Please sign and call

Everyone in the U.S who wants a job should have a job.  If you agree, please sign this petition, and make a monthly call to your 2 senators and 1 Congressional representative using the Jobs Guarantee hotline, 1-(888)-697-7317.  Tell them, or their staff members:

“Hi, I’d like to see Congress pass a federal jobs guarantee.  It would bring a lot of money into our state/congressional district and bring a lot of votes for any politician who supports it.  It would also raise almost everyone in our country out of poverty and create new customers for business.  And, finally, the enactment of a federal jobs guarantee would bring millions of working class votes to those in Congress who support it."

Why do we need it?
 

The regular job market is like a game of musical chairs    It will never give everyone a job who wants one because private sector employers must minimize labor costs to protect profits and budgets.  For example, even now, (February 2024), with unemployment at historic lows, almost 17 million people in the U.S. are unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work.   

What is a Federal Jobs Guarantee?

A Federal Jobs Guarantee is the ultimate anti-poverty vaccine.  It would fight the disease of poverty by assuring a decent income equal to about 2 1/2 times the poverty rate for a single-person household, or about $38,000/year, to everyone who was willing and able to work.  A guaranteed job means people can buy what they need to live.  

A Federal Jobs Guarantee (JG) would have a six main features:

1. A Jobs Guarantee would give everyone in the country over 16 years old the legal right to a job at $18/hr., plus benefits, including child care, Medicare, and social security retirement.  With a federal Jobs Guarantee, if a person is willing and able to work the government must provide a job.  House Resolution 145, February 2021, proposed by Representative Ayanna Pressley, (D. Mass.) is a good legislative example of what a Jobs Guarantee like this would look like.  
2. The federal government would fund the jobs, local governments and PVOs would design and manage them.  This matches the work to the needs of each particular community and keeps administrative functions local.  The federal government pays the salaries, because it can create all the money needed like it did during the Covid crisis.  It would increase prices only slightly, about 1% in the first year and almost nothing after that because it stops hiring when there are no more unemployed people.  
3. A Federal Jobs Guarantee will mainly help lower income people.  Because all JG jobs pay the same $18/hour with benefits, the program will automatically be limited to people willing to work for $18/hr.  It is a form of restorative justice, giving more help to people whose earning power has been hurt by past unfair treatment.  
4.  A Jobs Guarantee would force non-federal employers to raise their pay and benefits floor to the new Jobs Guarantee pay and benefits standard.  We wouldn't need minimum wage laws or costly governmental enforcement. If employers don't meet the JG standard, the 40 million workers who now (2023) make less than $18/hour would simply vote with their feet by moving to the JG jobs.   
5. JG jobs preserve workers' health and welfare.  They protect workers and their families during economic downturns so that they're able to return to private sector work when the economy picks up.  They expand the pool of entry level workers by encouraging more people to work.  JG workers make good customers and good employees and they're good for businesses.
6. JG jobs are a stairway to something better.  People may use them to start or re-start their working life. They will help people like students starting out, people who need to earn a living while they acquire language skills and learn the culture, people with poor work records or who have been out of the labor force for a long time. Caretakers are free to work full time or part time.  Workers are free to come and go from JG jobs, enabling people to try out regular jobs knowing that they will always have a JG job to fall back on if the regular job ends.

To build a great society we must immunize every worker in our country from income insecurity by attacking the chronic disease of unemployment with a comprehensive, nationwide, and permanent Federal Jobs Guarantee.