During tonight's State of the Union, most Americans are going to be listening for the President to say one word: "jobs." Well, I'm going to be listening for two words: "good jobs."
I know firsthand that just having a job is no guarantee that you can buy groceries or pay the gas bill. Americans need jobs that pay a living wage, offer health insurance, and provide a secure retirement.
Finding a job is certainly tough--even during this "recovery." Both my sons have been unemployed for over a year now. One was laid off after Rite Aid downsized. Now, he's trying to support his wife and two kids on unemployment benefits. Every dime they get goes to paying their utilities and food. Both my sons are having no problems finding odd jobs, but what they really need are steady jobs with steady paychecks so they can raise their families. Instead, they're spending almost every waking hour looking for jobs: by word of mouth, by surfing the Internet, and even driving around looking for "Help Wanted" signs. And they haven't had any luck yet.
But simply finding a job isn't enough--I found that out the hard way. I'm an independent home care provider in Ohio and until three years ago, I was making less than minimum wage, had gone without a raise for 13 years, and had no health insurance.
Not that my job was easy at all: home care workers lift their disabled clients in and out of bed, bathe them, cook for them, clean their houses, and everything else they cannot do for themselves. But no matter how hard I worked, my family stayed poor.
Three years ago, Ohio's independent home care workers fought for--and won--the right to organize ourselves into a union. Through our union, we won raises and health care benefits for the first time. I may have had a job for thirteen years, but before the union, it was never a good job. Now I have that.
But last fall, Ohio elected a governor who's trying to send us home care workers back into poverty and take away our health insurance. Governor John Kasich campaigned on bringing jobs to Ohio, but he's doing everything he can to destroy jobs. He says the best way to create jobs is cutting government--but cutting government is just code for cutting jobs. And he won't say where the jobs to replace government jobs are going to come from.
As companies are just beginning to hire again, governors like Kasich are about to turn millions of good jobs into poverty jobs--if they don't put them on the chopping block first. He's even promised to take away home care workers' right to organize. That would throw me back to where I was four years ago: when I went over a decade without a raise and no health insurance.
Tonight, I hope President Obama will lay out an agenda for our country that invests in our people to create the good jobs of the future. If he does, I hope the country's governors and mayors will take note and remember that the route to prosperity is investment, not cutting good jobs.
