This January, Half in Ten joined with the National Employment Law Project,  NELP, to urge Congress to include urgent reforms to the Unemployment Insurance system in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA.  The antiquated unemployment insurance system had failed to ensure equal benefits for low-wage workers, part-time workers, workers who left work due to “compelling family reasons,” and long-term unemployed individuals.  Low-wage workers are only one-third as likely to collect unemployment benefits, even though they have double the chances of being unemployed.  For this reason, UI reform was one of the 12 steps that the Center for American Progress Task Force on Poverty identified to cut poverty in half in ten years.

Congress listened to advocates, and included unemployment reform in ARRA, allocating $7 billion for the project. And these reforms have begun to reach unemployed workers across the country.  Earlier this week, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a report (PDF) detailing the “unprecedented wave” of unemployment insurance reforms that has swept across the country since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) became law on February 17th, 2009.   Read more »

By Paul Jackson
HousingWire.com

New Jersey state officials last week said they would begin to roll out a program requiring mandatory mediation on certain foreclosure proceedings, the latest effort by local government officials to stanch a growing tide of foreclosures. New Jersey Chief Justice Stuart Rabner said in a press statement that the program would provide mediators to help homeowners and lenders negotiate with one another and try to work out agreements to avoid foreclosures.
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On August 26, the Census Bureau released new data on poverty and health insurance coverage for 2007. The statistics show that, despite economic growth over the past few years, the number of Americans living in poverty was greater in 2007 than in the recession year of 2001.
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Minimum wage activists joined together on July 11 in Newark to help launch New Jersey’s Raise the Wage campaign. The state’s Minimum Wage Advisory Commission led by Governor Jon Corzine’s labor commissioner has called for substantially increasing New Jersey’s minimum wage and adjusting each year based on the cost of living so that it does not fall in value again. The Raise the Wage coalition, led by the National Employment Law Project and New Jersey Policy Perspective and made up of over 20 advocacy groups, community organizations, and workers groups, echoed the Advisory Commission’s recommendations. It is calling for increasing New Jersey’s minimum wage to at least $8.50 per hour and adjusting it each year so that it keeps up with the rapidly rising cost of food, gas and necessities.

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