Responding to the worsening jobs crisis, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken (D) proposed a new jobs bill last month that would use $10 billion from the remaining Wall Street bailout funds to help subsidize new hires at small and medium-sized businesses and boost employment in the green-energy economy.
Our first priority, our second priority and our third priority this year will be creating jobs. I am going to make sure 2010 is the year of job creation.
The bill would use 50 percent of the funds to reimburse companies up to $12 an hour for new hires. The other half would go to state and local governments to create green jobs through retrofitting government buildings to increase energy efficiency.
For St. Paul Local 110 Business Manager Michael Redlund, getting his members and other Americans back to work must be at the top of Congress’s agenda. Unemployment among his membership, mostly inside wiremen, is running near 44 percent. Many are losing hope that things are going to turn around anytime soon.
Says Redlund:
I’ve never seen it this bad before. I’ve talked to some of the old-timers, guys in their 80s and 90s, and they tell me that even they have never seen it this bad.
Redlund sees the credit freeze as biggest obstacle to getting the construction market moving again. Most smaller and medium-sized banks are skittish about making loans since the collapse of the financial sector more than a year ago. “Our contractors have plenty of projects ready to go, but the banks just aren’t lending out money.”
On Feb. 2, President Obama called on Congress to use $30 billion of the remaining Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds for a new government lending program offering inexpensive loans to community banks that will boost their small business lending this year.
Debate on the jobs bill is expected to heat up later this month.
The Minnesota AFL-CIO has also been active in pushing state legislators to take action to stimulate economic growth. Earlier this month, it held a press conference urging elected officials to support a series of bills aimed at creating jobs – including legislation to spark the construction industry through focused tax credits and allowing municipalities to issue bonds to finance energy efficiency improvements to public buildings.
To watch an interview with then-candidate-Franken during the 2008 IBEW Construction Conference click below:
