Democrats need to think outside the box on the unemployment problem...

[kentuck]

As someone posted down the page, companies and corporations are hoarding their profits, at the expense of us all. Obviously, they are squeezing the last drop of blood out of employees and cutting wages or offering no pay increases. This is not the purpose of capitalism. To hoard the capital. It is created to be invested and to make a better society.

Perhaps the Democrats could start the debate about decreasing the average work week to 35 or 37 1/2 hours per week with anything over being overtime. Many companies are now offering employees time off without pay or comp time and many are not working the 40-hour week anyway. This could create jobs. If the companies want the same production.

They need to do something about this growing crisis. This might be a good place to start?



.

[endless october]

1. have to bring back manufacturing.

it's got to become a top priority.

trickle up economics.

[Dappleganger]

29. Yes we do.

I've not seen a plan for this coming from any democrats yet, however.

[LWolf]

2. How many of us can afford to take the paycut

working fewer hours would create?

[kentuck]

4. I understand that 2 1/2 hours could be hard for many people...

But not as hard as being without a job. If you still worked 40 hours per week, then you would get a pay raise, with the overtime. It would tend to balance itself out.

[LWolf]

10. I make a salary that requires me to spend a certain number of hours.

In reality, it takes about 5-7 more hours a week to accomplish the job than my contract calls for. I don't have to be at work beyond contractual hours, but I sure as hell have to get the job done. So I stay late, and take work home. Common for those in my profession. I'm a teacher.

This year, in order to make up the losses from pay cuts to keep school doors open during tight budgets, I'm working extra hours on a grant for after-school programming. I get paid a fraction of what my hourly wage would be if you divided my salary by the hours in my contract. Between the normal overages that teachers put in beyond contractual hours, and the rest of the after school hours, I'm working about 55 hours a week, crammed into the 4-day week our school year was shortened to.

All to keep my head afloat.

For a shorter work week to be viable, we need those shorter hours to provide a complete wage or salary. A living wage for the lowest paid. A commensurate wage for the rest of us.

[kentuck]

12. Also, less hours could prevent further layoffs.

We are talking about unemployment and sometimes we may need to sacrifice just a little.

[LWolf]

32. I would love for there to be money

in school budgets to hire other people to do all the things I do that take me beyond contractual hours.

Even to reduce my contract, if not my pay.

"We may need to sacrifice a little...."

if that means sacrificing income, then I lose my house. That's not a little.

But then, I come from a long line of working poor people who have always worked extra hours and extra jobs to make ends meet.

[blueworld]

38. As a geezer, I have to tellya...

When I started work at Prudential in 1971 they had recently gone to a 37 1/2 hour work week without asking employees to take a cut in pay. Heaven! Several years later, under St. Reagan, they increased it back to 40 hours per week and cut the number of holidays & personal days. A few years later, they decided that salaried employees had to work 5 extra hours for "straight pay" and could only collect time and a half for anything over 45 hours per week.

I think my point is that they bloody well do what they want to non-union employees. And "exempt" (salaried) employees are usually scrood under Dept. of Labor regulations. Most of us would be willing to take a small pay cut to keep a job, but this economy is nightmare for the working class.

We need to produce something in this country again. Then we need to sell it. As previous posters have noted, we need "trickle up" economics, IMO.

[baldguy]

34. How many times have you heard "American workers are the most productive in the world"?

What that means is that means is that the supposed cost differential between Detroit and Mexico is a myth: manufacturers would make more money using American workers, because the resulting product would be more complex, with a higher quality & fewer defects.

[tridim]

3. IMO the common dual-income household needs to be addressed.

But honestly I have no idea where to even begin because Americans are addicted to two incomes.

[leftstreet]

6. 'Americans are addicted to two incomes' ??

You're kidding, right?

[asdjrocky]

9. No their not.

No one is addicted to income.

I know that's hard to believe, but there are millions of people without jobs or income and no one is going through withdrawal. There are no DT's, no one is sick or climbing the walls.

What we are is hungry and pissed. Many of us would gladly work 10, 12 15 21 hours a week, whatever we could.

[Skidmore]

11. Americans got "addicted" to two incomes because we were told

that it was patriotic to buy cheap junk and that you had to have it all--right here, right now. Unfortunately, the basic necessities are priced so that it has become pretty darned hard for people, particularly those with children, to survive on one income in some areas. Are you as concerned about hugely inflated salaries for the wealthy?

[tridim]

13. I'm concerned about all of the inequities in the workforce.

The basic necessities are also priced so that single-income people like myself are shit out of luck no matter what we earn or how hard we work.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[anonymous171]

18. What? nt

[RB TexLa]

31. How is one who gives up an income supposed to support themselves?

I assume you are talking about two adults earning incomes, right?

[Skidmore]

5. Currently employers make certain they don't hire people

for full employment so that they do not have to pay benefits. Unless there are other changes in law to offset this factor this suggestion is a nonstarter, as far as I'm concerned. Also, cutting loopholes for corporations which offshore their assets and jobs would be a good thing to see as well. Americans need to be producers and not a captive market.

[Dappleganger]

27. Exactly, this is true both by hiring more part-timers as well as contract workers.

[PufPuf23]

7. Over the short term "socialist" or Keynesian

programs such as WPA, CCC, or CETA would help.

Feeding stimulus from the bottom multiplies upwards much more efficiently than tax cuts.

Locally there were many local highway contracts this year but there is much more work to do on infrastructure.

Tax cuts and privatization of the public commons are band-aids and probably negatives over the long term.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JCMach1]

16. Stop basing human value on the labor they produce... That would seem like a good place to start

Otherwise what will an economy be based on in the future?

Robots and super-efficient manufacturing (oh and super-cheap outsourcing) kill manufacturing jobs.
Outsourcing and computers kill many service sector jobs.
The net fills-in for lots of knowledge sector jobs.

:wtf: is left...? That is the problem that neither socialism, or capitalism has figured out for the coming decades and centuries.

[leftstreet]

17. +1

[anonymous171]

19. Why not? If we did that then CEOs and bankers would be less than human

Sounds like a pretty good moral standard to me.

[thotzRthingz]

20. I'd go all out... let's have a 10 hour work-week to be FULL-TIME employment (w/all benefits)! n/t

[DailyGrind51]

21. Repeal NAFTA and GAT and go "full on FDR" with a "WPA 2010"!

[anonymous171]

22. FUCK YEAH! nt

[LWolf]

33. + 1,000,000

[reformist2]

36. +1,000,000 for me too!

[Statistical]

23. One problem is salary workers are "exempt" from overtime regs.

My employer can make me work any amount of hours 40, 50, 200 for my Salary.

Now my employer right now chooses to make me work just 40 (sometimes 45 if workload is heavy) but that is just because it is the norm.

Cut the workweek back to 35 or 37.5 and I and virtually all salary employees will still be working 40.

[mmonk]

24. We need expenditure projects that could jump start activity.

We also need to stop allowing what jobs remain from going out of the country. You know, like Democrats used to do before Reagan mesmerized both parties.

[MadHound]

25. First of all, are you going to jack up the pay in order to make up for the shorter hours?

Five hours worth of pay is a hard hit to take for lots of people.

Second, what about salaried workers, and the fact that this will increase the number of salaried workers. This means that more than likely people will be working more hours for less pay.

My thought, start bringing back/retaining manufacturing jobs. It is a shame and a sin that Chinese firms are getting part of the stimulus money to manufacture wind turbines over there while our country suffers from a lack of jobs.

Let's slap a big honkin' tax on corporations that outsource jobs. Let us attack this problem at the root rather than trying to fix it with stop gap measures that won't work.

[Codeine]

26. Nope. I can't afford to lose the hours.

I don't have a second income stream to make up the loss -- I live alone and rely on my own effort to survive. Deny me hours and I am in deep financial shit.

[upi402]

28. Democrats, ... think

They think of covering their asses and doing what their paymasters dictate, most of them anymore.

[readmoreoften]

30. Nope: capitalism was precisely created for hoarding profits. If it wasn't,

they wouldn't bust our unions and squeeze every pound of flesh they could out of us in the widget-making process. "Cheap" stuff means cheap labor. Materials don't fly out of the earth on their own (often they're still gathered by men and women in wooden sacks) and they don't shape themselves into components on their own. The machines that replace us don't get designed and built on their own. The factories don't get built on their own. We could do all these things without the capitalists, who extract profit from our labor by suppressing wages and then circulate that pound of our flesh amongst themselves or "re-invest" it for "the community."

However, I am for ANY labor action or labor reform that you can think of. Less working hours is a fine demand. But it will have to be fought for, and the 95% of the Democrats are not likely to help in this fight. I say this as someone who has lost a job from striking, who has lobbied for labor, and who has seen what Democrats do in action (write letters shaming your employers when they arrest your union members for protesting, write letters of condemnation when your employers fire you-- nice, but useless.)

[Echo In Light]

35. Do people actually think politicians are actually going to do anything to help this dying empire?

lol ... don't hold your breath!

[ipaint]

39. Not the current crop in office.

They won't do anything mildly significant until they are forced to. That won't happen until the pain is more widespread i.e. to the currently comfortable upper middle class.

[Echo In Light]

42. When that pain is felt, the anti-"terror" legislation will be used on its interned targets

US citizens

[reformist2]

37. We need major Public Works initiatives, and we need to act QUICKLY.

I am very concerned by the apparent lack of planning and slow implementation. Passing stimulus bills that help state and local workers around the country keep their jobs is necessary but not sufficient. We also need programs that will actually employ millions of people who don't have jobs, preferably doing something productive. We need to think BIG. Just off the top of my head,

1) Repairing roads and bridges nationwide
2) Building new commuter rail networks
3) Renovating abandoned cities & towns, and
4) Homesteading acts for both inner cities and rural areas

[timeforpeace]

40. Face it: jobs creation isn't our strong suit.

[cbdo2007]

41. This will hurt small businesses much more than large ones.

[kentuck]

43. And what happens if half the people posting here lose their jobs?

Would you then take a job with 35 hours per week? Or would unemployment be better?

The assumption in most of the posts seems to be that I got mine and I won't lose my job. I would rather be unemployed than to give up 2 1/2 hours per week because I cannot afford it. If another 5 million people or more lose their jobs, then what solution do we have??