Editorial
Dismissals cut into holiday cheer
November 9, 2009
Let‘s look at our social panorama for a moment, but a bit more focused this time on its human terms.
In that sense, these are times for despondency.
We watch with sadness as every week more and more public sector workers pack up their meager desk belongings and go home to a sad Thanksgiving Day. Most likely also, to an even more uncertain New Year.
Just last week, Puerto Rico‘s government eliminated another 2,000 civil service jobs.
Rampant joblessness, continued home foreclosures, excessive consumer interest rates, decimated social services, and plain old gouging are tearing at the fabric of the working and middle classes.
The jobless rate on the island is more than 16 percent, a record high in recent times and our economy suffers its deepest economic slump in decades.
The mass layoffs, along with some 12,000 planned for early next year, are casting workers out into an economy starved for jobs. Bankruptcies have soared, many businesses have closed and there is a growing waiting list for public housing.
Here, just like in the mainland, to make up for shortfalls, political leaders are reaching deeper into the pockets of the those still employed, raising user fees on almost any service imaginable, jacking up fines for traffic violations, and allowing tuition hikes that make public colleges and universities increasingly unaffordable.
Parking meters are everywhere.
The budget crisis is sowing fertile ground for social instability on a big scale.
About one in six people are now out of work in Puerto Rico. That’s just too many for social stability.
The buzz word for every dismissed person is: re-invent yourself. Not a bad idea if we really had a sound economic infrastructure in the private sphere, if we could give these jobless real support and if they had access to financing their “reinvention” projects — possibly help them generate lots and lots of small businesses.
It‘s not a bad idea to have a society replete with small merchants and independent service providers. But then, banks won‘t lend these new entrepreneurs money and the government won‘t pay its service bills on time.
And official permits are hard and long to come by to set up even the smallest business, even home-based one.
Either we really help people “re-invent” themselves or we stop firing people from their jobs, private or public.
We hope our political leaders see eye to eye with us on this.
In that sense, these are times for despondency.
We watch with sadness as every week more and more public sector workers pack up their meager desk belongings and go home to a sad Thanksgiving Day. Most likely also, to an even more uncertain New Year.
Just last week, Puerto Rico‘s government eliminated another 2,000 civil service jobs.
Rampant joblessness, continued home foreclosures, excessive consumer interest rates, decimated social services, and plain old gouging are tearing at the fabric of the working and middle classes.
The jobless rate on the island is more than 16 percent, a record high in recent times and our economy suffers its deepest economic slump in decades.
The mass layoffs, along with some 12,000 planned for early next year, are casting workers out into an economy starved for jobs. Bankruptcies have soared, many businesses have closed and there is a growing waiting list for public housing.
Here, just like in the mainland, to make up for shortfalls, political leaders are reaching deeper into the pockets of the those still employed, raising user fees on almost any service imaginable, jacking up fines for traffic violations, and allowing tuition hikes that make public colleges and universities increasingly unaffordable.
Parking meters are everywhere.
The budget crisis is sowing fertile ground for social instability on a big scale.
About one in six people are now out of work in Puerto Rico. That’s just too many for social stability.
The buzz word for every dismissed person is: re-invent yourself. Not a bad idea if we really had a sound economic infrastructure in the private sphere, if we could give these jobless real support and if they had access to financing their “reinvention” projects — possibly help them generate lots and lots of small businesses.
It‘s not a bad idea to have a society replete with small merchants and independent service providers. But then, banks won‘t lend these new entrepreneurs money and the government won‘t pay its service bills on time.
And official permits are hard and long to come by to set up even the smallest business, even home-based one.
Either we really help people “re-invent” themselves or we stop firing people from their jobs, private or public.
We hope our political leaders see eye to eye with us on this.