What we need is Empathy

The Federal Government gives and the State Governments take away.

After reading this article in The Week, a wonderful little magazine that tells the news succinctly and with no bias, and after listening to some of the Sunday news shows, I don't think these governors should be able to cut the unemployment payments for those who are out of work. Many of those who aren't working are mothers who have had to make a decision to stay home with kids instead of going out to a job every day. They had to quit when the pandemic hit so they could become teachers as well as mothers to their children. The virus has not gone away even though we feel better since we can get vaccinated. I was in an office with a woman who said she had not had her shots and was not going to get the vaccination.  I put on my mask.

Why should people endanger their lives for employers who fired them or who are not taking all precautions to keep them safe if they do go back to work? Around my area, I am happy to see some signs asking for workers and offering $10 an hour for the job that paid around seven before the pandemic. As one person in the article in The Week says, this virus forced low-income people into a kind of union whereby they can demand a living wage if they are to go back into the workforce. 

Some of my friends who support this idea of forcing those unemployed to take any job available by cutting off their unemployment benefits, claim that the checks they receive as unemployment make it easy for them to sit home and do nothing. Those who think this way have the misguided idea that low-income workers are lazy and just don't want to go to work. I wonder who those people were who kept the grocery stores running, who were considered essential workers last year? I don't think they are lazy.

If companies pay a living wage, people will go to work if they can physically do so, and if it is work they enjoy or the company is good to their employees. Everyone knows that unemployment benefits end, so many are taking this time to look for better jobs or better opportunities. Some have gone to school to learn a new skill. Perhaps they had to turn to another method to earn during the pandemic. Many became entrepreneurs with stay-at-home businesses. Good for them, I say. Take advantage of what is available.

I did that myself. I could no longer teach in a face-to-face setting, so I had to learn another way to reach my students. In my job as Program Coordinator for NCWN-West, I could not organize and hold a writing conference as we have done in earlier years. But I could use Zoom and hold writing events online for our members. I found I reached more of our members who lived in distant counties because they could sit at home and meet online with lots of other writers. 

We have helped new authors who recently published books to find an audience in places the authors might never appear in person. I also had the opportunity to attend conferences I would not have been able to attend, but with Zoom and online sessions, I was there and learned about writers, their books, their methods of teaching, and what others want to know about the world of writing.

Those governors who have no empathy for those who have struggled with losing their home, having to use food banks for their families, and who take care of their loved ones should just try to put themselves in the shoes of the unemployed who need their benefits. For a year they had no work and no income. Some of our leaders have no empathy for others. Just walk a mile in their shoes is an old and true proverb that we can all take to heart and make this a far better world for everyone.