U.S. Mass Unemployment is Here to Stay

Big business media finally admit

Mass unemployment is here to stay

Workers, students and you must fight for jobs, education

By Fred Goldstein
Published Feb 28, 2010 9:03 PM

The jobless recovery has been declared official by the New York Times, the newspaper of record for the U.S. ruling class. Its edition of Feb. 21 — the Sunday paper that is read in every capital, finance ministry, embassy, consulate, department of state, etc., in the capitalist world — carried the following two-column banner headline in bold: “Despite Signs of Recovery, Chronic Joblessness Rises — The Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs, Exhausting Savings and Benefits.”

The article that followed was a thinly veiled warning to Washington, to policy makers, and to pundits alike not to pay any heed to false optimism. The economy is in a new stage of crisis — economic recovery is rising alongside growing long-term unemployment. There is little to no prospect that the many millions of unemployed, many of whom are rapidly running out of unemployment benefits, will be rehired. Excerpts from the article give the sense of alarm intended.

It says there are “6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.”

A Times chart shows the racism of the long-term unemployment. Black men are 5.5 percent of the workforce but almost 13 percent of the unemployed. Latinos/as are also disproportionately represented among the long-term unemployed.

“Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department. …

“Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.

“Some labor experts note that severe economic downturns are generally followed by powerful expansions, suggesting that aggressive hiring will soon resume. But doubts remain about whether such hiring can last long enough to absorb anywhere close to the millions of unemployed.”

Of course, the Times minimizes unemployment. It does not refer to the millions of workers who, having dropped out of the labor force, are not considered part of the officially unemployed. Nor does it count the number of undocumented workers who were forced into the underground economy and are now laid off.

Youth suffer most from “jobless recovery” stage of capitalism

Above all, there has been no calculation of how many millions of youth cannot get into the labor force in the first place. Among those 16 to 24 years old who are counted, unemployment is in the 20 percent range. For African-American youth it is officially above 40 percent, but in reality is probably even higher.

For every available job, six people are looking for work. The connection between the economic crisis, the reduction in skills by technology and the loss of jobs in general falls hardest on youth, especially those who cannot afford to graduate from college because of unaffordable tuition and lack of financial support.

The Times knows that this jobless recovery did not come out of the blue.

“Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, a feat often achieved by cutting payroll. The declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees. Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to low-cost countries in Asia and Latin America. Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000. …

“‘American business is about maximizing shareholder value,’ said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. ‘You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.’

“During periods of American economic expansion in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, the number of private-sector jobs increased about 3.5 percent a year, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a research firm. During expansions in the 1980s and ‘90s, jobs grew just 2.4 percent annually. And during the last decade, job growth fell to 0.9 percent annually.

“‘The pace of job growth has been getting weaker in each expansion,’ Mr. Achuthan said. ‘There is no indication that this pattern is about to change.’

“Before 1990, it took an average of 21 months for the economy to regain the jobs shed during a recession, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the National Employment Law Project and the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research group in Washington.

“After the recessions in 1990 and in 2001, 31 and 46 months passed before employment returned to its previous peaks. The economy was growing, but companies remained conservative in their hiring.”

In other words, the present jobless recovery, which is far worse than the last two, represents a sharp deepening of a profound trend in U.S. capitalism. But the Times and other “experts” can never admit that.

Marxists understand that this crisis is a natural outgrowth of the drive for profits. Profits are derived by the exploitation of workers. The use of technology is a fundamental way the bosses have of intensifying that exploitation. Technology takes the skills out of jobs, lowers wages, and makes workers produce more and more in less and less time.

For the last 30 years the bosses have engaged in a global restructuring of the capitalist system based upon the introduction of more and more modern technology. This leads to overproduction, because goods are produced faster and faster and workers are paid less and less.

In the present crisis, heads of the automobile industry and related industries claim they had to shrink their capacity and lay off hundreds of thousands of workers in order to stay profitable. The same is true of the housing industry, the aircraft industry and many others.

Thus there is a permanent reduction in the need to rehire the millions of workers who have been laid off — that is, so long as capitalist profits come before the needs of workers and the communities.

The basic contradictions of capitalism are at the bottom of this new stage of the jobless recovery. The capitalist system is not going to make some big comeback and rehire the workers. The only way the workers will get rehired is if they organize, mobilize and fight to override the profit motive and put workers’ needs first.

Someone reading the New York Times headline alone, and not knowing that the Times is the mouthpiece of big business, might think at first that the article was written out of concern and sympathy for the workers. Indeed, there is a long lead-in about a 57-year-old woman worker in southern California who has been unemployed for two years and whose husband is disabled. She is running out of unemployment benefits and the family is on the edge of homelessness.

But genuine concern for the working class is hardly the motive of the New York Times or its news editors, and certainly not of its owners. Millions have been suffering this fate for years now, but their trials have not made the lead story of the Sunday Times. The suffering of the workers, particularly in this crisis, is hardly late-breaking news.

The workers have been suffering throughout the last period while the government has handed over trillions of dollars to the banks, insurance companies, auto companies, etc. In all this time the capitalist class has been slashing jobs and wages, putting people out of their homes and bankrupting communities.

So why it this being raised now? It is to sound the alarm that two things are staring the capitalists in the face if the jobless recovery goes on. First, they will have to shell out more money to keep the workers from starving en masse. And second, they could face a social explosion, a working-class rebellion.

Yet in spite of all the warnings, neither the Times nor any other of the big business “experts” have any advice on how to solve their own contradictions. They have no way of resolving this crisis within the framework of capitalism and its profit-driven economy.

Only the workers can find the way out. As a first step, it is time to demand that the trillions of dollars held by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board, plus the bloated profits of the banks and the hundreds of billions of dollars handed over to the Pentagon for war and war preparation, be used to create a massive government jobs program.

This program must include reopening closed factories and stores, as well as creating new jobs so that every worker who needs a job gets one at a living wage. The money is there. But it will only be made available through the struggle of the mass of people in the streets.

The long-term solution is to get rid of the capitalist profit system itself and establish a system where the economy is socially owned and run on a planned basis for human need and not for profit — that is, on a socialist basis.

The writer is author of “Low-Wage Capitalism,” a Marxist analysis of the effect of globalization on the U.S. working class, which highlighted the jobless recovery in 2008 as the present crisis was first unfolding.
——————————————————————————–
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Page printed from:
http://www.workers.org/2010/us/unemployment_0304/

Today on New Scientist: 3 March 2010

All today’s stories on newscientist.com at a glance, including: a measure for the multiverse, the largest arthropod to prowl the land, and where atheists come from

Shell Nigeria Facility Hit in Apparent Militant Raid

Shell Nigeria facility hit in apparent militant raid

Wed Mar 3, 2010 2:48pm GMT
By Joe Brock

ABUJA (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell said on Wednesday an oil flowstation in Nigeria’s restive Niger Delta had been damaged by an explosion, in what appeared to have been an attack by a militant splinter group.

The damage to the Kokori flowstation had no impact on Shell’s oil production but is potentially politically damaging for Nigeria because it would mark the first militant strike in more than six months following an amnesty last year.

“We confirmed explosive damage to a part of Kokori flowstation, but the facility was unmanned and has not been producing,” a Shell spokesman said in an e-mail to Reuters.

A militant group based in the Niger Delta, which identified itself as People’s Patriotic Revolutionary Force of the Joint Revolutionary Council, Western Division, said it was responsible for the attack, according to Nigerian press reports.

The Joint Revolutionary Council did not immediately respond to an email asking for comment.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Nigeria’s main militant group behind years of attacks on the oil industry, said Wednesday it was not involved.

“We know those behind the attack but they do not have the backing of MEND,” it said in an email to Reuters.

Attacks on Africa’s biggest energy industry in recent years, many of them by MEND, have stopped Nigeria producing more than two-thirds of its potential 3 million barrel per day capacity, costing it an estimated $1 billion (663 million pounds) a month in lost revenues.

The explosion is the first significant attack on an oil or gas facility in the Niger Delta for more than six months, after a presidential amnesty last year saw thousands of gunmen lay down weapons.

But promises of stipends and training have been slow coming and the absence of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who returned from three months in a Saudi hospital last week but remains too sick to govern, has increased uncertainty.

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan, who is from the Niger Delta, has pledged to push ahead with getting the amnesty program back on track and Monday set up a committee to monitor progress in the volatile region.

(Editing by Nick Tattersall)

Setting a good example

Amid gloomy economic news about the state of Greece’s public finances and impending austerity measures, former MEP and Greek singing legend Nana Mouskouri has today said she will donate her pension from her time as an MEP (1994-1999) to the public coffers to help Greece tackle its debt crisis.

At around £23,000 a year, it won’t bring Greece’s debt levels to within the 3% GDP required by the EU’s Growth and Stability Pact all on its own, but is a response to calls for wealthy Greeks to contribute more money to the national treasury in the current crisis.

Amid never-ending examples of how the European Parliament wastes taxpayers’ money, and MEPs voting for endless increases to their allowances, it’s nice to see that not everyone goes to Brussels to climb aboard the gravy train and milk it for all they can get (for those who find it hard to believe see last year’s blog piece on Swedish MEP Jens Holm donating his travel expenses to charity).

MEPs have a long, long way to go to arrest citizens’ declining faith in the European Parliament, but if more took the same approach as Jens Holm and Nana Mouskouri it would make a start.

Africa underachieving in development of ‘green’ energy economy - UN report

Africa is lagging behind the rest of the world in developing renewable energy projects with initiatives aimed at producing clean and ‘green’ energy remaining largely under-exploited, warned a new report released today by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Regional meeting brings together UN, African nations to discuss mercenaries

The United Nations today kicked off a two-day meeting in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to discuss the presence and activities of mercenaries and private military and security companies in Africa.

What the Middle East is really like

 

“There are so many documentaries about the [security barrier ] or about Gaza and about politics,” Samar Stephan, producer of Sleepless in Gaza and Jerusalem, which aired its first episode Monday evening, told The Jerusalem Post Monday. “People both here and abroad are sick of hearing about the politics in the region and we have decided it’s time to show people what life is really like.”

 

The concept is simple: A camera will follow the girls – two from Gaza and two from Jerusalem, two Muslims and two Christians – on a daily basis and record whatever they do.

 

“Whether they are out buying tomatoes or going out drinking and dancing with their friends, we will show it. The content is up to them,” explained Stephan, 29, from Ramallah.

 

However, the interesting twist to this show, which has enough funding for some 90 half-hour episodes over the next three months, is that it will harness the wildly popular social networking Web site Facebook to garner fans and will be broadcast each evening on the video self-promotion site YouTube in order to reach as many people as possible.

 

“This is a non-profit project,” explained Stephan, saying only that anonymous funders in Egypt and Abu Dhabi were behind the initiative. “We want as many people as possible to watch it. YouTube is a really popular medium and it is open to everyone. We want to show what this generation [of Palestinians] wants.”

 

The series already has its own Facebook fan page and within 24 hours of broadcasting its trailer on Sunday more than 200 people had decided to join. In addition, the webcast on YouTube was viewed by close to 1,500 Web users in less than one day. And on both Web sites, just the anticipation of the series has already garnered talkbacks and discourse among Palestinians and Israelis from across the globe.

 

“It’s amazing that so many people have joined [our Facebook page] already,” said Stephan. “I think people are looking for new things in their lives and a huge percentage of people around the world use Facebook every day. It’s a way of building bridges and reaching as many people as possible.”

 

Jerusalemite Ashira Ramadan, one of the four young women who will be followed by cameras for the next three months, added, “When a show is on a certain TV channel there is always one group of people that is alienated. By being on YouTube it is open to every side – Israelis, Palestinians and anyone across the world who wants to see what we are doing can watch us. It’s the best way to reach people.”

 

Ramadan, 25, who is a presenter for the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation and was previously a reporter for the now defunct RAM FM radio station in Jerusalem, will be joined in the series by Gazan Nagham Mohanna, a documentary filmmaker, Ala Khayo, a Jerusalem-based accountant, and teenager Dona Matras from Gaza.

 

“No one has made a reality TV show about life in this area yet,” said Ramadan, who hopes to show that “we have normal lives like the rest of the world.”

 

Though the show features two professional journalists and the women obviously have their political convictions with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Stephan and Ramadan claim that the overall goal is to demonstrate that despite the issues, most young people just want to enjoy life without politics.

 

“Obviously we will not ignore what is happening here,” stated Ramadan. “Occupation is something that you cannot erase or get rid of and it affects me every day, but I would also like to show my family life in Jerusalem.”

 

“I go out with my friends and we have fun,” she continued. “It’s just fun under occupation, with borders and boundaries, but I think people will be shocked to learn that we do go to parties or to the cinema and that there is culture behind the wall.”

 

“Of course there are a lot of people struggling in this area,” said Stephan, “but at the same time there are many people who just want to get on with their lives.

Warm winters distress reindeer herders

In a billowing cloud of white, Russia’s Arctic herders drive thousands of panting and wild-eyed reindeer through the knee-deep snow to the first slaughter this year.

But warm winters in recent years have forced herders here in the far northern Kola Peninsula to delay for months the rounding up of their reindeer from the vast tundra — at great economic cost.

“We’ve had to move the slaughter forwards from December to February because the lakes haven’t frozen over,” said Vladimir Filippov, an ethnic Komi herder who heads the farm Tundra, the main employer in this remote village. (Click on images for larger view)

These reindeer have lost roughly 20 percent of their weight during the extra months spent in the tundra while herders waited for the ice to thicken enough for the forced migration.

“It’s not a small but a huge problem for us and a constant worry,” said Filippov.

With meat sold at 4.34-6.01 dollars per kilogram (2.2 pounds), it can amount to a loss of up to 167,000 dollars per year. “That’s a huge loss,” Filippov sighed.

Over the past decade average temperatures have risen by 0.7 degrees C (1.25 degrees F) and satellite images show melting ice cover on the Arctic pole, said Anatoly Semyonov of the regional Murmansk state climate monitoring agency.

Even though 2010 has been relatively icy, herders who have faced more than a decade of mild winters dismiss the general skepticism amongst the Russian public over global warming.

Climate changes has also disrupted the breeding cycle and made it tough for reindeer to feed on lichen beneath the snow as late thaws and freezing rain create an impervious ice coating, veterinarian Vasili Pidgayetsky said.

At Tundra, global warming is forcing innovation. Last year, the farm entered a proposal to build freeze-storage sites powered by wind turbines near grazing grounds to avoid the need to cross the vast tundra for slaughter in a grant contest run by the World Bank.

“We could kill the reindeer in situ in December and carry the meat back to the village by snowmobile,” said Tundra’s director Viktor Startsev.

It is a radical idea that is not without opposition amid the indigenous Saami and Komi-Izhems herders clinging fast to age-old way of life on the peninsula.

“Of course, the older generation says this isn’t right,” admitted Startsev.

The herding crisis began here with the Soviet experiment: Herders were moved from their pastures to Lovozero in the collectivization of the 1930s and forced resettlements in the 1960s to make way for military and industrial activity.

Valentina Sovkina, an expert with the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, was one of hundreds of Saami children who were torn from their parents and placed in dormitories.

“They were tragic years when families were split, mine too. I saw it fall apart,” she said. “I use to live half a year in the tundra… We slept on reindeer pelts but then the authorities insisted each child had to have a bed.”

The Soviet changes led many to commit suicide and turn to drink, she said.

Today, many have left Lovozero and few young people in the impoverished village of 3,000 want to take up their forefathers’ profession.

Rubbing his mittened hands in frigid exhaustion, 42-year-old Grigory Khatanzei said he began herding at 16 and recalled how much tougher the job was without cell phones and snowmobiles — using sleighs and dogs.

Despite satellite television and other improvements at bases in the tundra, “My kids, the young don’t do this; they don’t want this work probably because it pays so little,” he said.

The average herder earns 7,000 rubles (234 dollars) a month and lives in the tundra in shifts between March and November.

With less people to mind the herd, squeezed by industrial growth and powerless before armed poachers, reindeer numbers have dropped drastically.

By the end of World War II — during which reindeer brigades transported Soviet armed forces — the Tundra farm had 43,000 animals. In 2010, some 26,000 reindeer are left.

The reindeer and caribou herds are in steady decline across the Arctic, the first global study of their numbers published in 2009 found.

“The vast degree of global change in the north casts doubt on the species’ ability to recover,” study author Liv Vors of the University of Alberta, Canada stated.

In the last sprint of the day-long, 50-kilometer (30-mile) rampage over the tundra, herders chase alongside, flapping their arms to spur on reindeer.

When one sinks exhausted into the snow, they swoop in and drag it by the antlers onto wood sleds at the back of their snowmobiles.

“We’re always worried, not only because of climate change,” Filippov said. “I’m afraid that if people don’t pay attention to reindeer herding, it may die away.”

Source:
France24 International News, “Warm winters distress reindeer herders“, accessed March 1, 2010

South Africa Ready For the World Cup, Says FIFA

SA is ready for the World Cup, says Fifa

MARINE VEITH | DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - Mar 02 2010 12:59

World soccer governing body Fifa on Tuesday brushed aside lingering doubts about South Africa’s readiness for the World Cup, as cities across the nation staged dance parties and celebrations to launch the 100-day countdown.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter insisted the country was ready to host Africa’s first World Cup, which kicks off on June 11, and said he was bothered by naysayers who worry South Africa won’t pull it off.

“It’s not so much that there’s pessimism, but that it’s always being thrown into doubt. It’s bad, because when there’s doubt, there’s no confidence. For me and Fifa, that bothers us sometimes,” Blatter told a news conference in Durban.

“There is no doubt, no doubt,” he said. “Let’s go now, let’s have this World Cup, and then we will discuss it at the end of July.”

He spoke after a tour of South Africa’s 10 stadiums that will host the month-long tournament. Construction is complete at all the stadiums, and only two have yet to host games to try out the new facilities.

“We are on track, we are ready to make this World Cup and this is the main message following this inspection tour,” Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke said.

The 100-day countdown dominated South African media on Tuesday, with celebrations planned in all the country’s main cities.

Schoolchildren were invited to ditch their uniforms for football jerseys, while Johannesburg planned a street party in the Sandton business district to teach people the “diski” — a dance inspired by football moves that is the centrepiece of the country’s marketing campaign.

Durban was deploying teams to taxi ranks and train stations across the city to pass out 100-day badges, while in front of City Hall a pile of 100 footballs was set out, with one to be given away each day until June 11.

Optimistic

South Africa has poured R33-billion into preparations for the tournament.

In addition to the stadiums, major upgrades to airports in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Bloemfontein are complete, while Durban’s new airport is set to open on May 1.

Fifa says that 2,2-million of the 2,9-million tickets have already been sold, even though fewer foreign fans are expected to attend.

South Africa is banking on 450 000 foreign visitors, though the actual number could be lower, with many fans overseas still recovering from the shock of the global recession.

The country is seizing the publicity around the 100-day mark to try to reassure fans about visiting South Africa, especially about security in a nation with one of the highest crime rates in the world, averaging 50 murders each day.

South Africa has spent more than R2,4-billion on security.

Overall, South Africans are increasingly optimistic about the World Cup. A survey out on Monday found that 85% believe the nation will ready for the games.

The public was less rosy about the chances about the hot-and-cold fortunes of Bafana Bafana — only 55% said they thought the team was ready to compete. — AFP

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-03-02-sa-is-ready-for-the-world-cup-says-fifa

Naomi Campbell Wanted Over Slapping Driver

Naomi Campbell ‘wanted over slap’

Police in New York want to question Naomi Campbell after her driver accused the supermodel of slapping and punching him as he drove her through the city.

After the alleged incident, the driver pulled over and Ms Campbell left the scene before police arrived.

A spokesman for Ms Campbell said “there shouldn’t be a rush to judgement” and said she would co-operate voluntarily.

The 39-year-old model has been sentenced to community service over previous incidents of assault.

“There is more to the story than meets the eye,” spokesman Jeff Raymond said.

Outbursts

Ms Campbell’s driver told police that he pulled his black Cadillac Escalade over to the side of the road in central Manhattan after she struck him from behind, propelling his head forward on to the steering wheel.

The 27-year-old driver told police that he had picked up the model from a Manhattan hotel and was taking her to the Astoria Studios in the borough of Queens.

Police said they were still waiting to speak to Ms Campbell.

In 2000, Ms Campbell pleaded guilty in Toronto to assaulting an assistant who said that the model hit her on the head with her mobile phone.

She served a five-day community service order in New York in 2007 after admitting reckless assault, having thrown a mobile phone at her housekeeper.

In 2008, she was sentenced to 200 hours’ community service in the UK after she pleaded guilty to assaulting two police officers on board a plane at London’s Heathrow airport.

Several of her former aides and maids have also sued her, accusing her of violent outbursts.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8546657.stm
Published: 2010/03/03 00:40:47 GMT