"Even though the federal government admits that there are some nine million workers who are unemployed, that has caused very little public indignation. Nor has the fact that more than two million have been unable to find a job for more than 27 months evoked a national outcry that Congress and the Bush administration do something about their plight.

It is easy to forget that those statistics represent human beings, because the unemployed remain almost completely invisible. We don't see them or hear them. They don't act mad at their former employers for depriving them of a livelihood. They don't demonstrate against Congress or the White House that have denied them even temporary assistance.

The docility of the nation's unemployed is strange, because American workers are known for sticking up for their rights. Apparently, they don't blame their employers for the layoffs. It's the free enterprise system that's at fault, they're told, and how is a jobless worker to fight the system?

In many countries around the world, especially in Europe, even threats of layoffs are greeted with mass protests, work stoppages and sit-ins. Americans, who will get into a fist-fight over a parking spot or a bar argument over a baseball score, don't raise hell when they are told they're terminated from a job they may have held ten, twenty or even thirty years.

The jobless are rarely in the news, and the AFL-CIO, who should be their biggest defenders, use their plight only as talking points to attack the Bush administration. Maybe if we knew more about how unemployed workers feel, we'd be more sensitive to their needs.

How would you react at the moment you were told you were being laid off, because your job is being moved to China or Guatemala or Thailand? Or what if you heard the company is planning to replace you with a younger person who will work harder and longer for less pay? Would you get angry? Would you threaten to sue? Or would you take whatever severance pay was due you and walk away without a fuss, because they told you that the layoffs were necessary for the company's survival?

How would you break the news of the layoffs to your family? How would you explain it to your kids, when they see you hanging around the house when you should be at work? What happens to your self-esteem, when you keep applying for a job and get turned down, again and again? Or when you settle for a job that you don't like and pays less? Or at age 50 or 55, you realize that you're going to be treated as a has-been in today's job market?

Inevitably, you'd feel like an outcast in your community. You couldn't help being somewhat embarrassed about meeting your friends and attending social events or accepting dinner invitations, because your job is the most important credential of your identity. You'd probably end up blaming yourself, not the company, for what happened.

Unemployment is a recurring economic disease that now afflicts a cross-section of the U.S. population. Its victims can be found in every trade and occupation, every ethnic and racial group and every region in the country. It makes no distinction between blue- and white-collar workers, union and non-union, skilled and unskilled, young and old, Republicans and Democrats.

Under the free market system, millions of people will be doomed to joblessness, no matter how strong the economy becomes. Employers will always try to get more production with fewer workers to reduce their labor costs, with little regard to the human costs. And as long as there's an enormous pool of unemployed workers, employers can keep the lid on wages and benefits.

The system can be changed only if the millions of unemployed decide to join together to demand that the government become the employer of last resort, when the private sector is unable to provide sufficient jobs for every American who is able and willing to work.

The AFL-CIO is the only organization that has the resources and experience to help the unemployed become an organized force. It is in line with labor's historic mission to help the exploited and oppressed.

Joined with the labor movement and its allies, the unemployed can demand that the federal government finance a massive public works program, similar to that of the New Deal in the 1930s, when the country experienced severe unemployment.

If the White House and Congress could find more than $18 billion for projects to rebuild Iraq, it can spend at least as much to provide socially useful public works jobs for unemployed Americans." (Harry Kelber, Labor Talk, December 24, 2003)

Our weekly "LaborTalk" and "Labor and the War" columns can be viewed at our Web site www.laboreducator.org. Union members who wish to learn about the AFL-CIO reform movement should check www.rankandfileaflcio.org.