comprehensive plan to combat the coronavirus crisis that is even bolder than the New Deal, which led the country out of the Great Depression decades ago.
The National Jobs for All Network’s plan calls for immediate assistance for the millions of Americans, especially the poor and minorities, whose lives have been devastated by the public health crisis and the ensuing economic downturn.
“We need a bolder government response than we’ve yet to see in our lifetimes,” the network’s chair, Trudy Goldberg, said. “The government unemployment statistics released in May are the worst on record. The June numbers are expected to be even worse, with as many as a quarter of our workforce officially jobless, and the real count in the 30 percent range.”
The Network’s proposals for “Relief, Recovery and Reform” provide a blueprint for creation of a more just and equitable society.
“The dreadful Pandemic is plaguing a nation already suffering from persistent, deeply divisive, and destructive economic inequality—a nation thus particularly poorly prepared to deal with this crisis,” the plan states.
The public health and consequent economic crisis is exacerbated by the chronic economic, social, and physical insecurity that beset millions of Americans, even in the best of times.
Crises are opportunities to take action against long- standing problems. The NJFAN plan calls for far-reaching government action and expresses a hope and need for a broad-based social mobilization to seize this opportunity for change.
Measures to combat the Great Recession failed to address chronic and growing economic and social inequality. The country must not pass up the opportunity for social reconstruction this time, the plan says.
Worse than the Great Recession
Characterized by mass contagion and an economic free fall, the coronavirus crisis presents a greater public policy challenge than economically induced crises like the recent Great Recession.
The government prevented the Great Recession from turning into a depression by bailing out the financial sector and providing compensation for lost work and income to maintain consumption, restore jobs and hold down employment.
Still, it took nearly a decade for the unemployment rate to reach its pre-recession rate of 4.7 percent. And the government response to the recession failed to address the deep-seated precariousness of work, structural employment, and poverty—challenges that today point to the need for more far-reaching responses, including the establishment of a guarantee of living wage work.
Immediate Relief
The plan identifies a number of immediate steps to provide relief to millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and been otherwise adversely affected by the pandemic–and to put the country on the path to recovery.
The proposed relief includes:
• the provision of federal government benefits to individuals and families, such as food, shelter, health-care assistance,
• a suspension of rent and mortgage payments, medical and consumer debt, and student loans
• federal government leadership and responsibility for universal coronavirus testing, medical care, and sufficient medical equipment and
• adequate pay, benefits and protection for front-line health-care workers.
The NJFAN plan also calls for a form of unemployment insurance that matches what a number of European countries have done.
These countries are providing government assistance to enable businesses to keep workers on payroll during the crisis. In contrast, the practice in the United States is to provide workers with unemployment benefits without any assurance that they will be able to return to their jobs after the economy recovers.
The Network’s proposal notes that coronavirus crisis has exposed many unmet human needs. These include national health care; paid sick leave; strengthening of collective bargaining rights; affordable housing; cancellation of student debt; tuition-free public higher education; universal broadband access; the guarantee of a living wage of more than $15 an hour; expanding Social Security benefits; and a stronger national voting system that ensures everyone has the right to vote.
A Job Guarantee
The centerpiece of the plan—drawing inspiration from New Deal programs like the Conservation Corps and Workers Progress Administration—is a federal “Job Guarantee” implemented through direct government job creation program.
In a sense, the job guarantee would fulfill what President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed in his Economic Bill of Rights in 1944. His landmark proposal called for the right to a job along with other benefits, including a good education, a decent home, and security in old age.
Today, the network’s proposed Job Guarantee would not only open the political space for the establishment of those benefits, but it would also help the federal government address climate change. A Green New Deal, for instance, would provide many job opportunities. This would help workers who lose their jobs as the country moves away from fossil fuels.
The new Job Guarantee, the NJFAN plan says, “would help neutralize the most powerful deterrent to the adoption of policies to combat climate-change—a fear of job loss.”
The plan concludes, “This is why we believe that as soon as workers are able to safely begin returning to work following the COVID-19 public health crisis, the New Deal direct government job creation strategy should be deployed to provide work for everyone who wants it.”
To read the plan, click here: https://njfac.org/index.php/2020/05/21/economic-justice-jobs-for-all-and-the-coronavirus-pandemic/
This article is a slightly modified version of a story that appeared in the Network’s May newsletter.
