(Very Special Thanks to Cathy Richardson & Jefferson Starship)
Watch this excellent account of the amazing song Follow the Drinking Gourd, the last coded song from the Civil War's Underground Railroad, written by Peg Leg Joe.
Please Call Your Senators to Support American Workers
Neo-Feudal Valley, USA -- Slavery? Labor Arbitrage? No jobs? Two advanced degrees but can't even get a job sewing doilies? Kids with college degrees still living in your basement? Who's cooking up this No Americans Need Apply economy to wipe out America's educated middle class?
Business Insider cites 22 statistics that prove the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence. Since there is no major (or any) MIDDLE CLASS LOBBY to fund journalists who support jobs for educated American workers, the article takes a predictable this is inevitable tone while the best part can be found in the comments section. But we don't need a weather man or corporate sponsored economists like Robert Reich to know which way the neo-frat boy corporate state's narcissistic sociopaths are blowing U.S. taxpayer money on privatization schemes that suck the public till for their personal gain at the expense of America's educated middle class by selling out jobs to cheap third world imports when there are not enough jobs for our own citizens.
In a post entitled Obama=Bush=Clinton=Global Labor Arbitrage, our friends at No Slaves explain that displacing American white collar workers with H-1B visa holders does not create jobs. It loses jobs. Got that, teabaggers and fleabaggers?
What to do?
No Slaves has issued this timely request Please Call Your Senators to Support American Workers with an amendment sponsored by Senators Sanders, Grassley, Harkin and Tester to block companies from hiring foreign guest workers when firing competent and hard working U.S. workers:
“The Amendment is S.AMDT. 4438, introduced to the Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010 bill number H.R.5297."
Below is their plea to save U.S. jobs.
COMPANIES LAYING-OFF THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN WORKERS DON’T NEED GUEST WORKERS
Please Support the Sanders-Grassley-Harkin Employ America Amendment to the Small Business Lending Bill.
Since the recession started in December of 2007, over 7 million Americans have lost their jobs and the unemployment rate has nearly doubled. In total, 15 million Americans are officially unemployed, another 8.8 million Americans are working part-time only because they cannot find a full-time job, and more than one million workers have given up looking for work altogether.
With the unemployment rate still unacceptably high and millions of people looking for a job, we have a responsibility to ensure that companies do not use temporary visa programs to replace American workers with cheaper labor from overseas.
Therefore, during the consideration of the Small Business Lending bill, we will be offering the attached amendment that would prohibit companies which have announced mass lay-offs over the past year from hiring guest workers, unless they can prove that their overall employment will not be reduced as a result of these lay-offs .
At a time when millions of Americans are out of work, the notion that we need to import labor from abroad because there are not enough qualified, willing or able American workers in this country rings hollow.
Recently, some of the very companies that have hired tens of thousands of guest-workers from overseas have announced large scale lay-offs of American workers. The high-tech industry, a major employer of H-1B guest workers, has announced over 330,000 job cuts since 2008. The construction industry, a major employer of H-2B guest-workers, has laid-off 1.9 million workers since December of 2007.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, signed into law last February, included a provision to prevent companies receiving assistance through the Troubled Asset Relief Program from replacing laid-off American workers with guest-workers from overseas.
The Employ America Act expands upon this provision to prevent any company engaged in a mass lay-off of American workers from importing cheaper labor from abroad through temporary guest-worker programs. Those companies that are truly facing labor shortages would not be impacted by this legislation and could continue to obtain employer-sponsored visas. Only companies that are laying-off a large number of Americans would be barred from importing foreign workers through guest worker programs.
No Slaves also adds: "You can locate your Senator and CALL THEIR OFFICE to support this critical amendment here. Please tell your Senators to support U.S. workers and pass this amendment, intact!
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wanting to offshore outsource your job, is already gearing up to fight this common sense amendment. They will stop at nothing in their quest to continue firing U.S. workers and replacing them with cheaper foreign guest workers and outsourcing.”
Follow the Drinking Gourd and do your part to restore civility to our hijacked democracy and local socioeconomic sustainability. It's Not the Economy, Stupid. It's YOUR JOB!
Happy Friday, Loserettes!
-2Truthy
4 comments:
Who cares about giving our already scarce American jobs to imported guest workers?
We fleabaggers here in Missouri don't.
We don't know even know which way is up! Outsourcing? Insourcing? We're all either on some kind of disability or welfare anyway, and housing is dirt cheap. We love to think we are intellectuals, and idiotically identify with those we'll never be, but at least we mindlessly cheer for the Democrats who pretend to sympathize with the "poor", even as they legislate to get rid of the middle class and make every American poor.
Unfortunately, this bill is tantamount to spraying a can of Lysol around an outhouse and walking back in it an hour later. It will do nothing to prevent the stench from falling through the cracks, i.e., hiring loopholes. Also, who will provide accountable oversight? Dream on.
While studying for my corporate sponsored MBA, it was clear in our leadership breakout sessions that success was not measured by intellect and, in particular, competence -- but by the extent to which one locked their lips around the right people.
Geithner now admits the U.S. is in a depression, so where's the same kind of job protectionism that has advanced Asia's growth and prosperity?
This amendment is like adding speed bumps to roads that doesn't prevent cats from getting run over, either; it just sends a signal for drivers to hang onto their shock protectors and maybe beef up business at the body shops to fix their vehicles when they take wild rides over them. Nope, common sense tells you when there ain't 'nuff jobs for the locals, the guests got to go.
That's good, Anon, the Lysol bit...Now that the cat is out of the bag that hiring H-1B's does NOT create jobs but loses them, it is inevitable that the tough talk in the form of loophole ridden bills and amendments will thrive during election cycles.
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