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Jobs created are minumum wage jobs fastfood no benefits { October 9 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/politics/campaign/09edwards.html"They are not creating enough jobs to take care of new people entering the work force," Mr. Edwards said, adding: "The new jobs that are being created? A huge percentage of them are minimum-wage jobs, fast food restaurant, janitorial jobs, part-time jobs, low-wage jobs, jobs with no benefits. The truth is this is the first president in 70 years that failed to create jobs."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/politics/campaign/09edwards.html
October 9, 2004
Edwards Says Bush Ignores Plight of Workers
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
SCRANTON, Pa., Oct. 8 - Two days after President Bush visited this region, Senator John Edwards came here on Friday to accuse him of ignoring the plight of workers in an area hit hard by job losses in manufacturing and of failing to improve the economy nationwide.
Mr. Edwards's remarks, hours before the debate between Mr. Bush and Senator John Kerry in St. Louis, focused heavily on the economy, a critical issue in the hard-fought hard-coal region of Pennsylvania, a state where polls suggest the race between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry is virtually tied.
Mr. Edwards was introduced by a favorite son of Scranton, Robert P. Casey Jr., the state auditor whose late father was a popular governor. In the vein of "Reagan Democrats," political analysts here have identified "Casey Democrats" - generally Catholic, socially conservative working-class Democrats - as a group that will play a large role in deciding the election here.
Mr. Casey will soon appear in a television commercial for the Kerry campaign, said Tony Podesta, the state campaign chairman.
"High-wage manufacturing jobs have been leaving the area with disturbing regularity," Mr. Podesta said.
Mr. Edwards hit the economy hard in a speech at a town-hall-style meeting that ran for nearly an hour.
He received his most sustained ovation with a promise to raise the minimum wage to $7 an hour from $5.15 and to reverse new federal regulations that Democrats say will deprive people of overtime benefits but that Republicans say will cut down on costs for businesses and ultimately raise the number of people getting overtime wages.
"It finally is time to raise the minimum wage in America," Mr. Edwards said. "Some of the things we need to do will have to go through Congress, but there is one thing we can do the first day, which is to reverse George Bush's overtime rules, which are a pay cut for millions of Americans."
Mr. Edwards alluded to figures from the Labor Department that showed that while the economy added 96,000 jobs in September, that was below the estimated 150,000 needed to keep pace with population growth.
"They are not creating enough jobs to take care of new people entering the work force," Mr. Edwards said, adding: "The new jobs that are being created? A huge percentage of them are minimum-wage jobs, fast food restaurant, janitorial jobs, part-time jobs, low-wage jobs, jobs with no benefits. The truth is this is the first president in 70 years that failed to create jobs."
He added, "The truth is we need a president and a vice president that'll fight as hard for your job as they fight for their own job."
Mr. Edwards said the president had treated American workers as the enemy. "George Bush has been at war - he's at war with working people in general - but he's certainly at war with organized labor,'' he said.
Mr. Bush visited nearby Wilkes-Barre on Wednesday but mainly addressed national security.
Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said the Kerry campaign had overlooked indicators that showed the economy was reviving. He noted that the nationwide unemployment rate held steady at 5.4 percent and that statistics showed employment had been growing for 13 months, for a total gain of nearly 2 million jobs.
"The Kerry-Edwards campaign's negative and false attacks can't mask the fact that the American worker and the U.S. economy have created nearly two million jobs in the past year, with two-thirds of them above the national average wage," Mr. Jones said.
Independent economists generally rate the recovery as moderate and suggest rising oil prices and other factors like the Florida hurricanes may take a toll. The unemployment rate in this region is 6.5 percent.
Mr. Edwards said the rosier assessments of the economy by Mr. Bush were meant to deceive voters.
"The people of America deserve a president who will be straight with them about what's happening in Iraq, who will be straight with them and tell the truth about what's happening with jobs here in America, who will be straight with them and tell them the truth about the health care crisis that America faces right now," Mr. Edwards said.
The country, he added, needs "somebody who has a real plan and real ideas to make it better, not just more of the same."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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