Jean Eisen lives in Buena Park, CA in Orange County.  Buena Park is home of UFCW Local 324, one of our Coalition-affiliated local unions. Local 324 represents clinical lab scientists among other technical positions in SCAL Kaiser Permanente.

Who is Jean Eisen?

She’s been unemployed for two years.

As she looks at job listings at her local career services center, the job descriptions, (technical positions for which she is not qualified,) look just as mysterious to her as the pinto beans she was just given.

“When you can’t define what it is, that’s a pretty good indication.”

Then her job counselor mentions a couple of possibilities: a cashier at a supermarket and a night desk job at a motel.

Listen to her in her own words as she accepts food from her church food bank after two years of unemployment, ready to put flyers on the porches in her neighborhood offering to clean her neighbors’ homes.

“I’ll e-mail them. I’ll tell them what a shining example of humanity I am”.

It breaks your heart.

The New York Times tells Jean’s heartbreaking and human story which also has within it deep analysis about the economic state of the country.  In brief, the article describes in graphic evidence that the job recovery from the Great Recession that we are in will take longer and impact fewer people.  In other words, this Great Recession, just like the others over the last 20 years builds chronic unemployment. 

The article focuses on an individual, Jean Eisen, who happens to live in the heart of the SCAL Kaiser Permanente world. There are hundreds of thousands just like Jean living in our world.  She has no access to affordable health care.

Jobless recovery

This Great Recession will impact the economy for a long time to come. Job growth has been declining for a long time.

According to the Times, the American economy has changed in ways that makes jobs scarce particularly for people like Jean, 57 years old with a high school education. 

During periods of economic expansion in the 1950s-1970s, jobs increased at a rate of 3.5% per year.  In the 1980’s and 1990’s job growth was 2.4% annually.

In the last decade, job growth was 0.9% annually, and with the severe job losses - 6.3 million in the last two years -- the decade had zero job growth, the first time ever!

We’ve already seen one jobless recovery: after the recession of 2000-01.

Jean Eisen is in her second year of unemployment. She is someone who worked all her life until now. Unemployment benefits have run out.

What are we to make of this reality? Of the Jean Eisens of the world, especially as we get ready to bargain our contract? We are proud well-paid unionized workers, with job security, great benefits, working in the ever-expanding field of health care.

It’s a great and humane position to be in. We lead the way for workers and our communities. 

We will struggle for solid wage improvements and maintain our benefits.

We also have the opportunity with our labor-management partnership, unit-based teams, and a deepening relationship on business strategy with KP to create value for the members who already have, and for customers who want KP health care services.

We must create greater and greater value in an economic landscape that is unforgiving and not set up to provide expanding numbers of well-paid, benefited jobs.

No, we will not read the story of Jean Eisen and hide. We will stand up for her and her humanity, cognizant always that the economic landscape in our nation has fundamentally changed. 

We will achieve breakthroughs in quality, efficiency, and productivity that will show other employers that by empowering its workforce, more value can be created.  It’s the way to re-build the economy: good-paying union jobs, union-jobs that give voice to the frontline…and to an economy that has been in decline far too long.

We must demand from our policy makers that we no longer allow American employers to be driven entirely by short-term profit. The Times article places this fact at the center of the nation’s economic decline.

We must demand long-term sustainable jobs to create an economy that works. And our model of labor-management partnership shows that we can get the job done.