Category: labor

The Postal Service

The Postal Service laying off 120,000 workers is just about the worst thing that could happen to the economy. Mark Andersen suggests a simple solution to fix the USPS problems:

The fix for our postal service is simple and it does not have to mean mass lay-offs, broken contracts, busted unions or anything else that would further damage our economy and the labor movement. The answer is to shift away from privatization and back to what the postal service once was, a full-fledged government agency and stop Congressional meddling with the agency. We need to move away from the idea that the only way to save a troubled entity is to slash the workforce…more often than not, that only makes things worse.

Meh. That is far too pat, particularly in the paragraph after Andersen admits that he rarely uses the mail anymore. The USPS does have major problems and isn’t bringing in enough income. It’s true that it gets treated differently than other government agencies and that profit-turning isn’t what a government is for. But this doesn’t solve any immediate problems.

I don’t really know what the government should do about the USPS. But I do know that laying off 120,000 workers in this economy is going to be a huge hit on the middle class. Policymakers still assume that private employment is going to pick up all these unemployed government workers, but it just isn’t happening. And even for those workers lucky enough to find employment, it’s unlikely that the jobs will be as good as those offered by the government.

Ideally, perhaps the government would shift some of these workers to other agencies to create a more effective government bureaucracy that would allow federal agencies to improve other areas of our lives. But policymakers in both parties are so convinced that dumping federal workers on the private employment market is going to revive the economy that my sensible idea is a pipe dream. Instead, we will have higher unemployment and more poverty.

Why Verizon Matters

Mark Engler has an excellent discussion of why the Verizon strike is so important, or as he puts it, the next Wisconsin:

The parallel to Wisconsin is apt for several reasons. First, like the Republican elected officials in their attacks on unionized schoolteachers and other public employees, Verizon is taking aim at one of the last bastions of the American middle class. As a main strategy in its public relations, the company is trying to stoke resentment about the fact that the CWA and IBEW workers actually have living-wage jobs. It is hoping that “I don’t have a pension, why should they” logic will carry the day.

Accordingly, on Wednesday Verizon took out a full-page ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer suggesting that a typical employee makes $80,600 in annual pay and $42,000 in benefits. The union disputes this claim, contending that salaries are generally in the $60,000 to $77,000 range, and that benefits are less costly than the company would suggest. But, regardless, the debate over numbers misses some critical questions: What’s wrong with workers sharing in the profits of a healthy corporation? Isn’t that the way our economy is supposed to work?

(On a side note, it’s always a treat when companies plead poverty at the negotiating table and then turn around and spend big bucks on media spots, anti-union consultants, and pricey PR firms—but that’s another story.)

The fate of 45,000 middle-class jobs is a big deal for all of America. Last month, the entire U.S. economy had a net gain of only 117,000 jobs. Not only is that for the whole country, it represents a pretty decent month given the numbers from the past year. Furthermore, almost all of the new jobs now being created are low-wage. Given these realities—and the fact that concentrating all wealth in the hands of the rich is a very bad strategy for creating the kind of demand the economy needs to rebound—what happens to the Verizon workers is a matter of broad public concern.

If the assault on the middle class isn’t halted here, there will be another battle and another and another until every right working people have gained over the past century is eliminated.

Recent Union Victories

There’s been a surprising number of union victories of late. I discuss several of them in my new piece at Alternet and consider their possible implications.

With all of this pretty good to great news all of a sudden, one wonders, is this coincidence? Or is it a sign of a rejuvenated labor movement ready to take on aggressive corporate attempts to destroy worker organizations in order to promote an increased profit line? It’s important not to overstate the impact of the labor-led protests in Madison against Scott Walker’s anti-union bill. Lowell Peterson noted, “What we witnessed in Wisconsin was very inspiring but the voting at nonfiction basic cable production companies was mostly done before the Wisconsin gov started slinging his six-gun. Organizing requires hard, patient work, and folks have to believe the union can make a difference in their lives. I think we have made that case to folks.”

That’s absolutely true, but at the same time the climate of unionization is important. Workers have historically joined unions when the media reports positively about them and when the government plays a neutral role in union elections rather than openly supporting employers. The Republican overreach in Wisconsin, Ohio and other traditionally pro-union states led to a great deal of attention for unions. Obama’s NLRB is making a real difference in working people’s lives.

But while these factors are important, the real credit goes to the people bravely risking their jobs to improve their lot and that of all workers. Workers may have tough employment prospects if they lose their jobs through union organizing, but the increasingly desperate economy has also helped many understand that employers will not take care of them and that their best chance for a respectable paycheck lies in uniting with their fellow employees. We must work to build off these recent victories to make the labor movement a force in America again. The survival of middle-class America depends on it.

Verizon Strike

Over 45,000 Verizon workers in nine eastern states, under the leadership of the Communication Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers have gone out of strike. This is already one of the largest and most visible strikes in years. Verizon workers are being squeezed by the company. Despite the fact that Verizon has made $20 billion in profits over the past 4 years, it is asking its workers to take huge benefit hits in the new contract. These workers are part of the traditional land-line phone business, where Verizon is not seeing such high profits. Verizon is attempting to force its use members into the same terrible health care plans that non-union workers get. CWA spokespeople claim it could cost some families up to $6000 a year extra in health expenses. Verizon also proposes to outsource more jobs abroad, cut sick days, and eliminate benefits for workers who get hurt on the job. Verizon has refused to back down on any of these points, seeking to break the power of the unions. And so we have the strike.

It’s hard to say what will happen here. I suspect the unions are quite a bit more willing to negiotate than Verizon, but they are also willing to stand their ground, as we see. A union victory followed by successfully organizing other Verizon workers would be a huge boon to the labor movement and is the ideal outcome here.

A Vision for Economic Renewal: An American Jobs Agenda

I have a piece at Alternet on the new proposal issued by the Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation and the United Steelworkers. Entitled “A Vision for Economic Renewal: An American Jobs Agenda,” this report identifies six areas where the government could make a positive impact in putting Americans back to work. I discuss each of them with analysis. One example:

6. Youth Unemployment

Youth unemployment has skyrocketed during the economic crisis. The report explores connections between early unemployment and long-term poverty, noting, “young people who do not have a successful work experience by age 25 are at a greatly increased risk of lifelong poverty.” Even college graduates are in danger; those who have to take low-wage jobs early in their careers earn 30-40% less for life than average college graduates. The report urges the government to address this crisis by creating jobs programs for in-school youth, providing vouchers to stimulate demand for young workers, and extending the Work Opportunity Tax Credit.

I applaud the report for focusing on this serious problem. Millions of unemployed youth is a recipe for societal instability. During the Great Depression, young, unemployed men provided the shock troops for fascist regimes throughout Europe. In the United States, commentators of the day feared that the young and unemployed could take the U.S. toward either communism or fascism and fretted about both possibilities. Franklin Roosevelt, whose New Deal clearly inspired the report’s authors, recognized the potential destabilizing effects of angry young people with nothing to do and put them to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps, Works Progress Administration, and other federal agencies. If anything, I’d like to see the report call for even greater emphasis on employing the young through direct government employment.

If we had serious leaders, this report would be a model that politicians would get behind for resuscitating the American economy. Alas, we live in the United States in 2011.

Labor Notes

A lot of interesting labor stories out there right now:

1. Sarah Jaffe has an excellent piece on unemployment at Alternet. Unlike all too many (almost all) reports on the unemployed, she actually focuses on people who are unemployed, gathering their stories with a particular interest in those organizing unemployed workers. Another Coxey’s Army is in order.

2. Also at Alternet, which has had some great labor reporting of late, Rania Khalek has a must-read article on corporations using prison labor. Given the demographics of the prison system, this is a real civil rights as well as a labor rights issue. And isn’t prison labor just the need stage in the free market capitalist race to the bottom? We’ve already moved all the jobs out of the U.S. But those Chinese/Vietnamese/Hondurans, they all want to get paid more money. What’s up with that? I can buy that ivory backscratcher if we start using prison labor! Disgusting. I mean, why even pay them at all? A tidbit from the piece:

Private companies have long understood that prison labor can be as profitable as sweatshop workers in third-world countries with the added benefit of staying closer to home. Take Escod Industries, which in the 1990s abandoned plans to open operations in Mexico and instead moved to South Carolina, because the wages of American prisoners undercut those of de-unionized Mexican sweatshop workers. The move was fueled by the state, which gave a $250,000 “equipment subsidy” to Escod along with industrial space at below-market rent. Other examples include Ohio’s Honda supplier, which pays its prison workers $2 an hour for the same work for which the UAW has fought for decades to be paid $20 to $30 an hour; Konica, which has hired prisoners to repair its copiers for less than 50 cents an hour; and Oregon, where private companies can “lease” prisoners at a bargain price of $3 a day.

What hope do we have to build a middle-class with the expansion of prison labor as the new workforce?

3. The big labor story of the last 24 hours was Hyatt Hotels turning heat lamps on strikers in Chicago conducting a 1 day walkout to protest the terrible conditions its housekeepers have to work under. It was only 83 at 7 am yesterday morning when the lights were used, on the way to 101 yesterday in Chicago. Hyatt is owned by the Pritzker family, which for those of you who follow these things, includes Penny Pritzker, close Obama adviser and his original choice for Secretary of Commerce before she took herself out of the running. With friends like these in the Democratic Party, who needs enemies?

Hyatt has since apologized. But to hell with their apology. A real apology would be sitting down with the union and agreeing to better conditions for the housekeepers.

4. Interesting bit at Democracy Now about the NLRB ordering a new election after SEIU conspired with Kaiser Permanente to beat out an upstart health care union, the National Union of Health Workers. Pretty bad deal by SEIU. I’m going to look into this more for a longer piece on the need for grassroots unions unaffiliated with the big organizations.