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