Junk Jobs: Roughly Half of New American Jobs at McDonald's: You Can't Even Get Them!

Junkland

We're not being disempowered, we're being disemboweled.

Junk Jobs: Roughly Half of New American Jobs at McDonald's

So those 54,000 new jobs added to the American economy in May? Up to 30,000 are attributable to a hiring spree at McDonald's. (I guess Dollar Menu demand is up in our anemic, non-recovering economy).

Low-wage, low-skill, high turnover, monotonous work with little opportunity for advancement at an anti-union company. Great!

Oh, and most of McDonald's workforce is part-time. Great!

I guess there's really no point in me mentioning the desperate need for a WPA project to put unemployed Americans to work at decent wages and for great benefit to the country, eh?

For the record, it hurts my heart to watch the country in which I grew up circle the drain like this. And it makes me extremely angry toward the cynical, psychopathic politicians, judges, and corporate officials who have put us there. And I also get pretty frustrated with the not small number of Junk Citizens who can't be bothered to do more than parrot the latest babble from the mainstream news (be it Fox or HuffPo). But my heart really hurts for the masses of people who have been screwed over by our anti-education, anti-labor, anti-health, anti- sex ed. public order and find themselves exhausted, broke, and entirely without opportunity.

Junk Jobs: You Can't Even Have Them!

Discrimination against the long-term unemployed is a topic close to my heart (I know, I know, anything vaguely related to oppression, discrimination, social justice etc. is close to my heart). Perhaps because I've watched older family members fall into the depressing, economically devastating, and apparently inescapable trap of unending unemployment. Healthy, willing, able, and eager to work- scrambling for our economy's junk jobs at the bottom- and shut out even of those.

From the excellent National Employment Law Project, comes this disturbing report on discrimination against those who have been unemployed long-term (generally, 6 months or longer). Nearly half (44.5%) of the 14 million+ officially unemployed Americans are long-term unemployed. The long-term unemployed are stigmatized, with employers and recruiters practicing explicit discrimination against them. There is no legislation to protect the long-term unemployed, and older workers are especially vulnerable to this sort of discrimination. From job ads that say "unemployed need not apply" to recruiters who tell the long-term unemployed they won't be put forth for a position because they don't meet the employer's "Unemployed Less Than 6 Months" policy, those workers who have already suffered enough look set to never work again.

Meanwhile, our political discourse amplifies the voices of a raft of ill-informed Junk Citizens who rail against benefits for or the moral worthiness of these victims of cowboy capitalism. Careful who you condemn today lest you be them tomorrow.

Check out Barbara Ehrenreich's "Bait and Switch" for an excellent look at middle-class victims of long-term unemployment (the kind who got degrees and did everything "right") and the predatory industry that has arisen to "help" them.