Cutting 6 Million Workers Off at the Knees?

  Urgent: If Congress fails to act, 2 million people who can’t find work and are relying on emergency unemployment benefits will lose their lifeline in January. And if action isn’t taken at all, the total will rise to at least 6 million over the course of 2012.1

But shockingly, it looks like Speaker John Boehner—who has nearly absolute control over what comes up for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives—may be willing to ignore this dire crisis and cut 6 million of America’s workers off at the knees. While he and his fellow obstructionists pursue a polarizing anti-worker agenda, time may run out for America’s jobless.

Sign our emergency petition: Tell Congress it’s time to put partisanship aside and take urgent action to renew emergency unemployment now.

Congress has never cut back on federally funded unemployment insurance when unemployment was anywhere near this high for this long.

But this time, it looks like it really might happen. Speaker Boehner is using the limited time left in this year’s legislative calendar not to extend unemployment, but to hold votes on legislation designed to benefit corporate CEOs and the richest 1% of Americans.

The legislative package Speaker Boehner’s moving this week—his misleadingly named “Jobs Agenda”—would do nothing to create jobs if it ever became law. Instead, it would weaken unions and workers’ collective bargaining rights, gut workplace safety and health rules, end environmental and consumer protections and stop health care regulations and financial safeguards designed to prevent another Great Depression.

Ignoring America’s massive crisis of joblessness while pushing attacks on workers is the same kind of overreach that Ohio voters rejected earlier this month. Working families rightfully demand bold action to extend unemployment benefits, address our immediate unemployment crisis and create jobs—now.

Sign now: Urge Congress to stand with unemployed workers and the 99%—not corporate CEOs and the 1%.

Time’s running out. Speaker Boehner and other obstructionists in Congress need to address this crisis now. He already failed millions of job-hunters by refusing to take up the American Jobs Act or any serious proposal to create jobs. Let’s make sure America’s long-term job-hunters aren’t left without both jobs and a lifeline in 2012.

Thanks for all the work you do.

In Solidarity,

Manny Herrmann
Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO

(1) http://www.nelp.org/page/-/UI/2011/NELP_UI_Extension_Report_2011.pdf?nocdn=1

To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.