Labor trying to mobilize the jobless to vote this fall

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4596

By Mark Gruenberg
19 August 2010

UPPER MARLBORO, M.D. - Realizing today’s jobless workers are more numerous and different from those of past years, the Union of the Unemployed and Working America, using two different tacks, are trying to mobilize the jobless to vote this fall, in their own self-interest.

The objective, say both Union Acting Executive Director Rick Sloan and Working America Director Karen Nussbaum, is to show the nation’s 15 million jobless workers that the set of policies that labor advocates for them will help, and that those pushed by the corporate elite and the Right Wing will not.

The mobilization is important. Sloan points out California alone has 2.2 million unemployed, who could provide the decisive votes in close Senate and gubernatorial races there. There are more than half a million jobless in Ohio and similar numbers in other key states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, he adds.

All those states have hot political races whose outcomes -- for the Senate, for governorships, or both -- could affect what aid comes to the jobless to help haul them out of the Great Recession.

And this recession’s group of unemployed is more white-collar, more politically active and madder than before, Sloan says. Now it’s up to unions to channel the anger.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

FULL story at link.

[babylonsister]

1. Rec'd. I think this is a great idea, and I had no idea

there was a Union of the Unemployed.