According to a report released this month by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the average indebted graduating college senior was $17,600 in debt last year. Nearly two-thirds of students attending a four-year public college or university take on student loans, and loans now comprise over half of financial aid packages, up from about one-fifth in the 1970s.
Expenses at public four-year universities have risen 59.4 percent since 1990, with private university expenses increasing 51.1 percent. High levels of student debt are the result of rapidly increasing college costs and policy choices that have made more loans – and not grant aid – available to students.
"American students are graduating with more debt than ever. We are handing college graduates a bill for more than $17,000 when they receive their diploma," said Heather Boushey, CEPR economist and author of the study. "Working your way through college is no longer possible with such a low minimum wage and few grants available to students."
By comparison, in 1981, college students could work full-time all summer at a minimum wage job and earn about two-thirds of their annual college costs, leaving less than $2,000 (in inflation-adjusted 2004 dollars) that they needed to pull together from grants, loans, working during the school year, or their parents. Today, however, students earning minimum wage would have to work full-time for one year in order to afford one year of education at a four-year public college or university.
Meanwhile, the Republican controlled Congress is proposing slashing student financial aid funding to help pay for tax cuts for the rich, the war in Iraq, and huge corporate subsidies for Republican corporate donors and other pork barrel projects in Republican districts.
Jobs With Justice Demands Full Support for Katrina Victims
The government's actions and inaction to protect the working people of the Gulf coast is a disgrace. In New Orleans, where one third of the population lives below the poverty line, 70% is African American, 40% are illiterate, and less than half own cars, the lack of preparation for a disaster that has been predicted for years is unfathomable. In rural areas across the Gulf Coast where many of the farmworkers speak only Spanish, word of the hurricane came too late for many to evacuate and now that the storm is over, no Spanish-language materials are available to help them find the food, water, and shelter they need.
This week, in a move that will further hurt the working families affected by the hurricane, President Bush issued an executive order that will allow employers using federal disaster assistance money to pay poverty wages to workers in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. The executive order suspends the requirements of the Davis-Bacon law, a federal law which requires that federal contractors to pay workers wages that are at least equal to the prevailing wages in the area where the work is conducted, such as highway construction and other federally-funded construction projects.
The working people of the Gulf Coast will not go quietly into the night, scattering across the country to become homeless in countless other cities while federal relief funds are funneled into rebuilding casinos, hotels, and only the wealthy sections of their cities. Those of us fortunate enough to live outside of the hurricane's path must do what we can to help. Jobs with Justice is asking you to do two things to help the working people hurt most by the hurricane:
1) Send a message to Congress and the President demanding that the federal government act now to fully fund the health care, housing, nutrition, employment and education needs of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Demand a bipartisan investigation into the failure of the government's response to this disaster. Demand that President Bush rescind his executive order that will further hurt the people devastated by Katrina's path. http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/katrinajustice/
2) Please give generously to support the organizations that are on the ground fighting to ensure that the voices of the Gulf Coast's working people are heard.
LabourStart.org Urges Solidarity with Korean Hotel Workers
The Korean Federation of Service Workers' Unions (KFSU) is calling for international support for their struggle against an insidious form of union busting at the Hotel Riviera in Daejeon City.
In the past, such support has been vital in getting governments and companies to obey the law and to accept the rights of workers to form unions.
Union members at the Hotel Riviera have been struggling since August last year against the owners' contrived closure of the facility, which the union has proven was carried out on fraudulent grounds in order to close the facility long enough to break the union.
Their struggle is now at a crucial turning point. And your help is needed -- right now.
The National Labour Relations Commission has ruled in favor of the union's contention that the closure was a fake designed to break the union. The owners should now reinstate all dismissed union members with full back pay and resume normal operations. But Korean law is full of loopholes.
Please pass this message on -- let's build a huge international campaign in support of our brothers and sisters in Korea and send a message to employers everywhere.
Gender Gap in Wages is Real
Right-wing ideologues and brainless loudmouths like Rush Limbaugh have long denied that a gender gap in wages exists. This idea has been highlighted more recently as a partial examination of Supreme Court Chief Justice nominee Judge John Roberts’ record shows that he made a legal argument while serving as an adviser for the Reagan administration insisting that a gender gap in wages did not exist. He further argued that legal remedies for closing the gender gap were "anti-capitalist" and "staggeringly pernicious."
Of course, all of these right-wing arguments are purely ideological and do not have a basis in reality. According to analysis of Census Bureau data done by the non-partisan think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the gender gap persists today (as it did when Roberts made his argument) even among men and women with similar educational backgrounds.
In fact for some demographic groups the gap has grown. Heidi Hartmann at EPI found that in 2004, college-educated women aged 45-49 earn $36,842 (or 38%) less per year than their college-educated male counterparts. In their 20s (when Roberts baselessly denied the existence of the gender gap), the gap was $11,001 or 25%. A woman with a college degree in 1984, who is now in her mid-40s, has lost a total of $440,743 between 1984 and 2004.
Where does that money go? To male wage earners? Nope. That money pads the bottom line of corporations and institutions that are thriving on sexist wage discrimination.
Since Roberts has not made any serious effort to recant his mind-boggling opinion of yesteryear, one has to assume that he still holds it. Why would Republicans insist on rubber-stamping a court nominee who believes that women are not worth as much as men and who will likely rule in future cases that they should not be paid comparably? Is it that the Republicans believe that corporate interests in large profits are more important than equality? We may be on to something here.
