Yesterday I wrote a diary, based on this linked article, detailing the failure of the State of Wisconsin Democratic Republic of Fitzwalkerstan to renew unemployment benefits. Today, I am going to bring a personal side to the story. The story of friends of mine...who are unemployed.
More below the fold...
I have known Dean since high school. We lost touch for a few years post high school but as time went we reconnected. We have laughed and cried together, we have vacationed together. In high school, if it had not been for a dead battery, we probably would have been expelled together if the homemade pyrotechnics we had planned on using during our performance of Iron Maiden's Flight of Icarus during the school's annual airband competition had gone off. Dean is a husband and father. He has two children, one seventeen and the other three and a half.
After high school Dean went to work for a local screen printer. He was there twenty-six years. In Dean's words, he worked his butt off for that company. He not only worked his butt off, he also sacrificed his body and family time. Numerous times he could not make it an outing because of overtime. Last year he had to have surgery on his neck because of the damage the job had done to his body.
The company he worked for was sold - and earlier this year, after the State of Wisconsin (The ransom demands were prior to Walker) refused the company's ransom demands...the company decided to move to another state. Dean received three weeks of severance pay. Three weeks of severance for twenty-six years of service - more of an insult than anything else.
After Dean was let go he went back to school to get a certificate from the local technical college so that he could show potential employers that he is proficient in using office software.
Dean is now on week seventeen or eighteen of unemployment. He is desperate for work...but when he applies he is told that he has the wrong certificate from school, or that he needs an associates or bachelors degree even for the most menial jobs...even a job as a security guard requires a degree these days.
Representative Robin Vos (R - Burlington) thinks that unemployment benefits keep people from applying for low wage jobs. This is obviously a person who has never been unemployed and has never had to live one paycheck away from disaster. Even if Dean could find a low wage job to take his wages would be eaten up by childcare costs. His other option would be to take a job at a different shift from his wife...but then he would be watching his child when he is supposed to be sleeping.
In talking to Dean I asked him how he felt about Rep. Vos' comments. He said it made him feel like he was lazy. Dean is anything but lazy. I think the twenty-six years he put in with one company proved that.
The other person is my friend Bill. Bill is a union journeyman electrician. Some of the irony of this is Bill was one of the electricians that worked on the State Capitol when it was refurbished. He is about to run out of unemployment benefits. So far he has lost more than just his job, he lost his marriage as well. Bill had gone back to school to work on college transfer credits so that he could get his Bachelors degree. Bill is out of money and nearing the end of unemployment. He can fall back on driving cab...but that really is not enough. Yes, it will put food on the table and will put a roof over his head...but it does not help with tuition nor does it help with retirement savings.
Yes, these are the people the Republicans seem to think are lazy...or that won't take low wage jobs if they are available. The problem is low wage jobs don't solve the problem. If you cannot afford childcare on a low wage job then what is the point of taking it? Now if the Republicans would raise the minimum wage to a living wage...then maybe they could realistically talk about this. But, they are against that as well. This all just a part of the race to the bottom.
8:50 AM PT: I need to make a correction. Dean only worked for the the company that laid him off for thirteen years. He worked for a different screen printer for 10 years and another one for three years - for 26 years total in the industry.