Jobs (News)

New York Times Editorial

One of the major goals of health care reform is to cover the vast numbers of uninsured. But how vast, really, is that pool of people? Who are they? And how important is it to cover all or most of them?

Critics play down the seriousness of the problem by pointing out that the ranks of the uninsured include many people who have chosen to forgo coverage or are only temporarily uninsured: workers who could afford to pay but decline their employers’ coverage; the self-employed who choose not to pay for more expensive individual coverage; healthy young people who prefer not to buy insurance they may never need; people who are changing jobs; poor people who are eligible for Medicaid but have failed to enroll. And then there are the illegal immigrants, a favorite target of critics.

By Randy Shaw

“This fixation on securing bipartisan support for health care reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.” -- Jean Edward Smith, author of “FDR”

By  Bernard Marszalek

Two weeks ago sacked workers on the Isle of Wight, off the British coast, occupied their plant to protest the loss of 600 skilled jobs. The Danish owned transnational Vestas Turbines closed the manufacturing plant and the accompanying research facility claiming that it was unprofitable. This was the only wind turbine manufacturer in Britain.

President Obama devoted nearly $60 billion of his stimulus package to building a new green-based economy rich in renewable energy and strategies to cut carbon. But despite the price tag, not one green job yet exists. It comes down to a problem of etymology. No one can yet agree on what a green job actually is. The working definition paints a broad stroke: a job that's good for the economy while simultaneously healing the earth. But that leaves lots open to interpretation—natural gas is technically a cleaner fuel than crude oil, but it's still unsustainable—making it difficult, if not impossible, to measure whether eco-based jobs are being created and whether, as the administration has claimed, they're the saviors of a sagging economy.

In large part, the very idea behind a green job ensures there will never be a full definition, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics agreed in April to start measuring data on them. (Critics, in response, quickly suspected that the BLS, an agency supposed to measure objective data, could soon help carry water for an administration eager to show the stimulus is working.) Several environmental advocates polled by NEWSWEEK defined green jobs the way Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously defined obscenity: I'll know it when I see it.

By California Coalition For Workers Memorial Day

On April 19, 2009 injured workers in Southern California joined together in front of the Kaiser Downey medical center which is located at the Downey Toxic Dump to speak out about workers killed and injured on the job. SEIU hospital workers and movie workers from IATSE and the Laborers have been injured at the site and some of the workers who have gone public about the toxic dangers at the sight have been sued by the develper Stuart Lichter. Lichter who used to work for the Federal government General Services Administration has control of former government toxic sites throughout the United States and has sued others who claimed that the sites were not being properly cleaned up and people were getting sick.

The Downey site housed a major military industrial center for the development of nuclear weapons, rocket fuel and other highly toxic weaponry. There were even sodium nuclear reactions that were conducted at the site.

The workers called for an end to the travesty where injured workers have to negotiate with lawyers for healthcare settlements and are forced to go to company doctors who do not take care of them but only provide insurance company ratings of what is wrong with them.