gallan is linking “volunteer” work to the unemployment benefits. If you opt not to volunteer, you don’t get the unemployment benefits.
I don’t pay an insurance premium every paycheck to get “you must take any job we throw at you, even if the salary and benefits are retardedly low for the job description.” Because, by the way, that’s what would happen–you’d see companies throwing “junior engineer” jobs for $10/hr out there.
That’s even allowing that your proposal is even coherent, which it’s really not. My paycheck has a specific line item for “Pennsylvania Unemployment Insurance”. I pay a monthly premium for UI that is about half that of my long-term disability insurance, and gives me significantly worse benefits (LTD gives me 65% of base salary as long as I’m not able to work in my field, UI gives me just about 37.5% of base salary for a few months and adds in a “look for jobs” requirement).
Unless AFLAC is some sort of administrative/overhead God, that’s about right, I think. Why are you trying to tack on more responsibilities to get the payout from insurance I’m already paying a premium for?
Not good enough - you see, your ideas and schemes DO concern me because, unlike a lot of people, I can envision myself being down on my luck. I don’t think the poor are “those people over there” and never have. If I, personally, would not like or would find intolerable the conditions of a social program how could I possibly justify imposing it on someone else?
What I find offensive is that you are over-generalizing about the unemployed and the poor - which is one of the reasons the current programs do don’t a very good job, they treat everyone the same even though people aren’t the same. What someone laid off after 20 years in the work force needs is very different from what someone who has never been in the workforce needs.
And then you start generalizing in your next post about how wonderful it would be to extract unpaid labor from the unemployed and how it would help them - not that it would help some, but implying a one-size-fits-all solution. If that was not your intention then your presentation was sloppy and careless.
Oh, please - that’s not the case at all.
Unemployment insurance is paid for by businesses AND WORKERS, right out of the employees’ paychecks. It normally lasts for 6 months and that’s it. Sometimes, such as during the current situation, they extend it but under no circumstances does it last longer than 99 weeks. Not ever.
Then you’re on to Public Aid, such as it exists. Adults get NO money anymore. None. All an adult can possibly get is foodstamps. Families with children can get cash… for the kids… for five years… and then that’s it. Oh, right, those long-term unemployed are livin’ it up! Maximum is $5 a day for food, and most get half that or less. No money at all - not even for toothpaste or soap. Yeah, you’re going to be REAL successful going to a job interview when you haven’t even got soap to wash with.
The current system is punitive towards the unemployed. I suppose the theory is that if you make unemployment unpleasant enough people will magically find a job even when job-seekers outnumber the actual jobs 50:1.
The money I received when on unemployment insurance was NOT “free money” - I paid into the system for several decades. It is already contingent on proof of actual job-seeking.
Do you want people looking for actually paying work, or do you want them providing no-cost labor to businesses? Seriously, which do you want? I want the unemployed to have actual paychecks, actual jobs. Looking for paying work is what they should be doing. If they choose to volunteer for something on top of 40 hours of job-seeking a week that is their choice. However, the focus should be on them finding paying work. That’s really what they need, and really what will benefit society most in the long run.
I consider a condition where everyone who wants to work has paying work to be the greatest good for the greatest number - and forcing people to work for no pay is an opposite of that.
Again, how does knowing someone else is worse off than me help me solve MY problems? How does it solve THEIR problems? If I can’t take care of myself how can I possibly take care of anyone else?
Quite frankly, while I’m open to actual volunteers to do that, I do NOT want someone forced to work for no pay driving one of my family to the hospital. It’s not just because I find coercion disgusting, though I do, it’s also because then I’d have to worry about someone resentful over the matter doing something stupid, or nothing bothering to show up, and so forth.
Oh, please - you are so eager to donate MY time and MY labor to someone else and give me NOTHING for it! Either you didn’t think that through at all, you think I do nothing all day, or you are actually malicious enough to pile on yet more obligations and duties to someone already quite busy. None of those three alternatives reflects well on you.
Sure, I could go to school - but during the time I had ZERO income, NONE, the only assistance offered to me were students loans. Oh, great - I have NO income whatsoever, but some bank is positively eager to sign me on to tens of thousands of dollars in debts, which I can’t ever discharge sort of death (unlike normal debt, which have the bankruptcy option if I can’t get a job after graduating), with the prospect of graduating into an economy where even people with experience in any given field are having trouble getting work - is this really a good idea? Or is it a way to wind up even worse off than I am right now? They’re laying off NURSES in my area, for Og’s sake, and when was the last time that happened? I thought there was supposed to be a shortage of them.
On top of that, the only “benefits” I could get while doing that would be foodstamps. That’s it: debt and foodstamps. This is help?
Then how on earth could you possibly think coercing the unemployed to work UNPAID on top of everything else is a good idea? What, did you not have enough to do with looking for work, selling stuff, and looking after your mom, you need to be forced into 8-16 hours a weeks of working for someone else with no return for you?
If they can’t get people to do the work for free here’s an idea: PAY SOMEONE TO DO IT.
Envision all you want, the problem is, it doesn’t exist.
Are you actually paying unemployment insurance? I was under the impression that it’s paid primarily by your employer, not the employees themselves. I have no such line item on my pay stub, and everything I’ve read on the subject suggests or specifically states that the employer pays a percentage of their payroll.
It’s right there on my pay stub, man, under PA SUI. I’m sure that my employer pays some part of it, as well (as they do with my other insurances).
I don’t know how it works in your state, but here employees pay 0.8% of their paycheck for UI, and the employer pays an unemployment tax on total payroll of between 2.677% to 10.8236% based on their performance.
That’s actually less, now that I look at it, than the contribution my employer is making towards my other insurances. By a large margin (but my employer does 90% employer, 10% employee because I work at a good company that actually seems to care about employees–for the same reason, our unemployment tax rate is at the bottom because we don’t fire people.)
Broomstick
I’m not going to participate in the “debate” any longer. You have no interest in debating the actual merits of a change to the status quo (which obviously isn’t working) and are instead insistent on personally attacking those who have a different viewpoint than yourself.
I’m all for lively debate, but quite honestly you’re not bringing anything to the table. All you’re saying is that people should be focused on “finding paying work” - but not offering any constructive ideas on how the system can be improved.
In your own post you point out that “job-seekers outnumber the actual jobs 50:1.” Something needs to change.
Good luck. I hope you find (or have found) a job with sufficient pay to support you and your family.
Don’t debate if you can’t handle the idea that someone might disagree with you, and do so with some passion. I think what you proposed was a terrible idea, and the manner in which you proposed it condescending.
How about:
- Training programs not restricted to those without degrees
- Educational opportunities that don’t leave students saddled with tens of thousands in debt
- Support for daycare for parents with dependent children who are strapped for cash but need to look for work.
- Advice on changing careers that goes beyond “well, what are you interested in? Here’s a brochure. I hope you can read.” It needs to cover where there is demand for people, upgrading skills, and real matching of aptitude to career path, not a half-hour (at best) multiple choice “personality quiz” and recycled platitudes.
- Not permitting employers to summarily eliminate the long term unemployed from consideration.
- Some way to short circuit racism, sexism, and ageism.
- More than one solution, in recognition that what a young person with children needs it different than what someone middle-aged and without children needs, that not everyone is suited either retail or a low-level office job.
- Much better coordination between employers looking for employees and employment offices.
- Revising, if not abolishing, HR practices in this country that work against the interest of both workers and employers.
I agree.
I don’t think forcing people to work for free is in any way an answer to the problem.
I was with you until you got to this. What exactly are you trying to say here? Because it sounds like you’re saying that there is a class of people who shouldn’t be required to take retail and low-level office jobs if they’re offered.
Yes! This is precisely what I was talking about.
You’re not thinking broadly enough - there are also outdoor jobs such as lawncare/landscaping, to name just one. UPS does advertise heavily at our local unemployment and public aid offices for people to basically shove boxes around. Too often what I’ve seen is geared towards the notion that everyone funnels into retail/office clerk and there is nothing else… which is untrue. Really, for someone like a young, not terribly well educated young man a job shoving boxes around might be great - he can learn basic work ethic and job skills doing something his young man muscles are well suited to do. On the other hand, middle-aged workers might have real issues with, say, a cashier’s job, steering them to a sit-down job makes a great deal of sense. Someone with children might not be able to take a night shift job as a practical matter, but someone single, or someone without children, might have no problem with it and might also get employed quicker if it’s suggested that their odds of them being hired are greater if they’re willing to take odd or late shifts. This is obvious to me, yet nothing of the sort was mentioned when I was grinding through the system.
Basically, a better job of fitting people to jobs and vice-versa. Don’t limit the thinking to retail and office clerk, there ARE other jobs out there and they should be seen as just as legitimate as any other job.
Employers also need to get past the idea that someone ELSE will always train their workers for them. It used to be businesses were willing to train people, now they aren’t - and now they whine they can’t fine experienced employees since all the old ones are retiring and, whoa! you can’t expect THEM to train anyone! Well, if you can’t find what you need you may have to, get over it.
Yes. i get it,. There are people who believe there are millions of unemployed because they wont lower themselves to take any job thrown their way. Except jobs are not there. When a company says it is hiring, there are lines a mile long with lazy good for nothings hoping and praying for a job.
I did a bit of the Work for the Dole in Australia. I think it’s mainly for long term unemployed and/or problem cases, me being the latter. My placement was at the Salvos, mainly just lugging stuff about.
I see it on my pay stub here in CA as well: SUI.
As usual, when a company announces jobs, even Walmart, the lazy unemployed beat the walls down trying to get a job.
If folks want the unemployed to work they can provide paying jobs either out of their own pocket, or through the government (as was done during the Great Depression) but you PAY THEM for that work… calling them lazy, etc. then forcing them to work for no pay is just downright cruel. Especially when there are so many who want to work but can’t find jobs because there is a lack of jobs.
People seem to have this idea that if you make being unemployed a torture, or even criminal, that magically more jobs will appear. They won’t. All it is, is kicking people when they’re down.
Well, if they weren’t lazy, they’d be creating jobs for themselves. You know…with all that money they’ve got saved up not working and being lazy.
Fun fact: The unemployed were referred to as “lazy” fifteen times in this thread…always by people claiming to defend the unemployed.
I suppose you don’t understand the concept of sarcasm. :smack:
No, I do. I just find it interesting that nobody is calling them lazy except people like Broomstick and Gonzomax.
No, implication works well enough most of the time.
YMMV, but it’s already been made clear that such people are mostly uninterested in hiring say an out of work engineer with 30 years of experience or anybody else who might jump ship at the first opportunity.
How many examples are there of people who would be willing to take low paying jobs but would never be hired? It happens every day.
This can’t work one way. If you want to make people take any low-level or retail job out there, you have to force employers to take the first qualified applicant, even if there’s the risk that applicant will leave for a better paying job.
Do you really think a McDonald’s is going to hire that 42 year old out of work architect to station a cash register? My parents own a small business, and, given the choice, they’d rather have the person who’s more likely to stick around a few years.
But somehow, in your view, it’s the fault of the jobless, instead, for not having the gumption to find and land those jobs.