US jobless claims rise again Tom Eley World Socialist Web Site Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:56 EST First-time jobless benefit claims last week rose to their

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/usec-f26.shtml

Tom Eley
World Socialist Web Site
Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:56 EST

First-time jobless benefit claims last week rose to their highest level since the week ending November 14, according to the US Labor Department. The new jobless benefit numbers, together with other data, show that there is no economic recovery for the broad ranks of American workers.

Initial jobless claims increased by 22,000 to 496,000 for the week ending February 20. Economists had anticipated a decline of 13,000 over the previous week, to 461,000. The Labor Department has now registered increases in initial unemployment benefit applications in six of the last eight weeks.

The Labor Department's four-week moving average of first-time jobless claims, which is meant to iron out weekly anomalies in the data, also rose to by 6,000 to 473,750, the highest rate in three months. Any figure over 400,000 shows a deteriorating employment situation.

"The progress toward an 'improving' labor market climate (initial claims below 400,000) - as opposed to a 'less-bad' climate - has come to a halt," concluded Ken Mayland of ClearView Economics.

Continuing claims - by unemployed workers who have received more than a week's jobless benefits - rose by 6,000 to 4.62 million for the week ending February 13, and the four-week average of continuing claims also rose to 4.6 million.

The number of unemployed workers collecting extended benefits sponsored by the federal government, a statistic that is not seasonally adjusted, dropped by 320,000 to 5.68 million. This decline is largely attributable to workers having exhausted extended benefits prior to Congress approving another extension.

More major layoff announcements came this week. The New York City Transit Authority said it will eliminate over 1,000 jobs, and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, announced a cut of up to 1,000. Continental Airlines will eliminate the positions of 600 reservation agents, and the business consulting firm Innovative Consultants will lay off 287 workers, both cuts coming in Houston, Texas. ABC News said it will eliminate between 300 and 400 jobs.

The San Francisco public school district moved to lay off more than 900 teachers and staff; aircraft maker Boeing will lay off 527 workers in Washington state by the end of April; Jersey City, New Jersey, laid off 279 workers; a new budget for Sacramento County, California, will cut the jobs of 111 city workers; airplane engine maker Pratt and Whitney will cut 163 jobs from its East Hartford, Connecticut, plant; and a Bunge soy bean processing plant will lay off 100 workers in Danville, Illinois.

Earlier in the week, the polling firm Gallup released a survey that found one in five US workers, about 30 million in all, are jobless or are working fewer hours than they would like.

Also on Thursday, the Commerce Department released data showing a 3 percent increase last month in the sale durable goods, "big-ticket" consumer products designed to last at least three months. But this apparent increase only "put a happy face on what was otherwise a notably weak report," according to analysis from Action Economics. When defense and aircraft purchases are excluded, durable goods sales declined by 2.9 percent.

This latter figure caused Macroeconomic Advisers to downgrade its forecast for growth in the US gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter by one-tenth of one percent, to 3 percent.

Evidence of a rebound in US manufacturing over the past several months has been attributed largely to firms rebuilding inventory and to the weakness of the dollar on international markets. The dollar's recent gains against the euro and declining consumer sentiment in the US indicate that this recovery may soon stall.

More negative data also emerged this week from the US housing market, whose crash in 2007 triggered the global economic crisis.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that sales of newly-built homes fell in January by 11.2 percent from December to the lowest total in almost 50 years - 309,000 units. The decline, which is expected to hold or deepen in February, spells further layoffs in the nation's beleaguered construction sector, which shed 75,000 more jobs last month and 2 million since the onset of the crisis. The unemployment rate in construction stands at the depression-level of 24.7 percent.

Analysts had not expected such a sharp decline in new home sales. "No sugarcoating these numbers," said Mike Larson, an analyst at Weiss Research. "They stink."

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller index measured a decline in December 2009 home prices in 15 of 20 leading metropolitan areas from November, and a year-over-year decline of 3.1 percent.

The prognosis for the US housing market in 2010 is bleak. At the end of March, the Federal Reserve will end its purchases of mortgage-backed securities - which has funneled $1.25 trillion to lenders since the end of 2008 - a move that will likely increase mortgage interest rates, and a first-time homeowner tax credit is set to expire in April. On top of this, economists anticipate a flood of 2.4 million foreclosed homes onto the market this year.

Home values - the major source of wealth for most US families - have already declined about 30 percent since 2006. Stock prices, in which many Americans have placed their retirement savings, are also down about a third from their 2008 highs. Coupling these declines with mass unemployment and wage stagnation, it is clear that the working population has been substantially impoverished.

This can only have a dramatic effect on an economy in which almost 70 percent of gross domestic product is based on consumer spending. This was born out by the Tuesday release of the Conference Board's Consumer Price Index, which fell sharply in January, and by profit warnings from major retailers.

Compounding the situation is the fact that banks have curtailed lending to consumers and small businesses. According to a quarterly report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) released this week, banks reduced lending in 2009 at the sharpest pace since 1942, the first year of American involvement in the Second World War.

Nothing could more clearly expose the multi-trillion-dollar Wall Street bailout that was backed by both the Democratic and Republican Parties. When the financial crisis erupted in the fall of 2008, politicians - including then-presidential candidate Barack Obama - promised that bailing out the finance industry banks would "open the spigot" of lending.

Not only has lending contracted, the trillions of dollars pumped into the financial markets have served the profit interests of only the very biggest banks, the FDIC report shows. A growing number of small and regional banks - those most exposed to impoverished consumers and least protected by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve - are threatened with collapse, which in turn places a question mark over the solvency of the FDIC itself.

According to the FDIC, 702 banks were at risk of failing last year, a 16-year high, and 140 collapsed. Almost $400 billion in loans and leases, 5.4 percent of the outstanding total, fell three months past due, a record. In the fourth quarter alone, banks wrote down $53 billion in bad loans. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair expects these numbers to rise in 2010.

The Unemployed Now Have Their Own Union, and It's Catching on Quickly

I used to try to rally people for this all the time when I lived in America but instead, I got no support and people called me "Loser, Monster, Liar" because even after earning four university degrees, I still couldn't get a job. Of course, this happened to a lot of people but the corporate-owned media crowed that it was a "perfect economy" where there were more jobs than people to fill them. Of course it was all lies, but as long as enough people didn't suffer, it worked! Work at a liveable wage should be a basic, Human Right in a capitalist society where everyone is expected to pay their way! I hope this works!

By Harry Kelber, Labor Educator
Posted on February 24, 2010, Printed on February 28, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145797/

It's been only a month that a union for the unemployed has come into existence through an ingenious grassroots organizing campaign. In case you haven't heard about it, the union's name is "UR Union of the Unemployed" or its nickname, "UCubed," because of its unique method of organizing.

UCubed is the brain-child of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), whose leaders feel that the millions of unemployed workers need a union of their own to join in the struggle for massive jobs programs.

The idea is that if millions of jobless join together and act as an organization, they are more likely to get Congress and the White House to provide the jobs that are urgently needed. They can also apply pressure for health insurance coverage, unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits and food stamps. An unemployed worker is virtually helpless if he or she has to act alone.

Joining a Cube is as simple as it is important. (Please check the union web site: www.unionofunemployed.com). Six people who live in the same zip code address can form a Ucube. Nine such UCubes make a neighborhood. Three neighborhood UCubes form a power block that cntains 162 activists. Politicians cannot easily ignore a multitude of power blocks, nor can merchants avoid them.

The union is built from the ground up. Cube activists will select their own leadership in each cube, neighborhood, block and higher group as well.

Jobless Union's Encouraging Progress in One Month

The UR Union of Unemployed (or UCubed) already has members in over 300 zip code addresses and 43 states, reports Rick Sloan, acting executive director of the union. Seventy-five cubes are up and running. For the first month, 19,998 people visited the site and viewed over 138,000 pages of content.

The union's Op-Ed article appeared in 62 newspapers, ranging from the "Black News" to the "Mexican American Sun," and from the "Las Vegas Tribune" to the "Senior Life of Northern Indiana." Total circulation exceeded 12 million readers,

UCubed put out three press releases last month, informing politicians in Washington that the union of unemployed will be watching--and reacting--to their vote on the latest job proposals of the Obama administration.

* * * * *

It is to the advantage of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to encourage their unemployed members to participate in the UCubed organizing campaign. It is important for organized labor to display meaningful sympathy and solidarity with those who have been without a pay check for many months. A large union of unemployed workers can be an important ally in political campaigns and a source of legions of volunteers. When those unemployed workers finally get back to their jobs, we want them to have a favorable memory of how unions stood by their side.

Let's give the unemployed the support they need to be effective in their own defense.

The Unemployed Now Have Their Own Union, and It's Catching on Quickly

I used to try to rally people for this all the time when I lived in America but instead, I got no support and people called me "Loser, Monster, Liar" because even after earning four university degrees, I still couldn't get a job. Of course, this happened to a lot of people but the corporate-owned media crowed that it was a "perfect economy" where there were more jobs than people to fill them. Of course it was all lies, but as long as enough people didn't suffer, it worked! Work at a liveable wage should be a basic, Human Right in a capitalist society where everyone is expected to pay their way! I hope this works!

By Harry Kelber, Labor Educator
Posted on February 24, 2010, Printed on February 28, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145797/

It's been only a month that a union for the unemployed has come into existence through an ingenious grassroots organizing campaign. In case you haven't heard about it, the union's name is "UR Union of the Unemployed" or its nickname, "UCubed," because of its unique method of organizing.

UCubed is the brain-child of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), whose leaders feel that the millions of unemployed workers need a union of their own to join in the struggle for massive jobs programs.

The idea is that if millions of jobless join together and act as an organization, they are more likely to get Congress and the White House to provide the jobs that are urgently needed. They can also apply pressure for health insurance coverage, unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits and food stamps. An unemployed worker is virtually helpless if he or she has to act alone.

Joining a Cube is as simple as it is important. (Please check the union web site: www.unionofunemployed.com). Six people who live in the same zip code address can form a Ucube. Nine such UCubes make a neighborhood. Three neighborhood UCubes form a power block that cntains 162 activists. Politicians cannot easily ignore a multitude of power blocks, nor can merchants avoid them.

The union is built from the ground up. Cube activists will select their own leadership in each cube, neighborhood, block and higher group as well.

Jobless Union's Encouraging Progress in One Month

The UR Union of Unemployed (or UCubed) already has members in over 300 zip code addresses and 43 states, reports Rick Sloan, acting executive director of the union. Seventy-five cubes are up and running. For the first month, 19,998 people visited the site and viewed over 138,000 pages of content.

The union's Op-Ed article appeared in 62 newspapers, ranging from the "Black News" to the "Mexican American Sun," and from the "Las Vegas Tribune" to the "Senior Life of Northern Indiana." Total circulation exceeded 12 million readers,

UCubed put out three press releases last month, informing politicians in Washington that the union of unemployed will be watching--and reacting--to their vote on the latest job proposals of the Obama administration.

* * * * *

It is to the advantage of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to encourage their unemployed members to participate in the UCubed organizing campaign. It is important for organized labor to display meaningful sympathy and solidarity with those who have been without a pay check for many months. A large union of unemployed workers can be an important ally in political campaigns and a source of legions of volunteers. When those unemployed workers finally get back to their jobs, we want them to have a favorable memory of how unions stood by their side.

Let's give the unemployed the support they need to be effective in their own defense.

Will the new jobs bill help hardest hit areas?

I KNEW the Answer to this before I read the article: NO!!! It is not in the best interest of the psychopaths that run the world to employ the population when they want them to die! Look up 'depopulation' on a search engine and start reading...The evil elite want us dead now that the infrastructure of the world has been built! ~MRC

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Will-the-new-jobs-bill-hel-by-Race-Talk-100226-767.html

February 26, 2010
Will the new jobs bill help hardest hit areas?
By Race-Talk
By Jason Reece, Kirwan Institute Senior Research, Race-Talk contributor

In response to our nation's ongoing economic challenges, a new federal jobs bill is expected from Congress soon. The Kirwan Institute has been tracking the impact of federal efforts to alleviate the economic crisis for the past year. Given our experiences tracking the impact of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and other federal relief programs, we are concerned that the new jobs bill will not help those communities or states in greatest need.

While the federal response to the economic crisis has helped in many ways, most notably in avoiding catastrophic state budget shortfalls, it has not been able to address the extreme economic hardship facing some communities.

The economic crisis is falling unevenly across our nation, impacting some states, communities and populations more than others. Hard-hit Midwestern states are reeling from foreclosures and from the continued decline of the manufacturing sector. Among some populations, disparities in unemployment by race, age or gender are vast. The "gender gap" in unemployment now stands at its highest since 1948, with unemployment rates for men surging. Michigan leads the nation in this gender divide, with nearly 1 in 5 men in the State unemployed at the end of 2009.

Across racial lines, we see White unemployment starting to decline, but Black unemployment continues to grow, and now exceeds 16%. Even more troubling, the unemployment rate for Black youth is now more than 43%.

Recognition of the uneven nature of the economic crisis is not reflected in much of our federal response and is not addressed in the recent jobs bill. One measure stripped from the jobs bill in recent weeks was a stipulation to target some funds to communities with high unemployment.

This type of need-based targeting is critical, or we risk spreading our resources too thin, providing little relief to those communities and populations which have been devastated by the economic crisis. More diligent targeting of federal job and infrastructure investments to hard-hit communities would also provide an efficient use of our public investments.

This not be an unprecedented move the first phase of the Neighborhood Stabilization program targeted communities with high rates of foreclosure, and the U.S. Department of Transportation runs a program which encourages investment in economically distressed counties.

Our measures of community need must also be accurate and robust in capturing the impact of the recession. Unfortunately, the latest attempt to prioritize states for federal housing relief did not use a measure of real need, like long-term foreclosure rates, but instead looked at housing depreciation, locking 45 states, out of 1.5 billion dollars in housing relief. If hard-hit states or communities do not push for more robust measures of addressing economic need in the next jobs bill, we may once again lose out, and not see the economic relief needed to address the state's economic hardships.

For more information about recovery tracking visit: FairRecovery.org

Jim Bunning Starves 1.2 Million People

Remember, Cruelty is Demonic. Bunning is probably one of those demon-in-skins I am always trying to warn people about! Real Demons infiltrated among us!

http://blogs.alternet.org/yc342/2010/02/26/jim-bunning-starves-1-2-million-people/

rmgg53 at 6:43 pm
February 26, 2010
Jim Bunning Starves 1.2 Million People

The Huffington Post reported today that Kentucky senator Jim Bunning, who is not running for re-election, staged a 1-man filibuster and would not give his consent to extending Federal unemployment benefits for a 30-day period until Congress can pass more detailed unemployment extension legislation. The GOP leadership did not support Bunning in his crusade to keep $10 billion from being added to the Federal deficit. This will not stand, of course, but in the interim state governments who collectively are facing a $250 billion shortfall will have to make up the difference. To top off this inexplicable act of cruelty Bunning complained about missing a basketball game. Didn’t he get a chance to call his bookie? I guess the chance to play President Bunning for at least one evening was just too enticing to pass up. Even with the American people suffering through daily examples of a totally broken legislative process this perfidious act of “fiscal discipline” strains the cerebral cortex. Jim Bunning, All-American asshole! And he sucked when he pitched for the Pirates too!

We Need a Scheme for Full Employment

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/feb/22/federal-reserve-full-employment

February 22, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
The Federal Reserve is required by law to pursue price stability and full employment – but it seems to be ignoring this mandate
by Dean Baker

Is the Fed breaking the law? That is a question that members of Congress should be asking. The Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act, which governs the Fed's operation, requires the Fed to pursue price stability and full employment, which is defined as 4% unemployment. It would be hard to maintain that current policy is consistent with these goals.

At this point the Fed is explicitly discussing its plans for an exit strategy, moving away from its policy of quantitative easing. This means we should anticipate a general upward movement in interest rates in coming months, although the speed of this movement is not clear.

This is troubling because the economy is expected to remain very weak by almost everyone, including the Fed itself. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the unemployment rate will average near 10% in 2010, 9% in 2009, and 8% in 2012. Unemployment is not projected to fall to 5% until 2015. If the Fed is retreating from its quantitative easing and allowing interest rates to rise, its policy will be doing little to push down the unemployment rate more quickly.

Meanwhile, there is little obvious basis for concern about inflation. The latest data show that the core inflation rate is continuing to decline from already low levels. There is some upward pressure on inflation from higher prices for commodities and other imports. However, this price pressure is more than offset by downward pressure on rents from a glutted housing market and other areas of oversupply in a badly depressed economy. The general direction of inflation in the next few years is more likely to be downward than upward.

If there is no basis for concern about inflation getting out of control, then there is little reason that the Fed should not be moving more aggressively to boost employment. Instead of ending its policy of quantitative easing, it should be expanding it. Its purchase programme for mortgage-backed securities is supposed to end next month. It should be instead extend and increase the size of this programme, thereby putting downward pressure on long-term interest rates. It should also switch its focus to purchases of Treasury bonds, which would lower long-term interest rates more generally, rather than just targeting lower rates in the mortgage market.

The Fed could also explicitly target a moderate rate of inflation in the range of 3-4%. The commitment would be to buy as many Treasury bonds as necessary to reach this target. This would have the effect of lowering the real interest rate, if this commitment was credible. Individuals and firms would be more comfortable borrowing, knowing that they can pay back their loans in dollars that are worth less than the ones they borrowed. This is exactly what is needed in the current economic situation.

A moderate rate of inflation would also erode the value of debt, helping to improve the balance sheet of tens of millions of households, especially underwater homeowners. This would be a big step toward getting the economy back on a normal footing.

Unfortunately, more quantitative easing or the targeting of a higher inflation rate do not appear to be on the Fed's agenda. Its sole concern appears to be ensuring that inflation does not begin to accelerate. This is not only perverse given the fact that inflation is slowing and is expected by nearly everyone to continue to slow for the next several months, it also would appear to violate the law governing the Fed's conduct.

The Fed does not have the option to ignore the full employment part of its mandate, as it appears to be doing at present. Congress should carefully question the Federal Reserve Board chairman, Ben Bernanke, when he gives his semi-annual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony this week. He should be forced to explain how doing nothing to counteract the five years of high unemployment projected by the Fed and others is consistent with its mandate to promote full employment.

Bernanke of all people should have an especially hard time explaining this path. The mistakes of Bernanke, along with Alan Greenspan, in allowing the housing bubble grow to dangerous levels are the main reason that the country is stuck is suffering from high unemployment. Millions of people are out of work not because they lack the skills or willingness to work hard. They are out of work because Ben Bernanke messed up in managing the economy. But Ben Bernanke still has his job.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Rising unemployment fuels social tensions in Russia

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/russ-f20.shtml

By Andrea Peters
20 February 2010

Official unemployment climbed a full percentage point in Russia during the month of January and now stands at 9.2 percent. Despite government claims that the recession is over, the state statistics agency Rosstat reported that a further 630,000 people lost their jobs last month. Economists, using the methods employed by the International Labour Organisation, say the total number of jobless is close to 6.8 million.

This is the fourth month in a row that unemployment has grown in Russia, even as the country’s economy officially returned to growth in the final quarter of 2009 and industrial production rose. More than 70,000 employers have cut jobs since the start of the year, reports the Ministry of Health and Social Development.

The emergence of mass unemployment in Russia is reflected in a ratio of jobless people to vacancies of 24:1. At the same time last year, this ratio stood at 16:1.

According to the Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FITU), the official figures underestimate by 810,000 the actual increase in unemployment from September 2008, when the economic crisis first hit Russia, to January 2010.

Additionally, the official unemployment rate fails to take into account large numbers of underemployed people who are forced to work part-time. According to a February 18 article in the online newspaper Gazeta.ru, the secretary of the FITU, Aleksandr Shershukov, maintains that “there are additional 1.2 million people working a shortened work week or work day.”

Wage arrears have also grown dramatically in Russia since the start of the year. Rosstat reported that as of February 1, employers owed workers 4.12 billion rubles ($136.2 million), an increase of 15 percent over the previous month.

The jobs crisis in Russia is expected to grow rapidly in the coming period as regional governments, pressured by the Kremlin in 2009 to artificially prop up employment by keeping industrial workers on the payroll, lose the ability to continue supporting the labour market. As federal resources allocated last year to help regional governments dry up, local politicians and businesses will be less willing to continue paying workers idled by the stagnation of manufacturing.

Conditions will likely be worst in smaller population centers and villages, in particular the so-called “mono-towns”—company towns in which residents are almost entirely dependent on a single firm or industry for employment.

Nikolai Volgin, the president of the National Assembly of Labour and Social Policy Specialists, recently told the online magazine Lichnie Dengi that he anticipates seeing widespread layoffs over the course of the year, with as many as 1.5 million more people losing their jobs.

“Computations based on the methodology of the International Labour Organisation show that Russia today has approximately 8 million jobless,” Volgin said. “I believe that by the summer massive dismissals may begin. The risk of this is very high, as the industrial slump is considerable. I do not rule out that there may be 9 to 9.5 million jobless in the country.”

f Volgin’s predictions are correct, Russia will see an unemployment rate of 12 to 12.7 percent by the middle of the year.
In the face of the jobless figures, President Dmitri Medvedev blithely observed, “Even though the economic crisis is abating, it happens in a crisis that unemployment may grow even with the economic upsurge.”

The Kremlin’s insistence that Russia is on the road to recovery has failed to convince masses of people. According to a recent study carried out by the survey institute VTsIOM, only 29 percent of Russians believe that the country is out of the economic crisis. Rising prices, falling incomes, wage arrears and an inability to buy basic necessities were all identified as essential and ongoing features of daily life.

At the same time that news broke about the sharp rise in unemployment in January, Finans magazine published its list of Russia’s richest individuals. While the country’s gross domestic product declined by 7.9 percent last year, the number of billionaires increased by over 50 percent, from 49 to 77. According to the Moscow Times, “the combined wealth of the top ten wealthiest jumped 84 percent year on year to $139.3 billion.”

Vladimir Lisin, head of Novolipetsk Steel, tops the list with a net worth of $18.8 billion. Many of those named by Finans oversee industries that were the greatest beneficiaries of the Kremlin’s economic bailout last year. Sergei Popov, the main owner of MDM bank, climbed 29 places from his position in 2008 and now controls $5.2 billion. The banking industry reportedly received 48 percent of the total money (officially $39.7 billion, but estimated to be as much as $180 billion) spent by the government on “anti-crisis” measures.

The jobs crisis and the overall economic situation are fueling social discontent. In late January in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea located between Lithuania and Poland, residents staged a demonstration to protest falling living standards. With an official unemployment rate that has grown to 10.5 percent, the population has become outraged at recent tax hikes and increases in rates on household utilities. In one of the largest anti-government gatherings in recent years, 10,000 protestors demanded the resignation of the local governor, appointed by the Kremlin, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

As the February 4 issue of the Eurasia Daily Monitor explained, Putin made “high unemployment in Kaliningrad” worse by “imposing restrictive protectionist anti-crisis tariffs on the import of used cars into Russia from Western Europe.” The article continued: “Putin’s tariffs were intended to help the bankrupt producer of LADAs, AvtoVaz, but they drove into poverty many in Kaliningrad who profited from the car trade. Putin’s anti-crisis measures are helping super-rich oligarchs and this is also proving to be unpopular.”

Press accounts state that the Kremlin was taken off guard by the size of the rally in Kaliningrad, which, according to the British Guardian, was larger than those that occurred at the time of the 1991 August putsch. President Medvedev responded by sending a special representative to the region to investigate the situation, which is expected to result in the removal from office of Governor Grigorii Boos.

On the day following the Kaliningrad protest, smaller anti-government demonstrations were held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, Krasnoyarsk and Vladivostok. According to press reports, in the country’s capital police arrested 100 of the 300 people who turned out.

More recently, residents of Irkutsk in Siberia and Samara in the Urals—the latter a major center of auto production—rallied against the government. In Irkutsk, 2,000 people turned out on February 13 to denounce a recent decision by Prime Minister Putin to allow the reopening of the Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill, which had been closed in 2008 because it was dumping waste into Lake Baikal, the deepest body of fresh water in the world. The facility is owned by Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs and a close Putin ally.

In Samara on the same day, 350 people protested against the lack of jobs in the city, crumbling public infrastructure, and rising housing costs.

In both places, protesters held signs demanding the resignation of Putin and the respective local governors. Demonstrators also denounced the ruling party, United Russia.

Last year, the Ministry of the Interior reported that 30,000 demonstrations took place across the country, involving 5.5 million people.

Despite the maintenance of tight governmental control over the media and the fawning treatment given Putin on television and in the press, according to VTsIOM his approval rating, which was as high as 81 percent in mid-2007, has fallen to 54 percent. President Medvedev’s is even lower, at 42 percent.

Because of the domination of the political system by United Russia, the ruling party is still widely expected to win regional legislative elections scheduled to take place on March 14. However, as Aleksei Malashenko of the Political Techniques Center is quoted as saying in a Febuary 15 article in Vremia novostei, “Just do not misinterpret [this] as the Russians’ alleged love of the powers-that-be.”

On Feburary 17, Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, issued a statement about the economic situation and its implications that, in addition to being striking for its lack of forthrightness, revealed the Kremlin’s nervousness at openly acknowledging the conditions that face masses of working people and the depth of discontent building in the country.
“Measures taken by the Russian government made it possible for the Russian economy to overcome the acute phase of the crisis,” said Patrushev. “In particular, the government managed to prevent an increase in social tension [and] to improve the situation on the labour market.”

He continued, “Unemployment levels are under control,” but admitted, “The lack of effective moves in solving the problem of creating new jobs in constituent parts of the Russian federation is causing particular concern. Dangerous dependence of our country on the situation in the world market continues.”

As millions more Russian workers are thrown out of work in 2010 and many more confront a combination of declining wages and rising prices, social tensions will increasingly assume the form of open conflict with the government and the entire socioeconomic order erected on the basis of the breakdown of the Soviet Union.