Published: February 14, 2011
Norristown Times Herald

Unemployed ‘99ers’ take on the Capitol

By Gary Puleo

NORRISTOWN — Gerry DePietro has been many things in her life — a mother, a wife, a diligent worker, to name a few.

But a role she never really asked for, as an advocate for the unemployed, has been garnering her some unexpected notoriety of late.

“It’s been such a hectic day ... I didn’t realize the work I was doing was going to help so many people,” the Norristown resident said on Thursday, the day after she and several other 99ers — so named because their 99 weeks of unemployment compensation have run dry — carpooled to Washington, D.C. for a press conference at the Capitol Visitors Center.

“We wanted to put faces on the unemployed and make them see that we are real live human beings,” DePietro said.

She and her friends were there at the invitation of Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who were proposing Democratic legislation that would provide an additional 14 weeks of benefits to anyone who’s been out of work for more than six months, supplementing the Emergency Unemployment compensation benefit, which offers up to 53 weeks of federally-funded assistance to workers who’ve exhausted the 26 weeks of standard state benefits without finding a job.

Lee and several other allies of the jobless that DePietro had befriended at the conference had been ringing her phone all day.

“Barbara Lee just called to tell me she got 51 co-sponsors for the bill,” DePietro said.

Headed by laid-off marketing executive Gregg Rosen, who once earned a six-figure income, the American 99ers Union is a diverse group — many of them worse off than she is, admitted DePietro, whose benefits ran out last September.

“The stories I heard yesterday are just tragic,” she said. “One girl with three kids was looking for a homeless shelter and they want to put her children into foster care, which is unacceptable to her. She has a college degree and was a systems analyst. Another girl took two days to drive there from Michigan — another college degree who can’t find work. Our country is rich; it’s the people who are poor.”

Lee and Scott were joined by Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, who, DePietro noted, believes that extending benefits will result in a far greater stimulatory jolt to our economy than handing out unpaid-for tax freebies to the rich.

"She pointed out that people like me are going to use the money at local businesses, like treating ourselves to a pizza, or getting our hair cut at the local barber or salon —unlike the rich who use their money to go to Paris or buy a work of art,” DePietro said.

Five other 99ers accompanied DePietro to Congressman Jim Gerlach’s office recently — a session she calls “a fiasco. He said they feel bad for us but where are they going to get the money? And when we left he said, ‘keep on plugging.’ ”

Lee and Scott positioned the bill to House Republican leadership as an “emergency” measure to exempt it from the standard Congressional pay-as-you-go method.

“It really is an emergency situation. The suicide rate among the unemployed is terrible, but everything is kept hush-hush with the media. I’ve learned so much from my work with the 99ers. In Washington, I talked to a woman at the Labor and Industry Board who said every day they have to tell people their 99 weeks are finished. There are over 25 million unemployed or underemployed people in the country. They don’t even know the exact figure. The politicians are saying there is one job for every 4.6 people, but it seems to be more like for every seven people.”

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, who regularly features the stories of the long-term unemployed, talked about the press conference on his show Wednesday evening and mentioned DePietro’s struggle, which included her needing to sell jewelry that held great sentimental value.

“I had done an interview at the conference and it was pretty intense for me,” recalled DePietro, who’s been out of work for over a year. “I had to sell a ring that my late husband gave me 37 years ago that meant a million dollars to me, but I sold it for $20 because that’s what 99ers have to do. Friends and neighbors will bring me soup or slip me a gift card. That’s how people are; they care for each other. Thank God for my kids. My son helps me when he can. My daughter works for the county and doesn’t make much but she gives me my moral support.”

Now over 60, she said she is routinely faced with age discrimination when applying for jobs and has already been forced to collect Social Security, well ahead of the age when it would have been a more judicious move.

“The only reason I still have my apartment is because I get Social Security, which is only $1,000 a month, and a very small pension from a union job I had,” DePietro said. “You tighten the belt the best you can, but the government’s got to help us. I worked for over 40 years and a lot of those years my husband and I worked two jobs to put our kids through college.

“The original plan was to retire at some point and travel and do other things. But that all ended.”

If the emergency relief bill is not passed, everyone in the U.S. will be affected, DePietro said.

"A lot of the 99ers will have to go on welfare. Right now there are over 46 million people alone getting food stamps in this country. If those people go on their specific state welfare rolls, the employed taxpayer is going to bear the brunt of paying for that. That’s one of the reasons this bill is so important.”