With Jobless Help Expired, Gary and 3 Million Others are Desperate for Help
Gary, of Bordentown, N.J., is supporting his disabled wife and their 11-year-old sons by racking up high-interest credit card debt and depleting their life savings. He is one of the more than 3 million workers who have been cut off from unemployment insurance since House Republicans allowed emergency help for jobless workers to expire at the end of last year.
Gary is on the job search, but his voice was heard Wednesday on Capitol Hill when AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler shared his story as part of the continuing initiative to give a voice to the jobless through “Witness Wednesday.”
The events will run every Wednesday through July 30, and will feature lawmakers and members of labor, community, faith and other groups reading the personal stories of struggle from those cut off from help.
The Center for Effective Government, the National Employment Law Project, the Coalition on Human Needs and the National Women’s Law Center organized Witness Wednesday to demand action on an extension of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits program that was approved by a bipartisan Senate majority in December.
Before reading Gary’s story, Shuler said:
I think some members of Congress think it’s their job to deprive 3 million workers and their families of the lifeline that they so desperately need, and we disagree. We disagree on moral grounds, we disagree on economic grounds, and it’s just plain unfair to those trying to work and make it in this economy.
Gary’s story is below, and see the video above for more.
My name is Gary, a resident of New Jersey, with a wife suffering with a lifelong chronic immune disease and [we have] 11-year-old twin boys. I have worked for over 30 years—the past 20 in the Carpenters Union. I had opened one unemployment claim and was cut off after 13 weeks of assistance. We are now living off credit cards at a high interest rate and exhausting our life savings...I spend 10 hours a day applying for jobs and countless interviews, always coming in second to the competition. We are now faced with taking money from our children’s college fund and our pension/IRA. We cannot sustain much longer without an unemployment extension. My wife is now too ill to work and has been awaiting Social Security benefits for over a year...I have hundreds of job applications submitted, and need my extension to feed my family during my job search. Please pass the extension for unemployment.
Call your representative at 845-809-4509, and tell her or him to pass the EUC benefits extension.
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This has been reposted from the AFL-CIO.
