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Private-Sector Unions Are the Real Battle

[ 27 ] June 26, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Yglesias summarizes the horrible federal court injunction that retroactively applies new rules for airline organizing, rules created during last summer’s ridiculous FAA standoff when Democrats caved on yet another labor issue to pacify Republicans, to the current American Airlines campaign to stop a unionization campaign by its passenger service agents with the Communication Workers of America. I don’t see how retroactively applying the law is legal except in the sense that it agrees with current Republican orthodoxy which is good enough for most of the federal courts and the Supreme Court in 2012.

But for as awful as this is, the real issue is the ability for unions to organize the private sector. Yglesias:

As a policy matter, the whole story illustrates how fundamentally bleak the outlook for American unions is. Political polarization has given Republicans a clear-cut partisan interest in doing whatever they can to block unionization efforts, completely apart from questions of ideology and business interests. And the basic tactic of changing rules midstream and applying them retroactively can be used in an endless number of permutations to block major organizing efforts. The CWA and the organizing workers will, of course, appeal the decision. But the conservative majority on the Supreme Court proved last week that it’s no more sympathetic to the union cause than the rest of the American right. The result is a set of political and legal situations in which it’s difficult to see how any major private-sector organizing battle can be won unless the Democratic Party has a sudden change of heart and starts fighting equally aggressively on the other side of these issues.

While I tend to eschew language about the end of unions, Yglesias does sum up the fundamental problem Americans unions face today–a Gilded Age problem one might say, when industry and the state are combining to destroy labor unions. Ideally, Democratic politicians would understand what is at stake here, but they continue either to not understand or not care, figuring that a future of corporate donations can make up for the grassroots political advantages unions provide. Again, Yglesias:

Point being that the future of the labor movement will be determined in the private sector, and that future is extremely bleak if there’s going to be post hoc legal changes every time a large bloc of workers gets close to organizing

He’s absolutely correct on the point about private sector organizing determining the future of the labor movement. Public sector unions are important and what happened in Wisconsin and Ohio is absolutely vital for understanding modern labor and how it is fighting back. But the only way to bring labor back in this country is to organize private sector workplaces. There’s no easy answer for that right now, particularly in the face of state repression.

This Day in Labor History: June 26, 1894

[ 24 ] June 26, 2012 | Erik Loomis

On this day in 1894, the American Railway Union, headed by Eugene Debs, called a nationwide boycott in solidarity with their striking members at Pullman, Illinois. This action turned a small strike into one of the largest labor actions in the nation to that date, led to the pioneering use of the injunction to crush labor unions, and ended with President Grover Cleveland calling in the U.S. military to serve as a private army for the railroads, ending the strike.

The railroad-caused Panic of 1893 was not only emblematic of how corrupt railroads controlled the American economy in the Gilded Age, but how plutocrats expected the poor to sacrifice during hard times. George Pullman, owner of the Pullman Palace Car Company, which made sleeper cars for the railroads, created his own company town, south of Chicago. He provided workers everything they would need–housing, schools, stores. He also charged them high rates to live there, would not employ someone if they did not rent from him, and would evict them if they left his employment. When the Panic of 1893 hit, Pullman began losing money. His response was to lower wages by 25% while keeping the rent for his housing unchanged. In protest against this, as well as against working days that sometimes reached 16 hours, Pullman workers attempted to meet with the big boss, but Pullman refused to talk to them and fired three of the leaders.

Pullman workers leaving their workplace for the day.

Many of the workers had become members of the American Railway Union, the nation’s first industrial union. Led by a young Eugene Debs, the Pullman workers went on strike on May 11, 1894. Union members refused to run trains with Pullman cars which didn’t really affect rail traffic all that much as trains without union cars were let through. When the switchmen were disciplined for not running the Pullman cars, the entire ARU went on strike on June 26. By June 29, 150,000 workers were on strike and the American train system ground to a halt. Sympathy strikes across the nation damaged rail traffic even more. Basically, American workers, who rightfully blamed the rail companies for the Panic of 1893, started taking out their frustrations on the rail industry, the cause of many of their sufferings.

President Grover Cleveland had named Richard Olney, general counsel for the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway as his Attorney General. With this kind of fair and impartial background on the matter, in his great wisdom Olney decided to issue an injunction against the ARU support of the strike. To justify the injunction, Olney used the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, which while intended to limit monopolies, became a favored tool of industry and government to crush unions instead. The federal courts and Supreme Court supported this interpretation. No doubt Antonin Scalia would have been proud to be a member of the Gilded Age federal court system. When Debs and the ARU refused to obey the injunction, Olney and Cleveland called out the military over the objection of Illinois Governor John Altgeld, who was sympathetic to the strikers. Commanded by General Nelson Miles, 12,000 U.S. troops, aided by U.S. Marshals, came in and ended the strike on the pretense that the Pullman Strike interfered with the delivery of the mail and violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Pullman strikers confronting the National Guard outside the gates to the Pullman factory.

On July 3, the military entered Chicago, which outraged the previously pretty peaceful strike. Between July 4 and July 7, fires raged through parts of Chicago as workers used them to try and protect themselves from the troops and were just generally extremely angry. One of these fires burned several buildings from the previous year’s World’s Columbian Exposition. Only July 7, the military fired into the crowd, killing at least 4 strikers and wounding around 20. The same day, the military arrested Debs and other ARU leaders and the strike began to fall apart. On August 2, the Pullman plant reopened. 13 strikers were killed and 57 wounded during the strike and its repression. Debs went on trial for conspiracy to obstruct the mail, but these U.S. Attorney dropped these charges, supposedly because a juror got sick, and instead the court sentenced Debs to 6 months for violating the injunction.

Federal troops crushing the Pullman strike.

Serving his prison sentence, Eugene Debs read Karl Marx, became a socialist, and emerged as perhaps the greatest leader for working-class rights the country had seen to that date. He would become a 5-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party, running in 1920 from prison where he was sentenced for violating the Sedition Act of 1918 when he criticized World War I.

The injunction would become the greatest tool the capitalists had to crush labor and in the aftermath of Taft-Hartley, it remains a powerful weapon against organized labor today.

Still enraged by Cleveland’s actions, Altgeld successfully prevented the renomination of Grover Cleveland as the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, though one would be silly to credit him entirely given the rise of the Populists and the mania for silver coinage, along with general outrage at Cleveland’s mishandling of the Panic of 1893.

You can visit the Pullman site today in a limited way. A couple of the original buildings still exist but you can’t go in them. The company housing today makes up a somewhat enjoyable neighborhood to wander around in. There’s a small museum that was closed when I visited. There has been a bit of talk of using the site for the Obama Presidential Library or perhaps to turn it over to the National Park Service; in any case, too much American history exists here to let it rot into the prairie.

This series has also discussed the Pittston Strike of 1989 and the beating of the women and children at Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912.

A Little Story About an Ancient Montana Plutocrat

[ 47 ] June 25, 2012 | Erik Loomis

A long, long time ago (the Gilded Age) in a land far, far away known as Montana there was a man named William Clark. Not the Lewis & Clark guy but instead a mining capitalist. Born in Pennsylvania in 1839, he followed his family to Iowa as a teenager and then went to the Colorado gold mines during the gold rush in 1859. Clark found he enjoyed the mining world and thus went north to Montana Territory to pan for gold in 1863. He quickly realized that panning gold was for suckers. The smart move was to invest in the mines or sell things to the miners. Clark began running a supply service between Montana and Salt Lake City and made a good bit of money in it. He used that capital to become a banker where he began buying up defaulted mining properties and by the 1870s was raking money in hand over fist in the copper industry.

Clark became one of Montana’s three Copper Kings, the territory’s (state in 1889) version of monopolists John D. Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie. Unlike most of the period’s plutocrats, Clark had personal political ambitions. But very similarly to his fellow capitalists, he felt that he should just be able to purchase his political will. He started this by running a powerful Butte newspaper, where he had built a resplendent mansion while the miners who made his fortune lived in conditions nearing slavery. But that wasn’t enough for Clark. He wanted to be a senator. Now remember that before the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913, state legislatures chose U.S. senators. One of the big reasons why reformers pushed this amendment was because of William Clark.

When Clark wanted to become senator, he figured the easiest way to do it was to get out his checkbook. Literally. He bought the votes of the Montana state legislature for the 1898 election for about $140,000. Even for the Gilded Age, this was beyond the pale of acceptable corruption. When this came to light early in 1899, the Senate refused to seat Clark. That didn’t stop him though; acting with slightly less obviousness, he managed to get the state legislature to reelect him in 1900 and he served a single term in the Senate. As Clark said, “I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale.”

For reformers, William Clark was Exhibit A for the terrible depths to which the American political and corporate world had sunk. Mark Twain hated Clark with special vigor, writing:

“He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind he is the most disgusting creature that the republic has produced since Tweed’s time.”

When Clark died in 1925, he was worth $150 million. Today, that would equal $3.482 billion. His Butte mansion is now a bed and breakfast.

This is the world the 5 Republican Supreme Court justices long to recreate through Citizens United and today’s decision to overturn the century-old anti-corruption laws Montana passed to keep this embarrassment from happening again.

The CEO Whisperer

[ 7 ] June 25, 2012 | Erik Loomis

I know that making fun of Friedman is shooting fish in a barrel, but this is pretty great.

Andrew Jackson, Alien Slayer

[ 36 ] June 23, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Chris Wade wins the internets this fine Saturday. Or actually yesterday I guess but I just saw it.

Rio+20

[ 10 ] June 23, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Not surprisingly given the world’s collective decision to do nothing of value to fight climate change, the Rio+20 conference was a complete flop. Given the almost nonexistent media coverage, it seems everyone assumed this would be the outcome from the beginning.

Paraguay

[ 67 ] June 23, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Yesterday, the Paraguayan Senate removed democratically-elected leftist president Fernando Lugo from power in what probably isn’t technically a coup since the Senate followed the Constitution. But it was little more than a politically motivated move to eliminate a president that spoke for the nation’s vast number of impoverished people. The entire process, from beginning impeachment proceedings to ousting Lugo, took less than 24 hours. Regardless of whether it technically falls under the definition of coup, it certainly puts a chill on the democratic revival in Latin America, much as the Honduran coup of 2009 did. There’s still a lot of elites in Latin America who are bitter and angry about the poor expressing their political will and they wish it was the Cold War and the U.S. would just send in CIA operatives or the Marines to reestablish order.

Colin is the person you should be reading on this. Also, see Boz. And Greg Weeks. In fact, consider this a time when you should start reading more of the Latin American bloggers out there, beginning with these three.

The UVA Board of Visitors

[ 45 ] June 23, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Who are these people that ousted Teresa Sullivan? The Post has a nice graphic. Every single member is a businessperson. Including Pat Robertson’s son. Not a single seat is reserved for someone with a different background. It’s quite clear–give a bunch of money to the governor, be rewarded with a seat on the University Board of Visitors. And for these people, the humanities have zero value. Says The Athenaeum:

I notice that every single member of the university’s Board of Visitors is a business person. This is true whether the member was appointed by Kaine or McDonnell. What is happening at Charlottesville appears to be part of a state wide effort to convert the state’s many fine colleges and universities into trade schools to support industry and the business community generally. The process has had a certain elegant simplicity Wealthy business people give a lot of money. They then are appointed to governing boards. Afer that they begin to agitate for “pragmatic” reforms. This generally means attacks on the Humanities. These are deemed to be “dreaming of the past” rather than studies in which critical, independent thinking is nurtured and fed on the experence of mankind. .English departments are converted into institutions that de-emphasize literature and teach rhetoric (reading, writing and public speaking). History and Philosophy are marginalized. If such desiderata are fulfilled, then the money continues to flow in. In short the business community and the moneyed class are buying the universities just as the same people are buying political power with the help of the Citizen’s United SCOTUS decision.

Other than Sullivan not doing enough to eviscerate the humanities, it’s pretty easy to see why this Board of Hacks wouldn’t like Teresa Sullivan. Before she became president of UVA, what was Sullivan best known for? Possibly for co-authoring this book with one Elizabeth Warren. H/T to Davis X. Machina on this.

I’m certainly not saying that there was some right-wing conspiracy where getting rid of someone who wrote a book with Elizabeth Warren played a role. Rather, publications like this means that for the capitalist extremists on the Board of Visitors, Sullivan is one of us academics who can’t be trusted. Remember that conservatives have been attacking the academy for years because it was the one spot in American life they did not control. They control the media, the churches, the sporting world, much of K-12 education, the airwaves, etc. It’s just Hollywood and the academy and Hollywood doesn’t actually make liberal movies that people watch. Turning the academy into a conservative training ground is part of the point here; if they can teach young people that there is no alternative to fundamentalist capitalism, if they can get rid of the courses and majors that teach critical thinking and skills not directly applicable to the marketplace, then conservatives have won a huge victory.

Now it does seem increasingly likely that the coup will fail. The Board is presently paralyzed and with the campus in an uproar, it’s hard to see how the coup leaders move forward. Governor Bob McDonnell is telling the Board to either resolve the problem or he will remove all of them, but given that this is McDonnell, that would only mean a more intransigent BoV to replace them. The money line in this story about McDonnell’s threat is here: “He derided “vitriolic comments” directed at Dragas, as well as vandalism on the campus and threats to refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the interim president.” However, it will be difficult to resolve this in any way that doesn’t lead to Sullivan’s return.

But even if Sullivan does return, it is only a small loss for the capitalists. They are doing this at every state school across the country. Most of the time, they can slash funding for the humanities and push colleges and universities toward serving as capitalist training camps without even the slightest peep of public notice. As the United States goes through its own Shock Doctrine, capitalist-caused crises to the economy become excuses to give more power to the capitalists at the expense of working people. This same dynamic goes for the universities–as capitalist anti-tax fervor dries up state budgets, states disinvest from higher education, giving capitalists complete control over universities. People accept it because they either believe the Capitalists Know Best rhetoric or they don’t see any other option and feel defeated and hopeless.

That’s why I said earlier that we are all the University of Virginia. Because what’s happening there is happening at every public school I’ve ever been associated with–the University of Oregon, University of Tennessee, University of New Mexico, and University of Rhode Island. And virtually every other school as well. Capitalists can fight a war on public higher education on thousands of fronts at once so a loss in Charlottesville is only a small defeat in their perfidious campaign.

A Problem with GDP as a Measure of Growth

[ 39 ] June 22, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Connie Hedegaard, the EU Commissioner for Climate Action, had a piece in the Guardian a few days ago on the urgent need to combat climate change. She’s completely right of course but basically nobody cares enough to really do much about it. Still, I want to focus on one particular aspect of her argument:

The traditional way of measuring economic growth based on GDP alone is not sufficient. GDP is nothing more than a measure of production. It takes no account of human wellbeing or natural wealth.

For example, GDP gives no value to a forest until it is chopped down and turned into timber. Likewise, natural disasters that kill people and destroy infrastructure and cultural heritage are positive for GDP because the reconstruction works that follow boost economic activity.

Putting a price on environmental pollution is also crucial to building a sustainable model for global growth. The cost of production cannot be the only factor determining the price of a product. The true cost of its environmental impact also needs to be factored into the price if people are to have an incentive to buy the least harmful and resource-intensive products available.

That is why the Global Sustainability Panel report recommends that, by 2020, all governments establish price signals that value sustainability. This would help guide the consumption and investment decisions of households, businesses and the public sector in a more sustainable direction.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I feel like statistics like GDP or housing starts (another pet peeve of mine) are the RBIs of economic statistics. They measure something useful, but they are hardly the best way to understand the economic health of a society. They measure immediate and short-term gains fairly well but fail miserably at understanding the long-term effects of economic decision making.

Take housing starts for example. Seeing housing starts as a key measure of economic growth does effectively measure short-term employment because construction can employ a lot of people. But is a robust housing market good for our economy in the long-term? This statistic does not measure the enormous investments in roads and other infrastructure needed to sustain suburban communities where most housing starts take place. It doesn’t measure the pollution outputs that drag down the economy through health problems. It doesn’t take into consideration the wasted time commuting to a job. Moreover, it doesn’t even begin to ask the question of whether more housing is a good thing or even necessary.

For similar reasons, I approve of Hedegaard questioning the value of GDP in a world where we need to worry about climate change, which will have massive negative economic effects.

Bipartisan Outsourcing

[ 237 ] June 22, 2012 | Erik Loomis

I’m fine with Obama running a campaign attacking Mitt Romney’s outsourcing ways during his time with Bain Capital. But while there’s plenty of difference between the two parties, there’s almost no difference between Republican and Democratic elites on the issue of outsourcing. Let us not forget that Larry Summers, who most recently was Obama’s choice to be Director of the White House National Economic Council, is quite the outsourcer himself, having called opponents of outsourcing Luddites.

This is one of those examples where the Democrats talk a good game about being the party of the working-class but don’t really do anything to follow through on their talk.

The Goose on Clemens

[ 101 ] June 21, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Shorter Goose Gossage: “As a man whose Hall of Fame credentials are clear from my WAR that splits the difference between all-time legends Javier Vazquez and Al Leiter, let me take the lead in lobbying against Roger Clemens’ Hall of Fame case after his not guilty verdict.”

Labor Notes

[ 31 ] June 21, 2012 | Erik Loomis

The big labor news today is obviously the Supreme Court decision that Scott discussed. But there is a lot of other important stuff happening that you should be aware of.

1. Mark Ames has an excellent article at The Daily Banter about how labor rights became so disconnected from human rights. He notes that none of the 3 biggest human rights groups–Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, or the ACLU consider labor rights even a minor part of their mission. Human Rights Watch comes in for specific assault:

Aryeh Neier, founder of Human Rights Watch and its executive director for 12 years, doesn’t hide his contempt for the idea of economic equality as one of the key human rights. Neier is so opposed to the idea of economic equality that he even equates the very idea of economic equality and justice with oppression—economic rights to him are a violation of human rights, rather than essential human rights, thereby completely inverting traditional left thinking. Here’s what Neier wrote in his memoir, Taking Liberties: “The concept of economic and social rights is profoundly undemocratic… Authoritarian power is probably a prerequisite for giving meaning to economic and social rights.”

Ames points out that this was not always the case–the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights included labor rights, but he also shows that corporations have convinced the big human rights groups to push labor rights to the side. The ACLU claims to consider labor rights a subsection of some of its other rights groups it follows, but it’s pretty weak sauce, as Ames shows.

Very interesting stuff.

2. Mike Elk has a good article on how Cablevision workers are seeing recent organizing successes after going on a number of wildcat strikes that are forcing the company to back off its long anti-union position. From a strategic perspective, this asks some hard questions about whether more radical workplace actions are in order across the nation.

3. LGBT workers at Bloomingdale’s won major victories in their union’s new contract, including protections from discrimination based on gender identity and expression, as well as paternity benefits for gay men having families, which the union believes may be the first contract of its kind in the retail industry. Real victory here.

4. Unions are already mad at the Democratic National Committee for holding the Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, a right-to-work state and a city with no unionized hotels. Now Charlotte is rubbing salt in the wound by forcing labor to give up its traditional Labor Day parade route, supposedly for security reasons.

5. Although begrudgingly, Change.org dropped two anti-union education groups, including Michelle Rhee’s Students First after progressives protested their inclusion under the progressive umbrella. The other group, Stand for Children, recently had an anti-teachers union petition on the website, which set the process into motion. Change.org has a standing policy against hosting petitions from groups known to have an anti-LGBT or anti-immigrant stance, but not anti-labor. It admitted that it only let the two groups go because under heavy pressure from organized labor.

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