Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the financial capital of the world Bloomberg eleven
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Speaker 1: I'm Tim Stanovick the domestic cover this week. In a
Speaker 1: tense labor market, union members are authorizing strikes that are
Speaker 1: rarely seen in America, just as non union workers are
Speaker 1: quitting their jobs at record rates. The struggle underway right
Speaker 1: now over workers power in America has another under the
Speaker 1: radar front, an audacious effort with little precedent in modern
Speaker 1: US history, to turn jobless Americans into a serious political force.
Speaker 1: If this jobless lobby gets its way, it could bring
Speaker 1: about the biggest permanent changes to the nation's troubled unemployment
Speaker 1: system in decades. But first, the workers need a movement
Speaker 1: big and broad enough to force major change both in
Speaker 1: Congress and at the bargaining table. How far will workers
Speaker 1: go along with the great Resignation and strike tober the
Speaker 1: unemployed are fighting for reforms that could translate into lasting
Speaker 1: leverage by josh Idolson. As protests symbols go, the marchers
Speaker 1: could have done worse than sarcastic desserts. On the occasion
Speaker 1: of the Georgia Labor Commissioner's birthday this summer, a few
Speaker 1: dozen unemployment activists arrived outside his office building in downtown Atlanta, carrying,
Speaker 1: among other things, a fudge pie meant to resemble the
Speaker 1: one from The Help that was memorably made of poop.
Speaker 1: The chocolate held together reasonably well in the July heat.
Speaker 1: Its symbolism straightforward. We worked hard, we did what they
Speaker 1: told us to do, said unemployed flooring salesperson Lauren Crace,
Speaker 1: who was protesting in a floral blouse and ripped shorts,
Speaker 1: and then we got shipped on Chrace moved to Florida
Speaker 1: in to be closer to elderly in laws, but because
Speaker 1: she made most of her income that year back in Georgia,
Speaker 1: that's where she had to go to seek unemployment benefits
Speaker 1: after her son's daycare closed and her company laid her off.
Speaker 1: To figure that out, she spent a month on the
Speaker 1: phone with Florida's Department of Economic Opportunity, including one day
Speaker 1: when she waited on hold for ten hours. Then she
Speaker 1: spent another month wrangling with both states before she received support.
Speaker 1: Others fared worse, as she saw in a Facebook group
Speaker 1: she created that quickly swelled with Georgians in search of help.
Speaker 1: More than nine million Americans lost their jobs to the
Speaker 1: coronavirus and got no help from Washington, according to a
Speaker 1: recent Bloomberg Business Week review of federal and state data.
Speaker 1: Everybody kind of got forgot about Chrais, says now American workers.
Speaker 1: The ones involuntarily benched during the pandemic and the ones
Speaker 1: who labored through it at great risk so others could
Speaker 1: stay fed, or entertained or alive, are now doing their
Speaker 1: best to be impossible to ignore. Private sector union members
Speaker 1: are authorizing strikes at a rate rarely seen in modern America,
Speaker 1: with more than one thousand workers recently threatening or mounting
Speaker 1: work stoppages in healthcare, higher education, telecommunications, transportation, television, mining, manufacturing, music, metals, oil, carpentry, whiskey,
Speaker 1: and cereal. The internet dubbed October hashtag Striketober. Non union
Speaker 1: workers are voting with their feet as well, fueling a
Speaker 1: labor market reckoning that's become known as the Great Resignation.
Speaker 1: On October twelfth, the U S Bureau of Labor Statistics
Speaker 1: reported that an unprecedented two point nine percent of the
Speaker 1: entire workforce, some four point three million people quit their
Speaker 1: jobs in the month of August, even as the government
Speaker 1: was confirming it would nuke extra jobless benefits in hopes
Speaker 1: of forcing people to work. And all of this is
Speaker 1: happening as the federal government wrangles over President Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: infrastructure bill. The legislation could transform the supply of childcare
Speaker 1: job and the penalties for union busting, and if Chris
Speaker 1: and her comrades get their way, make the biggest permanent
Speaker 1: changes to the country's troubled unemployment system in decades. It's
Speaker 1: a moment with the flavor of nineteen forty six, the
Speaker 1: beginning of a period of massive strikes by what we
Speaker 1: now call essential workers. They unleashed grievances they'd bottled up
Speaker 1: while getting the country through World War Two, partly through
Speaker 1: a series of strikes that included one in ten American workers.
Speaker 1: They ushered in a rare period where employees mediaan pay
Speaker 1: rose hand in hand with their productivity. To recapture that
Speaker 1: sort of leverage, US labor will need a movement that
Speaker 1: mobilizes enough people to force reforms. Unemployment benefits are controversial because,
Speaker 1: even as stingy and unreliable as they are in the US,
Speaker 1: they give workers a little more leverage against bosses by
Speaker 1: making them a little less desperate to accept a mediocre offer.
Speaker 1: They also help people feed themselves while out of a job,
Speaker 1: and help the economy avoided downward spiral where no one's
Speaker 1: getting hired because no money is getting spent because everyone's
Speaker 1: out of work. Last year, the immediacy and magnitude of
Speaker 1: the pandemic were compelling enough for both parties in Congress
Speaker 1: to get on board with emergency supplemental benefits of first
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars a week, then three hundred dollars. That
Speaker 1: sense of urgency didn't extend, however, to actually getting the
Speaker 1: money to millions of qualifying Americans who needed it, And
Speaker 1: this year, as spring turned to summer, twenty six states
Speaker 1: announced they would end the extra benefits earlier than the
Speaker 1: federal government's labor day cut off. Protests among the unemployed
Speaker 1: emerged throughout the country too. In such places as the
Speaker 1: Las Vegas Strip, downtown New Orleans, and the US Capital.
Speaker 1: At the time of the Atlanta demonstration, Georgia had already
Speaker 1: cut off supplemental benefits and nixed social distancing rules, but
Speaker 1: the local Labor Department office remained fenced off and closed
Speaker 1: to the public, as it has been since the beginning
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. Chrace and the other protesters marched with
Speaker 1: signs saying let us in, answered only by banners urging
Speaker 1: job seekers to check out the postings on the agency's website.
Speaker 1: This system has failed, us Chrais said. Over the summer,
Speaker 1: activists failed to persuade lawmakers that extending the emergency benefits
Speaker 1: would help the recovery more than employers claimed this sort
Speaker 1: of alternative minimum wage would hurt it. The data tend
Speaker 1: to support the activists, but a funny thing happened over
Speaker 1: the past couple of months. The protests continued. They've been
Speaker 1: buoyed by Unemployed Action, an advocacy group that's working with
Speaker 1: little modern precedent in the US to mobilize the lobbying
Speaker 1: power of the jobless. Crace's seventeen thousand member Facebook group
Speaker 1: for Georgians who struggled to get unemployment insurance during the
Speaker 1: pandemic is one of many grassroots efforts that have linked
Speaker 1: up with Unemployed Action. The national campaign is backed by
Speaker 1: the Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive advocacy group with
Speaker 1: funding from unions and the foundations of Facebook co founder
Speaker 1: Dustin Moscovite and billionaire George Soros. Like Strike Tober in
Speaker 1: the Great Resignation, their work is attracting notice in Congress,
Speaker 1: says Judy Conti, the director of Government Affairs at the
Speaker 1: National Employment Law Project, which advocates for workers. Some members
Speaker 1: of Congress are absolutely paying attention, and they understand that
Speaker 1: there's a different level of worker engagement than ever before,
Speaker 1: she says. Proposals for less temporary fixes to the unemployment
Speaker 1: system were introduced this fall by powerful advocates in both Houses,
Speaker 1: including Democrats Alexandria Occasia Cortez, representative of New York, and
Speaker 1: Ron Wyden, the Senator from Oregon. Workers haven't won much yet,
Speaker 1: and the millions in crisis can't just protest forever, but
Speaker 1: the pandemic has served as a magnifying glass for all
Speaker 1: sorts of American deficiencies and pathologies. Now whether on Kellogg's
Speaker 1: picket lines or at sailboat protests near West Virginia. Senator
Speaker 1: Joe Mansion's yacht workers are wrestling with COVID's long term
Speaker 1: legacy for US labor. If the emerging jobless lobby can
Speaker 1: win a stronger benefit system, unemployed action will have played
Speaker 1: a significant part without COVID supplements. US unemployment insurance is
Speaker 1: meager compared with benefits in peer countries. Delivering beneficiary is
Speaker 1: roughly of their prior income on average, too little to
Speaker 1: stave off a crisis for those most in need. It
Speaker 1: also excludes millions of people, including many temps, part timers,
Speaker 1: gig workers classified as contractors, undocumented immigrants, and people who
Speaker 1: quit their jobs because of domestic violence or child care needs. Also,
Speaker 1: the present system doesn't require employers to tell workers such
Speaker 1: a benefit exists. Part of the problem is that unemployment
Speaker 1: insurance is a patchwork. Each state funds and regulates its
Speaker 1: own UI system, meaning state officials have incentives to reduce
Speaker 1: aid to their unemployed constituents as a means of lowering
Speaker 1: the tax burden on employers who lay off workers. Some
Speaker 1: states max out at less than three hundred dollars a
Speaker 1: week for as few as twelve weeks and make it
Speaker 1: difficult to claim benefits. In one extreme example in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: laid off mortgage professor Camille Taylor had to make one
Speaker 1: and sixty phone calls to reach a human being. She
Speaker 1: then waited five months for her paperwork to be approved.
Speaker 1: This tends to decrease labor costs by limiting workers ability
Speaker 1: to hold out for better offers. One big missing piece
Speaker 1: of leverage among the jobless has usually been collective action,
Speaker 1: says political scientist Francis Fox Piven, who co authored the
Speaker 1: book Poor People's Movements. Unemployed people have been severed from
Speaker 1: their relationship with each other. She says, they've also been
Speaker 1: severed from their relationship with their primary antagonist, their employer.
Speaker 1: Organizing jobless Americans is hard. People don't identify as unemployed
Speaker 1: the way they do as teachers or coal miners. Some
Speaker 1: blame themselves for being out of work, or worry that
Speaker 1: others will, or fear that becoming a poster child for
Speaker 1: unemployment will hurt their career prospects. For others, the isolation
Speaker 1: of unemployment, especially during the pandemic, has hardened pessimism into hopelessness.
Speaker 1: Yet the desperation of the pandemic helped catalyze the emergence
Speaker 1: of unemployed Action. In the early days of the lockdowns,
Speaker 1: Rachel Deutsch, then the director of Worker Justice Campaigns at
Speaker 1: the Center for Popular Democracy, called a bunch of her
Speaker 1: employers fifty four affiliated advocacy groups around the country. She
Speaker 1: wanted to develop strategies to lobby for paid sick leave
Speaker 1: and other long time worker priorities, but affiliates reported back
Speaker 1: that they were overwhelmed with pleas for help from members
Speaker 1: who've just been laid off. So Deutsch and her colleagues
Speaker 1: at CPD and its sibling political group switched gears. They
Speaker 1: created Unemployed Action in June, using Facebook, phone banking, word
Speaker 1: of mouth, and ground level recruits such as Crace to
Speaker 1: ask jobless workers to attend protests or share their stories.
Speaker 1: They also created a fund to assist members in need.
Speaker 1: What you heard a lot was people from all different
Speaker 1: experiences going through this unifying experience of needing the government
Speaker 1: to be there for them and often finding that it
Speaker 1: was not, says Deutsch, who now consults for CPD. While
Speaker 1: caring for her own mom and kids, there was this
Speaker 1: opportunity to build solidarity and a shared vision for what
Speaker 1: our economy should be like and how we should care
Speaker 1: for one another. Affiliate groups soon began to organize protests,
Speaker 1: such as a sleepout on the sidewalk outside the Georgia
Speaker 1: Labor Department headquarters. Things got tense when state employees confiscated
Speaker 1: the protesters rented porta potties, but they released the toilets
Speaker 1: after police arrived. The agency says the protesters didn't have
Speaker 1: the necessary permit. Shannon Hussey, who had set up her
Speaker 1: own bustling Facebook group in Wisconsin, says she fielded several
Speaker 1: emails from Deutsch before deciding to team up. Hussey had
Speaker 1: been on a family vacation in Aruba when the lockdown
Speaker 1: swept across the u US, emptying Chicago's O'Hare airport for
Speaker 1: their return trip. The one thousand dollars a year she
Speaker 1: made from public speaking and consulting as a mental health
Speaker 1: expert vanished almost instantly, but as a freelancer, she was
Speaker 1: excluded from normal unemployment insurance. The out of pocket costs
Speaker 1: for in home care for her teenage daughter with special
Speaker 1: needs quickly became unaffordable. She and her husband made the
Speaker 1: agonizing choice to send her to a group home, where
Speaker 1: she remained for a few months until the family could
Speaker 1: get help from a temporary jobless assistance program Congress created
Speaker 1: for contractors. It was a pretty big blow. It disrupted
Speaker 1: her life, and it's hard as a parent those decisions
Speaker 1: to realize you can't provide for your kid, says Hussey,
Speaker 1: who's organized sleepouts at the homes of Tony Evers, Wisconsin's
Speaker 1: Democratic governor, and Robin Voss, its Republican Assembly speaker. We
Speaker 1: had this emergency system set up to jump in, almost
Speaker 1: like a generator for the country, and that generator wasn't clicking,
Speaker 1: Hussey says. All these people that thought there was a
Speaker 1: light that was going to come on, they weren't getting it.
Speaker 1: All they had was a broken bulb. Today, Unemployed Actions
Speaker 1: sprawling network is still working to lobby lawmakers around the
Speaker 1: country and push its way into the main stream. Besides
Speaker 1: in person protests, the broader organization swarms lawmakers on social media,
Speaker 1: trains members in skills such as bird dogging, trying to
Speaker 1: create popular videos by putting politicians on the spot, consults
Speaker 1: on think tank's policy proposals, and co ordinates events through
Speaker 1: its sixteen thousand member national Facebook group moderated by volunteers
Speaker 1: by design, Unemployed Action brings together some people for whom
Speaker 1: economic instability is old news, and others who were living
Speaker 1: comfortably pre COVID. This can lead to friction, but the
Speaker 1: group's day to day challenges are more basic. One laid
Speaker 1: off worker who planned to join July's protest in Atlanta
Speaker 1: decided to stay home rather than use up gas driving
Speaker 1: her s u V eighty miles round rip. Another volunteer
Speaker 1: abruptly moved to Missouri. She found a job there after
Speaker 1: months of searching. The Biden Infrastructure Package is Unemployed Actions
Speaker 1: biggest tests so far. Widen and Acacio Cortes have put
Speaker 1: forward measures for the final bill that would require states
Speaker 1: to offer twenty six weeks of unemployment benefits, add eligibility
Speaker 1: for workers looking for part time jobs, and demand that
Speaker 1: employers tell departing workers how to apply for the benefits.
Speaker 1: Lawmakers plan to use the Reconciliation Package to ease passage
Speaker 1: of the massive infrastructure bill, but that will still require
Speaker 1: the votes of every single Democrat, including Mansion and others
Speaker 1: who have been pushing to shrink the bill's price tag.
Speaker 1: In September, Hussey logged into a virtual town hall Unemployed
Speaker 1: Action held with Widen, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
Speaker 1: She asked him to spell out his strategy for ensuring
Speaker 1: that unemployment reform does end up in the final bill.
Speaker 1: I'm going to come in as chairman of the committee,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to fight like hell, Widen said. But
Speaker 1: even winning the incremental changes he's pushing, he added, is
Speaker 1: going to be a challenge. As you've seen, not many
Speaker 1: people back here are talking about this anymore. The Biden
Speaker 1: administration has been sending mixed and sometimes muddled messages. In
Speaker 1: an open letter to Congress in August, Labor Secretary Marty
Speaker 1: Walsh and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called long term UI
Speaker 1: reform a critical issue that Congress should take up via reconciliation,
Speaker 1: while also saying it was appropriate for the crisis inspired
Speaker 1: benefit boost, which was always intended to be temporary, to
Speaker 1: expire on Labor Day as scheduled. In lieu of that support,
Speaker 1: they suggested states could use unspent funds from this year's
Speaker 1: American Rescue Plan to help jobless workers wherever the delta
Speaker 1: variant was posing short term challenges to the labor market.
Speaker 1: In an interview with Business Week a couple of hours
Speaker 1: after the publication of the open letter, Walsh put it
Speaker 1: a little differently. If Florida has to shut down, Let's
Speaker 1: say the COVID numbers continue to climb in the next
Speaker 1: week or two and it gets to the point where
Speaker 1: people are just afraid to go outside their front door,
Speaker 1: he said, then there's going to have to be a
Speaker 1: safety net there for the families that can't go to
Speaker 1: work because their industry shut down. So far, zero states
Speaker 1: have announced plans to take the White House up on
Speaker 1: its suggestion they deploy rescue Plan funds for that purpose.
Speaker 1: Some of the jobless lobbies staunchest advocacy partners have entered
Speaker 1: the government this year, including Michelle Evermore, now a senior
Speaker 1: adviser on unemployment insurance at the Labor Department. That hasn't
Speaker 1: stopped the administration from disappointing advocates, as when the White
Speaker 1: House chose not to resist Red States cutting off extended benefits.
Speaker 1: Early in late August, Evermore joined Unemployed Actions weekly Zoom
Speaker 1: call to talk up the Labor Department's efforts to help
Speaker 1: state systems improve. At the end of a question and
Speaker 1: answer session, Deutsch told her the group would like a
Speaker 1: little bit more public leadership from Walsh on the knee
Speaker 1: to extend benefits and overhaul you I. We would just
Speaker 1: really urge him to use his bully pulpit. Deutsch said, thanks.
Speaker 1: Evermore replied. Asked about her former comrades frustration with her
Speaker 1: current colleagues, Evermore says the department lacks authority to do
Speaker 1: some things advocates want, including stopping states from cutting off benefits. Early.
Speaker 1: My feeling is that you I reform is urgently needed yesterday,
Speaker 1: but it didn't happen yesterday, so maybe it can happen tomorrow.
Speaker 1: She says. If unemployment goes back down and people stop
Speaker 1: paying attention to unemployment insurance, then we lose our window
Speaker 1: to do anything to get some of Widen's platform into
Speaker 1: the final legislation. Unemployed Action plans to keep up the
Speaker 1: pressure with members calling their lawmakers and recording personal video
Speaker 1: messages to spread on Twitter and maybe project onto the
Speaker 1: walls of senators offices. Stop dancing, do something. Jobless. New
Speaker 1: York retail worker Nicole Marie Poleck says in a video
Speaker 1: message to Senate Mature leader Chuck Schumer, the challenge that
Speaker 1: we have been facing has been trying to jump at
Speaker 1: a political moment of opportunity that is urgent and also
Speaker 1: very very crowded. Deutsch says, the thing with you I
Speaker 1: is that the urge to look away is so strong,
Speaker 1: and so how do you create more situations where you
Speaker 1: can't look away? Whatever unemployed action achieves this time, she says,
Speaker 1: there will be more work left to do. The group
Speaker 1: is counting on the bonds created over months of zoom
Speaker 1: huddles to keep people engaged even after they find work.
Speaker 1: Even without factoring in COVID, the US is only ever
Speaker 1: a decade or so away from the next recession, when
Speaker 1: the unemployment insurance system will let people down again if
Speaker 1: it isn't reformed first. As with so many other problems
Speaker 1: magnified by the pandemic, the first step is just that.
Speaker 1: In between the rallying, interstate driving and caretaking for her
Speaker 1: mother in law, who has cancer, Chrace in Florida applied
Speaker 1: unsuccessfully to more than one fifty positions in healthcare, call centers,
Speaker 1: and property management, among other fields, before finally landing another
Speaker 1: flooring job managing a store a half hour's drive from home.
Speaker 1: Although she's relieved to have the steady income again, she
Speaker 1: plans to remain part of unemployed actions fight. I'm a
Speaker 1: whole new person. I think, she says, the pandemic opened
Speaker 1: my eyes. And that's this week's domestic cover story. Find
Speaker 1: me to a Bloomberg Business magazine. It's on newsstands, Onlineberg
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Speaker 1: and I'm Carol Master. This is Bloomberg