South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Writing in The Huffington Post, George Wentworth of the National Employment Law Project describes changes to North Carolina’s unemployment insurance syste  as an unfortunate example of “how to disappear the unemployed.”

That line drawn by Governor McCrory and the Republican majorities in the North Carolina General Assembly has taken the war on the unemployed to the next level. This week, more than 70,000 unemployed North Carolinians lost their federal unemployment insurance — benefits that help pay for food, rents and mortgages; benefits that are not funded by the state or its employers; dollars that would help boost consumer demand by more than $1 billion in a state that still boasts the fifth-highest unemployment rate in the country.
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As we slowly turn the corner in today’s economy and unemployment fatigue settles in, we risk losing sight of those Americans still fighting to get back in the game — families that are patching together temporary assignments, multiple part-time jobs, low-paying work with less job security, and those still looking for an employer to take a chance on them. They are not just the rubble of the economic crisis to be cleared away and pushed out of public view. As a nation, it is time to stand up against attacks on the unemployed. We are better than this.