Jobs Crisis Forum: The Time for Excuses Is Over. Create Jobs Now
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)“All I want is a decent job,”
said Shonda Sheen. “I want to work. I love to
work. I’m scared. I don’t know what’s
going to happen to my mother. I have a home to
pay off.” Sheen, of Yellow Springs,
Ohio, was laid off in December 2009 and is
about to run out of unemployment benefits.
Because of state budget cuts, she also could
soon lose the health care nurse who helps care
for her mother who has dementia. At the last
job she applied for, she was told 450 others
had applied for the same position. Sheen and
Bob Stein, a 60-year-old former salesman who
has been out of work since May 2010, are two of
the 14 million Americans who are
unemployed—and their story is not being told
in the midst of the debate over the deficit.
Sheen and Stein, who are both members of
Working America, spoke to a forum on “The
Jobs Crisis—Moving to Action: A Dialogue
Between Workers and Policymakers” at the
AFL-CIO yesterday morning. Click
here to
read the rest of this report.
- James Parks, on the AFL-CIO Now
blog; photo: Shonda Sheen talks with AFL-CIO
Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker at
the AFL-CIO panel on the jobs crisis; photo by
Danielle Hatchett