Write a letter to the editor and let readers of your local paper know that lawmakers and Governor McCrory are about to drive North Carolina off the Unemployment Cliff on July 1.

On July 1, the benefit changes will not only mean a far weaker insurance system for our economy, business, and workers when unemployment is high but it will also result in the loss of $780 MILLION in federal extended benefits for 170,000 North Carolinians and their families! That is because the federal program available through the end of the year requires states to not cut benefits in exchange for receiving 100% of the funds needed to pay for this support to unemployed workers.

Tell newspaper readers in your area that state leaders can still save jobless workers a world of hurt by writing a letter to the editor!

The Letter to the Editor Section is one of the most widely read sections of the newspaper and can reach a large audience. It allows community members to comment on the way issues are being addressed in the media and to influence the topics the local paper may choose to cover. Elected officials often monitor this section of the newspaper and take notice of constituents’ opinions.

We’ve made it easy for you to contact your local newspaper with your views. We’ve given you some talking points to help you get started, but remember this. Editors want to hear from you in your own words, so be sure to speak from the heart!

Click here to get started.

What do we do? STAND UP! FIGHT BACK!

This is a special call by the NC State AFL-CIO for all unions in North Carolina to represent at the last Moral Monday in June. Let’s show our immoral state legislature what solidarity among workers looks like! WEAR UNION SHIRTS!

What: Last Moral Monday in June
When: June 24, 2013
Where: Rally on Halifax Mall
Why: Because we must move Forward Together and take not one step back!

Grab the flyer for the last Moral Monday in June.

“The road to justice must run through the South,” said MaryBe McMillan, secretary-treasurer of the NC State AFL-CIO when she spoke at the North Carolina NAACP’s “Witness Wednesday” event outside the state legislature.

“Our state is ground zero in this fight for fairness. This legislature, what they’ve done in a few months, is breathtaking,” MaryBe said. “The list of injustices is long.”

“But I think there is only one law you need to look at to understand how unjust, how callous, and how cruel this legislature can be. And that is the law that they passed making the most drastic cuts to unemployment benefits in United States history.”

LIKE and SHARE on Facebook this powerful testimony by MaryBe McMillan.

Thanks to Ajamu Dillahunt for the recording.

Moral Monday continues June 17th

The 7th wave of Moral Monday will lift up HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE!

What: Moral Monday 7
When: 5:00 PM June 17, 2013
Where: Halifax Mall behind NC General Assembly

For those who choose to petition the legislature through nonviolent civil disobedience, based on their own moral conscience, it is CRITICAL that you attend a briefing and information session beforehand at 3:00 pm.

Info session – Christian Faith Baptist Church – 3:00 PM (509 Hilltop Drive, Raleigh, NC)

Everyone else please meet us at Halifax Mall!

RSVP for Moral Monday 7 on Facebook.

Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC, AFL-CIO) is renewing it’s campaign at a Kangaroo-Pantry store in Raleigh. Kangaroo is based out of nearby Cary, NC.

The strategy is to hold actions every 3rd Wednesday this summer, beginning next week on June 19th.

Farmworker supporters will rally at 5:30 pm at the Kangaroo store at 4202 Wake Forest Rd to urge Kangaroo to increase the urgency of its message to Reynolds American that Reynolds must improve tobacco farmworkers’ living and working conditions.

What: Demand that Kangaroo convey consumer concerns to Reynolds
When: June 19th, July 17th, and August 21st
Where: 4202 Wake Forest Rd, Raleigh, NC 27609

Download the Kangaroo monthly action flyer and share it within your network.

Connecting the dots from Kangaroo back to Reynolds

Kangaroo, is the largest convenience store chain in the Southeast.

Over 30% of all Kangaroo sales come from tobacco products. McLane Co., Inc. is Reynolds largest customer and the largest distributor of tobacco products for Kangaroo.

Consumers have delivered thousands of letters to Kangaroo stores and to their headquarters over the past year, asking the company to respond to their concerns about conditions in NC tobacco fields.

But letters from community organizations and students groups have gone unanswered, and Kangaroo has yet to commit to visit the fields to see the conditions first hand.

Stand with farmworkers and demand that Kangaroo convey consumer concerns to Reynolds until there is a signed agreement with FLOC guaranteeing freedom of association to all farm-workers in their supply chain!

Today is the last day to pre-register for a guaranteed slot in Carolina Labor School’s class of 2013.

Didn’t get your registration in on time? Fear not!

We will continue accepting registrations on a first-come-first-seated basis until the class is full. BUT we only have a limited number of seats remaining, so don’t delay!

Read the call letter for more information about Labor School and check out the flyer. Download the and complete the registration form, and send it in with payment for tuition and fees, today!

Instead of calling on leaders of his party who reign supreme in the state legislature to actually do something to keep Federal Extended Unemployment Compensation from prematurely running out July 1, Governor McCrory has issued a talking points memo for lawmakers – specifically for their legislative aides who will be the ones to answer the phone when outraged constituents, many unaware that they will be cut off, call demanding answers of their own.

These questions deserve honest answers, not political spin:

Why did Republicans legislators vote down every amendment offered by Democrats to change the bill that cut state unemployment benefits to less than 26 weeks, violating federal law and thereby jeopardizing federal EUC?

Why did Gov. Pat McCrory sign into law a bill he knew would cost North Carolina jobless workers and our economy $780 million in EUC, already paid for by the federal government?

Why have both Republicans in the state legislature and their leader in the Governor’s mansion so far refused to move bills that would delay the effective date of their cruel cuts to January 1 to spare the needless loss of federal EUC?

Gov. McCrory’s memo doesn’t answer those questions, the News & Observer says in its political blog, Under the Dome:

The memo, reviewed by Dome, are designed to guide legislative assistants through questions asked by callers, particularly those who are losing benefits. “Losing benefits will greatly impact those who are unemployed,” it reads. “The best thing we can all do is show care and compassion, give accurate information and … then connect them to a local workforce office to find work.”

While not overtly political, the memo from the Division of Employment Security downplays why benefits are being cut off.

If Gov. McCrory really wanted to show compassion, he would be on Jones Street demanding lawmakers delay implementation of their unemployment cuts until after December 31, the end date Congress put on federal EUC.

“This is about open-government and accountability,” said Sen. Martin Nesbitt, a Democrat who opposed the state unemployment benefit cuts and tried to have them delayed, to the News & Observer. “If you supported a bill that’s unpopular, you should admit it, not hide from it.”

Unfortunately for the 70,000 workers unemployed in North Carolina who will no longer be eligible for federal EUC come July 1, that the bullies are now running for cover and hiding behind political spin won’t help put food on the table, keep a roof overhead, or hold onto a car to keep searching for work.

Unfortunately for all of us, the people who now run North Carolina – from the Governor to the Republican leadership in the General Assembly – are under the mistaken belief that state government is a business and is in the business of serving the business lobby.

Indeed, the scheme to cut unemployment benefits in the first place was hatched by the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce to make jobless workers pay the price for a debt created by a recession and decades of unemployment tax cuts for employers.

Therein lies the problem, said the Fayetteville Observer in an editorial this week:

North Carolina’s action isn’t a bad business decision. There’s plenty of precedent – corporations do it all the time. When there’s an onerous debt on the books and it’s preventing a proper profit, you tighten the corporate belt and clear the books, so you can get back to the company business without nettlesome distractions.

And that’s where the state’s elected leaders went wrong. North Carolina is not a corporation. Government is not a business. And the state’s social safety nets aren’t in place to enhance profit. Government is created to serve the people. And social safety nets are created for times like these, when a stubborn unemployment rate and sluggish job creation keep hundreds of thousands of workers from getting a regular paycheck.

When July 1 rolls around, the damage will extend well beyond the jobless recipients of federal benefits. As a weekend story in The Charlotte Observer pointed out, the lost federal money will remove about $780 million from the state’s economy. James Andrews, president of the state AFL-CIO, told the paper that, “When folks get their unemployment check, they don’t invest it overseas or stash it in a bank. They spend it right away.”

President Andrews is talking about folks like Brian Springs, whom The Charlotte Observer interviewed for its story.

Brian Springs, 46, said he has been collecting unemployment while looking for jobs since last fall, when his contract in a training and development position with a bank ended. He’s searched for work since then, without luck. He said the news that his extended unemployment benefits will end in four weeks – which he found out when he logged into the ESC’s website – took him by surprise.

“I’m frustrated with the way it was handled. I was thinking I was good, and all of a sudden I’ve got one month left,” said Springs, who lives in Charlotte. “I’m scrambling around trying to figure out what I’m going to do. No one said, ‘Hey, this is going to happen.’”

Losing the benefits will hurt, said Springs. “No one lives off it. You just survive off it.” [emphasis added]

Countdown Clock

Time is running out for Gov. McCrory, House Speaker Thom Tillis, and Senate President Pro-Tem Phil Berger to act and keep North Carolina from plunging over the Unemployment Cliff.

Counting down to the Unemployment Cliff

We need tax reform.

We need to make sure big, out-of-state corporations pay North Carolina taxes on North Carolina profits, just like our homegrown businesses pay.

We need to make sure the working poor and middle class do not pay a higher share of their incomes in taxes than North Carolina’s richest families.

We need to close loopholes and end tax giveaways that enrich a privileged and powerful few at the expense of our schools, our health, investments in our future, and everyone else’s pursuit of happiness.

The Republican leaders who control our state legislature have a different idea about what constitutes tax “reform”. In both the state house and state senate, plans are moving forward that would do away with North Carolina’s progressive income tax rate – thereby cutting taxes more for the rich and for corporations than for the rest – and would expand sales taxes to include more goods and services.

One proposal in the North Carolina Senate would even tax your groceries, your prescription drugs (as if they didn’t cost you enough already), car repair, and even Social Security benefits.

How much more in taxes are you willing to pay so that a privileged and powerful few with a state legislature doing their bidding can pay less?

What are you willing to sacrifice for this Robin Hood in Reverse?

Call 1-800-464-2537 to be connected to your legislators and tell them that you want tax reform that is fair for all and does not tax essential programs and services.

Text or email pics of your grocery list or grocery bill with one sentence about what increased taxes on food would mean for your family. Text your receipts to 919-323-6179 OR email them to Beth@MomsRising.org.

Sign the petition to tell lawmakers we don’t support tax cuts for the wealthy paid for by a tax increase on everyday working families!

Act now because these plans are being debated by your elected representatives, now. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

About 1,600 protesters from across North Carolina rallied outside the state legislative building last Monday, June 3rd for the fifth and largest yet weekly gathering of people opposed to the regressive and resentful policies coming out of our state legislature.

Among those present were over 150 individuals of good conscience – representing a cross-section of North Carolina – who chose civil disobedience and arrest to make their point that Republicans in the current General Assembly are ignoring their constitutional duty to govern for the good of the whole and instead choosing to enact extreme and immoral laws.

In calling on GOP lawmakers to heed Moral Monday protesters in and editorial this week, the News & Observer offered several examples of why protests and arrests are building:

GOP lawmakers have charged on with an agenda that has laid waste to constructive policies, cut unemployment benefits at a time when that will hurt the state’s economy and its people, passed on expanding Medicaid care for lower-income families, cut public education, moved toward giving public money to private schools through vouchers and embraced a Voter ID law to curb potential Democratic votes. One Republican even moved toward establishing a state religion.

Watch a powerful video recap of the Moral Monday 5th wave:

From the video’s description:

Its extreme and immoral to make laws that make it harder for some to vote and impossible for others.

Its extreme and immoral in a state with 1.6 million poor and 600,000 children to callously cut Medicaid for more than 500,000 people, many of them disabled children.

Its extreme and immoral to raise taxes on 900,000 poor and working class citizens in order to cut taxes for the 23 wealthiest families and to propose tax restructuring that raises taxes on poor and working people and undermines the governments ability to invest fully in public education infrastructure and protection of our environment through green economy.

Its extreme and immoral to end unemployment benefits for 165,000 people who have lost jobs through no fault of their own.

Its extreme and immoral to eliminate preschool for more than 30,000 poor children. And further defund public education and promote charter school and private school voucher programs that will deconstruct and re-segregate our schools.

As Rev. William Barber, president of the NC NAACP, explains in the video, anyone asking him or other Moral Monday protesters when they will stop is asking the wrong question:

“Don’t ask us when we’ll stop. Ask [Thom] Tillis and [Phil] Berger and the man in the Governor’s mansion, ‘When will they stop?’

When will they stop hurting children?

When will they stop hurting the sick?

When will they stop hurting our public schools?

When will they stop hurting our economics?

Because if they stop, we’ll stop. But we can’t stop as long as people are getting hurt.

Those who died to make this country free, they didn’t stop. And so we’re gonna walk forward together as long as there’s strength in our body and hope in our spirit.”

Learn more and RSVP on Facebook for the 6th wave of Moral Mondays on June 10th.

Download they flyer for Moral Monday, June 10, 2013.

Federally paid extended unemployment compensation will end on July 1 because of changes made to North Carolina’s unemployment insurance system by state lawmakers earlier this year. Seventy-thousand jobless workers will be affected immediately, but the federal Labor Department estimates some 170,000 people in all will have lost access to these crucial benefits through the end of 2013.

State lawmakers had a chance to postpone the effective date of their cuts to unemployment benefits by advancing a bill before a legislative deadline two weeks ago. Republican leaders, who control the state legislature, opted not to bring the bill up for a vote, a failure we and the NC Justice Center blasted as taking ”an extremist policy position, one that no other state has taken, and all at the expense of struggling workers, their families and the state’s economy.”

NC Policy Watch reports that the agency responsible for implementing the cuts and running our state’s unemployment insurance program, the NC Division of Employment Security, has only just begun to let know people who will be affected when North Carolina hits the unemployment cliff on July 1.

“We’re really desperate as to what’s going on here,” said JoAnn Loggins, of Morganton, who learned about the cut-off through a friend. “If they cut off unemployment, I’m going to be devastated; I’m going to be homeless.”

Loggins, 69, cares for her mentally disabled granddaughter and has been without a job since February when she was laid off from her position handling billing for a trucking company.

The changes are a result of a far-reaching law passed and signed this February to repay money North Carolina borrowed during the recession and restructure the state’s unemployment system. The new law caps weekly benefits at $350, down from the current $535, and limits the length of unemployment to a sliding scale of 13 to 20 weeks of unemployment, down from six months, when the unemployment rate is above 9 percent.

It will drop to between 12 to 19 weeks of benefits when the unemployment rate is between 8.5 and 9 percent, as it is now.

The state’s seasonably adjusted unemployed rate for April was 8.9 percent, the lowest it’s been since January 2009 but still the fifth-highest in the nation, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The stubbornly high unemployment rate comes as no surprise to Loggins, the unemployed worker from Morganton. With 25 years in the trucking industry, she’s sent out resumes and attended job retraining classes but hasn’t been able to find replacement work. She suspects employers overlook her because of her age.

“Why would you hire someone that should already be retired?,” she said. “But I still need to work and I can learn anything.”

Read the rest of the story, “Benefits running out for 70,000 jobless”.

Today, representatives of the state AFL-CIO met directly with Senator Kay Hagan to deliver letters from her constituents who say now is the time for immigration reform and that her vote is key to unlocking the way. North Carolina’s unions, along with a broad coalition of other groups, are stepping up their efforts to empower pro-reform activists to lobby Senator Hagan to create a commonsense immigration process that protects workers’ rights and offers a broad roadmap to citizenship.

Make the call 1-888-714-8759 to tell Kay we’re counting on her.

“How we treat New Americans reflects our commitment to the values that define us as Americans, including rewarding hard work and having the freedom to move and raise a family in the land of opportunity,” says North Carolina State AFL-CIO president, James Andrews. “Kay Hagan’s role in giving Americans an immigration process we deserve is pivotal.”

Spreading the message that “Kay is Key” to comprehensive immigration reform is the focus of print ads published Wednesday and Thursday in alternative weekly newspapers in the Triangle, the Triad, Asheville, and Charlotte. The ads ask readers who support common sense reform to call Sen. Hagan at 1-888-714-8759.

Click here to see our ad.

Labor’s lobbying efforts continue with public radio sponsorships next week, and the campaign is now online at KayisKeyNC.com. From the website, people can send Kay Hagan a message, click to call her office, and share the campaign on Facebook and Twitter – including photos of them, expressing why they think comprehensive immigration reform is so important. “Kay is Key” is also mobile, allowing people to lobby their Senator by texting ‘KEY’ to 235246.

The toll-free hotline, the text messaging, KayisKeyNC.com, and promoting the campaign online, in print, and on the radio is an effort by North Carolina’s unions to seize the opportunity, which bipartisan legislation in the U.S. Senate provides, to finally deliver workable and humane reform this year.

Text ‘KEY’ to 235246 to lobby Kay for commonsense reform.

“We are committed to fighting for all working Americans,” says state AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, MaryBe McMillan. “Being American is not about what you like or where you were born, and that’s why New Americans who work hard and are committed to this country should be able to attain citizenship.”

Creating a commonsense immigration process is good for all workers, not just for aspiring citizens and their families.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates three years of reform would generate an additional $1.5 trillion to the economy over 10 years. Furthermore, according to “Raising the Floor for American Workers”, the Center for American Progress reports that the higher earning power of aspiring citizens in just the first three years of reform with a roadmap to citizenship would generate up to $36 billion in net income growth, and with it, enough to consumer demand to support 750,000 to 900,000 jobs.

Growing the economy and creating jobs, raising all wages by ending the exploitation of immigrant workers, and removing the fear of employer retaliation for reporting wage theft and workplace safety violations are just a few reasons why workers will win with reform.

Plus, inclusive reform that values dignity, fairness, justice, and opportunity is the right thing to do. “Kay is Key” is about encouraging North Carolinians who share these values to reach out to their Senator so that Kay Hagan might do the right thing, too.

Visit KayisKeyNC.com to send a message to Kay Hagan.