More Layoffs, Fewer Hours on the Job and Teachers Forced to Take Second Jobs

April 21, AFL-CIO

Stuff happens. And lots of stuff happens without the mainstream media picking it up or putting it together in a way that shows the broader picture of what's going on.

Here are a few items of note today:

• Word is out that AT&T plans to cut about 4,600 jobs across the country to "streamline" operations, while Citigroup announced it will cut 9,000 jobs over the next 12 months, after losing $5.1 billion in the first quarter of 2008.

• In the past 12 months, 1 million workers have been added to the jobless rolls and some 3 million are expected to exhaust their unemployment insurance (UI) benefits before finding work in 2008. The AFL-CIO has been pushing hard for Congress to extend UI benefits beyond the current 26 weeks as part of a stimulus package to address growing joblessness and a nose-diving economy. Bush says he will veto such a bill.

• More than 25 percent of all Texas teachers must have a second job to pay their bills and survive--not to mention that 44 percent of them are seriously considering another profession, according to a new survey by the Texas State Teachers Association.

• Unemployment, bad as it is and worse as it's getting, is only part of the jobs crisis facing working people. More people report they are working part-time even though they want full-time employment. The number of workers in involuntary part-time positions has increased sharply since November 2007 and is up by more than 600,000 since early 2007, according to a report by the Center for Law and Social Policy.

• The gap between the nation's richest and the rest of us is the worst it's been since 1928, at the peak of the stock market bubble (and we know what happened after that), according to data released last week in the annual AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch report. CEOs of large U.S. companies averaged $10.8 million in total compensation in 2006, more than 364 times the pay of the average U.S. worker, according to the latest survey by United for a Fair Economy. PayWatch also makes the connection between egregious CEO pay and the economic disaster most of us are experiencing.