Why are no candidates addressing unemployment compensation?

[burr]

Unemployment compensation reform in California has become a joke..convincing the workers that the problem will vanish while businessmen and politicians work everything out. Later after mother and father lose their jobs and health insurance, they discover that they are no longer eligible for compensation. "But come back as minimum wage temp workers, and we could discuss employment."

Should unemployment compensation be like Social Security? The employer pays a tax into a general trust fund for each worker. These workers will pay a quarter of this tax. Credits build up...and regardless of why the worker is laid off, whether the worker is full or part-time, or how many different jobs this person worked. The idea is that such credits will follow you from job to job, and can only be used up while unemployed.

To me this makes more sense than allowing employers and the states to be the gatekeepers of unemployment compensation...

[hedda_foil]

1. Dean has (others probably too).

Please note that this is a press release from a full speech that goes into more detail, available on the Dean site. www.deanforamerica.com

campaign Press release from Unemployed For Dean (mods -- not copyrighted. This is a press release)

http://www.unemployedfordean.com/dean_news.htm

Google is GOOD!

DEAN OUTLINES STRATEGY FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH AND JOB CREATION
Wednesday July 30, 2003
By: Press Office

Former governor blasts Bush administration's 'unfair, misguided' economic policy (July 30, 2003)

DES MOINES--In a speech here before the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union, Governor Howard Dean, M.D., attacked the dismal economic record of the Bush administration and outlined his strategy for job creation and for addressing the concerns of America's working families.

" has created a crisis for American workers and brought financial disaster to more and more American families. They are the victims of an unfair, misguided economic policy," Dean said. "Never has a president talked so much about jobs while doing so much to destroy them."

"We need a fresh start, a new beginning with a new administration and a new economic plan--a program that opens up opportunity, creates more good jobs, and saves the ones we have," the former Vermont governor explained.

In promising to reverse the downward trend in the country's economic situation--which has seen nearly three million jobs lost under President Bush and the highest unemployment in a decade--Dean outlined a six-point plan for stimulating growth and creating jobs:

--Raising the minimum wage to put more money in the hands of working Americans

--Expand unemployment insurance to cover more full and part-time workers

--Expand aid to state and local government for homeland security and through doubling the Community Development Block Grant

--Invest in job-creating infrastructure programs like school construction and increasing rural broadband access

--A health care plan that reduce costs to employers and frees up additional private money for investment and job creation

--A trade policy that ensures that strong and enforceable labor provisions are included in all trade agreements--to ensure that trade helps both us and our trading partners shore up middle class jobs.

Commenting on the administration's "Jobs and Growth" tour, where cabinet secretaries are traveling through the Midwest to tout the Bush administration's record and promote their tax cutting agenda, Dean said, "With the record this administration has on jobs and growth, this must be one mighty short tour."

Dean also highlighted the concerted attack that the administration has launched basic American safeguards like social security and workers' rights, as well as on organized labor--stripping federal workers of union protections, seeking to privatize parts of the federal workforce, ignoring worker concerns in airline bailouts, locking out longshoremen and reversing ergonomic standards.

The governor credited labor unions with always leading the fights against industry-backed politicians who threatened America's democratic principles. "All Americans, not just union members, owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women of America's labor movement," Dean said. As president, Dean promised that he would "defend, support and expand the rights of American unions to organize as an essential prerequisite to the prosperity of our nation."

Today's remarks are one element of a comprehensive economic plan that Governor Dean will lay out later this Fall.

More information on the governor's speech, including the full text and his economic record, are available at www.deanforamerica.com.

[leftyandproud]

2. any tax paid by employers...

comes straight from the salary of workers...just like the employer share of FICA taxes. There must be a better way to keep costs down..

[burr]

3. or even more importantly...

there must be a better way to ensure that workers can pay into a system, and will later be fairly compensated if unemployed.

IMHO it would do much more to help workers between jobs if it worked more like the Social Security system than a privately managed pension fund in which only the employers decide who gets the benefits. In the era of outsourcing, we can forget employers putting up the capital to retrain unemployed workers.