By Mark Gruenberg

PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI)--The AFL-CIO activated its state and local leadership and is appealing to its members to stage a massive blitz on June 10-12 of e-mail and phone calls to Congress, urging passage of a new bill lengthening jobless benefits from their present 26 weeks to 39 weeks in most states and 52 weeks in states with 6%+ jobless rates.

The effort, coordinated by Americans United for Change, also includes AFSCME and SEIU, leaders said in a June 10 telephone press conference.

 “The economy is in free fall and working people are struggling.  The share of all the unemployed who are jobless more than 6 months is 18%, and there are two jobless workers searching, per every job available,” declared AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel.  He called the economy--including a sharp rise in May in the jobless rate--“a toxic brew” for workers and their families.
 
The objective of the blitz is to get the House to approve a bill, to be voted on either on Wednesday, June 11, or Thursday, June 12, extending jobless benefits to a minimum of 39 weeks, and making the extension retroactive to all workers who had exhausted their benefits starting last November.  Samuel said that every month, starting in January, some 200,000 more workers had lost their benefits, reaching the end of their 26 weeks.

“We alerted our state and local labor leaders, to contact their lawmakers and push them for it,” Samuel said.  “And we’ve got 800 (toll-free) numbers for activists to call.”  One such number is 1-888-460-0813, set up by the federation and Americans United.

The key roadblock, said Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) who joined the call, is getting enough Republicans to defect to override a veto by anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush.  Bush says that joblessness is not high enough to justify extending benefits.  He contends the economy is still basically healthy, even though unemployment rose 0.5% in May to 5.5% and 861,000 more workers lost their jobs.

Neither Levin--whose Ways and Means Committee is writing the bill-- nor Samuel could produce a nose-count on either side of Capitol Hill.  Samuel said the situation could change quickly depending on both lawmakers’ perceptions of the joblessness problem and on whether the free-standing jobless bill would--again--be rolled into Bush’s money bill funding the Iraq War.  The Senate added the jobless benefits, plus an improved GI Bill for soldiers’ education, plus more relief for Katrina victims, to that measure last month by a bipartisan 75-22 vote.

That would be enough to override a Bush veto, but “we don’t know how many would defect” on a solo jobless benefits bill, Samuel said.  “We hope it wouldn’t be any.”

The House also tucked the jobless benefits extension into the war money bill, but without enough votes to override a veto.  That needs two-thirds majorities.