Ur Union of Unemployed reacted strongly to the Republican response to the State of the Union address, calling the GOP position “worst than vacuous” on the jobs issue.
“Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA) could have laid out a jobs program equal to the depths of this Grave Recession. Instead, he offered empty promises, anemic programs and elastic rhetoric,” said Rick Sloan, Ur Union of Unemployed’s Acting Executive Director. “It will take much more than words to put the jobless back to work.”
More than 31 million Americans have been idled to some degree by the recession, which has impacted workers in every sector, including more than 770,000 union members in 2009 alone.
“Jobless Americans are angry and they should be,” declared Sloan. “They were last in line when politicians opened up the U.S. treasury to banks, insurance companies and government contractors, who took in trillions over the last fifteen months. Now, those politicians have the gall to say, ‘Wait! We need to focus on deficit reduction.’ What they really mean is ‘Wall Street got the gold mine; you get the shaft.’
“The jobless deserve more than Gov. McDonnell’s empty rhetoric,” said Sloan. “They deserve real jobs!”
Ur Union of Unemployed, or UCubed, is a community service project of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) designed to assist the millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans, and to provide them with a structure that allows them to take advantage of their growing numbers. For more information, visit Ur Union of Unemployed.