US / All willing and able person have a right to work

All Americans willing and able to work have a right to paid employment. If the private sector can’t generate sufficient jobs, the public sector should provide them.

This definition of “right to work” obviously differs from the one that Republican legislators in Michigan deployed when they passed a new law absolving workers from the responsibility of paying union fees even if they gain contract benefits from them. But perhaps their actions will dramatize the need to challenge their framing and reclaim the genuine meaning of the phrase.

Most of us live in a world in which paid employment is the only avenue to economic self-sufficiency. Without it, families maintained by working-age adults are largely dependent on the kindness of strangers, otherwise known as extended unemployment insurance and food stamps. Yet, for more than four years, this nation has tolerated levels of unemployment that have essentially made it impossible for most of those seeking paid employment to find it, with a ratio of unemployed workers to job openings of more than three to one.

Choosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from

via Nancy Folbre: A Real Right to Work – NYTimes.com.