NELP Email

I received this in an email from NELP. If you are not familiar with them please read what was sent out below -

Dear Friends -



In recent weeks, many of you have asked about whether there will be an additional tier of extended jobless benefits as the current extensions run out or to bring additional weeks to those of you in states where all available tiers were not sought after by your legislators.



In response, the National Employment Law Project has strongly advocated for Congress to act immediately to enact an additional extension. NELP released a new analysis demonstrating that over 500,000 Americans would run out of their extended unemployment benefits through September of this year, and another 1.5 million will exhaust all assistance by the end of December 2009. This analysis can be found here:



The report was featured on the front page of Sunday's New York Times (August 2, 2009), which sparked a flurry of television interviews. In those interviews, the Obama Administration and Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders indicated their support for further extended unemployment benefits. And Congressman Jim McDermott has introduced the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009 (H.R. 3404) to provide extra weeks of benefits in high unemployment states.



Now, we need your help to ensure that a final package delivers the kind of assistance jobless workers need to survive in today's economy. NELP is advocating for extension legislation that will provide at least 10 weeks of benefits to workers exhausting their benefits in every state in the country. And, we will advocate for up to 20 extra weeks of benefits for states with higher unemployment rates.



We hope that Congress will act on the extension after it returns from its summer recess in early September. With your Senators and Representatives returning to your home state in August, there are immediate ways you can help us win the kind of benefits jobless workers need today.



-We need people to volunteer to tell their stories to the press. Please sign up as a media spokesperson at http://www.unemployedworkers.org/page/s/uistories

-We need you to contact your member of Congress and Senator when they are home for the August recess. Please visit http://www.nelp.org/page/speakout/FederalExtension to find an action alert you can send to your member of Congress. If you are able to reach someone in your Congressperson's office please let us know what they say at unemployedworkers.org@gmail.com.

-We need you to forward this your friends, the more letters sent to Congress, the better! The link is http://www.nelp.org/page/speakout/FederalExtension

We'll be coming up with new ideas and features to push this campaign forward. We are happy to introduce Tiphany Lee, who has joined NELP's team to spruce up our unemployedworkers.org website and to help on this campaign. You'll be hearing from her in the not too distant future.



Best,

Andy, Tiphany, Christine, Debbie, Maurice, Judy and Rick

The National Employment Law Project's Unemployed Workers team