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Benefit Cuts Spur Unemployment Battles

By VVAW

In recent years lines of unemployed have reappeared on the American scene. Any Monday morning will find a couple hundred people standing in line at an unemployment office in Chicago, and the picture varies only in terms of the day and the method of the state in dealing with the unemployed in other places around the country. Any time a rumor floats around that a place is hiring, there will be hundreds or even thousands outside the employment office door. With the unemployment rate for younger vets at 18%, many vets have come straight from the chow lines into the unemployment lines. No jobs mean no money and no money means--well, it means getting pushed into the dirt one more time.

The big shots in this country are no help. Hell, it's the rich owners of these companies who lay us off in the first place, and it doesn't make any difference whether they're challenged by foreign imports or whether they export everything. And their politicians are no better. All they come up with are things like the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment bill and Carter's workforce program. These are nothing but ways they're attempting to reduce wages.

Under the Humphrey-Hawkins bill, a worker making, say $6 per hour, gets laid off and some unemployed worker might get his job at $3.25 an hour. Under the workfare program, if you make $6 an hours, get laid off and then refuse to accept a job at $2.65 an hour, you would lose your unemployment benefits and end up with nothing. Besides that, they've already reduced the number of weeks that benefits can be collected from 65 to 39 or 26 (depending on what state you live in).

Unemployment compensation didn't fall out of the sky. Back in the thirties, hundreds of thousands of workers took to the streets and fought and demonstrated to win compensation. And now that the rich are trying to steal it back, the unemployed are again rising up. Led by the Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee (UWOC) and joined by the newly formed National United Workers Organization, there will be a huge demonstration in Washington, DC when Carter gives his "State of the Union" address in January. Workers, both employed and unemployed will be demanding:

UNION JOBS AT UNION WAGES!
STOP ATTACKS ON UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCES!

VVAW urges vets to join in with the veterans contingent--On to Washington!