Please register to participate in our discussions with 1.5 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Using the unemployed as free labor would make the situation WORSE. What employer would ever hire a new employee that they would have to pay for?
But the article said that some of these people have been hired by the places they were working for free, when paid jobs open up. Especially if you're fleeing the crumbling auto industry, this sounds like a great opportunity to get your foot in the door and network somewhere else.
I wasn't paid, I was actually PAYING ruinous rates to go to my unpaid internship in social work as part of my Master's, and it gave me the critical elements I needed on my resume: work experience in my field, and people to call on, places to research, when looking for paid work.
The other advantage I see to this system is that it keeps people's work momentum going. If you worked in one job or field all your life and get downsized out of it, it's easy to believe there is nothing else out there for you, and this can put the kibosh on that kidn of defeatist thinking. If you spend any time at all on the Michigan forums you've seen plenty of that: "the Big Three is going under for the third time, and we'll never work again ever and Michigan will have to be closed down" is a lot of the post content here.
It would make more sense for the government to provide free education -- college, trades, whatever would make the person more employable. Do-nothing jobs created by the government just keeps a person busy but doesn't address the problem of why that person isn't employed. The only exception to this I would make would be where jobs are primarily being done by illegal immigrants. I'd put the unemployed into these type of jobs since it would have the side effect of eliminating the incentive that illegal aliens have for entering the country. Our immigration policy (with respect to both legal and illegal) has a great deal to do with our high unemployment rate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by unocentavo
I think that the government should give a job to anyone who wants it. An entry level job doint anything from sweeping steps of the courthouse to what ever. Most lazy people would not take that kind of work anyway.
If companies have jobs available they should be paid jobs...lots of people are unemployed and it is not their fault, you people with a paid job better hang on to them yours could be the next unpaid job
This is corporate greed ...making big profits out of the unemployed.
It's kind of a silly thing to think about, isn't it? There are jobs available. There are unemployed people. Why wouldn't you HIRE those unemployed people for the jobs?
That must be that government logic I don't understand.
Unemployment runs out, and thus, we are still unemployed. If anyone should be put to work, it should be those people living on govt. assistance. When you are unemployed, you are required to always be looking for work, and you are required to report in your searches. (I'm still unemployed, and I have to apply to three jobs each week in order to receive unemployment.) However, what requirements are there to keep getting govt. assistance? Once you get it, as long as you stay "poor" for lack of a better term, you keep getting it.
Those people on assistance should work for what they get. I don't care if it's going to a business and doing work "for free" or picking up trash on the road, or tearing down and cleaning up blight. They should be required to DO something for their money. Isn't that fair?
What's the government logic about allowing another 65K H1B visas for foreign workers + another 20K for those with a Master's degree when we have a 10+% unemployment rate? Why do we allow 11 million illegal aliens in this country? The government wants cheap labor in this country. It also wants a certain level of government dependency from the population.
For instance, when then the dot-com bubble burst and IT unemployment rate climbed, what was the government response? It expanded the H1B visa cap to 312K in 2002. In 2001, 9 out of 10 new jobs in IT were taken by H1B's in a time of record unemployment in the industry. I'm sure this was done to "help" the industry by providing a source of cheap labor to reduce expenses but it certainly didn't do anything to help American workers. Why should it be any different during this housing bubble?
Quote:
Originally Posted by GalFriday
It's kind of a silly thing to think about, isn't it? There are jobs available. There are unemployed people. Why wouldn't you HIRE those unemployed people for the jobs?
That must be that government logic I don't understand.
I think the idea that unemployed people working for a company with no pay while receiving unemployment compensation is a wonderful idea. Companies need profits more than ever & paying people to work for them hurts their bottom lines. Companies can then lay off people and "rehire" them while the government pays their wages. Once a person has maxed out the compensation, the person can stop working & the company can lay off more workers and do the same thing. It's a win-win!
And for one to agree with this proposal, it just shows that one doesn't respect the government or laws that are in place to make our society as civil as possible.
Only exception is if it were in exchange for college credit and the work involved was strictly related to the work I'm studying.
It's kind of a silly thing to think about, isn't it? There are jobs available. There are unemployed people. Why wouldn't you HIRE those unemployed people for the jobs?
That must be that government logic I don't understand.
Unemployment runs out, and thus, we are still unemployed. If anyone should be put to work, it should be those people living on govt. assistance. When you are unemployed, you are required to always be looking for work, and you are required to report in your searches. (I'm still unemployed, and I have to apply to three jobs each week in order to receive unemployment.) However, what requirements are there to keep getting govt. assistance? Once you get it, as long as you stay "poor" for lack of a better term, you keep getting it.
Those people on assistance should work for what they get. I don't care if it's going to a business and doing work "for free" or picking up trash on the road, or tearing down and cleaning up blight. They should be required to DO something for their money. Isn't that fair?
Huh?
Your anger is midguided. Government can't decide on who a business wants to hire. Maybe you need to re-think your logic.
If we want people to work in exchange for UE, the only way that'll work if it it's unlimited after the initial duration. And it would have to be ran by the government. I'd rather we have them work on improving our god awful infrastructure around here (it makes no sense some of our busiest roads have no lights, are filled with trash and are filled with gigantic potholes). After the WPA/CCC, the USA had some of the greatest infrastrucutre in the world that everyone envied. Now China's passing us up with their ghost cities, and that makes absolutely no sense. Besides that, government can't force a business to hire anyone, so the idea that a person on UE could just go work for a business for free won't fly. And besides that, UE is an INSURANCE they're entitled to, if they were let go then they shouldn't be forced to work again for INSURANCE they've already earned
Meanwhile, another plan that would work is what they're doing in Germany. For 3 years, the government subsidizes 67% of the wages of every unemployed person a business hires and trains. The total cost of that would be $1 Trillion Dollars, not much compared to what we've already spent nationally. The state could also individually institute a plan similar to that.
Experience can be priceless and if I was presented with an opportunity to expand on my skills and learn new skills, while collecting UE, I would do it in a heartbeat.
I think it's an excellent idea.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $53,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 1.5 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
