Today the trust fund that pays unemployment benefits has over $3 BILLION in assets – more than enough cushion to warrant changing the law by reversing the takeaways of 2013 and giving working people who fall on hard times a fair shake.
Describing himself as someone who always voted Republican, laid-off UAW member Jon Greene of Mocksville told the Salisbury Post that Gov. McCrory’s unemployment changes and “shady politics have completely changed the way I vote.”
In the second installment of our video series on issues that’ll be important to working people when the NCGA reconvenes, our general counsel offers one way it could begin to restore fairness after years of unemployment benefit cuts.
Instead of reversing any of their cruel cuts to jobless benefits made back in 2013 – cuts that now provide workers laid off through no fault of their own with just 12 weeks of coverage, down from 26, and pay at best just $350/week – the folks running our state plan to make it harder for workers to get any assistance while giving employer another tax cut.
The Daily Show’s takedown Thursday night of Fox News’ crusade against unemployment benefits is not-to-be-missed.
Download the two-page guide to know your rights about unemployment insurance in North Carolina
Tell newspaper readers in your area that state leaders can still save jobless workers a world of hurt!
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.
When the 2013 Labor Legislative Conference (LLC) convened in Raleigh on Tuesday, participants learned the outlook at the start of the new biennium of the North Carolina General Assembly for working people, consumers, the environment, clean elections advocates, and many other constituencies is grim, indeed.
We interviewed six North Carolinians to record their stories of life on unemployment. They told us a powerful story that should give pause to any lawmakers now pushing deep benefit cuts. May they be heard.
If Governor McCrory is going to put the brakes on a plan that would harm not only inflict permanent pain on jobless workers but threaten our state’s economic recovery, now is the time for him to speak up.
The Raleigh News & Observer has accused Republican state lawmakers of treating jobless workers “more as enemies than victims,” calling, in a recent editorial, their proposal to enact devastating cuts to our state’s unemployment insurance system “petty, hurtful and unnecessary.”
If a proposal by the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, adopted by Republican leaders in our state legislature, to dramatically cut our state’s unemployment benefits system becomes law, rural counties with unemployment rates almost double the state average will take the biggest economic hit.
Republican lawmakers have revealed a plan, negotiated in secret with the Chamber of Commerce, to let employers off the hook for $2.5 billion in unemployment insurance debt by making jobless workers pay instead.
Our forebears discovered that unemployment insurance holds up consumer demand, hence businesses, in a faltering economy. It’s worked for almost 80 years. With economic recovery underway but still precarious, now is not the time to ignore the hard-earned wisdom of history.
