Arizona Republicans have hit on a way to make life worse for unemployed people. Currently, to collect unemployment insurance, people have to be looking for work and to accept “suitable” work if it’s offered. Under a new law, scratch that “suitable” part. People will have to accept any job they’re offered as long as it pays more than 20 percent more than their unemployment check—which means any job paying $288 a week or more.
You could be an engineer or a graphic designer or a skilled carpenter, but if McDonald’s or Walmart says they’ll have you, you have to take it or lose your benefits. Forget about looking for a job in your field that will pay you a living wage. You also don’t get to consider what’s suitable in terms of the “risk involved to the individual’s health, safety and morals.”
[Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s] press aide Daniel Scarpinato called it “common-sense reform.”
“It’s a job that the individual’s been offered, and it pays,” he noted, adding that Ducey supports the idea of people finding employment “who are getting off of benefits and finding value in work.”
Bear in mind that people don’t get unemployment insurance automatically: anyone collecting unemployment in Arizona was laid off or fired for reasons that weren’t their fault. No one just walked off the job to collect that sweet $240-a-week check. No one was fired for dealing drugs at work.
These are people who had jobs within the last few months and lost them without doing anything wrong. To keep getting UI, they are spending four days a week looking for work. They should be the poster children for the Republican obsession with the value of work. But instead, they’re being devalued and treated as shirkers whose professional skills do not matter—because in fact, Republicans just hate anyone who’s struggling. And they’d rather sentence people to low-wage jobs that don’t make use of their specific skills than pay for a few extra weeks or months of unemployment insurance to make sure that people’s skills are maximized in the economy.
This blog was originally published at DailyKos on May 17, 2018. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Laura Clawson is labor editor at DailyKos.
