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NEWS BRIEFS

Date Posted: February 20 2004

House reinstates jobless $ – sort of
First the good news: the Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives approved a six-month reinstatement of federal jobless benefits on Feb. 4.

And now the bad news: the Washington Post called the vote “largely symbolic” because the Senate and President Bush still have to approve the measure, but have shown no sign that they’re willing to do so.

In addition, the House GOP leadership, which opposed the extension, called its passage a “hypocritical” political ploy because the House lawmakers didn’t provide any money to fund the added benefits. The vote was along party lines, with 39 Republicans breaking ranks to help approve the measure, 227 to 179.

“The Republican leadership has been playing with political dynamite in resisting this simple measure to aid families who are hardest hit by long-term unemployment,” federation President John J. Sweeney said after labor lobbied for restoring the federal benefits, which expired Dec. 31. Since then 375,000 people have exhausted their state jobless benefits, the only ones available.

Sweeney demanded that GOP President George W. Bush stop opposing jobless benefits and “prove his compassion for working families extends to those who want to work but cannot find jobs.

“Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) wrote the language providing $6.7 billion in unemployment benefits. “Last week the shocking neglect of the administration became all too apparent,” Miller said. “They (the unemployed) can’t find work and this administration won’t help them.”

Pay increases trend downward
Settlements in newly negotiated construction labor agreements in 2003 averaged $1.42 or 4.3 percent for the first year, according to the Construction Labor Research Council. The average increase was right in the middle of average first-year increases since 2000, which have ranged from 4.1 percent to 4.5 percent.

The average second- and third-year increases were both at 3.8 percent. An average of 63 cents of those increases were allocated to health and welfare costs.

The news was a little worse in Michigan, where the CLRC reported that average first-year increases were 4.0 percent in the first year and 3.6 percent in the second year. Michigan in recent years has been at the top of the rankings among states when comparing pay increases.

“As in most years,” the CLRC said, “agreements of three years or more were most common. The difference (in 2003) was a reduced tendency to negotiate agreements of more than three years. The pattern of even longer agreements, which had been growing in recent years, has, therefore, subsided.”