Gawker's Hamilton Nolan is collecting
first-hand stories of unemployment in a must-follow series. A veteran writes:
I also have to put down my medical history and my disability claims to justify my preferred hiring status (as a disabled vet). You can't tell me that they don't compare disabilities between candidates to determine which one is less likely to be annoying to deal with (I get seizures).
I find when dealing with civilians, I can't translate my experience very well. I also am not allowed to talk about what I did both with the Navy and the Army with any detail. I'm also 31. Its apparent in interviews when I am trying to land an entry level position. Add in that I don't have the experience with computers that most kids do (all the stuff I did in the Navy is analog and the Army job was just SQL).
A woman who has been lucky (her word) enough to get a good job after a year of unemployment writes:
I will say this: I have learned first hand how low income or hourly wage workers are made to feel on a regular basis. I am a white woman in her early 40s, went to Georgetown Law and own my own home, but none of that mattered last year. I could have been anyone in the grocery store trying to make her last $20 bill feed 3 kids for the next 5 days until her unemployment check arrived (which would be gone within hours - no joke). I was made to feel like absolute garbage when bringing my kids to their checkup and using AllKids coverage.
There's much more, including stories from someone about to run out of unemployment benefits, a woman with a restraining order against her ex-husband, and a 61 year old woman who thinks her age is a factor in her continuing unemployment.
A fair day's wage
- Recycle and yard waste drivers in the Seattle area are on strike against Waste Management and have filed unfair labor practices complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that the company has been bargaining in bad faith, retaliating against drivers for their union activities, and more.
- Unionized charter school teachers in New York are still fighting for a contract after two years.
State and local legislation
- Oh, this is fantastic. Last year, the New Jersey legislature effectively cut the pay of state workers by raising their required contributions to health care and pensions. Now, the state Supreme Court has said that judges are exempt from those increased contributions, since it is effectively a pay cut and the state Constitution says sitting judges can't have their pay cut. And judges get to make that call for themselves, unlike janitors and teachers.
- Pennsylvania's Republican governor and legislators keep wanting to add charter schools, even though the ones they have are insanely corrupt. Most recently, five charter school executives were charged by federal prosecutors with 62 counts including wire fraud, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering, related to their defrauding three charter schools of $6.5 million in public money.
Miscellaneous
- On Tuesday, it was three years since the last time the minimum wage went up. Jon Soltz explains why a minimum wage increase would be important to veterans, and Bryce Covert looks at why it would be important to women.
- The 401(k)-style, defined contribution retirement system has America on course for a major problem with elder poverty. Teresa Ghilarducci lays out some hard facts: You need to retire with 20 times your annual income saved, but 75 percent of Americans nearing retirement age in 2010 had less than $30,000. That means that "Almost half of middle-class workers, 49 percent, will be poor or near poor in retirement, living on a food budget of about $5 a day."
- And this drought means that $5 won't go very far starting real soon. What food prices will go up because of the drought?