LASA 1 Taking Action

Lasa 1: Taking Action
Sophia E. Crespo
Argosy University
Ethics and Social Justice | HUM220 A01
Faculty: Michael Pankrast

Lasa 1: Taking Action

Advocacy Letter

name

08-May-18

Chris Coons

Senator

Delaware

Dear Senator Coons

Today, the numbers about unemployment are increasing all around the country and this is really worried because there are a lot of families that have been affected because of this.

The Department of Labor’s Unemployment Insurance is working to give some benefits to people that is currently unemployed and as a representative of our State, I’m requesting your support to this program because there is a lot of people that often get fired without a reason or when there is not a fault by their own.

Without a job, there are a lot of issues that come with it. Healthcare is one of those; people is not able to have some help from the government and sometimes they have to pay a high amount of money for a treatment, that they prefer not to go with a doctor.

This is just one of the several issues that come when a person is unemployed and it get worst when they have children and families to take care of.

Let me thank you for your time to read my request to you to support this Department and their program of Unemployment Insurance and I’m looking forward for your response.

Sincerely,

Sophia Crespo

Wilmington, De

(302) 605-5274

[email protected]

Unemployment

First of all, let define the word “unemployment” for you._ It is the situation in which young people or people with a good age, the capacity and the desire to work can not get a job. Unemployment is affecting people all around the country and all around the world. This is today, one of the most important facts in a person’s life. Riffkin, in her article stated that “Nearly one in four Americans mention jobs and unemployment as the most important problem facing the country, up from 16% in January” (Riffkin, 2014).

A person is considering “unemployed” when he/she meets the next four conditions:

He/She has a good age for work.

He/She does not have a job.

He/She is looking for a job.

He/She is available to work.

In this order, unemployment is an involuntary phenomenon, for both, individuals and companies, this is: people who want to be employed are not contracted; and companies, given that there is unemployment, do not receive the income that would be possible if there were full employment or if unemployment was lower.

Mankiw and Rabasco (p.437) cite the following four factors as the causes of unemployment:

The first cause of unemployment is the time it takes the workers to find the job that best suits their tastes and qualifications. Unemployment insurance is a public program that, while protecting workers’ income, increases the amount of frictional unemployment.

The second reason why an economy always has some unemployment is the legislation on the minimum wage. This legislation, by requiring unqualified and inexperienced workers to pay a salary above the equilibrium, raises the amount of work offered and reduces the demand. The resulting excess of work represents unemployment.

The third cause of unemployment is the market power of unions. When they get higher-than-equilibrium wages in the syndicated sectors, they create overwork.

The fourth cause of unemployment is suggested by the theory of efficiency wages. According to this theory, it is profitable for companies to pay higher than equilibrium wages. High wages can improve the health of workers, reduce their turnover, improve their quality and increase their efforts.

The unemployment rate measures the proportion of people who seek work without finding it with respect to the total number of people who make up the labor force. Therefore, the unemployment rate can be defined as the ratio between the number of unemployed persons and the labor force.

Unemployment rate = Unemployed persons / Labor Force

Unemployment rates vary considerably due to changes in the volume of movement in the labor market as a result of technological change, which leads to the change of employment from one company to another, from one sector to another and from one region to another; Also according to age, sex and race.

The overall unemployment rate is one of the indicators most frequently used to measure global economic welfare, but given the dispersion of unemployment, it should be considered as an imperfect indicator of that welfare.

Companies must take advantage of the business opportunities offered by the market, adapt it to the environment, evolve, innovate in concepts, methods, in everything that help the results account. But this type of practice must have an implicit limit of its own, without having to regulate it by any abstract and difficult to understand norm. All you need is a performance that is simply ethical.

I believe that the basic guidelines of each person should be extrapolated to the very direction of our business. Our company must be a reflection of our behavior, our personal ethics and our moral value. After all, the creature is ours, we have made it and we grow it as we see fit. But if we act as we would like them to act with us, we will do much better in the long run.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment affect more to Black or African American people, followed by Hispanics or Latinos, then for White people and finally Asian people.

Unemployment Insurance

The Department of Labor’s Unemployment Insurance (UI) gives benefits to people that become unemployed due to layoffs and when they meet some specific criterias, for example, the conditions that we talk about before and that I wrote them above.

After going through a process, for qualify for benefits, people can have the insurance or it could be denied.

This Department has some parts that divide the help and the benefits they give to people according with each situation, one example is the “Unemployment Compensation for Ex-Servicemembers” that it is just for eligible ex-military personnel, or the “Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees” that it is for eligible unemployed former civilian federal employees, and so on.

References

Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm

Department of Labor, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/unemployment-insurance

Mankiw, N. Gregory y Rabasco, Esther. Principles of Economy, 2007.

Riffkin Rebecca, 2014. Unemployment Rises Top Problem in the U.S. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/167450/unemployment-rises-top-problem.aspx.