Womenstake, NWLC's Blog

It's not easy to be an unemployed worker in South Carolina. Unemployment is sky-high, jobs are scarce, and last year the legislature cut state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits down to just 20 weeks — the lowest level in the country.

But while workers and families struggle in this tough economy, the state Senate will soon vote on two bills that would block access to critical UI benefits for many South Carolinians:

• S. 1026 would deny benefits to steady part-time workers — mostly women — who lose their jobs and cannot take on full-time employment due to child care responsibilities or other family obligations.
• S. 1069 would cut benefits for seasonal workers who have lost their jobs by making them ineligible for any benefits during the off-season.

We need your help to stop these bills from moving forward! Click here to look up your state Senator's phone number. Then, call and ask him to vote NO on S. 1026 and S. 1069!

After a day like Wednesday, the rest of the week seems painfully ordinary. When I told my friend this, she said I sounded like Timmy Turner asking for Christmas every day.

National Girls and Women in Sports Day may not have been Christmas, but it was a gift.

As a journalism major, I’m supposed to have a way with words, which is why I make it my business to own all of my opponents in Words With Friends, Scrabble, and Bananagrams. However, I realized yesterday I couldn’t tell a single story about the day without repeatedly using the words “great” and “amazing.”

Whether I was relaying Lillian Greene-Chamberlain’s sports and advocacy stories, bragging about meeting Barbara Mikulski or talking about how Representative Linda Sanchez can talk some serious softball, I couldn’t help reiterating those same words.

Last week I wrote about a proposed minimum wage increase that had passed through the Delaware Senate Labor Committee. This week, I am happy to report that the bill has cleared the Senate! The bill would raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.25 by January 1, 2013. This increase is needed and welcome—but it’s still not enough to bring the wages of a single mother with two kids working full time, year round, above the poverty line. 

Women would especially benefit from an increase in the federal minimum wage because nearly two-thirds of the workers who made at or below the federal minimum wage in 2010 are women. And the recovery has been especially slow for women, who, by the end of 2011, had gained only 3% of the jobs added since the recovery started in June 2009.