WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On the heels of news that U.S.
unemployment had climbed to the highest rate since April 1983, the president
of International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) today
likened the crisis to 'Midnight in America.'
"Our country is in the midst of an historic jobs crisis," declared
Buffenbarger in remarks before the 2009 No Limits Public Policy Conference in
Washington, D.C. "There is a momentum to this crisis, a momentum that keeps
building in force with each passing month."
Today's official unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were
accompanied by nearly thirty pages of charts and tables that confirmed the
depth of the ongoing jobs recession.
"But percentages don't tell the whole story," said Buffenbarger, who tallied
the 15.7 million unemployed Americans, 9.3 million who are working part-time
involuntarily, the 5.6 million who looked for work last year without success
and the 1.0 million Americans who simply vanished from the BLS statistics
since May. "When you add up those numbers, you reach 31.6 million Americans
who are idled to some degree in this grave recession.
"Thirty-one million is a crisis, a long-term crisis," said the Machinists
President. "Thirty-one million means it is midnight in America, and the dawn
is a long way off."
Buffenbarger renewed his call for a second stimulus program with targeted
relief for the critical manufacturing sector and modernized versions of FDR's
Works Progress Administration and JFK's investment tax credit.
The IAM is among the nation's largest industrial trade unions, representing
nearly 700,000 active and retired members under more than 5,000 contracts in
aerospace, transportation, shipbuilding and defense-related industries. For
more information, visit www.goiam.org.
SOURCE International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
Frank Larkin of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace
Workers, +1-301-967-4520 (office), +1-202-285-3831 (mobile), flarkin@iamaw.org
(email)
