Time to Consider a Full-Employment Bill

[pal_of_poor]

PROPOSED FULL-EMPLOYMENT AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

Section 1. Every citizen has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment.

Section 2. Every citizen, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

Section 3. Every citizen who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for themselves sand their family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

Section 4. Every citizen who works has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of their interests.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to implement this article by legislation.

(Based on Article Twenty-three, United nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the United States is a signatory)

Our nation has a peculiar work ethic. It insists that people work for a living, which is a valid expectation, but it does not insist that the private and public sectors provide enough jobs at livable wages for everyone who wants to work.

Our Society's rhetoric values and rewards those willing to work the hardest or take the greatest financial risks, but, in reality, it sometimes rewards company executives and financial investors who work the least and assume the fewest risks.

We reward our professional athletic heroes and their owners with billions, because the market can afford it, but often pay our teachers a barely livable wage.

The country historically criticized the work ethic and sometimes humiliated the individuals on welfare, yet seldom questions the work habits or resulting product or service of the largest beneficiaries of governmental largess--corporate welfare.

I believe gainful employment is a human right. And if we truly value work and believe in the work ethic, we should provide every American with the constitutional right to work, the right to organize, and the right to make a livable wage.

I recognize this is probably the most controversial amendment I shall propose. In many ways, it is also the most important. A full-employment constitutional amendment, if realized, would generate unprecedented balanced economic growth, spawn astronomical sums of taxes at every level of government to pay for education, health care, housing, and a clean and sustainable environment, and provide these huge sums in a more balanced and natural way.

There are a variety of ways to rhetorically raise the full-employment challenge. Is our nation actually willing to practice what it preaches with regard to work ethic? Will we put our money where our mouth is? In biblical terms, are we really willing to make the work of work become the flesh of work? If the answer to all of those questions is yes, then America will be moving in the most progressive, humane, and just direction ever in the history of the world.
A More Perfect Union, Advancing New American Rights, by Jessie Jackson Jr. with Frank E. Watkins pp. 252-53

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/More-Perfect-Union-Jesse-Jackson/dp/B000J3EGQM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252506044&sr=8-2]Amazon.com: A More Perfect Union: Jesse Jackson: Books[/ame]

Crazy idea isn't it, always assuring people have a job, some dignity, and a decent living, instead of putting vast fortunes into the hands of a few money-grubbing people, who've got more than generations of their family can ever use, or spend.

 

[Fatality]

PROPOSED FULL-EMPLOYMENT AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

Section 1. Every citizen has the right to work
.

without being forced into a union, and everyone has the right to choose to opt out of any existing union

everyone has the right NOT to work if it be their choice and as a result can expect NO government compensation. they are on their own, to live with their descision.

 

[Xenophon]

No, it isn't 'time' for that.

Its time for government to stop impeding the private sector and start trying to help it.

 

[Dis]

The only portion of your post I agree with is that athletes make way too much money for what they do.. HOWEVER, if someone is willing to pay them that much, why shouldn't they take it?

I think teachers should have some type of bonus plan which is scaled based on their success rate. This way, the teachers that actually give a shit have the ability to make more than those that just show up for a paycheck.

What "protection against unemployment" are you suggesting? Employees that don't do the job, get canned. Period. Employees that don't show up get canned. Period. f a company can't afford to maintan it's current staff, some of those people need to be let go. You don't get to dictate if and when your employer can let you go. The best you can do, is make yourself indispensable to that employer so that YOU aren't the one being let go.

You also have no right to make demands on what employment with any company will, or should offer. Why don't YOU try starting your own business, and put YOUR demands into place and see how well it works out for YOU?

 

[Lonestar_logic]

Show me in the Bill Of Rights where citizens has the right to work.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

"Never take advise from people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about" -- My Aunt Esther

 

[Oddball]

What bullshit.

There are more vague weasel words in that mythical amendment than an Barry Obubblehead speech.

Of course, it's easy to point out that Soviet Russia had the same kind of "equality" for the proletariat, and they were all equally miserable.

 

[ozzmdj]

What bullshit.

There are more vague weasel words in that mythical amendment than an Barry Obubblehead speech.

Of course, it's easy to point out that Soviet Russia had the same kind of "equality" for the proletariat, and they were all equally miserable.

Or we can all work in the rice fields together