Today at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other leaders joined together to call for urgent action to create jobs and rebuild the economy.
In a live webcast panel discussion, the consensus was clear: Without quick action, an entire generation could be mired in economic turmoil. The nation can, and must, put people back to work-while addressing critical needs for the future of our communities.
The scale of the jobs crisis is obvious: Since the beginning of the recession, more than 8 million jobs have been lost. The official unemployment rate is at 10.2 percent, with more than 26 million unemployed or underemployed. These figures are even more severe among African American and Latino communities. Young people are at risk of permanently stunted opportunity, and the jobs crisis is rebounding throughout the country with increased hunger and poverty, massive numbers of home foreclosures and diminished access to health care.
Trumka will be part of a noted panel in "Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis" at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
With unemployment at its highest rate in more than 20 years, Trumka says America needs bold, quick action to put people back to work, in addition to longer term, structural fixes for our economy. The AFL-CIO initiative he announces will include calls to extend help for the unemployed, rebuild the nation's infrastructure, provide aid to struggling states and communities, create federally funded community-based jobs and increase lending to small and medium-sized businesses to spur job creation.
The House released a final version of the health reform bill. It has a public option all right, but not the robust version progressives were hoping for. The public plan would only cover 2% of Americans and premiums will cost more than anticipated.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) continued to threaten to join a Republican filibuster of a health care bill with a public option. A lot of people still think he's bluffing. Realistically, the public option probably faces more serious threats from inside the Democratic caucus. It's been whittled down at an alarming rate.
Nick Baumann of Mother Jones asks "What now for the public option?"
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that public option premiums will actually be higher than the premiums for private plans on the health insurance exchanges. That doesn't mean it's going to cost the government more money-the public option is paid for by premiums, not taxes; it actually cuts the deficit. But it will be more expensive than some private plans. Wasn't part of the point of the public option to prove that a government-run program could compete successfully with privately-run plans? Well, yes, but here's the problem: that was all based on the idea that the public option would pay health care providers at Medicare rates.
Baumann predicts that insurers will do everything they can to drive the sick people off private insurance onto the public plan, a phenomenon known as "adverse selection." Hopefully some of the proposed insurance reforms will curb their worst excesses, like kicking people off the rolls for misspelling their preexisting conditions on their application forms.
Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent reports that the House health care bill would eliminate the popular and cost-effective Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and shift its low-income beneficiaries onto private health insurance exchanges.
This looks like a stealthy preemptive strike on the prospect of single-payer health care. CHIP is a single-payer program that progressive health policy types envisioned as a prototype for a future single-payer system for all kids, or even eventually for everyone.
As Lillis points out, abolishing CHIP is also a gimme to insurance companies. Generally speaking, kids are cheap to insure because they're healthy. Private insurers would love to stock their risk pools with kids on federal subsidies. It's like getting paid to stock your pond with delicious trout. We worry about adverse selection making the public plan more expensive. Well, CHIP is the reverse of that because this public program is keeping the good risks for itself.
Suzy Khimm argues at TAPPED that killing CHIP could be a good thing, provided the kids continue to enjoy the same legal protections that they get under the public plan. Khimm suggests that moving low-risk kids into insurance exchanges could help keep costs down for everyone by making the risk pool healthier on average:
That being said, if CHIP's dismantling ended up moving more folks into the health-insurance exchange, it wouldn't simply be a boon for "the insurance lobby and moderate Democrats." It could strengthen one of the most fundamental parts of the Democratic reform package -- a robust insurance exchange with a pool of participants that's large enough to drive down costs precisely because insurance companies have an incentive to jump in and compete for customers. Moreover, folding CHIP into the exchange would add a younger, healthier pool of participants to the exchange, offsetting its potential of becoming a dumping ground for the sick and elderly. Finally, CHIP has always suffered from under enrollment -- about 6 million children aren't insured in the program who should be -- and by bringing whole families in under the same plan, more children will be covered.
That's a nice idea, but it seems foolish to scrap one a popular and successful social program in favor of an untested insurance exchange system.
The frustrating thing about so-called health care reform is that legislators don't really want to change the system. They want to make the system work better while catering to all the established interests that made it suck in the first place.
Politicians aren't the only ones to balk at fundamental change. The Real News Network interviews Sam Gindin (video below), a former assistant to the Canadian Auto Workers Union, now a professor at York University. Gindin says that, over the years, labor conceded too much on health care and thereby failed to reestablish itself as a leading force for progressive change in the United States. Helping elect Barack Obama was a step in the right direction for labor, he maintains, but it's not nearly enough.
As John Nichols of the Nation put it, when the House finally wrote the bill, the compromise was even more compromised than expected.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
(A really great look at the diverse roots of our progressive majority, and how it has been constituted by historical struggles over time. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
A (now long-ago) comment by fladem (pointing out that Obama won all the states that Lincoln won in 1860) led to this diary. What if the last election had taken place under the laws and customs that existed in most states in 1860? In other words, what if only white men could vote in 2008?
Now, that really is an alternate history question, so what we're seeing here on the left is how white men did vote in 2008, an election where everyone voted. On the right, how all those who gained voting rights after the Civil War voted - that is, non-whites and white women.
Click to enlarge.
The take home message: expanding voting rights - a progressive position - resulted in the ability to elect more liberal politicians. Below, more details and what this has to do with unions.
More than 5,000 people are packing the streets of downtown Chicago this morning, chanting, marching and rallying against Big Bankers and financial institutions that have taken taxpayer money and are using it to give big bonuses to CEOs and to lobby against financial reforms that would ensure they don't go back on the public dole.
The crowd is marching to the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, site of the American Bankers Association meeting, to protest the banking industry's greed and irresponsibility that crippled our economy, leaving millions of workers behind.
After the house of cards they built collapsed, bankers and the financial industry took $700 billion in taxpayer funds for a bailout. But rather than reform their failed practices, they want to go back to business as usual-with the chance of again precipitating another financial collapse and need for taxpayer bailout in coming years.
On Wall Street today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling for tough new regulations on the financial industry and a new approach to making the U.S. economy work for working people.
Trumka spoke today at the New York Stock Exchange as part of the new AFL-CIO leadership team's national tour to set out a jobs-focused, progressive vision for the economy-and to fight back against the corporate agenda that left workers behind.
We've let wealth concentrate for too long, Trumka said. The past decade has shown us the folly of building an unfair and unequal economy that only works for a few, while working people pile up debt to get by. We need to be able to protect consumers from abuses by mortgage lenders and credit card companies and hold accountable those whose greed and irresponsibility have undermined the economy, Trumka said:
Banks and other financial institutions must be held accountable for making this mess that required trillions of dollars of our money to clean up. For the pain they've inflicted on families who face financial ruin-unemployment, wiped out pensions, foreclosures and bankruptcy.
Something bad happened in the past 10 years to young workers in this country: Since 1999, more of them now have lower-paying jobs, if they can get a job at all; health care is a rare luxury and retirement security is something for their parents, not them. In fact, many-younger than 35-still live at home with their parents because they can't afford to be on their own.
These are the findings of a new report, "Young Workers: A Lost Decade." Conducted in July 2009 by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the AFL-CIO and our community affiliate Working America, the nationwide survey of 1,156 people follows up on a similar survey the AFL-CIO conducted in 1999. The deterioration of young workers' economic situation in those 10 years is alarming.
Once again this week, Michael Lind has written a piece for Salon that's distorted by his own preconceptions, and ghosts from his political past. This time, however, the main thrust is sounder, and the preconceptions considerably less odious. Yet the misconceptions remain significant enough that they warrant serious attention-as does his main thesis. In "Liberalism without labor unions?" Lind attacks the notion that the party can survive by effectively marginalizing the core economic concerns of its traditionally working-class base. On this point, Lind and I are in complete agreement, no questions asked. Indeed, I'm inclined to think that my critique goes deeper than his in some ways--but that's an issue for another time. At any rate, I can point to repeated pieces by Chris Hedges that I think make this case much better, and more deeply than Lind has done.
That said, if we want to change the Democratic Party, so that it truly represents those that it should represent, then we need an analysis that gets the problem right, not just in its broad sweep, but also in its breakdown into actionable chunks. And this is where my problems with Lind come to the fore.
As before, Lind is confused over the fact that minorities are disproportionately more working class than whites--as, too, as women. The centrality of this misconception cannot be ignored, when his second paragraph reads thus:
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka appeared on CNBC this morning for a frank talk about health care, politics and the future of the country.
As described this week in Huffington Post, Trumka is laying out a fundamental proposition: When it comes time for millions of union members to mobilize, educate other union members and get out the vote, they'll work on behalf of candidates who support real health care reform that provides quality, affordable health care to all and gives people the opportunity to choose a public health coverage plan alongside private options:
We finally said, look, this is the minimum. If you're going to do something, do something that works. If you're going to have health insurance reform, you must have a public option in it. if you don't, don't expect us to support you.
Okay. I'm personally disgusted and disheartened. But it is a legitimate criticism to say that being disgusted is not a plan for life. Certainly it is not a worthy theme song for anyone who claims to be a progressive.
Let's talk about what the situation is, and what are the available options.
BACKGROUND
The Democrats In The Bush-Cheney Years
The Democrats have been overwhelmed in recent years by the Bush-Cheney administration and their fanatical supporters, including Rupert Murdoch's Whorehouse, the 24-hour-per-day Fascist propaganda organ for the right wing which promotes war, hatred, and violence. It has been a somewhat terrifying time for many people in this country, although I think the Democrats mostly have been terrified at the thought of losing their own job.
The response of many Democrats has been to simply go along with Bush-Cheney, try to wait it out without drawing too much attention to themselves. Maybe they were afraid of being shot by the crazies who supported Bush-Cheney, a legitimate concern. But those who voted for the Wars, who voted for the tax-cuts, who supported silly new laws to make it a crime to burn a flag, who supported imprisoning more and more non-white poor young men as a solution to a failing economy, those who supported "free" trade policies which took more and more good-paying jobs out of this country and threw more and more Americans out of work, seem to have the heart and soul of Republicans.
But nonetheless, the Democrats are all we've got. So when they started telling us several years ago that we need to elect more Democrats so they could get the majority in Congress, we needed to fund-raise and make phone calls and campaign to elect Democrats, and donate, then donate some more, many of us got on board. Okay. We'll do our part. Save the nation.
Democrats Get Controlling Majority in 2008
Now the Democrats have control of both houses of Congress and the white house. Even though people blame Obama for the apparent failings so far to change anything, the fact is that Obama has no authority to pass laws. Congress is charged with the responsibility to pass laws. Congress holds the purse strings when it comes to war. Only Congress has the authority to declare war, to authorize war. So let's see how they're doing.
Democrats Provide Working People With No Economic Assistance
The economy is the key to people's ability to have a decent life. But from the Democrats, when it comes to helping the working people, nothing so far. No jobs programs from Congress. Obama has a big "recovery" program but it has pennies for a jobs-creation program, compared to billions in give-aways to the Wall Street criminals. Congress has failed to raise minimum wage to a living wage -- it probably should be double what it currently is. No discussion of that. Congress refused to cap interest rates on credit cards. I just got a notice from my credit card company that they are raising the interest rates to 14%. So they borrow money from the government for .25% -- 1/4 of 1% -- and they loan it to me for 14%. Do you know what an incredible con that is? But Congress refused to cap how much they can charge in interest, which should be tied within a few points of what they pay to borrow. If they pay 1/4 of 1% to borrow, maybe they should be capped at 3%. But 14% is outrageous.
As for ending the war as they promised they would do, they didn't. Instead, they keep voting to give billions more for war, to extend the wars indefinitely, to expand the wars, to kill more people, drop more bombs. Nothing for the working people and citizens, but everything for war. All of which is a corporate subsidy because we are in the middle east to provide private security for the Oil Corporations as they steal Iraq's oil, build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Maybe next steal Iran's oil. It's all about oil. And corporate control.
Speaking of which, not only is our reliance on foreign oil the direct cause of our starting wars to steal oil, it is also destroying the planet. The Democrats know this. So where is our major green push from Congress? To get off of oil. Green jobs, R&D money, development, funding? New community planning, new shelter/home/apartment designs, materials, concepts. Where is the Congress's major new proposal -- like A New Deal, or The Great Society -- where is the Congress in funding green work, developing industries, creating jobs, getting the universities involved, retrofitting people's homes, creating non-automobile transportation? Where are they on this subject? Not much there either.
On Health care, which they claim will be a radical reform to help the people -- all the rumors have it that there will be no real change, no help for the people. The Medical Industry -- Doctors' lobbies, Hospital groups, Drug Dealers -- have paid so much money in bribes to Congress that Congress will do nothing to stop them from continuing to rob us blind.
So all in all, the Democrats have been a complete failure. And worse -- it is a betrayal of everything that they promised they would do.
Organize: Where? How?
So what should we do, besides whine?
The traditional answer is we need to organize, to get enough people to take action to force the government to work for us instead of working for corporate bribes.
But how, where?
"Organize": The Unions
Traditionally, the term "organize" refers to the union movement, which was very active in the early part of the 20th century, then became somewhat complacent post-war as the anti-communist insanity was directed against them. Some of the unions began siding with the conservatives. After all, when unions become nothing more than an insider organization staffed by white men who get big paychecks, and whose job is to pay bribes to politicians and work with management to guarantee jobs and benefits and pensions and good wages to other white men, to exclude non-whites and women, then the unions actually become a reactionary force in society. By adopting those policies which benefit the insiders, they lay the seeds for their own destruction.
I know people who were union organizers in the 70s, trying to get the established unions to recognize that what was called "women's work" was a great place for expanding unions. But the white men who ran the unions saw "workers" as being macho men, and actually felt like they would be embarrassed to associate with the lower caste of people known as women workers. For example, the typesetters union was all white men, working on big typesetting presses, hard work. But along came computers, and the likely new typesetters suddenly became the class of workers who are typists -- women. But the typesetters union refused to go after the women, refused to include them, so laid the seeds for their own destruction.
The same is true for the building trades unions. They were mostly white male, except the separate laborers union was mostly black male. Male, notice -- women rarely were allowed on a job and if they were brought in, they were subject to malicious sexual harassment -- not off-color jokes, but actual threats of rape, groping of breasts. Not just boys having fun -- malicious conduct designed to force women out of the field. Some of the building trades unions simply became hiring halls for an insider exclusive group of white men. Instead of expanding their union, reaching out to other groups and people, they became a reactionary racist and sexist force, aligned with the conservatives in government. A few decades down the road, the buildings trade unions were undercut by developers hiring coyotes to bring illegal immigrants in by the truckload to take the jobs. If the unions had been more inclusive, had continued to expand their organizing and increase their strength by alliances with other workers, and had brought in women and non-whites, they would have been in a much stronger position to protect their jobs.
So the biggest problem with the unions is that they are sexist and racist, and short-sighted. Why didn't they include as a non-negotiable demand that the pensions be funded on an ongoing basis. In other words, everytime Employee A gets a paycheck, the boss must immediately transfer into Employee A's retirement account a certain amount of money so Employee A's pension will be fully-funded when he retired. And the Employer can never touch Employee A's pension money. It is safeguarded and protected. But the unions didn't take care of that. We now have retired autoworkers who will lose their pensions because the company did not fund the pensions for those employees -- just planned to pay it out of future earnings. A terrible mistake.
Some unions, many unions have agreed to two-tiered plans. They destroy unions. Here's how that works. Company agrees to continue paying current employees at a certain rate, providing them with benefits and pensions. But they get a two-tiered provision in the new contract that says new employees will receive a lot less money per hour, and receive a lot less in benefits. They did a two-tiered contract in one of the grocery stories I go to, and within a few months all the Adults disappeared -- I swear, the place was staffed with 14-year-old checkers within 6 months. All the long-term employees who had the higher pay were re-assigned, often to stores that were a long commute from home, to force them out. Two-tiered contracts are deals with the devil made by the existing employees to benefit themselves, selling out newer employees, and always leading to destruction of the union.
The male-only leadership continues to be a problem with unions. Women don't really want to pay part of their already diminished wages to a bunch of men, mostly paying themselves over $200,000/year as union "leaders," when the unions do not include as a non-negotiable demand the elimination of sexism in hiring, promotion, and wages -- by employers and by the unions themselves.
Some of the newer more aggressive unions seem to be following very questionable policies. For example, doormen and cleaning crews in commercial building (i.e. offices) in one City were earning about $10-12/hour through their union. But the commercial property owners fired the union workers, busted the union, and started hiring all illegal immigrants at $5/hour (thanks to the program by Bush and Fox to flood the U.S. market with millions of desperate illegal immigrant workers from Mexico). Nobody did a thing to stand up for the Americans who lost their jobs. But soon, a new union came along to represent the illegal immigrants (scabs one might say), and promised them what? First, that if they joined the union, the union would fight to get them $6/hour. And second, if they joined the union, they would have protection against being deported.
So the union comes in, "fights" with the property owner to get $6/hour, but the property owner gladly pays because it means he's protected against having the "American" workers come back and demand the full $12/hour they were making. It's a huge benefit to the property owner. The union works with management to screw the Americans. And the union I'm thinking about has a group of insiders who are paid over $200,000/year for their "organizing" efforts. This same union fought against single-payer healthcare in California because their management friends didn't want it.
Unions have been under assault, there's no question, particularly accelerating under Reagan when he fired all the air traffic controllers and busted the unions. But they also have been uninspired in coming up with a real program to fight outsourcing, fight against companies taking American jobs to other countries, fight against all these "free" trade agreements which have allowed cheap imports to flood our country, throwing more Americans out of work.
I understand the concept of One Big Union, an international perspective. But you need to fight for the jobs of the people in your own country if you expect to grow. Not based on racism or xenophobia, but based on the right of people to be employed, the right to have laws enforced so employers can't throw Americans out of work and replace them with slave labor illegal immigrants. Fight for the rights of all Americans, women and minorities included, instead of having unions remain white men's clubs. And the union insiders should stop paying themselves so much money, and start respecting their members by capping their own paychecks to some nominal multiple of the amount their dues-paying members are earning. Set an example for honesty, fairness and real democracy instead of taking advantage of terrified poor people, desperate for protection.
I think it's 10% of the private jobs are unionized today. And there's lots of infighting. So the unions strike me as a highly unlikely source for organizing people in this country. They may be re-made, but as of today their primary political activity consists of paying bribes to politicians. They can't even get the majority Democrats to pass EFCA. That's a disgrace. It shows that the Democrats are no longer the party of labor, and they don't care one bit what the unions think about it.
Organizing On A Community Basis
So what else? Some people suggest organizing on a community level. Neighborhood by neighborhood. Go knock on your neighbor's door. Engage them in conversation about healthcare. I don't think so. We don't have community in this country, for the most part. We have residences, dwellings. Places where people live as long as they have a job and can pay, and in today's environment there will be lots of moving around by people in foreclosure, unemployed, going somewhere else trying to find work, get a new start. Our society is structured in a manner designed to increase isolation. Go home and watch TV. We should try to change that, but for now, for purposes of using community as a basis for organizing, I can't see it.
Besides, there is little people have in common simply as a result of residing in the same neighborhood. Location of residence says nothing about political beliefs and leanings, gun-loving, hunters, progressives, religious fanatics -- they're so mixed in together. They can live alongside each other, but trying to organize blindly is like making cold-calls from a phone book in trying to sell a product. Lots of effort, little results.
Organizing: Within The Churches
Of course there are the churches which, historically, have in some cases gotten involved in progressives issues such as help the poor or end the war. But many of the churches are extremely conservative. I would suggest this also is likely too much effort, little likely results. Except in the case of churches which have a well-established history of social justice programs and concerns.
What's left? Two things:
Issues Organizing
1. Issues Organizing.
This has worked well in the past on some issues. The problem is that if Congress does something, or votes something, the issue may be co-opted. For example, the anti-war movement should be strengthened. But there is so much public deception about these wars, no draft, lots of mercenaries and private contractors, no real news, it seems this would be easy to co-opt. I think Obama already has done that. When he announced that he had a plan for a phased withdrawal from Iraq -- in the future -- which didn't mean all the troops would leave -- and wasn't writ in stone in any event -- many people seemed to say "Great, war over." But it's not over, and this administration does not plan for it to be over until every drop of oil is sucked out of the sand of Iraq.
Issues organizing, in order to have ongoing viability, needs to include many different issues. Which makes it begin to look more like a political party.
Organizing: Within A Political Party
2. Political Party.
Another alternative is for people to organize and get active inside a political party.
Within The Democratic Party
The first option is to work from within the Democratic party to try to change it. I do not think this will succeed until and unless strict laws are passed to cut down on the corruption. I would include the following as a minimum:
(a) Campaign Finance Reform, Bribery, Kick-Back Laws. Make it illegal for any candidate to accept any money or anything of value from anyone for any purposes. They get a paycheck, that should be the end of it. Same for any promise to pay in the future. Same for spouses, parents, siblings, kids. Have publicly-funded campaigns, and limited campaigns. It does the public no good whatsoever to have hundreds of millions of dollars spent on these political circuses. It's just decorating corruption with sparkly lights.
(b) No Future Employment Or Compensation For Five Years. We need a law making it illegal for any politician to go to work for, or accept money or anything of value from, any business, or industry that benefitted from any government contracts during the time the politician was in office. For five years. Five years after they leave office, they can do what they want. Until then, nothing. End this disgraceful practice by which a politician leaves office and is showered with hundreds of millions of dollars in kick-backs from foreign countries and corporations that benefitted from the politician's actions while in office. No money received at all -- not wages, not consulting fees, not even in these ridiculous "private" charity scams that have become so popular.
(c) No Ex-Parte Communications. We need a law making it illegal for a politician (or their staff) to receive or originate any communication with any person about any issue which is, or may come before the Congress, except for communications made as part of a public record, recorded or documented at the time of the communication, and immediately disclosed to the public.
Here's the idea. Take a Judge. He's got a trial scheduled in a few weeks in which Attorney A represents Dog-bite Victim who is seeking to recover money from Dog Owner, represented by Attorney B. Let's say that Attorney A and Judge both attend a dinner party, and Attorney A wants to talk to Judge about his case, about his client, about dogs. Let's say Judge listens. The Attorney A could be disbarred, and the Judge could lose his job too. That's because the laws of most states make it illegal for any attorney (or party) to communicate with a Judge about a matter before the judge, or scheduled to come before the judge, unless the other side is present or given notice and the opportunity to be present at the time of the communication, the communication is recorded or documented, and the other side has an opportunity to respond. You don't get to take the Judge in the corner and try to butter him up about how good your case is, when the other attorney isn't even there.
We need the same laws in Congress. Why should the Defense Industry be able to send lobbyists to meet with the politicians and convince them to support some new weapons contract, when the meetings and communications are in secret, the public is excluded, and none of us really know what went on in the communication. Were bribes offered or solicited?
I don't see any reason for any politician or their staff or agents or representatives to ever meet or communicate with a lobbyist or industry or business representatives in private. If the politician wants to learn more about some proposed weapons system, they can hold public hearings at which the public can "attend" either by real-time streaming on-line, or televised hearings, made available on-line for years. Written communications should be scanned and likewise available. We need to stop the secret meetings. Bring some sunshine and light to Congress and try to kill off the rot.
New Political Party
The other alternative to trying to organize within a political party would be to start a new political party. Create a platform with specific positions, demand politicians agree in advance to support each of those positions if they want to run as part of this new party. Would the party likely win immediately? No. Might it throw the election to Republicans? Possibly. Another alternative is that there would be a new conservative party started. After all, if only 20% of the country identifies themselves as Republicans, that leaves 80% up for grabs, many of whom consider themselves to be independent.
We hear a lot of speculation about the Republican Party being on its last legs. I think the Democratic Party is as well. They are just too corrupt. The fact that they did nothing during the Bush years to protect the people, the fact that Bill Clinton changed the party to be the Corporate Party, the fact that now they have the majority of the Congress and yet they do nothing to help us, suggests to me that the party is committed firmly to a policy of corruption, bribes, and kick-backs. They believe they will continue to receive the support of the majority simply because they can always raise the bogeyman "Remember Bush." I do remember. But what I remember is that the Democratic Party, my party, did nothing to help me, or to protect me, from the fascist administration of Bush-Cheney. That's what I remember.
The misleading attacks by Big Business on the Employee Free Choice Act now are aimed at the provision that would guarantee that workers can get a fair first contract. Their scare tactics are not only misleading, they're hypocritical.
Right now, workers lack a legal means to ensure they get a fair first contract. Recent research shows that even after workers successfully win a union and the ability to bargain, they're too often blocked from getting a fair first contract. Fifty-two percent of workers don't have a contract a full year after the election, and 37 percent don't have a first contract two years after the election. For too many workers, the promise of the freedom to bargain is out of reach because the law doesn't offer them any help.
The Employee Free Choice Act provides a process to help first-time bargainers to reach an agreement, through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. The reason we need first-contract arbitration is to create an incentive for companies to bargain voluntarily with their workers.
Ask Shannon Hilt, who's seen our broken system for forming unions firsthand, and she'll tell you that there's no question: Workers need the Employee Free Choice Act.
Hilt spent three years as a field examiner for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), overseeing the elections process and investigating unfair practices. She says the system we have now, one in which companies, not workers, have all the power, isn't free, it isn't fair and doesn't protect workers.
Writing in the Boulder, Colo., Daily Camera, Hilt explains how her years of experience as an NLRB field examiner have convinced her that we need fundamental labor law reform that gives workers, not their bosses, the ability to decide how they form a union and bargain.
Today, a coalition of Philadelphia-area rabbis and rabbinical students will meet with Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter to make the case for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Dozens of Pennsylvania rabbis and rabbinical students signed an open letter in support of Employee Free Choice, organized by the Philadelphia Jewish Labor Committee (JLC), and will deliver it today to Specter. Specter is a key vote in the fight for workers'; freedom to form unions and bargain-a fight that these rabbis know is critical to our economy and to basic fairness.
The meeting and letter are part of a larger outreach effort by the JLC to promote workers' freedom to form unions and bargain. These values, say a growing coalition of rabbis, are a key part of the Jewish tradition of supporting the dignity of workers and the strength of communities.
The banking lobby still holds enough sway inside the Beltway to torpedo sensible consumer protection rules, even after releasing a flood of predatory mortgages that kicked off the current economic crisis. On issues ranging from payday loans to subprime mortgages, the banking industry continues to successfully defend itself against new regulations that would protect the consumer. As if that weren't outrage enough, the finance lobby has also joined other corporate interest groups to fund misinformation campaigns that smear unions and block wage growth.
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire Blogger
It's official: The U.S. economy has been in a recession for a year and a half and many of the economic troubles worrying progressives in 2007 have yet to be addressed. While the Obama administration has taken steps to relieve some problems, a series of counterproductive bailouts, woefully inadequate labor laws and rampant inequality are still in urgent need of attention.
If you sign up to join a union, you won't face coercion or intimidation from your co-workers-or employers. Despite dire warnings by corporations against the majority sign-up process, a new study shows majority sign-up (card-check) protects workers and gives them the chance they need to form a union. It's another critical point in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers across the country the choice about how to form a union and bargain for a better life.
The study, "Majority Authorizations and Union Organizing in the Public Sector: A Four-State Perspective," written by top labor policy scholars under the direction of Robert Bruno of the University of Illinois, looks at the experience of four states (New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Oregon) where public-sector workers have the freedom to form unions through majority sign-up. If passed, the Employee Free Choice Act would give millions of workers the option of using either majority sign-up or a National Labor Relations Board election to form a union.
Today on Capitol Hill, labor law experts and a California worker exposed the ugly truth about corporate abuses of workers trying to exercise their freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.
Bronfenbrenner has studied these issues for decades as the director of labor education research at Cornell University's School of Industrial Relations. This is her fourth survey over 20 years, enabling her to put into historical perspective the obstacles workers face today.
Put down that grande non-fat caramel macchiato or whatever Starbucks concoction you're drinking. Turns out the coffee giant has a nasty history of being anti-barista, anti-union, and thus anti-Employee Free Choice Act as well.
The National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly found Starbucks guilty of illegally terminating, harassing, intimidating, and discriminating against employees attempting to unionize. Late last year, a judge ruled Starbucks had committed over a dozen violations of the National Labor Relations Act at a few New York stores. Starbucks has settled five such labor disputes in the last few years in New York, Minnesota, and Michigan, spending millions on legal fees to avoid exposing their anti-worker ways.
To make matters worse, Starbucks has led the charge on a so-called Employee Free Choice Act "compromise," joining Costco and Whole Foods to form the Committee for Level Playing Field. This Orwellian-sounding group has come up with a "third way" on Employee Free Choice, which would require 70 percent of workers to sign union authorization cards instead of the far more manageable 50 percent initially proposed by this legislation.
Hi friends. Today was a hot beautiful day here in the peninsula (midwest Bay Area, California). I'd imagine it got up to 100F which is a little hot for the garden. I took some photos today I'd like to share.
First I'd like to start with a request for your help. My friend Martin is taking a well deserved vacation with the family. He needs (and I would love to see) a few crossposts over to his site the Progressive Electorate. It's focused on elections, politicians and issues. Please come on by and crosspost something you've written, either recently, or something you wish had gotten more attention. There is no 3 paragraph rule so your diaries can be a link and a comment. It would be amazing if we could leave a nice little present at the Progressive Electorate in the form of ten to fifteen crossposts.
Here's a tiny rose I took a picture of, as I skillfully maneuvered the camera to avoid the thorns.
Yesterday in Norfolk, Va., union veterans held the first event of what will be a nationwide campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act, uniting union and nonunion veterans from across the country in support of the freedom to form unions and bargain.
In a dozen states, VoteVets.org, Veterans and Military Families for Progress (VMFP), Veterans' Alliance for Security and Democracy (VETPAC) and the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council are teaming up to host military veterans, family members and union members for rallies, roundtable discussions and mobilization events. More than 2 million union members-14 percent of all union members-are veterans and, along with national veterans' groups, they're ready to mobilize for a level playing field in the workplace and the freedom to bargain for the economic opportunity they deserve.
