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Job Dislocation Brochure For Unemployed Workers – avoiding scams

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has developed unbiased financial advice for dislocated workers in a brochure that tells them how to protect themselves from investment fraud, avoid job scams and keep their finances on track during a period of unemployment.

Through an affiliation and partnership with NASWA, FINRA is printing up 300,000 copies of their brochure “Job Dislocation Making Smart Financial Choices after a Job Loss,” [NOTE: large pdf] and will ship between 2,000 to 8,000 copies of this brochure to every state free of charge to give out to the States’ unemployed citizens.

FINRA is the largest non-governmental regulator for all securities firms doing business in the US and oversees 4,700 brokerage firms covering 635,000 registered securities representatives. FINRA was created in 2007 through the consolidation of a number of organizations including components of the New York Stock Exchange.

The brochure includes specific advice for unemployed individuals on how to check the background of investment professionals and find information about potential job scams from FINRA, and the state and federal regulators as well as other consumer protection agencies. The brochure also outlines how to prepare financially for a period of unemployment, how to make decisions to preserve retirement funds and what steps to take to start the search for a new position once your company announces a planned layoff.

In addition NASWA recently asked FINRA to add and highlight in the brochure some key pieces of information and advice to UI claimants. Two specific items were added to page 3 of the brochure. One points out to UI Claimants that they are required to register with the state’s employment office to begin the job search process immediately upon filing their claim. The second item highlights that it is important to let their state Unemployment Insurance agency know as soon as they return to work to eliminate the potential of a possible overpayment on their UI Claim.

Current Events

From New York’s Commissioner of Labor to unemployed workers

Statement on the Failed Unemployment Extension Bill

Albany, NY (June 25, 2010) – As many of you know, the unemployment bill to extend the eligibility dates for benefits was not passed by the US Senate last night. The bill needed 60 votes to pass but the package fell short – 57 to 41. The Senate is now in the process of determining what happens next but efforts have ended for this week. If further action is to be taken on this bill it’s likely it will not happen until after the July 4th recess (after July 12th).

In order to keep your claim active you should continue to certify each week in case legislation does pass that has a retroactive component (although this has not been proposed). In the meantime, as we wait for the next step, we urge all unemployment insurance claimants to go to New York’s myBenefits website —“ immediately. The site makes it easy for anyone to check if they may qualify for help to buy food, get health insurance, or meet other family needs. As we hear more, we’ll keep you updated.

Current Events, Political

Advocacy for the unemployed

From Interfaith Worker Justice: Our Continued Engagement Required on the Unemployment Crisis

Do you know someone who is unemployed? Almost everyone does, since the official unemployment rate is hovering around 10 percent. Maybe it’s you, someone in your family, church, mosque or synagogue who is getting an unemployment check and/or paying COBRA for health insurance. As of June 2, Congress allowed unemployment benefits and COBRA subsidies to lapse for hundreds of thousands of workers who have been out of work for extended periods of time. In a few days the Senate will decide whether to save jobs and services, help the unemployed and boost the economy.

In times of crisis, our faith communities respond with compassion. We call on the creator to comfort those affected and we engage in pastoral care that embraces a ministry of hope and solidarity. This unemployment crisis calls for our continued engagement. Our economic recovery is still weak, and the most vulnerable amoung us are still extremely fragile.

PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS (TOLL FREE: 888-340-6521) and ask them to Support HR 4213! This will extend unemployment insurance and provide summer jobs for youth. Tell your Senators to also vote to restore COBRA health insurance subsidies and Medicaid assistance to states.

When you call 888-340-6521 you will enter your zip code and will be directed straight to your Senator’s offices after a brief message about jobs and Medicaid aid.

Christian Witness, Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, ,

Irena Sendler – In The Name Of Their Mothers at the JCC of San Francisco

—In the Name of Their Mothers— tells the remarkable story of Irena Sendler and a group of young Polish women who risked their lives to save 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during World War II.

In 1943 Irena Sendler was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. The 33-year-old social worker was sentenced to death. On the day she was to be executed, she escaped. All the 2,500 hidden children survived the war and many were later reunited with their Jewish families. But for decades those who lived in Poland could not tell their stories. Silenced by Communist authorities, many endured Soviet prisons or were forced into exile. This film features the last long interviews Irena Sendler gave before she died at the age of 98, and include interviews with several of her liaisons and the children they saved.

Presented in partnership with the Honorary Consuls for the Republic of Poland in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Taube-Koret Center for Jewish Peoplehood at the JCCSF.

7:00 pm Tuesday, May 4th. Advance Reservation Required. Please call the JCCSF Box Office at 415.292.1233 or contact the Box Office by E-mail.

Christian Witness, Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , ,

Workers Memorial Day

Today is Workers Memorial Day. Take a moment to remember and honor those workers killed and injured on the job. Just this month, 29 miners lost their lives in the West Virginia mining disaster. On average, 16 workers die each day from workplace injuries, 134 are estimated to die from work-related diseases, and thousands more are injured on the job. No one should die from making a living.

Today, I invite you to pray IWJ’s Litany for Workers Memorial Day.

When workers are killed, families are torn apart. When workers are injured, families suffer. On Workers Memorial Day, let us honor not only the workers but also the families they left behind. May the memory of fallen workers inspire us to continue and strengthen the fight for workplace safety.

This year it should also be called to mind that one of those killed in the tragic plane crash that killed many of Poland’s political and civic leaders was Anna Walentynowicz. Ms. Walentynowicz was the labor activist who spoke out for worker rights in communist controlled Poland. For her efforts at organizing workers, and advocating for just and equitable treatment of workers, she was fired from her job. Her firing led to the founding of the free Solidarity Trade Union. Keep her memory in mind today as well.

From The Guardian:

A welder and then a crane operator at the yard, in her youth Walentynowicz was a member of Poland’s Communist party. Appalled, however, by the corruption that she encountered and the suppression of free speech, she became involved in producing and distributing Robotnik Wybrzeza (Coastal Worker), a newspaper which she handed out in the shipyard, even to her Communist bosses.

The trigger for her disaffection with the party was said to be her discovery that one of her bosses had stolen money from her fellow employees and used it to participate in a lottery.

It was not only corruption that incensed her but the gradual realisation that far from helping to make Poland a better place for the people, workers’ rights and freedom of speech were being trampled on.

Despised by the shipyard’s management, later in her working life she would be segregated from other employees for her actions. The crisis would come, however, when the management finally moved against her in August 1980, firing her a few months before she was due to retire.

It was this clumsy action that led to the strike, which occurred in the midst of a period of profound political and economic problems for the Communist regime. The consequence of that action, led by then electrician Lech Walesa, was the emergence of Solidarity and also the Gdansk Agreement, which saw the government give in to the workers’ demands for a new social contract. Within two years the union would have 10 million members.

Also, from New York State’s Labor Department: Rochester Workers Memorial Day Ceremony and Capital District Workers Memorial Day Commemoration.

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, , ,

The undelivered speech of President Kaczyński

Dear Representatives of the Katyn Families. Ladies and Gentlemen.

In April 1940 over twenty-one thousand Polish prisoners from the NKVD camps and prisons were killed. The genocide was committed at Stalin’s will and at the Soviet Union’s highest authority’s command.

The alliance between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and the Soviet attack on Poland on 17 September 1939 reached a terrifying climax in the Katyn massacre. Not only in the Katyn forest, but also in Tver, Kcharkiv and other known, and unknown, execution sites citizens of the Second Republic of Poland, people who formed the foundation of our statehood, who adamantly served the motherland, were killed.

At the same time families of the murdered and thousands of citizens of the eastern territory of the pre-war Poland were sent into exile deep into the Soviet Union, where their indescribable suffering marked the path of the Polish Golgotha of the East.

The most tragic station on that path was Katyn. Polish officers, priests, officials, police officers, border and prison guards were killed without a trial or sentence. They fell victims to an unspeakable war. Their murder was a violation of the rights and conventions of the civilized world. Their dignity as soldiers, Poles and people, was insulted. Pits of death were supposed to hide the bodies of the murdered and the truth about the crime for ever.

The world was supposed to never find out. The families of the victims were deprived of the right to mourn publicly, to proudly commemorate their relatives. Ground covered the traces of crime and the lie was supposed to erase it from people’s memory.

An attempt to hide the truth about Katyn —“ a result of a decision taken by those who masterminded the crime —“ became one of the foundations of the communists’ policy in an after-war Poland: a founding lie of the People’s Republic of Poland.

It was the time when people had to pay a high price for knowing and remembering the truth about Katyn. However, the relatives of the murdered and other courageous people kept the memory, defended it and passed it on to next generations of Poles. They managed to preserve the memory of Katyn in the times of communism and spread it in the times of free and independent Poland. Therefore, we owe respect and gratitude to all of them, especially to the Katyn Families. On behalf of the Polish state, I offer sincere thanks to you, that by defending the memory of your relatives you managed to save a highly important dimension of our Polish consciousness and identity.

Katyn became a painful wound of Polish history, which poisoned relations between Poles and Russians for decades. Let’s make the Katyn wound finally heal and cicatrize. We are already on the way to do it. We, Poles, appreciate what Russians have done in the past years. We should follow the path which brings our nations closer, we should not stop or go back.

All circumstances of the Katyn crime need to be investigated and revealed. It is important that innocence of the victims is officially confirmed and that all files concerning the crime are open so that the Katyn lie could disappear for ever. We demand it, first of all, for the sake of the memory of the victims and respect for their families’ suffering. We also demand it in the name of common values, which are necessary to form a foundation of trust and partnership between the neighbouring nations in the whole Europe.

Let’s pay homage to the murdered and pray upon their bodies.

Glory to the Heroes!

Hail their memory!

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , , , , , ,

In Albany last night

From WRGB:

The ceremony was attended by the diversity of the Polish community, with members from the Polish National Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Ukrainian Catholic communities. Prayers were offered by each, including a beautiful panikhida by the Rev. Mikhail Myshchuk. Reflections were offered by the leaders of Polonian organizations as well as area political leaders. Greetings and marks of condolence were read from the Capital Region’s Jewish community.

From the Schenectady Gazette: Capital Region Poles unite to honor plane crash victims

More than 200 members of the Polish community in the Capital Region attended a memorial service Friday night honoring the president of Poland and 95 other members of that country’s political, military and religious elite killed when their jet crashed April 10 in Russia….

From YNN: Polish community honors crash victims

The local Polish-American community came together to remember and honor the Polish leaders who died in last week’s plane crash.

The memorial service was hosted by Albany’s Polish Community Center. There, people heard prayer readings and a speech that Polish President Lech Kaczynski was supposed to give at a ceremony before he was killed in the crash.

The Polish President and First Lady were among 97 of the country’s dignitaries killed in that crash one week ago. They were flying to Russia for a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Forest massacre where more than 20,000 Polish prisoners of war were killed by soviet agents.

Those who attended the memorial service say they are not surprised by the large turnout.

“It shows the deep emotion and feelings people have. It’s also indicative of the large numbers that we have in the Capital District area of people from Poland in the recent past and from Polish heritage background,” said Fr. Carl Urban.

Mourners also tell us that the most positive thing to come out of the plane crash is that many people are now aware of the Katyn massacre.

Christian Witness, Current Events, PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , ,

Capital District Memorial Service

A Memorial Service for the deceased Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and Polish delegation that perished in the plane crash in Smolensk, Russia will be held at Albany’s Polish Community Center, 225 Washington Ave Ext., Albany, NY 12205 on Friday, April 16, 2010. Doors will open at 7pm and the Service will begin at 7:30pm. This event is open to the entire Capital District community. Please join us.

Christian Witness, Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , ,

Orthodox Church in Poland Mourns

The Orthodox Ordinary for the Polish Armed Forces, Ś.P. +Archbishop Miron, was among those killed in the tragic air crash near Smolensk in Russia. Metropolitan Sawa has assumed the role of Ordinary for the Armed Forces. Metropolitan Sawa appointed a commission to make funeral arrangements for Ś.P. +Archbishop Miron and conducted a panikhida service in memory of Ś.P. +Archbishop Miron and all those killed.

More from Cerkiew.

Christian Witness, Current Events, PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia

More PNCC Reflections on Poland’s Tragedy

Edwardsville, PA

From WBRE-TV: Polish Church Honors Those Lost in Plane Crash

Sadness over the tragic plan crash that killed Poland’s President and nearly 100 other people is reaching around the globe, even to our area.

The Polish National Catholic Church Resurrection of the Lord Parish in Edwardsville remembered the crash victims Sunday.

Reverend Pawel Filip and his family arrived at church wearing black clothes and black ribbons.They’re in mourning for the people of their native Poland.

He led the congregation in a prayer for the families they left behind and for the people of Poland. He said, I think all the polish nation lost the light of the Polish people.”

The pastor heard about the crash from a family member in Poland. It was night here. And the terrible phone call woke him up. He recalled,”I couldn’t believe that it happened.”

He left his home country just two years ago – and still feels strong ties to his homeland – it’s people and it’s leaders. He sighed,”It’s very hard to replace these kinds of people – especially the president.”

Even parishioners who never lived in Poland say this tragedy impacts them. Margaret Garvin of Edwardsville said,”It just brings everything right to you. Right to your heart.” Her grandparents came to the United States from Poland. She explained,”When it is your family like – polish it really means a lot.”

The reverend said the Polish are strong. And they will recover from this tragedy. Thanks in part to strong support from around the world. He said, “When something like this happens all the nations join together – we have the same spirit – the same thinking – we are very close.”

Frackville and Shenandoah, PA

Local Polish Pastor Remembers Friend Killed in Crash

FRACKVILLE, SCHUYLKILL COUNTY — A special memorial sits in front of St. John the Baptist Church in Frackville. It pays tribute to victims of a plane crash in Russia that killed the Polish President and Maciej Plazynski, a friend of St. John’s Pastor Robert Plichta.

“He was very dedicated man to his family, to the church and of course, to the country,” he said.

Pastor Plichta moved to the states 7 years ago. He’s responsible for polish catholic congregations in Frackville and Shenandoah.

Before Plichta moved to America, Plazynski was a parishoner of Plichta’s church in his hometown of Gdansk, Poland.

The former chief of Poland’s parliament, Plazynski was as friendly as they come says Plictha. “It was a blessing for me to know him personally,” he said.

But now Pastor Plichta, like the rest of his home country of Poland, is mourning a terrible tragedy. Plazynski was on a plane with several high ranking polish officials including the country’s president when it crashed.

Plichta hopes to help Polish-American communities in Schuylkill County cope with the loss. “The first question could appear, why. And there is no answer,” he said.

A special Monday mass is scheduled in honor of the crash victims. “Gods message, maybe for the Polish community, maybe for this entire world, Eastern Europe, Western Europe to live together and we have to realize that we are not masters of this earth, we are merely passing through,” he added.

Brooklyn, NY

From the AP: Polish immigrants worldwide mourn crash victims

Polish immigrants and their descendants around the world shared the anguish of their mother country on Sunday, mourning the 96 victims of a devastating plane crash as they crowded into Polish-language Masses.

Millions of Poles have emigrated over nearly two centuries, establishing large communities in the United States and Britain. They coped with Saturday’s death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and dozens of other military, church and government officials through vigils, prayer and writing…

Maria Balcer, 65, a recent immigrant, sat in a pew at Polish National Catholic Church in Brooklyn and cried. She had been up until 2 a.m. watching television coverage of the crash, she said.

“The tragedy is terrible, a horrible feeling in my heart,” she said…

Hamtramck, MI

From Freep.com: Poles in metro Detroit share their shock, hurt

The death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski in a plane crash Saturday stunned metro Detroit’s Polish community.

At the Polish Market on Jos Campau in Hamtramck, all shoppers wanted to talk about was the crash. Overhead, loud speakers piped in a news broadcast from a Polish language radio station.

“Basically, that’s all we talk about all day,” said Sebastian Poweska, an employee and an immigrant who came to the United States five years ago from Stalowa Wola, Poland.

“It’s been really slow — only half the people who normally come in,” said Poweska, 24, of Sterling Heights. “It’s the same thing as 9/11. People just sitting around at home watching TV all day.”

He learned about the crash when his father woke him at 6 a.m. Saturday and told him.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Poweska said.

…

On Pulaski Street in Hamtramck at the Holy Cross Polish National Catholic Church, three women were cleaning up after serving a meal at the congregation’s soup kitchen.

They said they expected the priest would say special prayers during mass today for Poland and those who died in the plane crash.

Jolanta Nowak, 38, of Hamtramck, who emigrated 10 years ago from Katowice, Poland, a town an hour west of Kraków, said she was praying “for healing. For the future of the people because they will be thinking about what happened.”

Stephanie Marsh, 71, of Shelby Township said, “I was thinking what would happen to us if something like this were to happen in the United States. It’s just going to rip everything apart for them.”

Rochester, NY

From the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Local Polish community grieves after tragedy that killed Poland’s president

The plane crash Saturday that killed Poland’s president and several members of his country’s elite was a tragedy not only for Poles, but for their relatives and descendants here in the United States.

During services today at St. Casimir Polish National Catholic Church in Irondequoit, the Rev. Melvin Walczak will lead congregants in prayers for those who have suffered.

—We will be praying for all of the people in Poland,— Walczak said. —We will be praying for the members of our congregation who have family members that are connected to Poland.—

Walczak, whose grandparents emigrated from Poland, was saddened by the loss of President Lech Kaczynski and other leaders.

—I can only imagine what we would feel if Air Force One crashed,— Walczak said. —That’s the parallel for American people to try to look at.—

The Polish leaders were heading to a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the slaughter of Polish military officers by Soviet secret police.

The massacre in the Katyn forest —is a very, very important moment historically for every single Pole, wherever we are,— said Maria Weldy of Irondequoit, a native of the Krakow area. —It’s just so, so sad.—

Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Association, added that the timing of the crash was —so tragic and so ironic.—

—The impact of this is really felt in Poland,— said Urbanski, who grew up in Nowa Huta, Poland.

Despite the tragedy, Urbanski said he believes Poland will recover.

—I think the country will survive this tragedy,— he said. —The Poles, like the Irish, are used to tragedy.—

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