[img_assist|nid=60188|title=Great Depression attitudes return|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=269|height=156]Another outrage: Many businesses that have now ever so gradually begun to hire again have also begun including a proviso that anybody they hire already has to have a job or will not be considered. Yes, if you're unemployed, for any reason whatsoever, you are in their minds defective.
Republicans in Wisconsin and nationally are loathe to extend unemployment benefits although millions of Americans have been without jobs for one and in some cases two years. So loathe that more than a year ago they forced President Obama and Democratic lawmakers into extending tax cuts for the rich in exchange for a few extra weeks of extended unemployment benefits. Scott Walker and some state GOP lawmakers have actually opined that unemployment benefits (which workers helped pay for) only serve as a disincentive to finding work. Never mind that a couple of hundred bucks a week are unlikely to turn you from industrious to lazy.
It's not bad enough that some politicians think unemployed people are unproductive drones, or that businesses won't hire or fairly treat women, or minorities, or even the 65 million Americans who have criminal records. Now, if you're unemployed, they're determined to do their part to keep you that way. Yet conservative exhortations continue: Get a job! It's totally hypocritical and contradictory.
The good news is that progressives are not going to let this go on without a fight. From unemployedworkers.org:
Efforts to expose the practice of excluding job applicants from consideration based solely on their being unemployed got a major boost yesterday. Representatives Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Hank Johnson of Georgia introduced the Fair Employment Opportunity Act of 2011 in the U.S. House of Representatives -- legislation that would ban discrimination against unemployed workers in hiring and help end the perverse catch-22 that requires workers to have jobs in order to get jobs.
The new legislation coincides with the release of a new report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) showing that employers and staffing firms continue to expressly deny job opportunities to job-seekers who are unemployed. The report documents numerous recent online job postings specifying that job-seekers "must be currently employed."
More at the URL below.