First Friday Fake-Out

Boy, is my face red.

The first Friday of every month is the day the national unemployment figures are supposed to be — emphasis on supposed to be — released.  And up until 12:30 when I had to leave for a First Friday event in downtown Pittsburgh, I was checking the New York Times website to see what the numbers would be.  But nothing was being reported.

And do you know why?

Well, let me tell you.  It seems that the government considers February to be too short a month to get their act together to put together the information on time — even though this is a leap year and they had 29 days.  I realize that’s a whole day less than the 30 days that many other months have but — really?

But nothing could stop PA Wants to Work, the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, and Working America from having an event anyway.  And because March is Women’s History Month the focus was on women and unemployment.  One of the speakers — Heather Arnet, CEO of the Women and Girls Foundation — spoke about the difficulties women who have lost their jobs are having dealing with being unemployed.  This is especially tough for the large numbers of women who are single mothers raising children.  It may be even more difficult — and this is me talking now — because women still earn less than men in the workplace and, as a result, receive less in unemployment benefits.

NEXT WEEK:  The Real First Friday

Rally for Transit in Downtown Pittsburgh on Wednesday February 29th

As I wrote in some early posts, I relied on public transportation to get to my last job and I still rely on it to get to current volunteer activities, interviews, career counseling sessions, and networking meetings.  The proposed, drastic cuts in public transit across the state would affect thousands of riders.  Here’s an article about the cuts in the current PA Wants to Work newsletter that I wrote along with Dave Ninehouser:

TRANSIT CUTS WILL DEVASTATE PITTSBURGH AND REGION

The recovery is threatened and thousands of jobs are on the line if the governor doesn’t act.

In September, up to 40 of 90 bus and T routes will be either cut or reduced unless Governor Corbett fully funds public transit in the Pittsburgh region — and beginning in July fares for all public transit will be increased.

Last summer, the governor’s own commission on transportation issued a report with recommendations to address the state’s transportation and infrastructure crisis.  Both Republicans and Democrats in Harrisburg are in agreement with the commission’s findings, but Corbett refuses to lead on this urgent issue and instead insists that the public transit problems are a local problem for Pittsburgh alone. 

Port Authority of Allegheny County faces a budget shortfall of $64 million and unless the governor comes through with the necessary funding 45,000 bus and T riders in the Pittsburgh area will be unable to get to work, visit their doctor, shop at small businesses, and, potentially, come into the city for evening sporting events or concerts.

PAWW, along with We Are One, is holding actions throughout the city and surrounding area to make riders aware of these drastic cuts and what they mean for workers, businesses and our region’s ability to thrive and survive. Watch for emails from Dave Ninehouser to find out where and when you can help get out the message.

YOUR VOICE IS URGENTLY NEEDED:  Call Governor Corbett’s office (at 412-565-5700 or 717-787-2500) and let him know that you want him to FULLY FUND public transit. Don’t stop Pittsbnurgh in it’s tracks – keep our region moving forward!

PA Wants to Work, along with concerned residents of Allegheny County, members of the faith community, community organizations, and civic leaders are holding a rally on February 29th to save public transportation in our region outside the David Lawrence Convention Center at noon.

 

And here’s a cartoon commentary on what could happen if public transit in Pennsylvania is not adequately funded:

How Would You Feel?

I’ve had two conversations in as many months with people I had just met about my job search experience.  One of them was a career counselor and the other was a networking contact.  And, after they had looked at my resume and I told them my story, both of them said I was doing the right things to find a job.

I don’t know how I feel about this or how I should feel about it.  One half of me — the one that’s always looking at the bright side of things even though that side is actually only a quarter to an eighth of the whole — is surprised, grateful for the compliment, and positive about my prospects.  The other half — the one that sometimes takes over the whole of me like David Banner (TV’s Bill Bixby) when he turns into the Hulk — is frustrated about it.  If I’m on the right track with my job search — if I’m doing all of the right things in terms of networking and volunteering — then how come I don’t have a job after all this time?  And it has been a long time.

How would you feel?

A Visit To The Drugstore And That Machine That Tells You Which Insoles You Need

How Do You Sleep?

Many experts in the art of the job search recommend that you spend 75% of your time in networking and 25% in searching on interwebs job posting sites.  Is there no time left for sleeping?

Have I Passed My Sell-By Date?

The word on the street is that if you’ve been out of work for more than a year you have lost many of the skills you used in your last job.  You have, in theory — if not in fact — passed your sell-by date. 

I bring this up because, as you know dear reader, I have been unemployed for more than a year.  When this topic of conversation came up with my career counselor she pointed out in a positive manner that this may not be the case with me because of all of my volunteer activities and blogging.  She suggested — and I took a crack at it — revising my resume so that the volunteer and blogging stuff would be the first things on my resume, rather than starting with my last job.  It’s a way of showing that I haven’t been sitting on my, er, blog for the last year or so.

I’ve been using many of my skills — especially writing — as part of my volunteering.  It’s what I do.  In fact, I’m even building on my skills by writing and managing a grant application.  And I’ll keep doing it so someone in a human resources department doesn’t get a whiff of that milk container in the company fridge that no one seems to want to throw out.

My Life As A PAWW Steering Committee Member

Last weekend my pal Dave Ninehouser, the PA Wants to Work Coordinator, represented the group at a conference in Philadelphia.  Before he left he asked me to write something about my experience that he could use as part of his presentation.  This is the final version:

MY LIFE AS A STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBER

I’ve been a member of the PAWW Steering Committee for just about a year, just about as long as PAWW as been around, and just a little longer than I’ve been unemployed.

I ran into Dave Ninehouser at a meeting and then a rally about health care — around the time that the current Pennsylvania governor decided that the working poor didn’t need coverage.  Dave invited me to come to a meeting of the steering committee and I offered to help out as a writer.  The writing stuff didn’t happen until much later — until we came up with the idea of putting out a monthly newsletter — but I was thrown in as soon as I showed up to plan our first resource fair.

I’ve been unemployed for a little over 15 months now and being part of the PAWW Steering Committee every week has made sure I got out on a regular basis and that I dealt with labor council and other professionals who respected my ideas and skills as a writer.  Those are important things when you’re unemployed:  many of the unemployed feel that they have nothing to offer and nave no voice in their situation once they’re lost their jobs.

Those are the reasons we’ve worked so hard to provide information, resources, and activities to the jobless.  In the last year I’ve helped plan and been part of two resource fairs; a volunteer day of action at the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank; actions around the city to bring visibility to issues such as crumbling bridges, threats to unemployment insurance, drastic state budget cuts, and the need for corporations to pay their fair share; and wrote articles for the monthly newsletter that provides the unemployed and our other supporters with information about our activities, news on unemployment insurance at the state and local level, and upcoming events.

Pennsylvania Wants to Work works because we know that being unemployed does not been mean that a person no longer has value.  Borrowing Billy Bragg’s mixture of “pop and politics,” Dave N, Joe, Rod, Catherine, Tony, Dave V, and I meet each week to reach out to the jobless at this crucial time for their families and the country at large.  At a time when hundreds of people are lining up for a single job and thousands are lining up for job fairs, it’s more important than ever that Pennsylvania Wants to Work and our sister cities in the America Wants to Work program, rally those who have been harmed the most — both financially and emotionally — from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression that they had no part in causing.  The only way to turn things around will be for the millions of unemployed and underemployed to have good paying jobs that will allow them to provide for their families, send their kids to college, and save for a comfortable retirement.  Anything less will not — and should not — be accepted.

My Dream Job

Doesn’t everyone have a dream job?  It’s usually something that they would love to do, given a change in financial situation and luck and contacts.  And it may not even be dependent on another talent or skill, as is the case with me.  I really enjoy writing for businesses, non-profits, and publications but my dream job would be writing for a completely different industry.  My dream job is to write the book for Broadway musicals.

For those of you who are not aware, the book of a musical is the play part of the show — it’s the part of the show between the songs.  I’m a big fan of the book musicals of the golden age of Broadway musicals in the late 1950s and early 1960s, shows like “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,”  “My Fair Lady,”  “West Side Story,” and, most of all, “Gypsy.”  I happen to think that “Gypsy” is the best musical ever (it doesn’t hurt that I saw it on Broadway with Angela Lansbury as Mama Rose).  The show has music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by the late, great Arthur Laurents — a book that is so strong it could stand on its own as a play.

I thought of my dream job earlier this week when I was waiting to watch the series premiere of Smash, a new program about the creation of a Broadway musical.  It’s not as if I don’t know how people put together a musical.  A little over 150 years ago I wrote the book for a one-act musical that was produced Off-Off-Off Broadway (that’s where the NY Times said it was — we got a listing in the Sunday Arts & Leisure section the weekend before we opened).  And for years since then I’ve been carrying around an idea for another musical but haven’t been able to find anyone to write the songs (I’ve also written a couple of plays since then).

But back to Smash.   This post isn’t meant to promote the show or review it (although I get awfully close to that in the following sentences).  The only thing — the main thing — I was interested in was how the show – both book and songs – was written.  I didn’t think that was too much to ask — from the commercials it looked like two of the main characters were the composer and lyricist team (Debra Messing is one of them — the division of duties wasn’t made clear in the pilot).  By the end of the hour, they had three songs and what was considered by everyone involved to be a rough book.  My problem was that you never saw them working on the songs and you never saw them writing the book — and it wasn’t clear (to me at least) that perhaps they weren’t even writing the book.  Is there a phantom book writer that will be revealed in a future episode?

All I’m saying is that my dream job is to do what this show seems to have removed from the creative mix.  Even the Tonys now give out the award for Best Book in a separate ceremony before the broadcast.  But book writers are an essential part of any Broadway musical.  How about a little respect here — and making a young(ish) man’s dream come true?

My Letter In Yesterday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Thank you for your editorial “Extend the Benefits: The State House Must Not Hold the Jobless Hostage” (Feb. 1). The editorial includes a remark from Rep. Ron Miller, chairman of the House Labor & Industry Committee, concerning an effort to address the insolvency of the state’s unemployment compensation trust fund. One of the main reasons that the trust fund is insolvent is that for the last 25 years companies have only been required to pay into the fund the first $8,000 of an employee’s wages, no matter how much that employee earned, even though unemployment benefits are based on a person’s recent salary.

Unfortunately, the majority party in Harrisburg has not been willing to increase these payments as part of the solution to the trust fund issue but continues to find ways to make life more difficult for the thousands of current and future unemployed Pennsylvanians.

- Henry Lipput

Your Name Here

There are a lot of bloggers that use their site to make money.  They write about products that are sent to them or they have links to companies and get paid by how many clicks their readers make on those links.

I haven’t done any of those things but, being unemployed, I’ve often considered how I might make some money off of my blog.  And I think I’ve come up with a genius idea:  naming rights.

Imagine you have a lot of money and don’t know what to do with it but you want to make sure your name or brand are kept out there.  Let’s say you’re a rich guy who has great hair.  Let’s say your name is something like Ronald Stump.  Why wouldn’t you want your name on my blog?  Why wouldn’t you want to come to the WordPress site and visit RONALD STUMP’S BEING UNEMPLOYED IS LITERALLY NOT WORKING FOR ME?  Your name and brand would be seen by an average of four readers a day!  Isn’t that worth a butt load of money?

So give me a call or send me an email.  All of this can be yours.