front page - search - community

EDITORIAL
Your Vote Counts
(Published September 7, 2004)

Labor Day appears to hold little significance for local leaders in a city that, ironically, is home to the headquarters of America’s organized labor movement.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams, treating the national day to honor working people as just another federal holiday, left town on vacation at the beginning of the weekend without uttering a word about the District’s workforce.

Nary a word has been heard from most D.C. City Council members since the council decided to put public business on hold for the summer. Those who have stayed in town, some to seek re-election, have said little – if anything – as the District’s unemployment rate skyrocketed to 8.2 percent by the end of July, while the national rate continued to fall.

The bevy of candidates seeking votes in the Sept. 14 primary also have deftly avoided making a campaign issue out of how to help the more than 20,000 D.C. residents who are seeking work but cannot find it. Local workforce analysts say the actual number of unemployed adults in the District, including those who have given up looking for work, may be three times higher.

Meanwhile, politicians continue to herald the city’s booming "economic development" of recent years – much of it subsidized by taxpayers, including those who are jobless – as the city’s salvation.

Yet, officials acknowledge that the bulk of new jobs created by the boom have not been filled by D.C. residents. And recent comments by the mayor’s longtime director of employment services, Gregory Irish, indicate that the Williams administration has no viable plan for addressing the problem. Three months ago, Irish flippantly told The Common Denominator’s editor that the solution is for the city’s unemployed to "get smarter." Last month, he told reporter Robert Arkell that a college degree soon may become a prerequisite for getting a job in the District.

That attitude, which exacerbates the problem, is unacceptable. It also explains why local leaders, with the tacit approval of the District’s congressional overseers, have destroyed almost every vocational training program that ever existed in the D.C. Public Schools. Instead, they are pushing all schoolchildren toward a college education that many neither want nor need – instilling many with unachievable dreams and saddling them at an early age with stifling debt.

For employers seeking good workers, a college degree loses meaning when every job applicant has one. A demonstrated drive to achieve and a record of accomplishment can often be better indicators of a prospective employee’s skills.

Why is it so difficult for local leaders to see a connection between the District’s chronically high unemployment rate and many of the city’s social ills? Why is there no plan to provide real help for the thousands who want to earn a paycheck, rather than receive a government handout or, in desperation, turn to crime?

The District’s elected leaders shape the policies and laws that drive market forces in the local economy. Many of the current policies and laws are being used to protect the bottom line of politicians’ wealthy campaign contributors – even as they erode residents’ quality of life. Voters have a chance on Sept. 14 and Nov. 2 to confront the status quo.

Copyright 2004, The Common Denominator