Join UMAW to Demand the Extension of Unemployment Benefits
Our unemployment benefits are set to run out at the end of this month. Take action today to demand that the Senate extend our expanded unemployment benefits, and enact our other COVID relief demands.
Join us anytime from 6pm-7pm ET here, where we'll be making calls and flooding Senate inboxes together for our UMAW COVID Benefits Power Hour. We’ll have UMAW organizers there to answer any questions you have, and UMAW organizer Mary Regalado will be doing a live DJ set to drive us through the hour. You can also RSVP here. Again, just join us here anytime between 6pm and 7pm ET to make your call, it should only take a few minutes.
Our calls will be insisting that the Senate extends our benefits, and goes beyond that to enact the rest of the COVID demands we declared in May. In your call, you can demand the extension of unemployment benefits, go through all the demands listed below, or list the demands most important to you.
For those of us who have been able to access the meager unemployment benefits extended to self-employed workers in the first COVID relief package, the end of this month is a terrifying date. On July 31, the $600 additional unemployment benefits given to so many music workers will expire. The Senate has so far refused to take any action to extend the benefits, arguing that we’re being given too much money.
The COVID crisis is hitting all workers hard, but is disproportionately harming Black workers and Latinx workers. According to data newly released by the New York Times, Black and Latinx people have been three times as likely as white people to become infected with COVID 19, and are nearly twice as likely to die from the virus as white people. Black workers are also bearing the economic brunt of the crisis. Black workers disproportionately hold essential jobs, and so are being exposed to COVID at higher rates. Black workers are also overrepresented in lower-wage service jobs that have been hardest hit by COVID closures. Black communities already held far fewer resources than white communities—the typical white household has over 10 times more wealth than the typical Black household, and seven times that of the typical Latinx household—and the economic depression is exacerbating that inequality. As the pandemic and its economic fallout continues, Black communities will be at much higher risk for evictions, food insecurity, health insecurity, and other crises.
The necessity of an expansive COVID relief package, then, is a matter of racial justice. To review our demands (the original demand is in italics, added analysis is unitalicized):
Extend all new unemployment benefits through at least the end of the year. As Black workers and communities face the brunt of COVID in both health and economics, the loss of the already meager and confusing unemployment benefits will be most heavily felt by those workers and communities. Even before COVID, Black workers were more likely to face unemployment than white workers, and those disparities have intensified as millions more are out of work. Unemployment benefits must be immediately extended and increased.
Extend benefits to all Americans in need, regardless of immigration status. As data recently released by the New York TImes shows, Latinx people are now the population most likely to contract COVID 19. At the same time, immigrants without citizenship status are ineligible to receive unemployment and other benefits extended to other workers. This is unacceptable: all those in the US must have access to the benefits and services necessary to survive and live with dignity through this pandemic.
We demand a national rent and mortgage cancellation for all for the duration of the crisis, in order to ensure housing security, and to save our music venues, small businesses, and non-profits. COVID is worsening the already atrocious racial housing disparities across the US. A recent report found that 32% of households missed their July housing payments. Black and Latinx households have been far more likely to be unable to pay rent throughout the COVID crisis. The housing crisis will continue to intensify if action is not taken to cancel rent and mortgages, and to end evictions.
We demand emergency supplemental funding to the NEA, NEH, and CPB, and that the new relief package authorize emergency regranting to individuals. The market-driven music industry has long underpaid and stolen from Black artists. Public arts funding also has a history and present reality of anti-Blackness that must be addressed. We demand that these Federal arts funds be distributed, and also that local agencies managing funds prioritize their allocation to the Black communities most impacted by COVID 19.
We demand that Medicare be expanded immediately to cover everyone in the country. COVID 19 has exacerbated the existing, murderous racial disparities in the US healthcare system. Even before COVID 19, Black and Latinx people had significantly higher rates of being uninsured, and higher medical debts, than white people. As COVID disproportionately strikes Black and Latinx communities’ health and economic security, those disparities have only intensified. Healthcare must be made free and accessible to all, throughout the pandemic and beyond.
We demand that the US Post Office be given all necessary funding, with no rate increases and no privatization. The Post Office is a necessity for musicians and other artists who ship recorded music and other merchandise. Beside being an essential service for music workers and millions of others, the Postal Service also provides union jobs with middle class benefits and salaries to nearly half a million people. A disproportionate number of these workers--around 100,000 people--are Black. The Trump Administration’s targeting of the Postal Services for massive cuts, then, is a clear attack on Black workers’ wealth, union organization, and power. We must stand with these workers.
These demands are only the beginning, and are by no means an exhaustive list of what we need from the government during this crisis and beyond.
