One worker says she lost four jobs during the past seven years. Another saw his unemployment insurance (UI) benefits evaporate due to Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) callous filibuster of an UI extension last month.

Those are just two of the personal stories jobless workers and others have shared at the AFL-CIO’s Good Jobs Now site. Our interactive site is part of the AFL-CIO’s fight for good jobs that today kicked off two weeks of action across the country with rallies and demonstrations at branches of the Big Six Wall Street banks—Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia-Wells Fargo. (Find out about events in your area here.)

The Big Six’s reckless greed played the major role in wrecking the U.S. economy and killing American jobs.  The workers sharing their stories have seen firsthand the damage left behind.

Mary from Illinois writes that the nation’s jobs crisis has battered her life and ruined her future.

I have suffered through four terminations of various kinds in a seven year timeframe. It is so hard to get a job these days and so easy for employers to let us go. In addition to the obvious destruction of a person’s finances, I have struggled with a lot of anxiety after the last two terminations. My future is ruined as well as the present because I have not been in a pension plan or 401(k) for the last 7 years and have not earned enough to save in my own IRA.

In December, Eddy, an Ohio UAW member, saw his job of 17 years shipped overseas.

There are those at the top making the decisions that know nothing of what it takes to make the product, or the people that make the product. We are just a number, but not the number that they are interested in. Corporate America knows only one number, the number that drives their greed! When corporations know that they can move a company’s operations to a third world country and make more for less, they have dollars signs in there eyes and it does not matter who they go through to get there or what they leave in the wake of their decisions.

Terry in Florida says he and his wife face a grim future after both were laid off from the same firm.

I worked for a large corporation in senior health care. They laid me off a week before Christmas….My wife was laid off by the same company six months before. The company is making more money than they ever have but wants more. I know, I see the financials. What’s up with that? At this rate we will be homeless by summer, no house and no car unless God helps us out. Please pray for us.

Like far too many construction workers, Mike, a member of the Operating Engineers (IUOE) in Ohio, has been forced to depend on unemployment benefits as construction projects have faltered in during the nation’s economic upheaval. But he never thought a Kentucky senator would tell him “Tough sh*t.”

I’m 51 years old and unemployed. I’ve worked 15 weeks in the last two years. They just cut off my unemployment benefits because some high and mighty senator decided he doesn’t like what’s being done with the extension on unemployment benefits to Americas unemployed. HE STILL HAS A JOB, HEALTH CARE AND A PRETTY GOOD RETIREMENT. What about the rest of America? How do we pay our bills? What do we eat? How do we pay for our medications that we need? Guess it’s not his problem, is it?

Click here to read more stories or submit your own.

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