[Peace-discuss] Food for thought?

[John W.]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Marti Wilkinson <martiwilki at gmail.com>wrote:

>From Reich's Blog:
>
> *I'd suggest that all contracts entered into with stimulus funds require
> contractors to provide at least 20 percent of jobs to the long-term
> unemployed and to people with incomes at or below 200 percent of the federal
> poverty level. And at least 2 percent of project funds should be allocated
> to such training. In addition, advantage should be taken of buildings trades
> apprenticeships - which must be fully available to women and minorities.*
>
> I think that this suggestion does begin to address some of the inequities
> that do exist within the trade professions. I would also go so far as to
> recommend that failing to recruit and train women and minorities be subject
> to severe penalties.


One interesting thing to me about all of this is that most friends of
working people seem to feel that the Latina whom Obama has recently
appointed as Secretary of Labor (I'm blanking on her name at the moment) is
one of his few GOOD selections.  While I don't disagree, Robert Reich was a
genuinely good Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, but nobody
paid a damned bit of attention to him.  They basically still don't.

John W.




> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:45 PM, LAURIE SOLOMON <LAURIE at advancenet.net>wrote:
>>
> Food for thought?  The question here, I guess is:  if this is actually the
>> case and if training people to have the right and most current needed skills
>> will take time, what kinds of stimulus can there be which does not reward
>> those who already have the skills and jobs while actually accomplishing the
>> production of something productive and useful in terms of tangible
>> infrastructure improvements and repairs as opposed to merely keeping the
>> economy, financial centers, and corporations up and running as usual with
>> little actual tangible benefits to the standard of living and needs of the
>> ordinary population.?
>>
>>
>>
>> FOCUS | The Stimulus
>>
>> http://www.truthout.org/011109Y
>>
>> Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "The stimulus plan will create jobs
>> repairing and upgrading the nation's roads, bridges, ports, levees, water
>> and sewage system, public-transit systems, electricity grid, and schools...
>> But if there aren't enough skilled professionals to do the jobs involving
>> new technologies, the stimulus will just increase the wages of the
>> professionals who already have the right skills rather than generate many
>> new jobs in these fields. And if construction jobs go mainly to white males
>> who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the
>> most - women, minorities, and the poor and long-term unemployed - will be
>> shut out."
>>
>
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