Independent Workers Blog No. 1
The battle over whether people who have been collecting unemployment insurance benefits for a long time should continue to receive benefits has infuriated me.
It has infuriated me so much that it has spurred me to take drastic action. I have huffed, puffed -- and decided to put together a series of blogs on Storeboard.com about independent workers. This article is Part I of what I hope will be at least a five-part series on independent workers.
Part I is based on a USA Today article I read in 2009 -- “Many of the jobless get no unemployment benefits.” I found the article in the midst of the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression. Like many other independent workers, I was getting fewer assignments from my clients, or any other prospective clients. Regardless of how much money I was earning, though, the government would not provide me with a single penny because only “employees” can receive unemployment benefits.
The article reports that the social safety net did not exist for millions. Here is what the article precisely says -- “While 13.2 million people were unemployed in March, approximately 5.8 million were collecting unemployment benefits at the end of the month, double the number from a year ago, the government said Thursday. That means less than half of those who were out of work and were actively trying to find a new job were receiving unemployment benefits.”
The situation that existed in 2009 exists today -- but most politicians could care less. During the debate about whether hundreds of thousands of long-term unemployed people should continue to receive benefits, I read numerous, maybe dozens of, articles on the subject. Many politicians -- I’m looking at you Rand Paul -- expressed concern that the long-term unemployed were lazy bums who were manipulating the system. Those people are called CROOKS -- and their behavior does not justify the government jeopardizing the health and homes of people in need.
If the politicians were really concerned about people, they would be making an effort to address the predicament of MILLIONS of people who aren’t earning enough money to live with dignity and are ineligible for unemployment insurance benefits. Unfortunately, though, the number of politicians who addressed this issue as far as I can tell is ZERO -- and that includes Democrats who continually whine that Republicans don’t care about people. Democrats don’t care either.
This issue isn’t a secret. The U.S. Department of Labor reported in 2006 that there were 42 million independent workers (the government has such contempt for us that it rarely updates this figure). It’s also not a secret that many companies illegally misclassify employees as independent workers so they can evade taxes and not fund other benefits that employees typically receive, including unemployment insurance. These crooks are rarely prosecuted -- and many desperate workers won’t challenge them.
Many jerks make a technical argument about how denying unemployment insurance benefits to millions of people is justified. Basically, they say that the benefits are funded by employers and, thus, self-employed people deserve nothing.
Not only can the law be changed, but surveys indicate that an overwhelming majority of self-employed people are willing to pay into the system. The Brooklyn-based Freelancers Union has surveyed its members, including me, on this issue, and I hope to have a detailed report on this later in this series.
In the meantime, politicians need to care more about people than their rigid ideologies. The USA Today article cites governors of five states who are arguing against extension of unemployment benefits. It’s no surprise that they’re ALL from poor Southern states -- Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. In fact, poor people are more likely to be victims of the full-time employee-based system than anyone else.
The unemployment insurance system is complete garbage.
"There are so many gaps," Monica Halas, an attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services, which provides free legal aid to low-income people, told USA Today. "People think (if) they are unemployed, they are going to get unemployment. Not true."
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