Louisiana – Governor’s Job Hypocrisy Hurts Louisiana

We hear it from politicians all the time: Jobs are priority number one. Then something strange happens. Instead of creating more jobs and helping working families climb out of the recession, they destroy middle-class jobs that already exist in the public sector.

In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal has taken a page out of this hypocrisy playbook. During his last re-election campaign he touted his job creation efforts and promised more in his next term. Yet state government – in which Jindal serves as chief executive – has eliminated a staggering 5,743 classified positions and 3,167 employees since Jindal took office 2008, according to The Times-Picayune.

Even Jindal’s Republican allies in the Legislature were shocked when he announced last September the closure of the C. Paul Phelps Correctional Center – destroying 250 more jobs in a rural community.

“Do the nurses and correctional officers who get laid off have any less trouble paying their mortgage than their neighbor who got laid off from the factory?” asked Paul Wilson, a corrections officer for more than 20 years at Avoyelles Correctional Center and president of AFSCME Local 3803 (Council 17). “Our jobs don’t count to politicians like Jindal, yet our communities suffer all the same.”

Jindal campaigned relentlessly last year to privatize and sell prisons to profit-hungry corporations. Where he was unsuccessful, he simply closed three state prisons and shrugged at the resulting job losses.

Leonal Hardman, president of AFSCME Council 17, says that at the same time middle-class civil service positions are being eliminated, the governor has given more six figure salary jobs to his friends at the top. “We are trying to help the residents of this state realize that the governor talks fast, but look at what he’s really doing. He’s hurting the middle class. He’s taking away from those who are less fortunate and handing over more to the richest 1 percent.”