PBS News doing nasty hit-piece re: Fed .Unemployment Comp. & the unemployed

[99th_Monkey]

Last edited Sat Apr 7, 2012, 12:10 AM - Edit history (1)

Those WHORES!! I am hopping mad.

Segments like this make me wonder if we should even have public media if it's
going to shill for the 1% ... fuck them.

They interviewed "employers" (read Republican Mfg. Owners) who are claiming they
have "perfectly good manufacturing jobs for $12 - $14 per hour, but "they just can't
be filled with competent workers because of federal unemployment is paying them
better than that" and "as long as Congress keeps extending Unemployment Payments,
these jobs will go begging for workers".

Un-freeking-believable.. did anyone else just see this on PBS News?

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june12/jobseekers_04-06.html

EDITED TO ADD ABOVE LINK TO OP

[Iris]

1. wtf? Can't anyone do basic math?

I mean, even if someone was making $480/week, which is what the $12/hr rate would yield, if they are using COBRA to maintain health insurance, they're practically coming up negative. Are these corporations offering benefits? Because health insurance and matching payments into a retirement plan would make the decision a no-brainer.

[99th_Monkey]

2. They - of course - did not go there.

no mention of health benefits, but they did claim even that some
of them were "union" in some sense, but nothing about health ins.

which makes this all the more distorted.

I'm going to PBS news video archives to see if I can find this and
post it on DU and elsewhere. wish me luck.

[Iris]

4. Thanks. I'd really like to see it.

Too bad PBS can't be bothered to do research. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find out what each state pays in unemployment benefits.

[BOHICA12]

6. Ask the staff in local One Stop Employment Center .....

... it happens.

[99th_Monkey]

8. Oh, they did "research" believe me.

Or at least puffed it up and spun it that way,
but their "anecdotal research" consisted of
managing to find TWO manufactering-type
employers who were also willing to be ReThuglican
shills, to try to kill unemployment insurance pmt.s
to people who are relying on them to just get by.

It all rang so hollow and false ... was so disgusting.

[FarLeftFist]

13. Some PBS programming is sponsored by the Koch Bros.

[asjr]

3. PBS has become an adjunct of the Republican party.

[glowing]

5. Those wages are all under $30,000 per year (excluding O.T.)

Exactly why would a qualified professional take one of these positions if they could try and hold on a bit longer and try to find a position they are qualified for and which pays better.

Besides, people who made more before being laid off, are often dis-qualified for any of these lower paying wages because they are "too experienced" and are apt to leave for a better job (duh) when one becomes available. So, the corporations don't want to waste their time on hiring and training for someone to up and leave them.

At some point, we have to insist on having wages that pay a living wage. Minimum wage should be a "living wage". "Working Poor" should never be an expression that represents anyone who works a full week for any company.

[lonestarnot]

7. +

K & R! Living wage for full time 40 hrs per week.

[longship]

17. O.T.??? Ha ha ha ha ha!

You want overtime pay? Sorry, Congress repealed the wage-hour act this last session and President Rmoney signed it into law. So all you twelve year olds (they repealed the child labor laws at the same time) get back to your machines or you'll be back on the streets with your useless, deadbeat parents.


Just a bit of hyperbole. A bit.

[The Straight Story]

9. I have been fighting to get UE since end of Dec

Final hearing soon. Pain in the ass. No paycheck in months and they keep rejecting things.

Hopefully will win the next hearing (called an attorney and he said it sounds like I have a good case, they just don't like overturning someone else - even when I filed the guy said everything seemed good to him).

[99th_Monkey]

11. Best of luck with getting your UE soon

Sadly, PBS just made it a little harder for you,
and anyone and everyone needing UE.

Solidarity & best wishes for you and for
our sad excuse of a public safety net.

Vote Dem/Liberal in 2012, or may as well
kiss our sorry-assed excuse for a nation good bye.

I mean, if 99% are ALL peons, who the hell's
going to BUY BUY BUY to boost recovery?

[doc03]

10. There is some truth to it, I was laid off 3 years ago. I stayed on unemployment

for 1 year then retired. While laid off I was getting the equivalent of $18 an hour from unemployment and SUB and
full health insurance with no premiums. After 1 year when I turned 62 I had three options. One, the company offered me full health insurance until the age of 65 as an incentive to retire, I took the retirement. Two, I could have stayed on layoff and our union contract entitled me to another year of fully paid health insurance and I would have also accumulated another year on my pension. Three, I could have signed up for SS and continued to collect unemployment and health insurance for another year. The reason I took the retirement was I wasn't going to lie about looking for work for another year. If you are getting $18 an hour on unemployment it would be stupid to take a job that pays $12-$14 an hour. A lot of my co-workers took the other two options. So they are not entirely wrong.

[99th_Monkey]

12. I do not doubt that SOME do game the system

I have no judgement either way as to whether YOU were doing that or not,
but just sayin' ... I know that does happen to some extent.

But still, that was NO excuse for running such a one-dimensional attack on
the whole notion of UE; which is clearly what this was designed to do.

[doc03]

14. It does happen though. I worked in a steel mill and we got among the highest wages in the area

so we received the maximum unemployment benefit along with SUB and health insurance because of our union contract.
So any jobs available around here pay less than we made unemployed. Then another problem is even if you do find a suitable job employers won't hire you unless you resign from your previous job because they figure you will go back to your old job if they call you back. I was 61 when I got laid off and they practically insisted I take retraining. I told them it would be a waste of money to retrain me because in one year I was retiring, period. So I stayed on unemployment and looked for work that didn't exist or if it did I wouldn't get hired because of my age anyway. But many of my co-workers played out the system.

[99th_Monkey]

15. Here is link to the PBS story I was referencing

you be the judge.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june12/jobseekers_04-06.html

Transcript
JEFFREY BROWN: And we continue our look at the job market with a seeming paradox that Judy and Greg Ip referred to, unemployed workers who say they're desperate for a job, employers who say they can't fill open positions with the workers they need.

NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman looks into the disconnect, part of his ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.


ANNIE CARTER, Carter Machine Co.: We have jobs in this county that go unfilled for years now.

PAUL SOLMAN: Annie Carter of Galion, Ohio, makes and repairs industrial cylinders, says she pays upwards of $20 an hour for work that didn't seem that hard to master.

ANNIE CARTER: And we're willing to hire anybody, train anybody to do anything. They just have to show us some -- some work ethic, some motivation.

PAUL SOLMAN: Carter's comments came as a real surprise when we visited her last March. Nationally, official unemployment was 9 percent; locally, 12.3 percent.

Our own more inclusive monthly reckoning of un- and under-employed Americans put it at nearly 18 percent. That provoked us to ask other employers we met last year, did they too have job openings they couldn't fill? And, if so, why?

Drew Greenblatt runs Marlin Steel in Baltimore.

DREW GREENBLATT, Marlin Steel: We have actually had people tell us that they won't accept a $16- and $18-an-hour job because they're making $15 an hour on unemployment.

PAUL SOLMAN: Farmer Kim Haynes in northern Alabama.

KIM HAYNES, farmer: If the work's too hard or too hot or too sweaty, they're not going to do it.

PAUL SOLMAN: Bill Brittain, a tree specialist in rural Maryland.

BILL BRITTAIN, arborist: Yes, I would rather hire anyone who had the right attitude and was trainable and dependable. But a lot of those people just don't seem to come along much anymore.

It's putting all us out of business.

PAUL SOLMAN: The most caustic was Bobby Joslin, a sign maker in Nashville, Tenn.

BOBBY JOSLIN, Joslin and Sons Signs: They cannot fill out an application from the top to the bottom without misspelling half the words. It's pitiful.

[doc03]

18. Sounds like the gas drillers around here. We are in the shale gas area here

and the drilling companies claim they can't find anyone willing to work or can pass a drug test. The bottom line is they want to bring "right to work" people from down south here instead of hiring people that may start a union.

[CAPHAVOC]

28. Looking for work that does not exist.

And there you have it.

[WCGreen]

16. It makes no economic sense for someone to take a job that pays less

than the Unemployment they collect.

If they hold out for a better job, they are living by what the Market offers.

This is the same market that the GOP and right wingers from both parties say demands that all "rational" decisions are made by maximizing the economic situation. As a player in the "market", why would anyone do differently.

[99th_Monkey]

20. Exactly. No argument there.

I wish that was how PBS had presented it,
i.e. that employers should be fucking ASHAMED
of the shit wages they are offering,
for highly skilled workers.

But that was definitely not the case, at
least not in this piece, sadly.

[JDPriestly]

24. As I recall, if you get work that is part-time and

pays less than unemployment and keep looking for a full-time job, you keep the portion of your unemployment payments that exceeds the pay you receive from your job.

I think that was the way it used to work.

The story about people not taking available jobs just is not believable to me. Why would anyone pass up an opportunity for a job, even a somewhat lower paying job in this job market?

After all, unemployment insurance runs out, and it may be much more difficult to find a job down the road than it is now. A bird in the hand . . . .

I don't think that is the problem.

I think employers are picky about who they are willing to hire -- don't want to hire older workers for instance or are afraid to hire workers whose past pay histories were higher than the job offered. And I think that people are not learning about jobs because employers are not advertising them very well.

[BOHICA12]

29. But it does make both esteem and job hunting sense

Riding the couch, the Employment Office, the laptop wears on the psyche and diminishes your perceived value in the workforce in the eyes of those doing the hiring.

[WCGreen]

30. Exactly, however...

if we are to all behave as rational economic units as the GOP insists we do, then maximizing your profits is the only way to go...

[upi402]

19. PBS shilled for Bush 1st in the Panama Deception film blackout

Then went pro NAFTA airing Clinton, Gore, and the rest of the Republican touts - and only kooky Perot was offered as balance.

[99th_Monkey]

21. Yet PBS markets their telethons to older "Liberals"

with Cosby Stills Nash & Young and/or Joan Baez or some such
playing "liberal" music for to pull on heartstrings... cha-ching!!

Whores.

[elleng]

22. Au contraire,

several of the interviewees, business-people, stated they think problems are caused because employers take advantage of employees by offering unreasonably low wages. This point was made by some unemployeed members of PBS' panel, intelligent and articulate people.

I didn't see this as a hit-piece at all.

You don't want 'public media,' stick with the networks.

[99th_Monkey]

23. you are welcome

to live in your parallel universe,
and I promise to stay in mine.

[JDPriestly]

25. Or better yet, listen to Pacifica radio. It's much better than just about anything else out here.

Ian Masters is great -- interviews intelligent, knowledgeable people.

[coalition_unwilling]

26. Are you referring to the "Pentagon Broadcasting Service" that helped to whore us

into a war that cost (conservatively) upwards of 100,000 innocent Iraqi lives ALL FOR A LIE???? I gave up on PBS back in 2002 in the run-up to Operation Shocking and Awful. They will never see another cent from me or enjoy another minute of my viewership of their propaganda in support of the war machine.

[Prophet 451]

27. We've had them here (UK) for a while

Our tabloid media for the last few years has been conducting an outright hate campaign against anyone who claims social benefits for any reason. "Scrounger" is the very nicest accusation dished out. One covered a story involving a road death but chose to highlight that the driver was on his way to collect benefits. They've trained the public to outright despise anyone claiming benefits. Since that includes me (for both mental illness and physical disability), I'm fairly bitter about it. Oh, and our current government (the bastard scum Tories) are using that to make benefits even more meagre and restricted.

As I've said several times to similar stories, if it's possible to get more in benefits than it is working, that doesn't mean benefits are too high, it means wages are far too low.