Front-running presidential candidate Newt Gingrich knows a good idea when he sees one, particularly when it originates in his adopted home state of Georgia:
Speaking to about 200 employees at Insight Technology, a defense contractor in New Hampshire, the former U.S. House Speaker called for funds workers pay into unemployment insurance to be diverted to training programs.
"I am willing to continue unemployment compensation, but I would attach to it a training requirement," the Georgia Republican explained. "So if you sign up for unemployment compensation, you would also sign up for a business to get trained to learn a new skill. Because by definition, the reason you're signing up for unemployment compensation is you're not finding a job at your current skill level."
"Now if you took all the money we spent in the last five years for unemployment compensation, if that had been a worker training fund, you'd have a dramatically better-trained work force. We have thousands of jobs available that people can't fill. You have people over here that want a job, but they don't have the skill. You have jobs over here that requires a skill that's not currently available," he added.
"I don't want to pay people 99 weeks to do nothing."
The former House Speaker was most like referring to a program called "Georgia Works" where companies are provided unemployed trainees for free. The state provides a $240 stipend — cut back from $600 last fall — to the trainee each week for up to eight weeks.
So let's review the mechanics of Georgia Works. Businesses can take unemployed people, get eight weeks of work out of them train them on the public dime, and then decide whether to hire them at the conclusion of eight weeks. From the perspective of the unemployed, this program offers…well, eight weeks of work at a sub-minimum wage pay rate. Oh, plus "training."
If this sounds like a publicly-funded temp agency to anyone, that isn't quite the case. Temp labor can be employed for extended periods of time whereas Georgia Works expires in about two months. Sure, it could be used as a long term source of free labor if an employer decided to keep bringing people in for eight weeks of – *cough* – training before letting them go and replacing them with another Georgia Works recruit. But that would never happen. Unless of course there was a large, permanent population of the desperate and unemployed.
Yeah, this is the plutocrat approved post-New Deal vision of the social safety net. I mean, it stands to reason that the most effective way to get businesses to hire the unemployed is to set up a state-subsidized program that gives businesses free labor. Ideas like this make me thankful that we still have a robust two party system.
Democratic President Barack Obama has also praised the program.
"There is a smart program in Georgia," Obama said during an August bus tour. "You're essentially earning a salary and getting your foot in the door into that company."
Jesus titty-fucking christ…
Middle Seaman says:
Most people tend to confuse wise people with evil ones. Newt is as evil as they get so people see his evil outbursts as wise statements. Newt never exercises his brain; Obama is not smart either, but he cannot tell the difference between smart and stupid; he doesn't have the brain for it.
So, this odd couple likes the Georgia work idea. It actually doesn't help anyone. In 8 weeks the employer gets very little done except the great satisfaction that the nothing is free. Another reason the odd couple likes the plan is their strong support for socialism for the rich.
The odd couple running against each other in 2012 will be a beauty. Two totally useless people in a heroic attempt to damage the country even further.
J. Dryden says:
…aaaaand we're back to the 18th-century again. Gingrich truly believes that there is nothing actually wrong with indentured servitude. He's not stupid enough to float slavery as an option, but oh man he loves to tiptoe up to the line. He'll always hedge with "If the only other alternative is starvation." It isn't, and he knows that, but so what? The poor are, in every sense, worth less to him–they are not full participants in the economy, and thus in the nation, and thus, hence, ergo, fuck them. I'm still waiting to see his legislation to "Bring Back Serfdom"–"Steady employment! Builds strong families and strong communities!"
As a sidenote, those who tout Newt's 'brilliance' need to take a remedial course in logic (I recommend a review of Ed's work on Logical Fallacies): "Because by definition, the reason you're signing up for unemployment compensation is you're not finding a job at your current skill level." Actually, no, that's not "by definition"–that's "by skewed, utterly contemptible interpretation." "Skill level" is not the only requirement for employment, Newt. That would be like my saying, "If you're a serial divorcer, by definition, you're clearly not a functioning heterosexual." Actually, I think I might hold onto that one…
Major Kong says:
Everybody's gone serfin', serfin' USA!
SA says:
1) There are almost no jobs worth having that one can train for in two months.
2) Particularly if you're also supposed to be spending at least part of your time job hunting in case something does open up.
3) In the Bay Area, one of these exact programs that was supposed to train people to service the MUNI fleet instead was plagued by allegations of people being given make work (of the "rake these leaves into a pile… now we'll kick the pile over… now rake them again" kind) to keep them from doing work that was reserved for union members, even though MUNI's legendary absentee rate meant there were no union members available to do the work. *
*I am normally totally pro-union but MUNI is pretty much a collection of the worst possible right-wing stereotypes about unions, come to life, the upshot being that we have the highest-paid public transit workforce in the company and one of the worst on-time service records with constant cuts in services and increases in fares.
wetcasements says:
Look how well this bullshit works in England:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/16/young-jobseekers-work-pay-unemployment
Major Kong says:
I'm all for training people, but if the jobs aren't there you just end up with a bunch of well-trained unemployed people.
Nunya says:
Holy dog shit! This is actually worse than slavery.
How could it have ever been contrived that the rare people who actually qualify for unemployment (career level, educated or skilled employees) should have to be willing to completely abandon their training in their chosen field to pursue illegal wages in whatever-the-fuck the government of Georgia decides they have a need for by the businesses that have bribed them.
Sure, sacrificing a career that you have spent decades building to work for essentially nothing is a great move for not only the individual but for the tax base. I only hope the meth fueled gay sex tapes come out on these assholes and soon.
Arslan says:
You know who also did one of these "work for your unemployment benefits" thingies? ADOLF HITLER. No seriously, he did.
Neal Deesit says:
"You're essentially earning a salary and getting your foot in the door into that company."
Wooo Hooo! Your foot's in the door for 8 whole weeks. Then your ass is in the street.
c u n d gulag says:
Somewhere, Tzar Alexander II (who freed the serfs in 1861), and Abraham Lincoln (who freed the slaves in 1863), are looking around and wondering why the fuck they bothered?
Find the rich.
Catch the rich.
Torture the rich.
Kill the rich.
Eat the rich – I normally like my meat rare or medium-rare, but I'd recommend either stewing these motherfuckers, or preparing them well done, because these nasty vermin are bound to be infested with other nasty vermin.
A nice, thick 'rich' sauce made with bottles of the expensive wines they were saving for some "special day" adds both flavor and irony.
*Note – I'm kidding.
Also, note, too – I think.
Xynzee says:
"Because by definition, the reason you're signing up for unemployment compensation is you're not finding a job at your current skill level."
Or it could mean that there're no jobs out there, your job was sent overseas or your job no longer exists thanks to technology (not bad per se).
So 8wks of training eh? And you can learn what level of competency in that time? I find it rather difficult to see a company doing serious investment in such a short time frame for training – electricians spring to mind. So one has to show up with a reasonable skill level, but there will be little to no opportunity to actually extend and expand those skills. The other alternative would be sorting shoelaces and putting them into boxes, which does nothing to expand the skill set at all.
Or would Newt(ered) actually create a formal Federal Training Agency to oversee that this is more than painting rocks? Perhaps it could have some kind of on-line study component…
squirrelhugger says:
So everybody's given a small income from the state and assigned work wherever. If this came from Obama first, every single fucking republican in the country would be screaming about communism. And they'd be right. It's not even socialism. The Democrats, of course, think that maybe it's an ok idea. The Democratic Party is as incompetent as the Republican Party is venal. I'm going for Gingrich in 2012, because that's the quickest, surest path to pushing things over the edge and getting some heads on pikes. Yeah, it'll be ugly, but it's going to be that regardless. In the end, sooner will have less damage. The Democrats are just… tedious.
Hazy Davy says:
1) I have nothing to add to your article. Here is wordy evidence of that.
2) If I were in a worse mood, I would escalate the blasphemy in your last line, by asserting different preferences for the original hippie.
queenrandom says:
Sounds kind of like a postdoc fellowship.
comrade x says:
Well, prison labor is our modern version of slavery. This bullshit is our indentured servitude.
I wonder why people even bother to vote in this country anymore. The Denocrat in office sounds like Calvin Coolidge. The challenger sounds like Cato The Elder- he was the Roman who wrote a book advising that slaves be beaten on a regular basis, just to show them who is boss.
Major Kong says:
Basically because, as bad is it is, I'll still take the guy who wants to bone me up the you-know-where (without lube) over the guy who wants to slit my throat, grind up my corpse and use it to fertilize his begonias.
Jonathan says:
I can't believe that so many people actually believe the Democratic "we're here for the little guy" horseshit when every person in Federal politics, with as many as a dozen exceptions, favors concentration of power and wealth. What do employers have to do with social welfare outside of feudalism?
Don't vote. That only encourages them.
I'm with C. Gulag — even if the rich people themselves are not the problem, it is true that their ill-gotten gains have possessed them and the Eskimos would have pushed the lot of them off the ice when no one was looking.
ladiesbane says:
All the "training" (cheap labor, Job Corps, AmeriCorps, whatever) in the world doesn't mean there will be a single job for you at the end of your term of indenture. No jobs = train for what?
Newt knows this. He's just letting wild arrows fly to keep people from looking at his real agenda. This not only makes sense, since he did eat Herman Cain and now must replace him, but it also falls in line with his behavior back in the 90s. (See also his 1996 GOPAC memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control", and Bernays's "The Engineering of Consent.")
Newt isn't really talking about jobs, unemployment, or…anything, really. He is pushing buttons. Ask: whose buttons? Why? I think Newt knows he has no real chance to beat Obama, and may not even win the nomination. This is all auditioning for future backers and employers.
I have to hand it to him. "If God didn't want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep." (Isn't that the Libertarian motto?) The Huckabees and Palins of the world shoot for Fox News jobs, but Newt is aiming for big money, possibly think-tank level cash. Go directly to private consulting, do not pass GO, do not settle for $400,000.
JohnR says:
The thing is, this isn't a long-term solution. Too many problems, too much bureacracy. The obvious answer is unlimited 8-week internships at the end of which the intern must be hired or fired. The state can feed and house these interns at one of many convenient local "hostels" built and operated by the "criminal justice system", which provides jobs for good, hard-working Real Americans. Should any of these interns become too lazy or sick through their own carelessness to continue the program, they will be "retired" to a comfortable Rest Home in some vaguely-described but undisclosed location. That patch of woods over there, maybe.
xynzee says:
Bother! Something that was supposed to be added was:
Here's an opportunity for states like Georgia to show solidarity to their Southern brethren. So let's see who also works for sub-minimum wage? Hmmm… Oh hey! C-A migrant workers. Who can't get migrant workers at the moment and the harvest is rotting on the vine? Nor can they get day release prisoners to work the fields because they're doing other things (some actually have paying jobs ergo day release). Oh yeah! Alabama! So now they can get a new kind of migrant worker, so it all fits. Don't be surprised if Georgia soon has as crap a "Papers! please" law. They've found the solution, and it's Georgia Works.
And silly me thought that The Market would put an end to their stupidity, only to find that they'd already worked out a solution. Force everyone to work for below par wages, and call it "training".
@Squirrel: I believe what we're looking at is Fascism at the truest sense of the term. At least in Hitler's Germany the workers could at least earn a car.
jjack says:
Alaska (probably other states?) has a pretty good deal where you can collect UI benefits while you do a union apprenticeship. It would be nice if they could do something to get more apprentices in.
jeffteaches says:
@xynzee: We (GA) already have a "get-those-lazy-beaners" law, and it has already cost the ag industry millions.
What's funny (not haha funny) is that now these rich-as-fuck ag guys, who all vote R and tend to be a bunch of racist assholes, want changes in the bill to favor them, but the Atlanta area rich-as-fuck business guys, who all vote R and tend to be a bunch of racist assholes, are hard-line against any changes.
It's an old GA dance of rural vs. urban priorities, but at the end of the day comes down to who can milk the most $$ out of the system.
I haven't researched the GA work program, but if I had to guess, it's a boondoggle!
bob_is_boring says:
comrade x,
You need to read up on Cato the Elder.
I can't see Newtie disemboweling himself when it becomes [sic] clear to him that the state he loves has become corrupt.
Although one can hope.
hueyplong says:
Ebenezer: Are there no prisons?
First Collector: Plenty of prisons. In fact, more than in Dickens' time.
Ebenezer: And the union workhouses – are they still in operation?
First Collector: They are operating in full vigor in Georgia.
If there are enough debates, Newt will eventually propose his genius new idea of the Treadmill.
bb in GA says:
Jeff:
Please esplain how the rich urban, R votin', business types milk more money from the system (than the rural brothers) by maintaining a more severe immigration law?
Not a confron, but inquirin' GA minds want to know…
//bb
Chicagojon says:
Fitting topic today as I was just having a discussion wondering if Slovakia was still "The Georgia of Europe" — the outsource destination because of their lack of unions, job benefits, or empathy.
To Newts point I bet that if a worker "trains" really really hard and puts in a ton of extra effort they have a good chance at being hired at minimum wage with no benefits, meager working conditions, and a craptastic job where they will be expected to continue to overachieve or be fired at will.
I wonder if Georgia caught wind of Newt's speech on minors helping out at local libraries or businesses — if he combines the two ideas he could revolutionize the manual labor industry with youthful trainees.
Halloween Jack says:
Doonesbury did a strip about this in the seventies, with B.D. bitching about how all the unemployed welfare queens weren't looking in the classifieds, where there were all kinds of jobs listed, and Zonker is saying, yeah, all those chemical engineers just loafing around. Same as it ever was.
J. Dryden says:
@ bob_is_boring: No, that was Cato the Younger, his great-grandson. Cato the Elder did indeed recommend consistently harsh treatment of slaves. And wives. And children. But he was also scrupulously honest and devout, so the comparison with Newt kinda breaks down there.
Ellie says:
"…the reason you're signing up for unemployment compensation is you're not finding a job at your current skill level."
Well, the last time someone in my little nuclear family was unemployed, the "current skill level" was "earned a doctorate and has years of teaching experience then got fired because they eliminated the program (due to funding cuts)." Clearly, someone was in need of retraining….on how to sweep floors and serve fries, or something.
Turok says:
Let's be real: This looks good on paper and isn't all bad. You do get work experience in a time when businesses discriminate against the unemployed. You DO get your foot in the door. If the stipend weren't cut, and there was some oversight to prevent abuse, I would totally be behind this.
Xynzee says:
@Turok: that's just it. On paper it sounds good. The problems are ensuring that it won't be abused. Given the current drown govt sentiment from the GOP we won't see such protections come into place.
The next issue is meaningful skilling. Somebody straight out of HS shelf stocking is fine. For some body w a degree – isn't that why you went to uni, to not do this type of work? For someone in their 40s, w a mortgage, kids, and experience where exactly will 8wks of shelf stocking get you? Certainly not on to a career track anytime soon.
Australia had a couple programs that in principal were pretty good.
The first was a subsidy paid to companies for putting long term unemployed to work (18mos+). The downside was that as soon as the subsidised period ended so did the job. Putting hooks into the clause where a company couldn't let *anyone* go for a period of time after the subsidy ended may have helped.
The other was New Enterprise Incentive Scheme (NEIS) where you were encouraged to start your own business. During this time you maintained your unemployment benefits and got assistance in how to run a business. Not sure what happened to that one, and it was sort of like an "easter egg", as it wasn't loudly spoken of. That was probably the best one as it could assist those with the desire and drive but lack the know-how of how to get a business going.
Ike says:
Sort of on topic. Apparently in Germany Amazon is using some "hire the unemployed" scheme to collect on people… fire them, rehire them, recollect.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,800408,00.html
stacey-marie says:
"Because by definition, the reason you're signing up for unemployment compensation is you're not finding a job at your current skill level."
Oh that's like when my mom got "downsized" and raised 5 kids on unemployment and then racked up years of credit card debt when unemployment ran out because she couldn't find any jobs with her MIS skillz. Now she's a secretary.
Yay.
/whine.
SA says:
@Nunya
the rare people who actually qualify for unemployment (career level, educated or skilled employees) should have to be willing to completely abandon their training in their chosen field
Exactly. During my 6 months of unemployment last year (pro tip: if you teach at the university level, try really hard not to lose your job at the end of May, as the hiring cycle for fall is already over and you're looking at potentially being unemployed for 15 months until the next Fall semester starts, unless you're exceptionally lucky. I was exceptionally lucky…) I spent every minute of those 6 months when I wasn't panicking over paying the rent, applying for every job I could find including PARKING METER READER, with a PhD. Guess I just needed more training. That's probably why I didn't even get an interview for the Public Health job I applied for that required a high school diploma and 2 years working in a position that involved confidential interviewing, since I'd only been working in mental health for 13 years at that point – I probably needed more training.
@queenrandom
Sounds kind of like a postdoc fellowship.
Ha. Also during that unemployment, I applied and was interviewed for a mental health postdoc at Stanford, which offered the glorious sum of $20,000 per year for full time work including evenings and weekends, with no PTO and no benefits. At the interview, they thoughtfully noted that I was probably too far advanced in my field to really "benefit" from the experience. I said "frankly what would particularly benefit me at this point in time is slowing down the rate at which I'm tapping my savings and not having a giant gap on my resume, and given that you'd be getting a clinician who's worth four or five times what you're offering [go big or go home, I say], you should look at me as quite a deal."
Pity this program wasn't in place. They could have "trained" me for two months* for minimum wage.
*You can learn to be a therapist in two months, right?
Eric Titus says:
I wonder if any of the comments that instinctively criticized the program (started by Georgia Dems by the way) actually bothered looking at information on it. After looking into it, it doesn't seem that it's doing any better than other options, but before the recession, it may have been effective. In principle, progressives could get behind a version of the program that does what it's supposed to do. If you add slightly higher stipend and safeguards against abuse it could be a feasible larger-scale program. Most new deal programs involved underpaying people because it recognized that the act of working has its positives. And does anyone think that the current alternative, giving people opportunities for retraining in educational facilities (rather than actual companies) is any better?
Nancy Irving says:
There are jobs that can't be filled because there aren't enough people with the right skills, but I don't think many of them can be filled via eight weeks of training.
Rather they are highly-skilled technical jobs that require years of training–the kind of training our young people can no longer afford to get, and which the Rs want to make even more difficult to obtain, with cuts to higher education resources.
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