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.
The Union of the Unemployed, which the Machinists also call “U-Cubed,” hopes to “go viral” on the Internet with a hard-hitting 2-minute “Bite Back” ad, with links to be sent out after Labor Day, Sloan said.
“Bite Back” slams “the Coalition of the Heartless” – Congressional Republicans and some Democrats – who try to cut off unemployment benefits, COBRA insurance and other aid to the jobless. Sloan says the unemployed can be “predators” eating those pols. And he wants to make the election “sweet revenge” by the jobless against “the heartless…for all they have put us through.”
Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
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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.
The Union of the Unemployed, which the Machinists also call “U-Cubed,” hopes to “go viral” on the Internet with a hard-hitting 2-minute “Bite Back” ad, with links to be sent out after Labor Day, Sloan said.
“Bite Back” slams “the Coalition of the Heartless” – Congressional Republicans and some Democrats – who try to cut off unemployment benefits, COBRA insurance and other aid to the jobless. Sloan says the unemployed can be “predators” eating those pols. And he wants to make the election “sweet revenge” by the jobless against “the heartless…for all they have put us through.”
Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.