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| April 16, 2004 |
Volume 4, Issue 1 |
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| The Living
Income Initiative is a special project of the NC Justice and Community
Development Center. It is |
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| IN THIS ISSUE: |
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| LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYMENT HITS RECORD
LEVELS AT SAME TIME THOUSANDS LOSE UNEMPLOYMENT AID BECAUSE CONGRESS
FAILS TO ACT
From late December, when the federal Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation program (TEUC) phased out, through the end of March, an estimated 37,600 North Carolina jobless workers “exhausted” their regular unemployment benefits and did not get further aid.(1) Nationwide 1.1 million jobless workers were denied extended aid. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “in no other comparable period on record have so many individuals exhausted their regular benefits and gone without additional aid.” By the end of June, it is estimated that more than 20,000 additional NC workers will exhaust their benefits before finding another job. The TEUC program was created in March 2002 to provide an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits to workers who could not find a job before their regular unemployment insurance benefits ran out at six months. By December 2003, over 217,000 North Carolina unemployed workers had benefited from the extended assistance. Historically, Congress has maintained such a program when long-term unemployment is high, but not this time. After extending the program twice, Congress allowed it to expire in late December 2003. Governor Easley sent a letter to the President and Congressional Delegation asking that they continue the TEUC program to address the continued high unemployment and large numbers of new persons still coming into the state’s unemployment system. Workers and labor and advocacy groups inundated Congress with requests to continue the program. The Bush administration was silent on the issue and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said there was "no reason" to reauthorize the program. In March, 23.9% of all unemployed US workers had been out of work half-a-year or longer, setting a new 20 year high for long-term joblessness.(2) March was the 18th straight month of long-term joblessness of over 20% and makes this the worst period for long-term unemployment since World War II. National figures that showed an unexpectedly high increase in payroll and job growth in March, still aren’t enough to address the problem that there are more than 2 million fewer jobs now than in February 2001. North Carolina unemployment continues to stagnate around 6%, above the national unemployment rate of 5.6%. Furthermore, this is an undercount of unemployed workers since the number of individuals in the labor force (i.e. working or looking for work) has remained stable at around 4.2 million in spite of growth in the state’s working age population. More recently, the Bush Administration said they would sign a bill to reinstate the program if Congress passes one. Earlier a bi-partisan majority in the US House voted to extend the TEUC program by 227 to 179. Similarly, a majority of 58 Senators voted for extension of the program opposed to 39 against, but 60 votes are required to pass the measure. (Three Senators were absent.) Since then unsuccessful attempts have been made to hold another vote and the bill continues to languish while families go without assistance. For more information and citations to the facts in this article see: (1) Isaac Shapiro, More than One Million of the Unemployed Have Now Been Denied Aid Due to End of Federal Program: Exhaustions Continue at Unprecedented Pace, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 25, 2004 (2) March Unemployment Rate Increases to 5.7 Percent as Long-Term Joblessness Sets a New Record, National Employment Law Project, Press Release, April 2, 2004, |
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UNC-CH EMPLOYEE FORUM PASSES LIVING WAGE RESOLUTION The UNC-Chapel Hill Employee Forum passed a resolution on April 7, asking the North Carolina General Assembly to:
In addition, they resolved that the Employee Forum of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill strongly recommends that the Chancellor and his Administration convey and support publicly the concepts of this resolution in dealings with the University's General Administration, and the North Carolina State Legislature. The Employee Forum consists of professors, groundskeepers, housekeepers and other staff on campus. As part of this resolution process they used the NC Justice Center’s 2003 report Working Hard is Still Not Enough, which found that on average, North Carolina parents need to earn $10.60/hour working full-time, year-round to support a family. |
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NC LEGISLATURE CONVENES COMMITTEE ON WORKFORCE NEEDS The Joint Select Committee on Workforce Needs met for the first time this week at the NC General Assembly. Committee co-chairs are Senator Katie Dorsett (Guilford-D), Representative Alma Adams (Guilford-D) and Representative Connie Wilson (Mecklenburg-R). The Committee is charged to examine 11 different issues regarding North Carolina’s workforce. Topics include:
The Committee will not meet again until after the upcoming short session of the NC legislature which begins on May 10, 2004. |
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TANF & CHILD CARE REAUTHORIZATION STILL IN LIMBO Congress continues to be polarized on the issue of reauthorizing the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Block Grant (TANF), the federal government’s primary program to assist low-income families with children. The House passed HR4, its version of welfare reauthorization, and the Senate finance committee has approved a somewhat different and improved bill. The full Senate took up the reauthorization bill March 29th, passed one Amendment that would increase child care funding by $7 billion over the next 5 years (as opposed to only $1b over 5 years in House version) and then removed the bill from the floor to try to negotiate a plan for how best to proceed with other amendments. They could not come to an agreement on how to proceed because the Senate’s Republican leadership refuses to promise the Democrat leadership that they can participate - or even be in the room - when the House and Senate negotiate a final bill. It has been standard practice to allow the minority party to participate in, or at least watch, bill negotiations until the recent Medicare bill came up and Republican leaders would not allow even Senator Daschle, Democratic leader in the Senate, into the room. In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Restoration Act (PRWORA) which created the TANF block grant, altered the Child Care and Development Block Grant and implemented many other changes collectively known as “welfare reform.” The TANF and Child Care block grants were authorized and funded until September 30, 2002 at which time they would have to be reviewed and reauthorized by Congress or expire. Congress has been in gridlock over how and whether to change these programs and how much additional funding (if any) to provide. Because they cannot agree on a renewal law, Congress has been extending the program and it’s funding a few months at a time with no changes. The current extension expires June 30, 2004. Some ongoing issues of contention include: Work Requirements: Bush proposed, and the House endorsed, an increase in the number of hours per week a parent must work in order to get assistance, the percent of the state caseload that must be working and more restrictions on the types of activities that count toward the work requirements. Given the state of the economy this seems particularly unrealistic. The Senate bill and some additional proposed Amendments would allow more training opportunities for more parents, would give states credit for increasing the number of families working even if the state does not meet its annual quota and would allow specialized training activities for parents with disabilities, among other things. Funding: House bill adds only $1 billion in child care subsidy funding over the next five years, but Senate would increase child care funding by $7 billion. Funding for Child Care subsidies and TANF have remained the same since 1996 when first reforms were passed. Costs of childcare have increased with inflation and the demand for child care subsidies has increased with the recession. Over 24,000 children are waiting for a subsidy in North Carolina. Immigrant
eligibility: PRWORA restricted immigrants from getting
assistance in many programs. Since 1996, eligibility has been
restored to some immigrants
in some programs but so far President Bush and the House have not been
willing to even give states the option of serving more immigrants
with TANF funds. Superwaiver: House bill contains a clause allowing the Bush administration
to waive federal law and policy requirements for numerous different federal
programs that serve needy populations. In effect, this shift authority
to set program standards and requirements from Congress to the President
and
would
allow states to use large amounts of money intended to help low-income
and vulnerable population for other, even unrelated, purposes. Under
the Superwaiver,
the administration could waive food stamp, housing voucher, social services
block grant, TANF, Child care, and numerous other program requirements. For more information about TANF reauthorization see Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). |
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