Approaching the Twilight of the Labor Movement

We're Sunk
by DAVID MACARAY


Private sector union membership in the U.S. stands at about 7-percent, meaning that 93-percent of all private sector jobs in this country are non-union, which makes those accusations of unions of being “too powerful” even more ridiculous and hysterical than they already were. (Not to resort to one of those tiresome Nazi analogies, but didn’t Hitler use the Big Lie to great effect?)

Yet, even with these depressingly low membership numbers, if America’s non-union workers rooted for unions to succeed, and aspired to join a union themselves, it would mean, at least in theory, that the labor movement was alive and well and had a decent chance of succeeding.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Alas, many (too many) non-union workers not only don’t admire or respect labor unions, they hate them. They envy them. They fear them. They resent them. It’s as if America’s corporate masters had gathered together all the underpaid, under-benefited non-union workers and done some hideous Manchurian Candidate brain-washing number on them, convincing them they could trust the profit-motive more than they could trust a workers alliance.

As a college student, I worked part-time as a breakfast cook. I’m not exaggerating when I say that, back in those days, it was the dream of every cook to get a job in a union manufacturing plant. That was their life goal. These guys didn’t dream of being millionaires or lottery winners or entrepreneurs; they dreamed of working in an industrial setting where the wages, benefits, and working conditions were first-rate.

Which is why it’s such a stunning disappointment to see so much antipathy directed toward unions today. One of the main complaints you hear is that workers shouldn’t be forced to join a union or forced to pay dues. That objection has always puzzled me. You hire into a union shop because the wages and benefits are roughly 15-percent better than non-union facilities, and yet you balk at having to embrace the very organization that made those wages and benefits possible?

In an odd way, the resentment at being “forced” to join a union (despite the obvious advantages) reminds me of the South’s resistance to desegregation. Southerners wouldn’t accept the fact that the federal government could tell a restaurant in Alabama that it no longer had the right to choose whom it could and couldn’t serve. Even though this was private property, your “Whites Only” signs had to come down. It was a concept people couldn’t absorb. Perhaps that same mind-set applies to union membership.

This classic labor vs. management adversarial relationship has been in place in the U.S. ever since the mid-19th century, and has existed in Europe far longer. Because everything and everyone—the Congress, the media, the police, the banks, the city fathers—were arrayed against the unions, it was a constant struggle, and any progress labor made came at a steep price.

But the one enduring resource unions could always count on—the one built-in advantage they had—was the support of working men and women. Because workers felt they were all pretty much in the same boat, this was truly an all-encompassing “labor movement.” Moreover, it was this grassroots, across-the-board solidarity that management feared the most because they had no way of combating it, other than by giving workers a larger slice of the pie.

Which is what makes the current anti-unionism so disturbing. Despite statistics clearly showing that the middle-class is losing more ground every year, the average worker, for whatever reason, continues to place more faith in the generosity and infallibility of the so-called “free market” than he does in the only lobbying organization working people have ever had.

If the support of decent, hard-working men and women continues to evaporate, it means we’re sunk. It means we’re more or less finished. It means Corporationism has won and the Working Majority has lost. And who knows? Maybe this is a done deal. Maybe we’ve already crossed that dreadful threshold.

Upward Redistribution

Why Tax Policy is Not at the Root of the US's Economic Problem

by DEAN BAKER


There has been much public discussion of who exactly pays taxes and who gets government benefits ever since Mitt Romney’s now-famous fundraising speech was made public. Almost all of this discussion has focused narrowly on what the government actually takes from people in tax revenue and what it pays out in Social Security, unemployment insurance, and other benefits. This is unfortunate, because tax and transfer policy is the less important way in which the government helps or harms people.

The set of rules the government puts in place that structure the economy redistributes far more income than its tax and transfer policy. Starting with an obvious example, the government has destroyed millions of manufacturing jobs through a trade policy that puts U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. This policy has also had the effect of driving down wages in other sectors as the displaced manufacturing workers are forced to compete for jobs in retail or elsewhere in the service sector.

Note that this is not free trade. There are millions of very bright people in India, China, and elsewhere in the developing world who could easily train to U.S. standards for doctors, lawyers and other highly-paid professions. They would be happy to work in the United States for half the prevailing wage in these areas, leading to large gains to consumers and the economy, but we chose not to structure our trade agreements to facilitate trade in this area.

We have also strengthened patent and copyright laws to make the monopolies granted stronger and longer. Currently we spend $300 billion a year on prescription drugs. If drugs were sold in a competitive market, we would save around $270 billion annually. This transfer from consumers to drug companies is about five times as large as the size of the Bush tax cuts to the richest 2 percent.
Labor-management policy is another important area through which the government redistributes income. In the last three decades this policy has been much more friendly to management and hostile to workers. For example, in the Chicago teacher strike, Mayor Rahm Emanuel had gone to court and threatened strike leaders with fines and imprisonment if they did not end their strike.

There are many other areas in which the rules set by the government redistribute income. In the last three decades, the direction of redistribution has been mostly upwards. If we want to have a serious discussion of makers and takers, we have to look at these rules, not just the tax code.

They Never Intended to Share It

How Much of the Pie?

by DAVID MACARAY

 

One of the criticisms you hear about organized labor is that unions are too adversarial in their dealings with management.  They’re too belligerent.  People tell you that instead of seeing themselves as management’s “enemy,” unions would be better served by seeing themselves as management’s partners, because, in effect, that’s what they are.  Labor unions being regarded as partners?  Working people being treated as equals?  Wow, those are great ideas.  In fact, they could be the basis of an excellent science fiction story.

Labor unions—organized collectives established to represent the interests of employees—haven’t always been the first choice of discriminating workers looking to better themselves economically.  Historically, union membership was often pursued only after earlier and more ambitious efforts to get a larger slice of the pie had failed.

Once it became clear that the wage-based labor system had too many inherent defects to provide long-term security, American workers began seeking alternatives.  One of
those alternatives was the “cooperative.”  This was an arrangement where the workers independently owned and operated the business, and split all the profits among themselves.  They didn’t need a union to fight management because they were management. U.S. cooperatives go all the way back to the 19^th century.

Perhaps the most famous co-op in history was the Players League, established in 1890.  The Players League was a group of professional baseball players who decided they didn’t need to be “owned” by someone in order to flourish.  These weren’t marginal players or bench-warmers who recklessly set out on their own, believing they had little to lose.  The Players League (composed of eight teams) featured some of the biggest stars of the day, including legendary Hall of Famer Mike “King” Kelly.

While this was a revolutionary concept to many, the players themselves saw it as basic arithmetic.  In their view, all you needed to become a successful baseball team was a field to play on, teams to play against, and fans willing to pay to watch you play.  What could be simpler?  More to the point, what were the advantages of having a group of businessmen “own” you?  Alas, the Players League lasted only one year, falling victim to major league baseball’s threats, pleas and considerable muscle.

Manufacturing workers took a similar tack.  Because it was their sweat and toil that yielded the profits, workers decided to eliminate the middle-man, and run the operation themselves.  While it was a noble and ambitious endeavor, what killed the co-ops was, among other things, a terminal case of undercapitalization.  They simply didn’t have the cash to keep these enterprises going.  And unlike “conventional” businesses that always had the banks to turn to, worker co-ops found it difficult to get loans or attract investors.

Another creative alternative to the traditional wage-based format is what is loosely called “profit-sharing.”  Although profit-sharing schemes have been notoriously unreliable (e.g., profits are concealed, payments are deferred, benchmarks are manipulated, etc.), the premise itself is tantalizing.  You work for a base wage, but you also share in the profits.  In short, instead of simply being hired help, you are now part of the company.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the reason many of these profit-sharing arrangements “failed” was because they were too successful.  It’s true.  Some of these profit-sharing ventures turned out to be wildly lucrative.  And once management saw how much money their employees (both salaried and hourly) were raking in under these profit-sharing plans, they immediately dismantled them.

Their thinking ran along these lines:  Why on earth are we giving people 6-and 7-percent annual raises when we know for a fact (by reviewing their earnings history) that they’re more than willing to accept 3-percent raises?  Why would we do that?  To management, the answer was simple.  You don’t do it.  Instead, you go back to the standard, wage-based format where workers are treated as “overhead,” and you take your chances at the bargaining table.

This is why the labor-management dynamic is adversarial.  The acquisitive impulse is biological.  Labor has to fight for every scrap because management is biologically hard-wired to resist any form of sharing.  No matter how profitable a business is, management cannot bring itself to part with one more nickel than is absolutely necessary, and therein lies the crux of the relationship.

Labor unions aren’t the solution to everything.  But given the unfortunate track record of worker co-ops and profit-sharing schemes—coupled with management’s detestation of sharing the wealth—unions (with roughly 14.8 million members) are clearly the only thing keeping the American working class afloat.

If Big Labor Would But Fight, Millions Would Join Them on the Ramparts

Friday, March 30, 2012 by Common Dreams
An open letter to Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO
by Ralph Nader


Dear Mr. Trumka,

You have come to your leadership position of our country’s labor federation of unions with 13 million members the hard way. Starting by working in the coal mines, then becoming a lawyer, heading the United Mine Workers, then becoming the Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO before assuming your present position in 2009, who can pull rank on you in the formal labor movement?Yet, the AFL-CIO’s public leadership in three major areas has been far less effective than one would expect. I am referring to your less than assertive response to President Obama: 1) turning his back on raising the federal minimum wage; 2) failing to advance his card check promise to you in 2008; and 3) dropping the ball on backing long-overdue safety and health responsibilities of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

I say this with the awareness of your group’s public stands in favor of these three crucial matters to working families. But as you well know, there is a very marked difference between being on-the-record, as the AFL-CIO is, and being on-the-daily ramparts pushing these issues, as your organization is not.

Even just making a statement, however, took a back seat in your March 13, 2012 endorsement of Barack Obama for a second term as president. In what ways has Mr. Obama “moved aggressively,” as you declared, “to protect workers rights, pay, health and safety on the job?”

He has neither championed nor pressed Congress, when the Democrats were in control in 2009-2010, to give you card check which you have long-said was needed to reverse the serious decline and expand the ranks of organized labor by millions of workers (you told me this in 2004).

Second, Mr. Obama appointed an excellent head of OSHA and then betrayed OSHA – an agency that has estimated 58,000 workplace-related American deaths a year from disease and trauma! That is over 1000 people a week, every week, on the average.

Dr. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor and the head of OSHA, cannot get White House approval for issuing long-overdue standards or strengthening weak and outdated standards such as the woefully inadequate silica rule, to save American lives not threatened by terrorists, but by corporate negligence or worse. Why have you not exposed this reality in public? Has Mr. Obama, whom you have socialized with at White House viewings of the Super Bowl, ever invited you to come across Lafayette Square to discuss this serious ongoing, preventable tragedy?

Had he taken worker concerns seriously, he might have asked you why the AFL-CIO for many years, has retained at its large national headquarters so few full-time advocates on occupational health and safety? And you in turn might have asked him why his politicos are blocking Dr. Michaels and why he is content in having only $550 million for OSHA’s annual budget while the U.S. spent $675 million in 2011 paying corporate contractors to guard the overbuilt U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. Are these the Obama “values” you extolled in your endorsement statement?

More dismaying is your touting Mr. Obama for aggressively protecting workers’ pay. By pushing for more NAFTA type “pull-down” trade agreements through Congress, and not moving to revise NAFTA as he promised in his 2008 presidential campaigns, he is undermining both workers’ pay and jobs. By totally abandoning his pledge made to over 30 million workers in 2008 that he would press for a $9.50/hour federal minimum wage by 2011, he left them defenseless with more debt and fewer necessities of life.

The AFL-CIO wants at the least to catch up to 1968 with an inflation-adjusted $10/hour minimum wage law. Where is the visible muscular campaign for such legislation? Keeping up with inflation for the federal minimum wage is historically supported by 70 percent of the people. That includes many Republicans and even Rick Santorum and, until his latest flip-flop, Mitt Romney. A $10 minimum wage, after years of windfall price increases and executive compensation windfalls at labor’s expense, would annually pump tens of billions of dollars into greater consumer demand by low-income families in this recessionary economy.

What is the AFL-CIO waiting for? Hundreds of non-profit organizations will follow your lead. Talk is not enough. Resources and muscular lobbying are required along with far more relevant and tough public advertisements than your members are seeing and paying for on TV these days. Enough, already, of the general feel-good mood spots on TV.

The AFL-CIO is in a deep, defensive rut when in these tough times it should be in an aroused, innovative state of high alert and aggressive action. Workers in the 1930s’ Depression were in worse shape than workers today, yet organized labor was more militant.

As someone who in earlier days had been a dig-in-your-heels labor negotiator in fights with management, what did you receive for millions of American workers in your early, blanket endorsement of Mr. Obama? No wonder he can get away with giving the trade union movement and unorganized workers the back of his hand. You have unnecessarily allowed him to believe that you have nowhere to go. This is another way of saying that the Republicans, by being worse than the bad Democrats, are holding the American labor movement hostage to the corporatist Democratic Party.

The AFL-CIO is in a deep, defensive rut when in these tough times it should be in an aroused, innovative state of high alert and aggressive action. Workers in the 1930s’ Depression were in worse shape than workers today, yet organized labor was more militant.

People inside and outside the AFL-CIO know the problems. They are: complacent bureaucratic rigidity, fractious relations between member unions over how supine they need to be to Obama and the Democrats (with their costly wars), the lack of union democracy and competitive elections both within member unions and at the AFL-CIO plus, except for a few unions like the California Nurses Association, a distinct lack of sustained fervor and money for organizing drives.

You know all this only too well. Yet, as a 14th Century Chinese philosopher once said, “to know and not to do is not to know.” Unless you shake the AFL-CIO up and reorder its priorities against the corporate state, expect another four years of an Obamabush Administration.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

The War on Labor

Right to Work
by JACK RANDOM

“When you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others.  You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future.  Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.” ~ George Orwell, Down and Out in London and Paris

As a fan of George Orwell I have grown to wonder if too many of our political geniuses misinterpreted his classic work 1984 as a how-to book on controlling the masses. Had they read his earlier autobiographical work Down and Out in London and Paris, they would have understood that Orwell was a man of the people and his sympathy was planted firmly with the poor, the outcast and the working class.

Of all the Orwellian phrases in common use these days one of the most egregious is the Right to Work. Adopted in twenty-three states, right-to-work laws effectively ban labor unions by prohibiting workers from gaining union representation by a majority vote. The Right to Work is the right of a worker to refuse to pay union dues. Because unions gain power by representing workers as a united front in negotiations with management, right-to-work laws negate that power.

As a result of these union-busting laws, unions have ceased to function and workers earn less. The average worker in a right-to-work state earns anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000 less per year than workers in other states. They receive less in health benefits, less in pension benefits and less protection from unsafe conditions or unfair dismissal.

Studies have been inconclusive on the decline of union representation as a result of right-to-work laws because unions must already have declined in order for such laws to be adopted. The law therefore serves as a substantial roadblock to rebuilding a union movement.

The war on labor does not end with Right to Work. Having decimated labor in the private sector (as of January 2011, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of union workers in the private sector fell to a 100-plus-year low of 6.9 percent), anti-labor forces have taken aim at the public sector. The tactic of choice against police, firefighters, teachers and other government employees is attacking the right to collective bargaining and binding arbitration.

To fully comprehend this attack, you need to understand that government employees are often prohibited by law from striking to achieve fair treatment in negotiations with their employers. In those cases where it is legal to strike, conscientious employees are loath to do so because of the harm it would do to students and communities. Binding arbitration by an impartial body is an alternative to the strike.

When you take away the right to fair arbitration, you leave workers at the mercy of their employers and you cut the union off at its knees.

These same politicians who yearn for yesteryear when the middle class was strong and the American dream of upward mobility was still alive, neglect to tell you that those were the days when unions were on the rise.

The peak rate of union workers in this nation was the mid 1950’s. After the experience of the Great Depression and the Second World War, Americans understood that if workers were to achieve financial security they needed representation to counter the power of corporations and bankers. Combined with the GI Bill, enabling veterans to gain a college education, the union movement more than any other single phenomenon created the working middle class.

The statistics are staggering. From a high of 35% of workers represented by a union to a low of 11.9 % today, if you wonder why wages have stagnated while corporate profits have exploded, look no further.

Both of the key strategies in the war on labor operate on the same principle: divide and conquer.

The right-to-work laws divide the workforce into those who support the union, who feel a sense of responsibility to fellow workers, who recognize the need for unity in representation against the powerful, against those who will not sacrifice a red penny of their paycheck for the common good.

The assault on collective bargaining is an attempt to divide private workers, who have already lost their union rights, against public workers, who earn more and claim greater benefits because they have retained union representation.

We are all in this fight together. If we wish to push back the most powerful force the world has ever encountered, corporate greed, we must unite against the tide. The right to organize the workplace, the right to unionize, must be fought for and defended.

We are under siege. We are the victims of a devastating fifty-year war against workers that is relentless and without mercy. The corporations have taken control of our government with unlimited sponsorship of elected officials. They have moved our industries to China, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere, without any concern for the welfare of our nation or its people. They have outsourced our technology service, drafting and infrastructure planning jobs to India. They have reduced their share of tax responsibility to a minimum with offshore accounts and favorable legislation, forcing a beleaguered workforce to pick up the tab. And they have done all this with a sense of entitlement.

We are just beginning to fight back. We are beginning to understand that if we speak out in one voice, the 99 against the one, our politicians will begin to listen. We are beginning to understand that fighting for labor rights overseas will bring the jobs that are rightfully ours back home.

China does not own America.

The low point in this war on labor was in 2010 when the anti-labor forces took control of our legislatures but they overplayed their hand. In 2012 we must take back control and reverse the course of the nation.

The corporations do not own us.

The first part of the labor agenda must be to strike down right-to-work laws in the 23 states that now embrace them. The most efficient means is a federal law affirming the principle of majority rule as fundamental to the rights of labor. Barring that, states that uphold the rights of labor should establish a policy of preference to those states that do the same. Right-to-work states should be held to account. States that fail to acknowledge the basic right to organize the workplace should pay a price.

The second part of the labor agenda should be an affirmation of the right to collective bargaining and binding arbitration as an alternative to the general strike. Again, federal law is the most efficient means to this end but state alternatives should serve to provide motivation should the federal government fail.

The corporations that have taken control of our government will cry foul. They will accuse us of class warfare to which we will reply: yes, but now we are fighting back.

The Austerity of Hope

Paternity Over Fraternity!

by VIJAY PRASHAD


Poor Mitt Romney. He is worth “somewhere between $190 and $250 million”. Even he is not sure of his net worth. He cannot account for the gap of $60 million. CNN asked the multiple-millionaire about his economic policy. He said, “I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.” He has been pilloried for his callousness not only by the Democratic Party but also by his own Republican primary rivals.

Rick Santorum, who has been a steady challenge to Romney, said that Romney’s comments about the poor “sent a chill down my spine”. Romney, who not only comes from the world of finance capital but also is its preferred candidate, has been unable to grasp the deep crisis of everyday life for millions of Americans.

The “safety net” that Romney mentioned has been frayed beyond recognition since the 1980s. One of the most grotesque problems is hunger. Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that in 2010 about 17.2 million households in the U.S. did not have the resources to buy food (that is about 14.5 per cent of all households).

Additionally, about 6.4 million households reduced or disrupted their eating habits because of a lack of access to food. To seek food, the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed, people had sought refuge in emergency food pantries. During the recession’s early years, 2007 to 2009, use of these pantries increased by 44 per cent. The Agriculture Department’s September 2011 report on “Household Food Insecurity in the United States” showed that one in six Americans do not have the money to feed themselves. The problem is acute.

Charity fills in the gap left by an inadequate governmental response. But here the challenge is enormous. With anxiety about the economy, charitable giving has dropped significantly (by 11 per cent to the big charities). Donations to organisations that help the very poor have dropped even further. According to the Nonprofit Research Collaborative, the charities with less than $3 million to spend saw their donations fall the most. These charities, such as homeless shelters and food pantries, are the ones that serve the very poor. They are in dire straits.

The children’s TV show “Sesame Street” has introduced a new puppet, Lily, whose task is to speak on the problem of food insecurity once a week to the children who tune in. She does not get enough to eat. She will share her story with children who are in her predicament. At least the puppet is concerned for the very poor.

Paternity

Building on his surge in the Republican primaries, Santorum went to give a big speech in Colorado Springs, the heartland of the new American conservatism. Santorum, who went on to win the primaries in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, told the thousand people in the Biggs Centre that he wanted to distinguish between the French Revolution and the American Revolution. The French had a three-part slogan, two of which Santorum was happy with: Liberty and Equality. The third, Fraternity, was not appropriate because it suggested that people in community would be able to create codes to live by. Santorum preferred Paternity to Fraternity, with the Father being God. God’s law should precede human law. No one amongst the Republicans challenged this anti-democratic tendency towards theocracy.

Rather than deal with the serious problems of hunger and homelessness, the right wing has tried to shift the debate toward what are known as “social issues”. These include abortion rights, marriage rights for gays and lesbians, discussions about birth control and sexuality in schools, as well as the teaching of diversity in schools. The Right remains fixated on the body and on sexuality, with a morality that is out of touch with the everyday lives of people. No wonder that one of the problems for the Right has been the constant eruption of scandals among its leadership, with this or that spokesperson for an anachronistic morality found with sex workers or with pornography (Ted Haggard? Mark Foley? anyone?--jef). Hypocrisy is the touchstone of an obsolete morality.
As part of his health care overhaul, President Barack Obama announced a rule that all health care providers (including religious hospitals) needed to provide free contraception for their employees. They did not have to provide contraception to their customers, but their employees had to be covered by federal mandates. A 2010 study in Vital and Health Statistics showed that 99 per cent of women aged 15 to 44 in the U.S. had used at least one contraceptive method. In other words, contraception use is universal among women in the U.S. It seemed as if the Obama policy was, therefore, quite straightforward and of great use to the 62 million women of childbearing age in the U.S.
Nevertheless, the Right went ballistic, calling the Obama policy an infringement on religious freedom. This is fairly typical of the Right, which masquerades its social suffocation as freedom. Santorum’s linkages between liberty and equality with the sanctity of God’s Law is an example of this unhappy marriage.

With Obama having been painted as anti-religion, it was impossible for the White House to stand firm on its principle. Harder for Obama to navigate this issue with one in five Americans of the erroneous view that Obama is a Muslim. Instead, Obama had to compromise with the Right and allow religious health care providers to sidestep this provision. Despite Obama’s surrender to the Right, Romney tried to fan the fire of this issue, “I will reverse every single Obama regulation that attacks our religious liberty and threatens innocent life in this country.”

The Right has gone ballistic on contraception but is virtually silent on the home foreclosure crisis and on the criminal activity by banks. Millions of Americans have been turned out of their homes as a result of the collapse in the home mortgage market.

As part of the neoliberal transformation of the U.S., low-rent, government-provided homes disappeared from the 1980s, with the private sector coming in as the main provider of homes. But with wage incomes stagnant since the 1970s, and with little wealth in the hands of ordinary people, the only way for them to get the keys to a home was through no-money-down, balloon payment mortgages. Banks devised these schemes to ensnare desperate people into homes, and then moved their mortgages into the secondary and tertiary financial markets as securities to be traded. These securities were given good bond ratings from Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, whose culpability has not been fully addressed.

When it became clear that these securities were built on unsustainable dreams, the housing market collapsed. Banks received bailouts (along the grain of the neoliberal view that the government must make sure to remove Bad Money from the financial system and replace it with Good Money). There was no bailout for the millions of Americans. They were evicted from their homes.

Popular outrage at the criminal behaviour of the banks forced an investigation of financial activity. Banks were afraid that they would face a series of lawsuits from public interest litigants and from those among the foreclosed that might be gathered together into class action lawsuits. This was the spur for the banks to begin negotiations with the government for a deal.

The Obama administration and several Attorneys General of the different States sealed a bargain with the banks in early February, where the banks promised to pay $5 billion into a fund, which would include $21 billion taxpayers’ money. This fund would be used to pay out between $1,500 and $2,000 per borrower foreclosed upon, between September 2008 and December 2011. It is a ridiculously small amount of money both from the banks and to the victims of the foreclosure epidemic. That means the government believes that the fine to banks for forging and fabricating documents is no more than $2,000. The government decided to settle with the banks (including the worst offender, Bank of America) without any serious investigation of their offences.

Foreclosures slowed down in 2011 in anticipation of this bank deal. “Foreclosures were in full delay mode in 2011,” notes Brandon Moore of RealtyTrac, which follows the housing market very closely.

“The lack of clarity regarding many of the documentation and legal issues plaguing the foreclosure industry means that we are continuing to see a highly dysfunctional foreclosure process that is inefficiently dealing with delinquent mortgages – particularly in States with a judicial foreclosure process. There were strong signs in the second half of 2011 that lenders are finally beginning to push through some of the delayed foreclosures in select local markets. We expect that trend to continue this year, boosting foreclosure activity for 2012 higher than it was in 2011, though still below the peak of 2010.”

This is a very chilling thought, that the bank deal will not stem the foreclosure crisis but intensify it.

Occupy movement
Police action against the Occupy movement has cleared out most of the encampments. The Occupy movement has now shifted its focus towards much more focussed, local political endeavours (including fights against eviction).

One year ago, in Wisconsin, a massive social upsurge promised to open up a new dynamic in America. With the labour movement as its backbone, the Wisconsin demonstrations that began in March 2011 showed what was possible when the people refused to back down before the politics of cruel austerity (the story is captured in a new book edited by Mari Jo and Paul Buhle, It Started in Wisconsin: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Labor Protest, Verso, 2012). One hundred and fifty thousand people, mainly those affiliated with trade unions, stood in the cold and occupied the State House against their Governor Scott Walker.

Seven months later, in New York, the Occupy movement took off and spread across the country. It was grounded in the many facets of social distress in the U.S.

The initial position of both the Wisconsin protests and the Occupy movement was to change the conversation from the defence of the banks and the question of “social issues” to the broad questions of freedom and justice in the country. When the state decided to respond to these protests with police pressure, the immediate issue before the protesters was to deal with the forces of repression. The conversation around social suffocation and economic distress had to be set aside.

The battle lines were drawn between the police and the protesters, when the real contradiction is between the people (the 99 per cent) and the powerful (the 1 per cent). As cruel austerity cuts into the social lives of Americans, it is likely that the full range of issues that debilitate the well-being of Americans will return to the table. The tragedy is that neither of the two mainstream parties is capable of holding a real debate over these issues. They have other obligations, other priorities.

Lockouts: The Empire Strikes Back

Tuesday, February 14, 2012 by Common Dreams
by David Macaray

If you’re looking for evidence of just how confident, militant, and insufferably arrogant companies have become in recent years, look no further than the phenomenon of the lockout. A lockout is where a company closes its doors, refusing to allow its union employees to return to work until they accede to company demands—demands that typically call for staggering cuts in wages and benefits.

Unlike strikes—which, as the ultimate manifestation of employee dissatisfaction with management, are a universally recognized form of protest—lockouts are a form of extortion. A lockout represents an unambiguous threat, an ultimatum. Management figuratively places a gun to the employees’ heads and says, Take it or leave it.

There was a time not long ago when strikes were a regular part of the American economic landscape, and when, conversely, lockouts were about as scarce as hen’s teeth. In fact, lockouts were practically unheard of. But given that the business world has been recalibrated—and given the availability of replacement workers, part-timers and temps, coupled with the weakening of state and federal labor laws—strikes are now relatively uncommon, and, in a reversal, lockouts have become management’s new weapon of choice.

One of the uglier incidents occurred recently at Caterpillars’ London, Ontario, facility. After the membership refused company demands that they accept a whopping 55-percent wage cut, plus the elimination of the pension plan (along with other take-aways), the plant’s 465 production workers were abruptly locked out. No further negotiating, no compromises, no mediation; the company went directly to lockout mode. Then, after a 6-week lockout, Caterpillar announced it was shutting the plant down for good, and that everyone had lost their jobs. That’s what we politely meant by businesses “recalibrating.”

Strikes have always had a distinctly schizoid nature, being both dreaded and embraced, glorified and vilified Traditionally, when workers in a viable facility (i.e., one making a healthy profit) reached the point in contract negotiations where the company refused to budge, they hit the bricks. They shut the place down, walked off the job, thereby depriving the company of the ability to make a profit, and, very importantly, sacrificing their own economic well-being by no longer earning a wage or receiving benefits.

Because the stakes are so high, strikes have always been rightly regarded as spooky, monumental undertakings. While some strikes have been successful, many—perhaps most—have not. But successful or not, strikes need to be recognized as labor’s only real weapon. Depriving management of the opportunity to make money is the only bullet in the chamber; everything else is theatrics. Other than striking, what’s a union going to do to get the management’s attention—threaten to stand on the front lawn and scream insults through a megaphone?

Here’s a true story. In 1983 I was part of a union negotiating team that called a strike against a major manufacturing company, an action that put more than 700 men and women out on the street. It was a chaotic scene. Even though we got a 96-percent strike authorization vote prior to the shutdown, once the real thing happened, and the hammer dropped, people were understandably frightened and anxious. The strike lasted 57 days.

Looking to nip any problems in the bud, we immediately contacted the company’s HR rep and made clear our views regarding people crossing the picket line. Although we were a tight local, and didn’t anticipate scabs, you never know what people will do in a crisis. We told the company that if they allowed scabs to cross, we would be forced to retaliate by taking out full-page ads in local newspapers, exposing the company’s greed and stubbornness, and calling them bad names.

They didn’t take our peremptory salvo well. The strike was barely four hours old, and tensions were already running high. They told us to shut up, mind our own business, and not presume to lecture them on how to run their operation. But they also informed us that they had no intention of allowing people to cross over, believing that allowing people to cross would create more problems than it solved. We believed them.

But within a week or two, a handful of our guys tried to do just that. They approached at night (it was a 24-hour operation) hoping they wouldn’t be observed, and asked to be put to work. When the company refused, it occurred to them that being denied entry might very well constitute a “lockout.” While it was a known fact that strikers weren’t entitled to unemployment benefits, wouldn’t “locked-out” employees be eligible?

They went down to the unemployment office and made their case. They told the duty officer that even though their union had called a strike, they themselves wished to continue working, but the company wouldn’t let them. “Doesn’t that mean that this is a lockout and not a strike?” they asked eagerly. The duty officer seemed puzzled. She thought about it a moment and answered: “What’s a lockout?”

The 99%, the 1%, and Class Struggle

Saturday, November 5, 2011 by Dollars & Sense

by Alejandro Reuss

 

Between 1979 and 2007, the income share of the top 1% of U.S. households (by income rank) more than doubled, to over 17% of total U.S. income. Meanwhile, the income share of the bottom 80% dropped from 57% to 48% of total income. “We are the 99%,” the rallying cry of the #OccupyWallStreet movement, does a good job at calling attention to the dramatic increase of incomes for those at the very top—and the stagnation of incomes for the majority.

This way of looking at income distribution, however, does not explicitly focus on the different sources of people’s incomes. Most people get nearly all of their incomes—wages and salaries, as well as employment benefits—by working for someone else. A few people, on the other hand, get much of their income not from work but from ownership of property—profits from a business, dividends from stock, interest income from bonds, rents on land or structures, and so on. People with large property incomes may also draw large salaries or bonuses, especially from managerial jobs. Executive pay, though treated in official government statistics as labor income, derives from control over business firms and really should be counted as property income.

Over the last forty years, the distribution of income in the United States has tilted in favor of the wealthy (including business owners, stock- and bondholders, and corporate executives) and against workers. Between the 1940s and 1960s, U.S. workers’ hourly output (“average labor productivity”) and workers’ real hourly compensation both grew at about 3% per year, so the distribution of income between workers and capitalists changed relatively little. (If the size of a pie doubles, and the size of your slice also doubles, your share of the pie does not change.) Since the 1970s, productivity has kept growing at over 2% per year. Average hourly compensation, however, has stagnated—growing only about 1% per year (see figure below). As the gap between what workers produce and what they get paid has increased, workers’ share of total income has fallen, and capitalists’ share has increased. Since income from property is overwhelmingly concentrated at the top of the income scale, this has helped fuel the rising income share of “the 1%.”

The spectacular rise in some types of income—like bank profits or executive compensation—has provoked widespread outrage. Lower financial profits or CEO pay, however, will not reverse the trend toward greater inequality if the result is only to swell, say, profits for nonfinancial corporations or dividends for wealthy shareholders. Focusing too much on one or another kind of property income distracts from the fact that the overall property-income share has been growing at workers’ expense.

Workers and employers—whether they like it or not, recognize it or not, prepare for it or not—are locked in a class struggle. Employers in the United States and other countries, over the last few decades, have recognized that they were in a war and prepared for it. They have been fighting and winning. Workers will only regain what they have lost if they can rebuild their collective fighting strength. In the era of globalized capitalism, this means not only building up labor movements in individual countries, but also creating practical solidarity between workers around the world.

A labor resurgence could end workers’ decades-long losing streak at the hands of employers and help reverse the tide of rising inequality. Ultimately, though, this struggle should be about more than just getting a better deal. It should be—and can be—about the possibility of building a new kind of society. The monstrous inequalities of modern capitalism are plain to see. The need for an appealing alternative—a vision of a cooperative, democratic, and egalitarian way of life—is equally stark.

NFL Players and Owners at an Impasse

A Cloud of Dust
By DAVID MACARAY

Within hours of the NFL’s collective bargaining talks breaking down, the owners initiated their anticipated Plan B, locking out the players (on March 12). And it wasn’t long after the lockout was announced that TV sports commentators began criticizing both sides for having “given up too soon.”

They chided both the team owners and the NFLPA (National Football League Players Association) for abandoning negotiations after utilizing a FMCS (Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service) mediator for “only sixteen days.” Those sixteen days of mediation were alluded to in utter disbelief, as if common sense told us that sixteen days weren’t anywhere near long enough.

What these commentators didn’t seem to realize is that union-management disputes aren’t like diplomatic negotiations or congressional hearings. This wasn’t a summit meeting between North and South Korea, where, after sixteen days, they’re still arguing over the seating arrangements.

Union-management negotiations are a whole other deal. Because labor disputes are all about money (as with the NFL, where the two sides are at odds over the players’ share of total revenue), and tend to be brutally direct, there is very little foreplay—and virtually none of the pompous rhetoric and public grandstanding we’ve come to associate with politics and diplomacy.

Sixteen days with a federal mediator in the room? That’s an eternity. If NLFPA executive director DeMaurice Smith were candid, he’d likely tell us that fourteen of those days were a total waste of time.

During a strike I was involved in some years ago, we met with an FMCS mediator (an ex-Steelworker rep named John Courtney) a grand total of three times. The first meeting lasted four hours and it occurred two days before we shut down the facility; the second occurred a month later, and it lasted eight hours; and the third and final meeting occurred on the 56th day of the strike. We spent 22 consecutive hours at the table before reaching a tentative agreement.

With all due respect to Courtney and his boss, Sam Sachman (who joined us at 11:00 P.M. on the final night), mediation played a very small part in the process. Although the mediators put their hearts into it, neither side paid much attention to them. What ended the strike—what got the union to return to work after 57 days—was the same thing that ends most strikes: the combination of austerity, fatigue, despair and resignation.

As for the football dispute, it will be surprising if it continues beyond the next two or three weeks. For one thing, there’s simply too much money to be made (and lost) by both sides. After all, this is a battle between millionaires and billionaires. For another, April 28 is college draft day, and the closer they get to that date, the higher the sperm count will be raised. The NFL doesn’t want to see the draft come and go without a settlement.

On March 22, the League made a slight tactical blunder when Commissioner Roger Goodell ominously suggested that the owners’ last offer “may not be on the table” the next time the parties meet. Besides Goodell having no business posing as an objective third party (he clearly represents the owners, who hired him and can fire him), his remarks scared no one. All he did was antagonize the Players Association.

When management puts a good faith offer on the table, they’re not only announcing to the union that it’s an agreement they can live with, they are, in effect, exposing their hand. They’re showing the union exactly what they consider important, how much they’re willing to pay, how far they’re willing to move, and what they’re willing to give up.

And you don’t go backwards. Management can’t suddenly withdraw that offer and pretend it never existed simply because they’ve grown impatient. They can’t pretend that the union’s negotiating team hasn’t already etched the terms of that offer indelibly on their brains….not if they’re serious about reaching a settlement.

Roger Goodell’s pathetic threat only succeeded in further alienating the players; and given how sensitive these bargains can be, that’s the last thing he wanted to do. Some advice for the commissioner: Stick to your administrative tasks, and leave the negotiating to the negotiators.

Owners' Lock Out of NFL Players Raises Some Big Questions

Public employees in Madison and professional football players in Green Bay both face powerful and hostile managements trying to undermine their unions.
By David Morris, AlterNet
on March 24, 2011

What do public employees in Madison earning $40,000 a year and professional football players in Green Bay earning $1.5 million a year have in common? They both face powerful and hostile managements trying to undermine their unions.

The battle between labor and management is always uneven. Up until the 1930s management didn’t even have to negotiate with its workers. Owners could fire union organizers. Courts routinely declared unions an illegal “restraint of trade” and ruled that by trying to negotiate collectively unions were violating the “contract rights” of individual employees and giant corporations to freely negotiate salaries and working conditions.

Only in 1937 did workers finally gain the legal right to form unions and bargain collectively. Corporations were legally required to bargain “in good faith”. Congress established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and gave it judicial authority to enforce labor rights. The NLRB did so enthusiastically for the first few decades, modestly in the 1970s, and not at all after Ronald Reagan took office when he nominated, and Congress confirmed as Chairman of the NLRB Donald Dotson, a man who viewed collective bargaining the way 19th-century courts did, as “the destruction of individual freedom, and the destruction of the marketplace as the mechanism for determining the value of labor”.

Public service unions came of age when private sector unions were strong and the word “union” was a respected word. It was a time when Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower could announce, with widespread approval, "Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice."

But even when unions were respected by society as a whole, they were rarely as respected by employers, public or private. Only in 1959 did Wisconsin become the first state to allow collective bargaining by public employees at the local level. In the South, public employee unions had to struggle for recognition, especially when they were composed largely of blacks.

We might recall that when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968 he was there to support a strike by sanitation workers. Two months earlier two black sanitation workers had been crushed to death when the compactor mechanism of the trash truck was accidentally triggered. In response to the tragedy, the city’s sanitation department gave each of the grieving families one month’s pay and $500 for funeral expenses. No one from the city government attended the funerals.

On February 12, 1968 more than 1,100 black sanitation workers began a strike for job safety, better wages and benefits, and union recognition. King's assassination did not dissipate the workers’ struggle for dignity. As Taylor Rogers, one of the strike’s organizers recalled, “If you stand up straight, people can’t ride your back. And that’s what we did. We stood up straight.”

The sanitation workers won. Their contract included union recognition, higher wages, a dues check-off, and the updating of the antiquated sanitation equipment. Another practice that had infuriated black workers—sending them home on rainy days without pay while white supervisors stayed and collected a paycheck—was also ended.

A Brief History of the Football Players Union

Professional football players also began to organize when private sector union density was at its peak. But neither the respect of neither unions nor the law convinced the team owners to negotiate. In 1956 players on the Green Bay Packers and Cleveland Browns formed an association and made minimal demands on their team owners: a minimum wage, per diem pay to cover expenses and, believe it or not, a request that the teams pay for their uniforms and equipment!

The owners never met with the players and refused to respond to any of their proposals.

As would be the case for the next 40 years, the players turned to the courts for help. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the NFL did not enjoy the same antitrust immunity that Major League Baseball did, opening the door to many NFL rules that limited player mobility and negotiating power to be viewed as illegal restraints of trade. Rather than face that prospect through another lawsuit, the owners granted several of the players' demands, including setting up a minimal pension plan. But the owners refused to enter into a collective bargaining agreement with the association.

In 1968, threatened by the possibility that the players would join the powerful Teamsters union, the owners said they would recognize the NFLPA if the Teamsters were rejected. The players did, but the owners reneged on their promise. The players voted to strike. The owners countered by declaring their first lockout. A few days later the owners relented, but the concessions won by the players were modest. According to Wikipedia, the owners agreed to contribute about $1.5 million to the pension fund but maintained current minimum salaries at $9,000 for rookies, $10,000 for veterans and $50 per exhibition game. The owners refused to allow for independent arbitration of player-management disputes.

In 1970, after the NFL and the AFL merger, their two players’ unions also merged. After a brief lockout, the players went on strike. They returned two days later when the owners threatened to cancel the season. The players did, however, gain the right to bargain through their own agents with the clubs and impartial arbitration but only for injury grievances. They gained some improvements in basic salaries and pensions, and dental care. Following negotiations, the owners retaliated by letting go many union player representatives from their teams.

In 1963, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle had unilaterally imposed what became known as the Rozelle Rule. The timing was instructive. That was the year after he negotiated the NFL’s first broadcast contract with CBS--$9.3 million for two years. Each team began the season with $332,000 in the bank, a sum greater than most teams’ payrolls at the time. Thus all teams were guaranteed a profit even before they sold a single ticket or played a single game. Flush with cash, the team owners could have started a bidding war if players were free to sell their services to the highest bidder. The Rozelle Rule all but eliminated free agency by allowing any team that lost a free agent to another team to receive something of equal value from that team. Few teams were willing to risk signing a high-profile free agent only to see their own rosters depleted.

Coincidentally but not accidentally, the agreement by the NFL owners to share national broadcast revenues equally not only opened up the specter of higher player salaries; it also raised the possibility of future Green Bay Packers---non-profit teams in small cities owned by their fans. So in 1963 the League also adopted a rule banning any further such ownership structures.

In 1974 the players again went on strike, this time focusing on the hated Rozelle Rule. The players rallied under the banner, “No Freedom, No Football” but gave up six weeks later. They again turned to the courts for help.

In 1977 John Mackey of the Baltimore Colts became the first NFL player to successfully defeat the League owners in court. Along with 35 other NFL players, he challenged the validity of the Rozelle Rule. The owners argued that the rule was part of a collective bargaining agreement and therefore exempt from antitrust law, a legal argument that, as we shall see, has played an important role in player-management conflicts. The court disagreed, concluding the Rule was not the product of good faith bargaining but had been forced upon a weak players union.

The owners reached a settlement with the union. Impartial arbitration of all grievances was implemented. Some free agent restrictions were ended. But the League’s new version of free agency was almost as restrictive as its first. Indeed, from 1977 to 1987 only one player changed clubs out of the thousands of free agents who were eligible.

In 1982, the players again took on free agency. They went on strike for 57 days. The owners refused to budge. One reason was that their TV contracts with the networks, which provided about 60 percent of the owners' income, guaranteed they would be paid whether games were played or not. The players capitulated.

In 1987 the players again tried to allow individual players to enter a true marketplace for their talents. When no progress was made in the negotiations after two weeks of regular season play, the players voted to strike. The league responded by canceling games and hiring replacement players. The strike was broken. The union voted to return to work.

The day the strike ended, the players once again turned to the courts. The NFLPA filed an antitrust suit in Federal Court. The Court of Appeals ultimately rejected that suit. You might have to be a lawyer to understand the logic, so read closely. The Supreme Court held that even in the absence of current collective bargaining agreement, as long as a bargaining relationship still exists the antitrust immunity holds. In other words, so long as collective bargaining was deemed to be continuing, the antitrust law could not be invoked. The Chief Judge presciently dissented, noting, “this court’s unprecedented decision leads to the ineluctable result of union decertification in order to invoke rights to which players are clearly entitled under the antitrust laws.”

Gabriel Feldman, law professor at the Tulane Sports Law program explains, “Essentially, players are required to choose labor law (and collective bargaining) or antitrust law (and individual bargaining and litigation). If the players choose labor law, an antitrust shield is raised that prevents them from attacking NFL rules under the antitrust laws. To lower the shield and choose antitrust law, the players must end the collective bargaining relationship.”

Forced to make this choice, in December 1989 the players voted to end the NFLPA’s status as the players’ collective bargaining agent. The NFLPA then re-formed as a voluntary professional association.

Since the NFLPA no longer represented the players in collective bargaining, individual union members were free to bring an antitrust action against the NFL challenging its free agency rules as an unlawful restraint of trade. A group of players, led by New York Jets running back Freeman McNeil filed suit challenging the restrictions on free agency. An all-woman jury in Minnesota heard the case in 1992. Pat Bowlen, owner of the Denver Broncos complained to the Rocky Mountain News that he didn’t want “eight women who are basically domestic housewives to decide the future of the National Football League.”

In 1992, they did by ruling in the players’ favor.

That verdict and the threat of a class action suit filed by Philadelphia Eagles player Reggie White on behalf of all NFL players brought the parties back to the negotiating table. Under the auspices of U.S. District Court Judge David Doty, the NFL finally agreed on a formula that permitted free agency. In return, the owners demanded and received a salary cap, albeit one tied to a formula based on players' share of total league revenues.

Once the agreement was approved the NFLPA reconstituted itself as a labor union and entered into a new collective bargaining agreement with the league. Players won unrestricted free agency for the first time and were guaranteed a higher percentage of major league revenues in return for giving the owners a salary cap on payrolls.

The NFLPA and the league have extended their 1993 agreement five times, most recently in March 2006 when it was extended through the 2011 season after the NFL owners voted 30-2 to accept the NFLPA's final proposal. In 2010 the NFL exercised its option to terminate that contract, effective March 3, 2011.

The NFL owners had an ace up their sleeve. Just as they had in 1982, in 2010 they had signed a contract with broadcasters—CBS, ESPN, NBC, and Direct TV—such that the NFL would accept significantly lower revenue in return for a guarantee that it would receive about $4 billion even if the season were not played. This was designed to give them enormous bargaining leverage.

Two days before the lockout, Judge Doty ruled that by insisting on this lockout provision as part of the broadcast contract, and by agreeing to take significantly less money in return, the NFL had breached its collective bargaining agreement with the NFLPA, an agreement that required both parties (players and owners) to act in good faith to maximize total revenues that both parties would receive. That stripped away, at least for the time being (the owners have appealed), the owners' $4 billion lockout fund.

They locked out the players anyway. The NFLPA sued, asking for the courts to issue an injunction ending the lockout. A hearing on the issue will be held April 6. Meanwhile the union has again decertified, again to allow its players to challenge the owners under the antitrust law. The owners have filed a complaint to the NLRB, arguing that the decertification is an unfair labor practice.

And that’s where things stand today.

Millionaires vs. Billionaires?

Currently the revenues are split about 50-50 between players and owners. (The net revenues, after the owners subtract some of their expenses from the total, an amount worth more than $1 billion in 2010, are split 57-43 in the players’ favor, a percentage you often read in the media.) The owners want the players to give back about $1 billion that is coming to them under the 2008 contract.

The owners argue that while the players’ percentage will decline, the amount they receive will not if they agree to another of the owners’ demands: extending the regular season to 18 regular games. The current schedule has 16 regular season games, up from 14 in 1977 and 12 in 1960.

Another issue is whether to cap the rookie’s pay scale and if so, what to do with the money saved. Both the players and the owners agree that there should be a rookie pay cap. But the players want half of the estimated $200 million in savings put toward retired players and the other half toward veteran players. The owners want to keep the money.

The media so far is describing the labor battle as millionaires fighting billionaires. And it is true that the median salary across the NFL is a handsome $1.4 million a year. The rookie minimum is $310,000.

But the length of an average NFL player’s career is only 3.6 years. And even a short career takes a heavy toll on their bodies. The owners watch from cushy seats in heated skyboxes. The players are down on a hard, cold field, engaged in a very violent game. In 2010, 350 players were on the injured reserve list for an average of nine and a half games.

At the Superbowl we watched Packer star cornerback Charles Woodson exit the game with a broken collarbone, Packers cornerback Sam Shields leave with an injured shoulder and Steeler star receiver Emmanuel Sanders sit out almost the whole game with a foot injury. Green Bay’s quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, has suffered two concussions this year. The announcers noted he now wears a special helmet.

Each professional football player now has a l0 percent chance of sustaining a concussion in a given season. Mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), the medical term for concussions, has become the most common specified type of injury in pro football, occurring nearly twice as often as hamstring strains.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that l5 percent of patients diagnosed with MTBI experienced disabling problems on a “persistent” basis.

The long-term health risks associated with NFL injuries include a significantly increased likelihood of Alzheimer’s or dementia.

A 1994 study of 7,000 former players by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health found that football linemen have a 52 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than the general population.

Essentially, the quality of life of an ex-football player is likely to be diminished from his life on the field. Even more damning, the quantity of his life will also be diminished. The average NFL player who plays for more than five years has a life expectancy of 55 years. If he is a lineman this drops to 52 years. U.S. life expectancy overall is 77.6 years.

To my knowledge, there have been no studies of the life expectancy of NFL owners. But since life expectancy is correlated with wealth it is likely they live longer than the rest of us.

Since a professional football player’s tenure is so short and the probability of debilitating injury so high, a key issue in labor negotiations is the level of medical benefits and pension. NFL pensions are skimpy. The pensions are vested only after four years. (Recall that the average player’s career lasts only 3.6 years.) Even long-term players receive little, especially in comparison to other professional sports leagues like major league baseball. According to former cornerback Bernie Parrish, Major League Baseball pays average pension benefits three times higher than those offered by the NFL: $36,700 vs. $12,165.

Former Packers guard Jerry Kramer gets a pension of $358 per month. Willie Wood, who helped Vince Lombardi win five championships during Wood’s 12 seasons, is now in a wheelchair. He receives a pension of $2,000 a month.

Baseball’s gross income is about $4.3 billion. Last year the NFL grossed over $7 billion. As Parrish says, “There is no excuse not to have the NFL retirement benefits matching MLB’s.”

As for medical care, only in 2007, after enormous public pressure and congressional hearings about the disabilities of professional football players, did the NFL create the “88 plan”. The number refers to the number worn by John Mackey who played for the Baltimore Colts in the 1960s, was the first president of the NFLPA, and was one of those let go by his team because of his role in the 1970 strike. It is also the amount the NFL currently pays for institutional care for an ex-player suffering from Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia: $88,000.

It is possible the issue of disability benefits and medical care will be decided, as have so many other issues, in the courts. An increasing number of NFL players are suing the NFL on these issues. A class action suit would have a powerful impact.

The football players union is not perfect. For one thing, it hasn’t represented well the interests of all its members, focusing instead on enabling ever-higher salaries for its current players. Some 50 years ago the team owners agreed to share equally the network broadcasting revenue but the players have yet to divide up their collective revenue more fairly between current players and retirees.

The NFLPA can also be criticized for not using its member’s fame and influence to assist other workers. NFL stars do not walk the picket lines when other workers strike. They do not honor the picket lines of other workers. This has been starkly emphasized in Madison. To their credit, six members of the Green Bay Packers did sign a letter of support for the public employees that maintained, in part, “When workers join together it serves as a check on corporate power and helps ALL workers by raising community standards.”

But no Packer stars or even, to my knowledge, players in the starting lineup at the Superbowl, have made public their support for other Wisconsin unions.

Indeed, the NFLPA shies away from the word, union. Instead, it calls itself an association. Probably because they believe union has disagreeable connotations in modern America where less than 12 percent of the workforce belongs to a union. Given the polls about public support of unions after the Madison uprising, they might want to reconsider that belief. The word "union" projects a strength and unity of purpose that "association" lacks. And that strength and unity will be crucial when faced with the power and influence of 32 team owners with collective wealth over $40 billion.

Class War in Wisconsin

(I know I'm posting a ton of articles on this topic but it's potentially the biggest thing to happen in this country since 9-11. Maybe not yet, but like the song says, "you can't start a fire without a spark." By the time this whole thing shakes out, it will have been one of the most historically significant set of events in US history. The time to chase corporate influence out of government is now.

The government is controlled by corporate interests, look at what Obama campaigned on and what he has done since becoming president. They are two different people. And that's because when you get that close, it's too hard to see the whole picture, I guess. Is he a bad guy? i don't know, but don't think so, but he's definitely a coward for not standing up for the people and caving in to corporate interests instead. 

 Every bill that is proposed by either chamber of congress, with the exception of less than a handful--usually by Ron Paul or former congressman Alan Grayson or former senator Russ Feingold--is written by industry lobbyists who have a stake in the bill becoming law. They write the bill, and most often the congressman who proposes it DOESN'T EVEN READ IT before proposing it. That's why laws are filled with corporate loopholes--every single one of them. Look for yourselves, you can download a copy of any bill and every law at the Library of Congress website. ( http://thomas.loc.gov/ )

And last year, the courts made it legal for corporations to openly buy candidates, which is how you really explain the success of the tea party, which is no grass roots organization--it's a well funded (by the Koch brothers and the lobby group US Chamber of Commerce) , anti-union, anti-tax, anti-workers rights, corporate special interest-based branch of the Republican party, with plenty of corporatist Democrat enablers to sell out the people as well.

It's all about money and keeping it from the middle class, and taking away what money they do have. You can sit this out for a little while, but eventually, you won't have a choice. "Coming soon to a town near you..."--jef)

++++++

Labor's Last Stand?
By JEFFREY SOMMERS

Enter Governor Scott Walker. A month into office, he was keen to establish himself as the new sheriff in town by reprising in the state of Wisconsin a simulacrum of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Painting by numbers, Scott Walker, following Reagan's first stroke, took on labour. But Walker's Patco moment (the busting of the Air Traffic Controller's union) has proved an overreach. Walker, who presents himself in a way that could be right out of Frank Capra's central casting, may find that following Reagan's recipe produces different results today. After 30 years of economic decline, workers in the United States are recognising the bankruptcy of these policies and are fighting back.

We have all seen the figures. While the American economy has grown the past three decades, labour has taken it on the chin. Meanwhile, CEOs and those in the FIRE sectors have seen their incomes grow by multiples, often subsidised at taxpayer expense, even as their reckless actions have left economic chaos in their wake. The whole while, labour has been repeatedly lectured that they are to blame for the country's economic crisis and that the rich must capture ever more rents for the economy to prosper. Even if you don't like it, workers are told, invoking Margaret Thatcher, "there is no alternative."

This past week, however, public workers surprised everyone, including themselves and their union leadership. The rank and file took the lead in these demonstrations and forced their often conservative teachers' union leadership to follow. Last Tuesday, teachers in the capitol announced their intention to hit the streets and take their students with them. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin's biggest city, teachers defied calls from school administrators and their unions to stay on the job. They marched on Madison last Wednesday in such numbers that their union leadership was forced to follow. Thus, 35 state school districts closed, as teachers and other public workers trekked to Madison in the thousands.

Frankly, most protests the past few decades, while led by well-intentioned organisers, have been tedious. We turn out for good causes, but would rather be somewhere else, and we have secretly (and sometimes openly) doubted the effectiveness of the whole exercise. Not this time. For veterans of protests in recent decades, this had an entirely different vibe. The scene has been simultaneously creative, good-humoured, joyful, peaceful, yet angry. There were no spokespersons for this movement. People organised themselves, made decisions on the ground, and acted on them – with their actions and instincts proven right by subsequent events.

The scope of the movement is broad. Students and teachers and other public employees have been joined by firefighters and cops – whose collective bargaining rights are not, in fact, under immediate threat and are therefore there out of a remarkable solidarity. Together, they have embraced each other in a new alliance that has put the history of these 1960s antagonists aside. In this new world, cops deliver food and coffee to student protesters on the floor of the Capitol rotunda. Firefighters, arriving in their soot seasoned gear or Scottish kilts, bellow on their bagpipes and sound their support for their public employee and student brethren. Wrapping themselves in the flag – and who else can do it without looking cynical or silly? – firefighters have returned this powerful symbol to organised labour.

By Saturday, the numbers had swelled to over 60,000, while the governor's Tea Party supporters could muster only a few thousand. This despite having billionaire financiers like the Koch Brothers creating astroturf websites, such as "Stand for Walker", imploring Wisconsinites to hit the streets in support of the governor.

For all this good energy and success, however, all is not well. Labour is seriously divided. The political right has invested heavily in turning private sector employees against their public sector counterparts. And, it has worked. After three decades of war on private sector unions, only 7% of non-public workers are protected. Predictably, this has translated into an almost complete erosion of their previously held health and pension plans they once enjoyed.

Today, US private sector workers have been reduced to Japanese-like long hours. Their health plans consist of HMOs providing substandard care, often having to navigate numbing bureaucracies, only to be told "coverage denied". They no longer have employer-paid pensions. Most are now on their own when it comes to retirement. Or if lucky, they may have a generous employer that gives half towards a 401k plan that merely feeds traders on Wall Street, while never delivering enough returns actually to fund their retirement.

In short, it has been a return of the mean season. Briefly, in 2008, this frustration was directed against the Republicans. Yet, the Democrats delivered no tangible gains for labour since taking power then, and now, the right has helped steer working-class anger away from Wall Street and back to Main Street's teachers and public employees. Deftly executed, private sector workers without benefits now blame workers who do have them as the cause of their deprivation. Instead of seeing the gains unions can deliver, private sector workers now take the lesson that these gains have somehow been taken at their expense – all the while ignoring the trough-feeding that continues unabated on Wall Street.

The new class war, as it is actually perceived, is not between workers and capital, but between private and public sector workers, with the fires generously stoked by the billionaire Koch brothers and rightwing money generally. One can only imagine Mr Burns of the Simpsons hatching such a scheme in caricature of capital; but this is real, and few seem to recognise the irony as they play out their scripted parts.

Monday's public holiday was likely the last of the big protests this week. Protests in the tens of thousands are not sustainable. Public workers are under pressure from their employers and teachers' unions to return to work. If Governor Walker refuses to compromise, the only weapon left in labour's arsenal is a general strike. Nobody knows if sufficient resolve exists to launch one. This movement began with Scott Walker's actions and will likely end with them. Whether labour takes this next step toward a general strike depends on his actions in the coming days and whether he will seek compromise or further inflame workers by attacking their democratic right to organise.

Walker, the son of a preacher, has always been blind to shades of grey. His past actions suggest a fundamentalist path ahead.

Conflict of Interest, Hollywood-Style

Actors' Union vs. Movie Producers
By DAVID MACARAY  

I recently had lunch with David Clennon, the movie and television actor (Being There, The Thing, The Right Stuff, Syriana, Ghost Whisperer, thirtysomething, Saved, Boston Legal, etc.), at a coffee shop in Santa Monica.  We were there to share a meal and discuss some union issues.  In addition to being a distinguished actor, Dave Clennon is also a committed political and labor activist.  

How committed?  He once turned down a role on the hit television series, 24, because he felt the show’s depiction of torture indirectly contributed to the U.S. government’s use of torture as a legitimate form of interrogation, and, accordingly, to the public’s acquiescence or tacit approval of it.  In the real world, turning down a paying gig because of political principles is rare; in Tinsel Town, it’s practically unheard of.

As for the labor scene, what made the last couple of Screen Actors Guild (SAG) negotiations so frustrating and disappointing to Clennon and other SAG activists is the glaring conflict of interest that exists within the movie industry.  Indeed, when you hear it explained, it seems truly bizarre.   

The group with whom SAG (with 120,000 members) negotiates its contracts is the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers), the people who more or less run the movie business.  On one side of the table you have the rank-and-file actors, looking for a larger slice of the pie, and on the other side you have the producers, looking to retain the whole pie.  At first glance this “actors vs. producers” scenario seems like any other labor vs. management scrimmage.

However, what makes this SAG scenario so different is that some of the union’s most influential members happen to be producers themselves.  It’s a concept that’s hard to wrap your mind around.  Recalling my days as a negotiator, Clennon asked, “How would you feel about having the CEO of the company you’re negotiating with also being an influential member of your union?”

And of all the successful hyphenates (actor-producers) in Hollywood, none is more successful or more formidable than Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump, Philadelphia, Saving Private Ryan), who owns Playtone, his own production company.  Not only does Hanks earn more as a producer than as a performer (and he’s very well paid as a performer), it’s been said that Playtone consistently employs more actors each year than any studio in town. 

Given his executive profile, his acting whiskers, and his unique role in the union, to say that Tom Hanks wields considerable clout is a gross understatement.  In truth, he is arguably the single most influential human being in Hollywood.  

Of course, the problem with having union members like Hanks (and Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Robert DeNiro, et al) is immediately apparent.  As successful producers or multi-millionaire actors (or both), their needs don’t coincide with the needs of SAG’s rank-and-file members who rely on such things as TV residuals and DVD sales to make their living.  

While George Clooney no longer has to worry about residuals from “ER,” or his cut from future DVD sales, the majority of SAG’s membership still do.   Residuals and DVD sales are vital to them.  And, as happens at every negotiation with the AMPTP, the producers are reluctant to part with their money.  It’s always been a battle.  Which is why it’s so alarming to have as your union spokesmen people who, to put it bluntly, not only don’t need the money as much as you do, but may have an entirely different agenda. 

In February of 2008, a “secret,” invitation-only meeting was held to discuss the upcoming SAG negotiations.  Hanks, Clooney, James Cromwell, Mike Farrell, and Melissa Gilbert (former SAG president), among others, were in attendance.  They represented a group of SAG members called Unite for Strength, who were opposed within SAG by another group, a more activist faction, known as MembershipFirst, of which then-president Alan Rosenberg was a member.

Hanks and his supporters were worried that Rosenberg and company were going to enter the upcoming negotiations with a giant chip on their shoulder, that they were going to be overly aggressive in pursuing a new contract, particularly after concluding that the Alliance had screwed them out of money and benefits in previous negotiations.  The rumor circulating among the cognoscenti was that the MembershipFirst crew was looking for payback.  

The fact that the WGA (Writers Guild of America) were already on strike (they would stay out 100 days), was another burr under Unite for Strength’s saddle.  Clearly, the writers taking so militant a stand—and being out for so long a period—had put the fear of God into the moderates.  Unite for Strength was worried that Rosenberg, who’d been reported to be hanging out with Patrick Verrone, president of the striking WGA, was going to follow the writers’ lead and force the Actors Guild into a strike.

Normally, in the run-up to a negotiation, a rumor like this would be gold, a cause for jubilation.  Every union in America prays for the leverage provided by this kind of pre-negotiation notoriety, where you’re perceived as already being in full-blown strike mode—especially these days, when so few unions actually pull the plug.  Typically, when unions engage in saber-rattling displays, nobody (including their own membership) believes them, which is why management is so willing to call their bluff.  

But this was different; this threat was perceived as real.  Having the producers genuinely fearful that the bargain could wind up in a ditch was manna from Heaven.  Unfortunately, instead of parlaying this perception into dollars and cents, Hanks and others moved to squelch the opportunity.  They moved to squelch it because they were well-heeled company men who had absolutely no interest in rocking the boat.

On February 14, 2008, Unite for Strength took out full-page ads in the trade papers, urging the parties (SAG and AMPTP) to sit down together and “just talk,” ostensibly as a means of averting any hostility.  The damage that such a reckless tactical blunder can do in the run-up to a contract negotiation—publicly circumventing the elected leadership—is incalculable.  

Then, the next day, February 15, Hanks and Clooney took it a step further.  At what was presumed to be Hanks’ urging, they co-authored a letter to the editor that appeared prominently in the Los Angeles Times, in which they cautioned the actors to approach the negotiations in a rational, open-minded fashion. 

What this amateurish, sad-sack plea did was effectively strip Rosenberg of the only trump card a union has—i.e., evidence of unwavering membership solidarity.  Basically, the only thing that Hanks and Clooney’s letter succeeded in doing was to announce to the world that SAG was riddled with dissension.  Well done, boys.

Of course, what happened next was predictable.  The Alliance exploited the dissension, the subsequent contract offer was ratified, the MembershipFirst slate was soundly defeated in the next SAG Board of Directors election, and the “moderates” took charge of the Guild. 

So the question that Dave Clennon and others have raised remains unanswered.  And it’s a good question.  Indeed, it’s the same fundamental question that was made famous by the 1930s Florence Reece labor song of the same name:  Which Side Are You On?

If You Can't Trust a Greedy Multinational Corporation, Who Can You Trust?

Labor v. Management at the Bargaining Table

By DAVID MACARAY

In the spring of 1997, AWPPW Local 672’s union negotiators sat across the table from Kimberly-Clark management (which on this day included an eager, young cost analyst, already champing at the bit), awaiting their cost presentation. These exhibitions had preceded every bargain I’d ever been involved with, going back to the early 1980s.

The presentation was all about comparative costs: labor costs, raw materials costs, energy costs, medical costs, tax costs, Procter & Gamble’s (our chief competitor) presumed costs, the paper industry’s costs, California’s costs, and, most importantly, the comparative costs of other K-C facilities, many of which were located in the Deep South, where they were always threatening to move us.

Gloomy and foreboding as these presentations were, we’d built up an immunity to them. At their conclusion, our standard response was to nod thoughtfully, thank them for taking time to share that information, and quickly move on to other business. The impression we wanted to convey was one of not giving a rat’s ass about some trumped-up cost statistics. They had their priorities and we had ours.

While it was true that Local 672 had once enjoyed a “Cadillac contract” (high wages, great benefits, extravagant work rules), those days were long gone. Even though we’d always considered K-C a good company, three consecutive contracts weighted down with concessions, compromises and discounts had taken an obvious toll. Mind you, it was still a decent contract, a respectable contract….but not a Cadillac. (A Buick?)

Kimberly-Clark’s cost presentations weren’t unique to the corporation or to the paper industry. In truth, these things were fairly common. Most companies like to give apocalyptic cost speeches prior to negotiations as a way of scaring or softening up a union. Sometimes they actually work. But common or not, two things made the ‘97 presentation different.

First, the company’s cost analyst surprised us by using a K-C plant we’d never heard of—a paper mill located way up in Huntsville, Canada—as his prime example of a low-cost facility (initially, we thought he was referring to Huntsville, Alabama). And second, the union responded in a manner that was totally out of character for us. We exploded with rage.

What sent us through the roof was the company’s audacity. It’s one thing to bullshit us; it’s another thing to lie to us. Pretending with a straight face that our costs were way out of line—that we were wildly overcompensated, blah, blah, blah—was a tactic that not only didn’t bother us, it was a form of gamesmanship we’d more or less come to respect. After all, bargaining is a contact sport, and you expect to get bloodied. But having their cost analyst pull a stunt like this one, and thinking we would fall for it, enraged us.

Since the early 1980s we’d been deluged with horror stories of runaway health costs. Medical insurance now dominated all discussions. We’d heard how much K-C was spending on it, how $1,600 of the sticker price of cars built in Detroit went to health care, how spiraling medical costs were the single biggest threat to the U.S. economy, etc. As a consequence, we—like millions of other workers—had seen our co-pay go up, our coverage go down, and our paychecks shrink.

So why were the costs so astoundingly low at this Canadian mill—the one they were beating us over the head with? Because Canada has national health care. Kimberly-Clark wasn’t required to pay a dime for health insurance. And as we were to learn later, these Canadian mill workers’ wages were actually higher than ours, not lower.

The company not only failed to share this information, they tried to conceal it. Only after we pounced on it did they acknowledge free medical coverage. Obviously, they were looking to gain leverage by having us think wages were so high in California that Kimberly-Clark might have to shut us down and move the whole shebang to Dixie (the prevailing threat for last two decades).

To us, this went way beyond gamesmanship. And it wasn’t just the deceit we objected to; what bugged us was the ploy’s carelessness and naked transparency. For them to think they could trick a Local 672 bargaining board with a maneuver as amateurish as this one was an insult to us. That’s why we blew our corks.

I wish I could say our outburst had a salutary effect on the subsequent bargain but, alas, it did not. In fact, other than being momentarily stunned by our tantrum, the company didn’t so much as flinch. The way they saw it, they had tried to run a play on us and that play had failed. Incomplete pass. Go back to the huddle.

As for the actual contract negotiations that began two weeks later, they ended the way most union negotiations have ended in the post-Reagan era. They ended like any other bullfight. The noble beast lies dead in the ring and the donkeys come in and drag it away.