Today, February 6, 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published an update on the official unemployment rate in the United States.[i] Despite the many moves to bailout multi-billion dollar corporations, many banks have still shown fear from giving large loans, and the U.S. economy appears to be grinding to a slow and unproductive pace, laying off, cutting back, and firing millions of workers. This can be seen in today’s (February 6, 2009) published BLS report on unemployment in January 2009: “the unemployment rate rose from 7.2% to 7.6% percent. Payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007; about one-half of this decline occurred in the past 3 months. In January, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major industry sectors.”[ii]
These are issues that are effecting all working people, not just those unable to work. “The percentage of total employment made up of involuntary part-time workers increased by 2.4 percentage points to 5.1 percent over the same [April 2006-November 2008] period,”
[iii] reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This means working people are struggling to maintain full-time jobs with benefits, vacation, and other advantages. This desperation among workers is not only demonstrated in the increase of “involuntary part-time workers”; but as unemployment goes up, it makes the labor force that much less secure, more willing to do anything to keep their jobs, and more willing to accept a low-paying job. In other words, the recent increase in unemployment threatens the security of all our wages.
Consider this with the problem that St. Louis has had a consistently higher unemployment rate, than the rest of the U.S. in the recent economic crisis.
[iv] Although, St. Louisians are desperate for work more than ever before, we cannot seem to find it. And unless we address these problems, we can expect to see more theft, drugs, violence, crime, and incarceration, along with the direct economic effects of less job security, thus lower wages. This high unemployment is occurring at the same time as Exxon Mobil’s newest world record for profits, which broke their world record that was set last year (2007); Exxon Mobil finished off 2008 with $45 billion of profits!
[v]
In 2007 we saw the first increase in union membership nationally in decades, and 2008 was a repeat. “In 2008, union members accounted for 12.4 percent of employed wage and salary workers, up from 12.1 percent a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.”
[vi] This increase in union membership is a result of the strategies of unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which has been organizing unskilled workers in the service sector. The current economic crisis poses an impending question of how working people will get by, and this increase in unionization poses an answer to this question of crisis. These different interests may not make corporate aristocrats like those at the top of Exxon Mobil, but McCowan has made very clear his labor principles.
While Mayor Francis Slay has broken countless promises to City employees and unions in St. Louis, Elston K. McCowan has been a social justice activist, community organizer, labor organizer, and democratically elected union official for decades. Currently, he is Public Service Director of SEIU, Local 2000. He knows working people’s struggle, and has committed himself to stand by the principles of working people’s struggle. Because the right to free association and assembly is such a fundamental element of democracy, McCowan thinks it is only logical that workers are allowed to freely organize and collectively bargain without fear and intimidation by employers. The General Accounting Office classifies such violations of labor law (intimidation or outright preventing workers from freely associating with a union) as “sweatshops,” and Elston McCowan and the Green Party of St. Louis share that perspective.
[vii]
He is also a Executive Board Member of the Walbridge Community Education Center, where he has recently helped develop a Certified Nurses Aid job-training program. The Yeatman CEC has similarly developed a Certified Med-Tech Aid. McCowan has said,
As an Executive Board Member at Walbridge CEC, I can say that we are piloting a program for toxic waste in our community, we have gotten in touch with the City’s Health Department to schedule lead testing for all of the children under the age of 6 years old. I am on a committee that is looking for a way to train (i.e., Heating & Cooling Technician, Custodial and/or Food Services, etc.) young people in the neighborhood for jobs.
Rebecca Rogers stated at the
“Rebuilding St. Louis Public Schools” panel discussion that she agrees with Elston McCowan, in thinking that these job training and employment locating programs could be better run if linked up with the SLPS. “These trainings are attracting youth between the ages of 18 to 25,” which only further demonstrates the need to implement the
Economics Platform of the Green Party of St. Louis (of which Elston McCowan agrees).
The Green Party of St. Louis and Rev. Elston K. McCowan say we need a “City Works” program that will have full employment as its goal, by networking people looking for work with vacancies and future projects in both the private and public sector. City Works would only comply with private businesses willing to comply with the City Works labor policies, which requires strict adherence to workers’ rights to freely associate and assemble, as well as “provide a living wage to all its employees with benefits, in accordance with the Living Wage Ordinance.”
[viii] We also demand the need for Hiring and Training Facilities
that will be connected with the City schools, adult literacy and other education programs to serve the needs of young people and the rest of the St. Louis community in obtaining secure, well-paying jobs in the City.
These H&T Facilities will be used to lessen the economic divide in St. Louis by having new hiring based upon those neighborhoods with the highest unemployment rate, and training based on those neighborhoods with the lowest graduation rate and lowest median income.
[ix]
These H&T Facilities can then be linked up with an improved version of Jobs for Missouri Graduates, specifically engineered to help rebuild St. Louis: Youth Careers. Youth Careers would
allow students to shadow potential careers in which they are interested. This encourages students to establish skills, experience, training, and future job security, even if they decide to not attend college. Youth Careers will be focused on schools where the dropout rate is high and on neighborhoods where unemployment is well above the average. The objective is to provide students who typically do not go on to college with the incentives to acquire skills that lead to job security and an upward career path.
This would help protect all workers wage stability and overall job security, as well as help lessen the immense economic divide throughout the City that has made St. Louis such a segregated, dangerous City.
[i] It is important to remember that the unemployment rate is only those people, 16 years of age or older, and can prove that they have been actively searching for work in the past 4 weeks. “Unemployment” does not mean everyone who does not have a job. In relation to everyone who does not work for wages, the BLS has stated, “The employment-population ratio, which is the proportion of the working-age population that is employed, trended down from a recent peak of 63.4 percent in December 2006 to 61.4 percent in November 2008” (“Involuntary Part-time Work on the Rise,”
Issues on the Rise, US BLS, US Dept. of Labor, Summary 08-08/ December 2008, 1).
[ii] The Employment Situation: January 2009, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Economic News Release: Employment Situation Summary, USDL 09-0117, 6 February 2009,
[iii] “Involuntary Part-time Work on the Rise,”
Issues on the Rise, US BLS, US Dept. of Labor, Summary 08-08/ December 2008, 1.
[iv] For example, in November 2008, the national unemployment rate was 6.5%; the St. Louis unemployment rate was 7.3%. (See “Metropolitan Employment and Unemployment: November 2008,” Economic News Release, US BLS, USDL 09-03,
[v] Steven Mufson, “Exxon Roars to Record in Oil Slump,”
Washington Post, 31 January 2009,
[vi] Union Members in 2008, Union Members Summary, Wed., 28 January 2009 (10:00 a.m.), US BLS, USDL 09-0095,
[vii] “We define a sweatshop as an employer that violates more than one federal or state labor law governing minimum wage and overtime, child labor, industrial homework, occupational safety and health, workers’ compensation, or industry registration.” See General Accounting Office, “Garment Industry: Efforts to Address the Prevalence and Conditions of Sweatshops,” 2 November 1994, GAO/HEHS-95-29,
[viii] Economics Platform, McCowan for Mayor, 21 January 2009,
[ix] Economics Platform, McCowan for Mayor, 21 January 2009,
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