It’s Time to Fight
for Full Employment!
The Progressive Path
Out of Our Crisis
A Project of the Labor Committee of CCDS
The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
The Struggle for Full Employment:
A Strategy to Defeat the Neoliberal Assault
on the US Working Class
by Randy Shannon
Treasurer, PA 4th CD Chapter,
Progressive Democrats of America
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“In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;”
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt: State of the Union Address, January 11, 1944
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“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”
- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948
I. Introduction
The “Great Recession” that began in 2007 has caused the greatest percent of job losses since the Great Depression of 1929. This crisis is the end of an era of unrestrained ‘neo-liberal’ capitalism that became public policy during the Reagan administration. The crisis marks a new level of instability with the growth of a global financial elite that targeted US workers and our trade unions after World War II.
The election of President Obama reflected the growing struggle of America’s progressive majority to reverse the neo-liberal policy of war and austerity that has undermined the social advances established by the New Deal and the United Nations. It also begins a long period of readjustment for capitalism as it responds to multiple crises, struggles to maintain its system of social control, and seeks a new system of profit accumulation.
Serial Crises
During the seven decades since World War II, US workers have faced ten periods during which the economy lost jobs for over twelve months. Each successive recession in employment lasted longer than the previous downturn.
In the above chart, each line represents an employment crisis since World War II. The vertical axis shows the percent of jobs lost each month and the horizontal axis shows the duration of the crisis in months since the last peak in employment. The right end of each line is the point at which employment returned to its former high.
In the crisis of 1990 the economy lost jobs for two and one half years. Then in the 2001 recession, it was four years before job losses ended. Although these last two downturns were prolonged, and the recoveries were weak, job losses at around 2% were not enough to cause widespread protest.
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