On March 14, three separate guests gave their input on the topic of dignity of work while on America’s Work Force.
Bernie Lunzer, News Guild– Communication Workers of America, joined AWF to talk about the attacks on journalism and the work that they do. Many journalists are attacked and berated for doing their jobs, and how people are sending legitimate threats to them. He talked about the dangers of working in journalism and if someone reports a story that goes against a person’s agenda, they deem it “fake” and an “unreliable source.” Lunzer stressed that journalism is not dying out and that the journalism practice needs to be preserved and protected at all costs.
Michael Shields from Policy Matters Ohio spoke with America’s Work Force on how the General Motors Lordstown workers could have been protected. He said that if the Art Modell law extended to corporations, the workers would have been able to keep their jobs or be properly reassigned. He also talked about strengthening unemployment compensation in Ohio so that when the workers were laid off, they would be properly compensated and would not be struggling to make ends meet while looking for new work. Also, Shields mentioned that if there were better tax incentive packages in Ohio, more companies would have wanted to come in and take G.M.’s spot or maybe even G.M. would have stayed open.
Senator Sherrod Brown was the third and final guest on the March 14 edition of AWF. He discussed raising the minimum wage so that workers would not have to be living paycheck to paycheck to afford the most basic necessities. He also talked about President Trump’s new budget plan and how the GOP tax cut added to the deficit and to counteract it, they are cutting money from social programs such as social security and medicare.