What gonzo said.
Is it me or is there a spate of posts in favour of involuntary servitude recently?
It’s dangerous to compare countries when the system of government, societal cultures and basic work ethics, among others, are vastly different.
I believe it has to be a somewhat equivalent position to a person’s previous. A 50 year old electrical engineer laid off from GE doesn’t have to take orders dressed as a chicken at the local fast food joint. (I think. I hope)
To offer slight support in favor of the OP, his idea sounds similar to the WPA that was instituted by Roosevelt during the Depression to build infrastructure. Basically Obama’s stimulus on steroids. But that clearly wouldn’t go anywhere in today’s congress. Re-instituting slavery and indentured servitude for the lower classes might pass though.
And then these unemployed would be kept so busy working for their little stipend to survive on, that they will never, ever, be able to regain meaningful jobs but be forever indentured to their new masters.
Best idea I’ve ever heard for elimination of the remaining remnants of the middle class.
Last time I was on unemployment it was ZERO. If you turned down a job offer, ANY job offer, you no longer would receive unemployment.
Likewise, in the “welfare” system, you are required to look for work, and not allowed to refuse ANY job offered to you.
In my state 50% of what you earn while on unemployment is deducted from your benefit - so it really is to your advantage to get some work of some sort while on it, but you won’t get dumped until you’re earning 150% of what unemployment gives you. Given that, when I was on unemployment, I was getting something like 40% of my former salary this doesn’t strike me as outrageous. A job comparable to my prior one would have more than twice what I was getting on unemployment.
Yeah. I wasn’t even getting interviews for jobs like that until I STOPPED putting my college degree on my resume…
You left out the most important part of this practice. It was mainly used as a method of controlling black labor.
I(n Michigan ,a few years ago, you did not have to take just any job. You were allowed to look for jobs in your field until unemployment expired. Then when the extension came in, you had to take anything offered.
I’m a lawyer dealing primarily with unemployment benefits.
This is how it works in every state in the union. Or very slight variations on that rule. In order to collect unemployment you must be able to, available for, and actively seeking work. In most states, you must call the local unemployment office X times per week to “certify” that you’re still seeking work. In my state, you must keep a log of all work search efforts. If the local office examines your log and determines your work search isn’t earnest or thorough enough, you will be cut off.
In my state, it is zero. Declining a bona fide offer of work disqualifies you from all future benefits.
In my state, it needs only to be a bona fide offer of full-time work. Some judges will still grant benefits if the offer is too piddling, but such a case is pretty rare because most people who are trying to get unemployment had a previous job that was pretty piddling anyway. (“Most,” not “all.”)
To the OP – as others have pointed out, these jobs have to come from somewhere. If there is a job to be found, the claimant can do the job, and the claimant can get himself hired to do the job, then the claimant is ineligible for unemployment anyway by virtue of being employed.
I’ve thought of this as well, but I have slightly different ideas.
I wouldn’t allow any for profit company to take on such workers. Instead have people volunteer at places that need the help. There are plenty of schools that would love to have some extra hands doing things. Every Historical Society that I know of has years of work that needs to be done, they can’t afford to hire the people to do them.
Nor would I have people work more then 1-2 days a week, this way there is plenty of time to look for a job.
This would keep from having to let more people go since they need the people anyway. It would also give people new skills, even if it isn’t something useful in the type of job they are looking for it’s still a skill.
I’m sure there will be plenty of objections to this idea, but to have people say there is no work that could be done is just wrong, it may not be the jobs people want to do but they are there.
Ok, thanks to everyone who responded. It was late and I see now that I did a pretty poor job of formulating my plan. So, here’s a scenario that may or may not match the original post:
The place where I work currently has 232 open positions. Most have been open for several months (some for over a year). Two of those positions are “litter patrol” earning $11/hour. Just to make it easy, let’s say that there’s someone out there making $165/week on unemployment. When that person certifies their unemployment for the week, they could be presented with a list of jobs available that would include these litter patrol positions. If the person declines any of the jobs on the list, they don’t get their unemployment for that week.
But let’s say they do accept one of these litter patrol positions. That person could be required to do this job for 15 hours a week (165 / 11). Since this is a full-time position, potentially three people could be assigned to do this job. The message being, “You need a job. This job is available.” Since the terms of unemployment require that you accept any job offered to you, the person could not turn down that job without losing their unemployment benefits. If the person doesn’t like this job, or wants to keep looking for a better job that more closely matches their skill set, they could settle for the 15 hours and $165 per week, potentially leaving them with 25 hours a week to look for another job (providing for a standard 40-hour work week). If the person just wanted any job they could get, they could just accept this position and begin work full time, with benefits.
Or a simplified way to say it: instead of waiting for the people to look for jobs, we bring the jobs that are available to the people. Yes, it’s likely that after exhausting the supply of jobs there will still be many people who are unemployed. But at least then we could honestly say that there are, in fact, no jobs available.
It will be interesting to see if the financial pros Goldman is canning should be subjected to that treatment. They make 400 K plus. Do you think they can support themselves on a job like that? Should they be forced to take a minimum wage job ? Should they have to clean streets to earn unemployment?
They are special you know?
Very true. The CCC and WPA were two of the smartest things FDR ever did. The public is still enjoying the benefits of some of these projects. When the current administration came into office, I had hopes that this kind of program might be reinstated. Put people to work doing genuinely useful labor, building skills. Take care of some long-overdue maintenance and improvements on our public parks, forests, rangelands, commons. Construct necessary roads, trails, public buildings. Tackle streambank erosion and invasive species issues. Improve watersheds and viewscapes. It seemed like a winning play for everyone.
But no. As noted the current congress would rather be drawn and quartered than entertain such an idea. How dare the government hire people directly to do useful tasks? That’s socialism!! I can hear the screams of anguish from government contractors that consider it their god-given right to milk any and all government jobs by hiring minimum-wage temps with no benefits and raking in the profits. And this would actually work to the benefit of the public welfare and the environment…two items that are the equivelent of devil-worship in the minds[sic] of your average junior congressman/teabagger hero.
SS
Where the hell do you work? First, I find it odd that some company pays substantially above minimum wage for a litter patrol position. I also find it odd that so many position are open for so long. We’re pretty specialized, and when we had some positions open we got tons of applicants. Are these positions posted in the break room, or on job boards or on your web site? How many resumes have you received for them? How many people have been interviewed?
Or, are you posting from 1999, in which case my advice is “Sell!”
One flaw with this plan is that it essentially forces the employer to accept employees blindly. This is a problem because a significant percentage (let’s say more than 5%) of people on unemployment benefits are hopeless losers. Is your company really interested in hiring someone who will only show up to work long enough to steal whatever isn’t bolted down? The company would be forced to hire people like this if your plan were instituted.
However, under the current system, if your company contacted the local unemployment office with these jobs, they would start directing applicants to you. If your company screened these applicants, and offered some of them these jobs, and those applicants turned down those jobs, then they’re disqualified from benefits. So you could say that your proposed system is already partially in place.
Here’s my problem with this–of the proportion of people on unemployment, how many of them are in a situation where that would help them?
Case in point–if I were laid off today, my weekly would be closer to $600 than $165. Most of the people I know who are unemployed right now are closer to the median of those two numbers. Litter patrol isn’t very helpful to unemployed engineers.
That said, I agree with Voyager: where do you work? How much of a bitch is your hiring process? Is your company located in an active volcano or in the middle of a glacier, or some other market where the labor supply is absurdly below the average? I mean, I get well over three dozen applications for every open position, and I never have to advertise for more than two weeks.
Y’know, job hunting can be practically a full-time job by itself. By forcing the unemployed to work, one could be preventing them from finding meaningful employment in a timely fashion. Just sayin’.
That’s just an employment service. That is exactly what temp agencies and State unemployment agencies DO.
It may be dangerous but we do it all the time. Eg: health care, death penalty, gun control etc.