Main Street Alliance of Wisconsin wants to make sure you saw this story from Mitchell Schmidt of the Wisconsin State Journal, “Wisconsin’s Unemployment Rate Remains at 3.9% for the sixth month in a row”.
Here’s what we had to say:
“Shawn Phetteplace, state manager for the Main Street Alliance, which represents more than 100 small businesses across Wisconsin, said expanded access to child care, paid leave and health care coverage — provisions proposed in President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan — would go a long way to get more people, especially women, back into the workforce.”
“The lack of affordable, flexible child care, paid leave and the Medicaid ‘cliff’, which provides an incentive for workers to reduce hours, all contribute far more to our challenges than any impact enhanced unemployment insurance had on the market,” Phetteplace said. “Organizations like (Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce) and leadership in the legislature wanted to blame workers first, instead of figuring out what barriers exist for them. Let’s have an honest discussion to help small businesses.”
Small Business supports the Build Back Better plan. Here’s why.
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Main Street Alliance member and associate director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy Laura Dresser added, “The pandemic really exacerbated and exposed some underlying issues in these labor markets, and those are issues relating to low wage jobs and gender inequality in the way we think about the distribution of care work.”
