May Day 2013

In many countries in the world, this is the day on which workers express solidarity and call for better conditions.  The U.S. has a Labor Day holiday that represents the end of summer and a time to picnic.  Maybe we need to be more worker focused on this day.

What is the state of working people in the U.S. on this May Day?  Unemployment is still too high.  Despite recent reports, wages have been flat or falling.  Most of the jobs being created are lower wage.  For example,  the website 24/7 Wallstreet recently reported that the Dollar Store is planning to hire 10,000 employees in May.  The article notes that these will not be good jobs, but it will be “10,000 more hires for payrolls to count.” Such jobs just lead to more people who have to shop at Dollar Stores.  For working people and the middle class, the American economy is headed in one direction: down.

As long as executives and their crafty consultants look for new ways to increase productivity and cut wages, the problem will grow worse.  But it’s not enough to blame the people at the top.  As they have in past generations, workers have to unite and speak with one voice.  They need to demand that politicians act in their interests.

May Day is not only a holiday.  It is also an international signal that a ship or airplane is in crisis.  The ship of the American workforce is about to crash: mayday, mayday!

8 Hour Day in Australia

Today is Labor Day in Australia, where it is also known as 8 Hour Day.  How many Americans think of Labor Day as anything other than a day off (if they even have the day off).  Australia’s version underscores what was gained in limiting the number of hours worked in a day.  Sadly, for many Americans the 8 hour day has become a memory of their parents’ world.  We need to take a lesson from the good people of Australia.  Let’s celebrate and fight for the 8 hour day.

Spanish Airline Workers Fight Back

Aljazeera reports that airline workers in Spain have launched a two week strike to protest planned layoffs.  The strike could cost the airline, which is losing money, as much as $134 million.  The logical question – the American question – is why would workers strike?  Don’t they care about their jobs?

Spanish workers see through the myth of “my job.”  They are standing with those who are being laid off and saying, “No more.”  American airline workers have suffered greatly over the last three decades as they’ve made concession after concession, lost pensions, and watched management continue to pay itself bonuses.  Maybe they should take a lesson from their brothers and sisters in Spain.  Solidarity.

From Sweatshops to Slavery?

One of my favorite writers, Laura Clawson of Daily Kos, has posted a video by a commentator from Fox News who thinks sweatshops are just a stage in economic growth.  Clawson points out that many working people today are stuck in low paid jobs and unpaid internships.  She right, but I think the issue is more serious.  My problem with the logic of Fox’s commentator is that it’s one more step toward abolishing the 13^th Amendment.  Can people be free in a country where they don’t earn enough to live, a country where they have no security in health care or retirement?  Are people who live in fear and want any better than slaves?

Security and Risk

I was listening to Ed Schultz’s radio show today, which included an interview with the great union leader Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers, who asked this question: Why do CEOs and executives get the security of contracts?  A small faction of unionized employees have such security, but that piece of the labor pie gets smaller every day.  The best paid employees – the executives – are also the most secure.

Corporations now specialize in transferring risk from the company and executives to workers.  I met with a client today who drives a small truck.  His company is being put out of business by competitors that require drivers to purchase their trucks and routes, which is a method FedEx uses for some of its vehicles.  When the company is no longer responsible for the vehicle, it can cut its price while increasing its profit.  The company wins, so does it customer.  Who loses?  The employee who now has to own the truck, maintain the vehicle, and eventually replace it.

This example is just one way that workers are carrying the burden of “productivity.”  The more a company can ask of its workers: own the vehicle, own your tools, pay for your entire pension, pay for most of your health care; the more it can take as profit.  Those who believe in the “free market” will argue that these business models would be impossible if workers did not accept the terms.  I think a more accurate way of describing this situation would be that desperate people will make bad choices.  Those bad choices will cause all of us to suffer.  First we will pay more to support social programs accessed by low wage workers.  The next step will be much worse.  What happens when wages fall so low that the shrinking middle class can’t subsidize the system that pushes money up?  Our lives will be very ugly.

We need a system that offers real security as well as the opportunity for reasonable profit.  Our current system is out of balance, asking the least of those who have the most, setting up a system where those who are most secure are getting even more security.

Big Words. Let’s See Some Action

Speaking today in Michigan, President Obama put himself on the side of labor in its conflict with Michigan’s governor and state legislature that is pushing through “right to work” legislation.  The President even said that such laws mean “you have the right to work for less money.”  Great words, golden words, but we have heard words from this president in the past.  What will he do?  Actions matter.

In his first four years, the President has done little to help labor.  He is currently said to be supporting a Pacific trade bill that would be as bad or worse than NAFTA.  He also champions education “reform,” which is a smoke screen for busting teacher unions and enabling corporations to profit from public education.  Labor supported Mr. Obama.  It is time for him and other Democrats to return the favor.  If they don’t, the elections of 2014 could be worse for the Democrats than 2010.

The People Who Are on Strike at Caterpillar

In today’s Chicago Sun-Times, Mary Mitchell introduces us to the people who are on strike against Caterpillar, a company that had a 67% increase in profits for the second quarter.  Mitchell takes us beyond the cliché of spoiled union workers and introduces us to real people and the struggles they are facing.  Take a few minutes to read this column.  It gives voice to people who too often are ignored by the corporate media* and too often reviled by their fellow workers.

* Yes, the Sun-Times is a corporation.  Unlike the city’s other paper, it can sometimes look at issues that affect working people and the poor.  The paper investigates issues that matter to Chicago, and it has great columnists in Eric Zorn, Mary Mitchell, Roger Ebert, and Rick Telander.  Do I like all of its writers and editorial policies?  No.  But it hits more than it misses.

 

Radical Thoughts from Honest Abe

During a speech in 1864, Lincoln said, “The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relationship, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds.”

I found this quote in The “S” Word by John Nichols.  More on this fascinating book in future posts.

Sabbath, Sept. 4, 2011

[“Sabbath” is this blog’s Sunday feature that looks at work through a wider lens.

Due to computer issues during a vacation, I’m posting this entry on 9-10-11]

Labor Day, 2011

To play on a famous line from Dickens, this year has been the best of times for organized labor.  It has also been the worst.  Union members in Wisconsin and Ohio have risen up to protect their right to bargain collectively.  At the same time, they have had to do this because governors in those states and many others have enacted laws that restrict workers’ rights.  Too many working people still think the rich are the “job creators” and union wages/benefits hurt job growth.

Over the last two and a half years, my clients have told me stories about their lives, stories that illustrate how workers are treated by the “job creators.”  Salaries have been cut.  Benefits reduced again and again.  Hours and responsibilities increased.  In many ways, this period has just been an intensification of what has been happening in America for 30 years. 

It’s too easy to blame one group (the Republicans) for this problem.  While I’m no fan of the GOP, especially in its current form, Democrats have done little or nothing to help working people and organized labor.  Yes, protections like the minimum wage and unemployment insurance are important.  But so many factories have closed in the last 10 years.  So many public employees have lost their jobs in the last two years.  This disease cannot be cured with band aids.

Beyond politics, I think America suffers from two bigger problems: greed and resentment.  We live in a culture where we want what our neighbor has – if not something bigger.  When we fail to achieve that noble goal, we’re bitter.  Public workers are victims of this cultural derangement.  Workers in the private sector have been under siege for 30 years.  They have lost pensions, sick days, fully paid health care.  Now they look at public sector workers and resent the benefits negotiated in contracts over several years.  Rather than join together to get more, many private sector employees want to take away from teachers, fire fighters, and police officers.  Meanwhile, those who profit most from this worker-on-worker battle smile and cash their checks. 

The workers’ rights movement of the 1930s really started by economic downturns in the 1890s.  Only when the system collapsed in the Great Depression did workers join together in a way that brought real change. I hope we don’t have to face another crisis like that to change the current attitudes toward unions and labor.  This problem will not be solved by politics and programs.  This country needs to change its outlook.  It needs to value the people who do the work, not those who profit from the labor of others.

Daily Kos’s New Labor Site

Daily Kos has launched a website that will be devoted to issues facing workers.  Some people will immediately dismiss this as “left wing” propaganda.  My retort would be to look at the charts.  If this data is true, American workers have been screwed for decades.  It’s time to wake up and stop believing in tooth fairy myths about “job creators.”