Unions

Hurricane Sandy's Silver Lining: A Reaffirmation of Progressive Principles

Daniel Marans3 — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 14:44:19 -0400

At a time when the country is still reeling from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the storm has reaffirmed progressive principles that have been under attack in recent years. Sandy has, in fact, brought together a trifecta of progressive policy vindications: the dangers of climate silence, the importance of a strong and responsive federal government, and the necessity of collective bargaining rights for workers.

Action on climate change. Climate hawks--also known as people who understand the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change--have long warned that climate change would lead to more extreme weather patterns. There are by now many studies showing that higher temperatures and rising sea levels have increased--and will continue to increase--the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms.
Despite this year's already-extreme weather, including one of the worst droughts in American history, climate change has been largely overlooked in the election. For the first time since 1984, it was not mentioned during any of the Presidential debates, leading to charges of "climate silence" from activists, citizens, and the media.
Hurricane Sandy seems to be reversing that trend. Perhaps it is due to the nature of "Frankenstorm" itself, which extended unusually far inland, combined gale force winds, torrential rain and even snow, seemed to represent a new species of storm. Perhaps the fact that it was concentrated in the population-heavy economic and political centers of the mid-Atlantic region between New York and Washington. For any number of reasons, Sandy seems to have given climate change awareness new headwinds in the public discourse, right at a moment when it was being ignored the most.

Sandy has also reaffirmed the financial cost of climate change inaction. Reuters reported that Sandy caused between $5-$10 billion in insured losses, and $10-$20 billion in other economic losses. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has only $1 billion in reinsurance funds, or money insuring its in-house insurer, indicating it may need to be bailed out by taxpayers. This comes on top of $20 billion in federal crop insurance that the summer drought cost taxpayers. The national flood insurance corporation is apparently still $20 billion in debtfrom claims it paid out due to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Many long-time climate activists organized on the Internet to raise awareness of climate change issues during the storm. Bill McKibben, one of the country's top climate activists and an organizer of the massive Keystone XL pipeline protests, initiated a petition and fundraising drive through his group 350.org asking the fossil fuel companies responsible for extreme weather to donate their profits to hurricane relief efforts, and only then asking the same of petition signers. Matt Stoller, a policy fellow for the Roosevelt Institute, called for a "hardening" of our infrastructure to increase storm preparedness, and the building of a clean energy system, and took several mainstream environmental groups to task for featuring animal rights- and election-related issues on their websites. Stoller and others are promoting the site ForecasttheFacts.org, a creative new activism site that includes a "Weather Caster Watch"exposing meteorologists on local news channels who deny climate change and giving people the tools to pressure them.

Meanwhile, one of the Internet's most influential climate bloggers, David Roberts of Grist, debated the merits of highlighting one extreme weather event, when any one occurrence may or may not be the direct result of climate change. Roberts counsels us to think of climate change's role in Hurricane Sandy-level storms as similar to that of steroids in baseball.

"When the public asks, 'Did climate change cause this?" they are asking a confused question. It's like asking, 'Did steroids cause the home run Barry Bonds hit on May 12, 2006?' There's no way to know whether Bonds would have hit the home run without steroids. But who cares? Steroids mean more home runs. That's what matters."

So too the ongoing force of climate change will mean more storms like Sandy.

A strong, well-funded federal government.You might say there are no libertarians during natural disasters. The basic argument for a strong federal government received a major boost from Sandy. That's because, as usual, the federal government, and specifically, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), played an important role in helping states and cities prepare for the storm, and will undoubtedly be key in helping them rebuild.But the storm did not just positively affirm the role of government--it also discredited the right wing's war on key federal agencies and misguided obsession with states rights. The storm's concurrence with the presidential race brought out positions of that many top Republicans have taken on emergency disaster funding, FEMA in particular. The Huffington Post reported that during a Republican primary debate in June 2011, Mitt Romney called for privatizing FEMA or turning it over to the states. When asked whether he would shut down FEMA and let states handle disaster relief on their own, Romney said:

"Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?"

The Romney campaign's tail-between-its-legs attempts to deny it ever held this position attests to how short-sighted state's rights or privatization seems when disaster actually strikes.

This gave progressive writers the chance to reiterate the case against federalism as a whole. As Alec MacGillis of The New Republic points out, states often mismanage or neglect responsibilities to their citizens. For example, many states, especially in the South, severely underfund and limit eligibility for Medicaid. Even when states have the political will to provide basic services, however, their ability to do so is often limited because, unlike the federal government, states must balance their budgets. As a result, without the federal government, states would be unable to fund basic programs during recessions, when revenues decline and demand for state services increase. With states as cash-strapped as they are currently, one can only imagine them trying to fund Sandy relief on their own.

In addition, Sandy put across-the-board austerity of the kind Republicans, and sometimes Democrats, are proposing under renewed scrutiny. Suzy Khimm reported in the Washington Post that the Romney-Ryan Administration would cut FEMA funding by between 22% and 40%, unless it were offset significantly elsewhere. For its part, the Obama Administration has cut FEMA funding by 3%, which it says is due to declining residual costs from Hurricane Katrina. That may be true, but given the increases in extreme weather we are expecting, cutting back for the sake of making cuts is risky. The Obama Administration tends to favor a lighter version of austerity than the Republicans, but Sandy reminds us that preparedness should be our top consideration, not the deficit boogey man.

The right to form a union and bargain collectively--in both the public and private sectors. There could be no more stinging rebuke to recent attempts by Republican state lawmakers to strip public sector workers of their collective bargaining rights than Hurricane Sandy. The storm was yet another reminder of the crucial, often dangerous work civil servants do, and the need for them to be able to bargain collectively for decent wages, benefits and working conditions. Republicans rely on characterizing public sector workers as an amorphous bloc, because when the public identifies them by their individual professions they are more sympathetic. During Sandy, there were no abstract "public sector workers," only the individuals police officers, firefighters, and EMTs rushing into flooding waters to evacuate people and put out burning houses in a time of crisis.Organized labor made sure to highlight this to the media. On the eve of the storm, Mario Cilento, President of the New York AFL-CIO, publicly stated:

"We're hopeful that preparations will prove unnecessary, but we have peace of mind knowing that union workers - public sector, private sector, and building trades - will be there for us: supermarket and retail workers making sure that supplies are available; utility and communication workers laboring day and night to keep the lights and phones on; police officers, firefighters and EMS professionals maintaining our safety; transportation workers preserving our subway, commuter rail and bus infrastructure; state, county and municipal employees keeping the roads clear; construction workers repairing our homes, businesses, and community; hospital workers providing care to our family, friends and neighbors; teachers and child care workers keeping our children safe until we can be with them; and hotel workers making sure there is a place to stay for those who cannot remain home."

The power outages and other disruptions that Sandy caused may also shine a light on the rampant union busting in power companies and the effect it could have on restoring power. After the derecho this past June left thousands of Washington, DC-area residents without power for days, Mike Elk reported in In These Times, that the extended outages may have been the result of local power company Pepco's reduction and replacement of its unionized electricians with less skilled contractors. We await news of any evidence of the effects of unionbusting on restoration of power in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the wake of Sandy.

Storms like Sandy show just how much Americans' standard of living depends on the workers who serve them being able to bargain collectively for a decent standard of living of their own. Would our civil servants be as willing to jump into flooded streets or climb burning buildings without the protections offered by collective bargaining rights? How quickly would our electric line workers fix power outages? Since virtually all of the states that were significantly affected by Sandy were highly unionized states, it is hard to say exactly how the storm would have been handled in right-to-work states. But there is little doubt that Sandy would have been far more tragic were it not for union workers from Maryland to Massachusetts.

For more of Daniel Marans' policy and political analysis, tune in to Take Action News with David Shuster, Saturday 12-3 pm on weactradio.com, or download the podcast on iTunes.

Early Bain-ization - How A Few Got Rich Illegally Suppressing Unions

Dave Johnson — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:23:43 -0400

A look at one of Bain Capital's first deals shows a get-rich-quick-at-everyone-else's-expense pattern forming: borrow heavily, gut assets, cut wages, cut safety, crush unions, restructure for tax avoidance and sell with a sweetheart, insider deal. That pattern foreshadowed what happened to our jobs, communities, industries, economy and country since the early 1980s. An already-wealthy few got fantastically rich(er) and the rest of us paid the price.

A Financial Times Investigation

In FT investigation: Romney’s take-off the Financial Times (FT) investigated the $5 million buyout of Key Airlines, a "formative" deal from Mitt Romney's company Bain Capital's early years.

At the time Mitt Romney was at the consultant firm Bain & Company, and heard that Key Airlines was looking to be bought. Key Airlines had a $10 million per year government contract to shuttle pilots and support workers between Las Vegas and "Area 52," where they were working on the then-secret F-117A stealth fighter. Romney formed Bain Capital in part to buy the airline. T. Coleman Andrews III, a former White House official recruited to Bain by Romney led the buyout for Bain and chaired its board of directors.

The Financial Times investigation showed how the purchase of Key Airlines helped establish the company's method of doing business. They bought the company by borrowing all the money needed, 100% debt-financed, meaning Romney and Bain put up no money -- and very little risk -- of their own. They "restructured" the company; according to FT, "Bain also reshaped Key Airlines, turning it from a profitable, taxpaying company with a $13m balance sheet and its own aircraft, into an operating company with a $2m balance sheet and a holding company from which it sold assets separately."

When the pilots tried to start a union, the company unlawfully suppressed the effort with what a federal judge called "blatant, grievous, wilful, deliberate and repeated violations."

No-Risk Leveraged Purchase

One of the ways private-equity companies make money is by borrowing using the purchased company's assets as collateral, and passing some or all of the borrowed money to themselves. Romney and Bain purchased Key Airlines by securing a $5 million loan with $2.5 million worth of aircraft owned by the company, and a $2 million guarantee of their own. In other words, they borrowed money to buy the company by promising the lender they would put up the company's assets as collateral. (The company had a $10 million per year government contract.)

The bank lent the money with part of it personally guaranteed after satisfying themselves that the investors were worth enough money. In other words, they could finance a debt-only deal because they were already rich.

Restructuring To Avoid Taxes

When purchased, Key Airlines was making money and paying taxes. By borrowing, the company incurred debt servicing costs, which are deductible against taxes. The company also restructured in ways that cut taxes. According to FT, "Bain also reshaped Key Airlines, turning it from a profitable, taxpaying company with a $13m balance sheet and its own aircraft, into an operating company with a $2m balance sheet and a holding company from which it sold assets separately."

Crushing The Union

Private equity companies cut costs. If you are not rich and have to work for a living, you are one of those "costs" that has to be cut. Your pay or your job are in the way of someone making a whole lot of money. Another "cost" to cut is the work environment. Worker safety can cost money, so it is one more thing that is in the way of someone making a whole lot of money. Providing a good, reliable product is another "cost" that is in the way of someone making a whole lot of money, and in an airline that "cost" is safe, well-maintained airplanes.

In 1985 a majority of Key's pilots tried to form a union. According to FT, "the pilots cited safety concerns; management said that the pilots were unhappy because of their low pay."

Bain was getting ready to sell the airline, and the worst thing that could happen to them would be a union, which could demand fair pay, worker safety and better maintenance and air safety procedures. Crushing the union -- keeping pay low, and being able to ignore pleas for safer conditions for workers and passengers -- would mean the Bain investors would make a lot of money. So they crushed the union.

According to FT,

There followed an unlawful attempt by Mr Andrews and Key management, in the words of District Court judge Roger Foley, “to stamp out any cockpit crew members’ union before it could come into being”.

In January 1986, Mr Andrews and Olen Rae Goodwin, interim president of the union, met in the Key Airlines trailer at Nellis. The court ruled that Mr Andrews had then “threatened [Mr] Goodwin’s job and he threatened to leave Key, and that the management team would also leave. He threatened to sell Key”.

A court later found that Key's management had illegally suppressed the union, and awarded $500,000 in punitive damages.

Labor bosses: When asked about this recently Romney had this to say,

“President Obama continues to put the interests of labour bosses ahead of the interests of Americans looking for work. By contrast, Governor Romney has grown companies and created jobs, in the private sector and as governor of Massachusetts, and will get America working again,” said Michele Davis, a spokeswoman.

Please click through to the original Financial Times story for more.

"Blatant, grievous, wilful, deliberate and repeated violations": Another FT story, Romney link to union suppression ruling explains further,

“The anti-union activities in this case are not merely unfair labour practices as Key argues, but blatant, grievous, wilful, deliberate and repeated violations of the Railway Labour Act,” Roger Foley, federal judge for the District of Nevada, wrote in 1992, in a case brought by two Key pilots.

That's how a federal judge worded it. (Note how a case that started in 85 takes till 92 to get a ruling.) This is what the airline had done:

According to the court ruling, Key held coercive meetings with pilots; said management would leave and the company lose contracts; and told pilots that salaries, bonuses and benefits could be frozen. Federal labour law forbids an airline “to interfere in any way with the organisation of its employees”.

Sold For A Lot

The once-profitable company was struggling, losing money, had only $2 million in assets -- down from $13 million when Bain bought it -- and had just avoided (illegally suppressed) unionization. But Bain was able to sell part of it to Presidential Airways-- a company in which Bain was also an investor, with Andrews on its Board -- for $18 million. They sold other parts of the company for further profit. The Bain partners got rich(er).

According to FT

In the final analysis, it is hard to say whether Bain Capital was good or bad for Key Airlines.

The operating company had higher sales, was more focused, more efficient and employed more people by the time that Bain sold out.

On the other hand, it was also more fragile, with only one line of business, net losses and a weak balance sheet.

So a look at Bain Capital's early, "formative" years tell us a lot about what has happened to our country, and our jobs, and our economy. This was the beginning of a pattern of Bain-ization that swept through the economy. Good jobs were replaced with low-wage, insecure jobs. They used various schemes to avoid taxes. They suppressed unions. They gutted the assets of good companies. They cut costs (us) and cut costs (safety) and cut costs (product quality) and cut costs (customer support) and cut corners and cut We, the People out of the equation.

Individuals Have Little Power When Up Against Giant Corporations

Dave Johnson — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 10:55:40 -0400

In a Sunday op-ed Arthur Laffer provides one of the funniest lines of the week, "Right-to-work laws provide individual workers with greater freedom to negotiate the terms of their employment." I almost spat out my coffee, thinking about what would happen to the worker who goes alone to management, demanding a raise and more vacation time. It's like you or me asking the cable company to show up at 10:30 sharp, and to take those added "fees" off my bill right now!

Arther Laffer, in an op-ed today titled in the paper (but not online), State's fix: Cut tax rate, enact right-to-work law, gives us the old "make us more business-friendly" argument. Apparently if we become more like China -- China is very "business-friendly" -- and give business owners everything they want, the businesses will move to put-name-of-state-here. (Except, WE won't benefit because the environment will suffer, we won't have a say, and a few at the top end up with everything.)

Over a period of decades, legislators have created a tax and regulatory climate hostile to business -- and all but guaranteed that the Golden State will not be the sort of place where productive and growing companies set up shop.

... Low taxes aren't the only way to attract and retain businesses. Implementing a right-to-work law, which prohibits workers from being fired for not paying union dues, is another way to guarantee outsize economic growth.

Right-to-work laws provide individual workers with greater freedom to negotiate the terms of their employment, and they create an environment where companies can avoid obstructive union rules.

My local newspaper, like most, regularly feeds its readers these right-wing "you should work for less so the rich can be even richer" and "if you tax the rich you won't have jobs" op-eds. They also feed readers a steady diet of "public employees make too much money and shouldn't get pensions." Since the alternative viewpoint is almost never presented, people over time come to accept it.

Oh, Laffer also says we need to lower taxes as a way to solve the state's deficit crisis. Heh.

(*A "right-to-work" law out to be named a "law-that-lowers-your-pay" because it weakens unions, keeps them from collecting dues, and other restrictions. Several southern states have used these laws to break up unions and now Republicans in several other states are passing them. The result of the decline of unions has been a decline of wages and benefits, and the hollowing-out of the middle class.)

AT&T: "It Helps Us When We Don't Pay You"

Dave Johnson — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:35:25 -0400

Some news you may have missed: Last week thousands of AT&T workers walked out in protest of AT&T's lack of progress in contract negotiations, aggravated by a mocking memo from an AT&T executive.

We Party Patriots: Thousands of AT&T Technicians Stage One Day Walk Out in Nevada, California,

Last week, thousands of AT&T technicians and call center workers at more than 100 sites in Nevada and California staged a walk out to protest an unresolved contract dispute and a memo sent by AT&T Vice President Betsy Farrel. The well-orchestrated mass action comes as several months of negotiations between the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the company remain stagnant. From the Contra Costa Times, which got a copy of the memo:

In the memo, which was obtained by this paper, AT&T Vice President Betsy Farrell complained that recent “union activity has caused some of you to make a choice not to serve our customers. Given comments I have heard from many of you regarding the importance of providing good customer service, I’m a bit puzzled about why you would leave customers without service we committed we would provide them.

“The company doesn’t suffer. In fact, these actions help us financially when we don’t pay you.”

AT&T officials refused to comment on the memo, but CWA spokeswoman Libby Sayre responded on behalf of the workers:

“It’s a slap in the face. These guys work very hard to provide quality customer service; they don’t need a lot of insults and provocation.”

More from the Contra Costa Times: AT&T workers walk off the job,

Thousands of AT&T technicians and call center workers at more than 100 sites in California and Nevada walked off the job Friday to protest what a union spokesman called an "insulting" memo from an AT&T vice president.

The Communications Workers of America said "thousands" joined the protest, which comes during negotiations of a contract that expired in April. Workers in Oakland carried picket signs protesting the AT&T vice president who they said wrote the memo.

And the LA Times: AT&T workers walk out in California, Nevada

Thousands of AT&T Inc. workers in California and Nevada have walked off their jobs, the latest development in an acrimonious contract negotiation that has dragged on for months.

AT&T land-line workers in hundreds of locations protested AT&T's contract demands, which they said included "massive healthcare cost shifting to workers and their families" as well as reductions in AT&T worker retirement security, according to the Communications Workers of America, the union to which the employees belong.

That contract for 40,000 AT&T workers around the U.S. expired two months ago, and the company and the CWA have failed to reach a new accord. The CWA's ninth district, which includes California and Nevada, covers 18,000 AT&T technicians who install and repair telephone lines.

[. . .] In April, national CWA Vice President Ralph Maly addressed AT&T's annual shareholder meeting, saying that "despite AT&T's continued success and profitability, despite its position as the nation's biggest telecommunications company and the top 10 ranking among U.S. companies overall, members are being told they must sacrifice more."

Romney says Obama "Takes His Marching Orders" From Unions

Dave Johnson — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:58:45 -0400

Is this guy a Presidential candidate from a major party, or a fringe nut? He sounds like Rush Limbaugh. HuffPo: Mitt Romney: Obama 'Takes Marching Orders From Union Bosses',

Speaking to a crowd at a campaign stop in Lansing, Mich., on Tuesday, presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney took a swipe at both President Barack Obama and organized labor, saying the president "takes his marching orders" from unions that cost American jobs.

"Liberalism once taught that unions would ensure lasting prosperity for workers," Romney said at Lansing Community College. "Instead, they too often contributed to disappearing companies, disappearing industries and disappearing jobs. But like many politicians of the past, President Obama takes his marching orders from union bosses, rails against right-to-work states, fights to win union elections by eliminating the vote by secret ballot, and even denies an American company the right to build a factory in the American state of its choice."

When People Have A Say

People who follow Romney's line of reasoning think that we need to be more "business friendly" with low wages, low benefits, low environmental protections and low taxes on the rich so we can compete with countries like China. Here's the thing, in countries like China the people don't have a say. When people have a say they say that they want higher wages, benefits, good schools, environmental protections and the rest of the prosperity that democracy brings to all the people, instead of huge amounts accumulating in the hands of just a few people.

Unions Drove Wages And Benefits Up

Romney's argument that unions "contributed to disappearing companies, disappearing industries and disappearing jobs" is based on the idea that unions drove wages and benefits up. He believes that good wages and benefits -- namely US -- are a "cost" instead of the reason that We, the People decided to develop the body of laws that allow corporations to exist, to use our infrastructure and educated people and laws and courts and police and all the other "public structures" as a foundation for doing business. We, the People did that so that we -- all of us -- could benefit. All of us, not just a few of us.

In that respect Romney is correct, unions and democracy brought us higher pay, benefits, "the weekend," vacations, 40-hour workweeks and things like that. Before unions came along to enforce the idea of democracy we didn't, after unions we did. Before unions we had 12-hours a day workdays, seven days a week. Before unions we had low pay. Before unions we had no benefits. Before unions we didn't get vacations. Before unions we could be fired for no reason. Unions are why we ~~have~~ had a middle class.

Unions enforce the concept of democracy. Yes, We, the People were supposed to be in charge. Yes, the economy was supposed to be for our benefit. Why else would We, the People allow corporations to exist in the first place? But it was unions that gave people the power to enforce that idea.

Laying People Off, Cutting Wages, Pocketing That Money For Himself

Romney made his fortune buying up companies (not, by the way, using his own money, but using the companies' own assets as collateral for the loans to buy them with). Then Romney fired many of the workers, making the rest do the extra work. He cut wages and benefits for the rest and then pocketed that money for himself. This is the guy who says that good wages and benefits is what puts companies out of business. In other words, Romney is saying that the problem with our economy is that we have a middle class. Romney wants America to be more "business-friendly."

Romney hates unions. They get in the way of doing business they way business was done "When Mitt Romney Came To Town:

According to the Christian Science Monitor, this is the story of what happened to the workers in one company when the Romney/Bain machine "came to town":

The new owner, American Pad & Paper, owned in turn by [Mitt Romney's] Bain Capital, told all 258 union workers they were fired, in a cost-cutting move. Security guards hustled them out of the building. They would be able to reapply for their jobs, at lesser wages and benefits, but not all would be rehired.

Outsourcing jobs to places where people don't have a say so they can't demand good wages, firing people and making them reapply for their jobs but at half the pay, gutting people's benefits, stripping companies, treating employees like throwaway Kleenex, closing factories, stealing pensions, borrowing and pocketing... Locust capitalism. Chop shops. That's Mitt Romney's view of how to make money. Unions are in the way.

What Is Business-Friendly?

Some quick thoughts about what "business-friendly" really means: (add your own thoughts in the comments)

Business-friendly =

Low wages
Longer hours
No health benefits
No pensions
No vacations
No sick pay
Low taxes on the wealthy and their corporations
"Smaller government," -- which means less "We, the People" in charge of things:

So what are your thoughts on this argument that we need to be more "business-friendly?" What does the phrase even mean? And what happens to the idea that We, the People have an economy for our own benefit?

What Those NLRB And CFPB Recess Appointments Mean To You

Dave Johnson — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:23:29 -0500

In January the President sidestepped Republican obstruction and made "recess appointments" to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This was because Senate Republicans were blocking all nominations, in order to keep these agencies from operating. Now that they are operating we can all see what it was Republicans were trying to prevent.

One example: In New York, a company named Renaissance Equity Holdings owns Flatbush Gardens, a 59-building, 2,500-unit complex. They have "locked out" 70 or so employees for refusing to take a 30% pay cut and for taking them to the NLRB for unfair bargaining. Renaissance was depending on the NLRB being unable to do anything about this thanks to the Republican effort to keep the agency from operating. So now is trying to keep the NLRB from enforcing the rules by contesting Obama's recess appointments. Bloomberg: Obama Labor Board Recess Appointments Challenged in New York Lockout Trial,

The Flatbush porters and handymen, many of whom filled the courtroom gallery today, were frozen out of their jobs in November 2010 after they refused to accept an at least 30 percent pay cut. The Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ is seeking to have them returned to work at the higher wages they were making while the dispute is resolved.

The labor board filed the court case on Jan. 25 saying there was “reasonable cause to believe” that Renaissance engaged in unfair labor practices and the lockout should end.

The union said in court papers that Renaissance is trying to eliminate organized workers from the complex.

CFPB To Regulate Debt Collectors

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is going to regulate debt collectors. For more on this here is US News:CFPB Takes Aim at Debt Collectors, Credit Reporting Agencies,

"These are [firms] involved in the financial system who have not been traditionally regulated," says Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, adding that while the Federal Trade Commission has historically handled regulating debt collectors and credit reporting agencies, it has had limited reach.

... The details of the new oversight are still murky, but it could allow the CFPB to go into theses business and examine their books and evaluate their practices. "They could do a compliance review, which was never really done before," Rheingold says.

It could also mean the CFPB has the authority to set rules governing the practices of the industry. "It's a very important announcement and something that we've needed for a very long time but didn't really have because the FTC was hamstrung," Rheingold says. "They didn't have quite the same authority as the CFPB has."

Why is this so important to regular people? Matt Stoller, writing at Naked Capitalism, explains, in One in Seven Americans Pursued by Debt Collectors,

...Ten years ago, one in fourteen American consumers were pursued by debt collectors. Today it’s one in seven.

The experience of debt collection can be chilling, as this 2007 ABC News report suggests.

Consumers around the country have taped threatening phone calls from collectors who have called in the middle of the night, used abusive language and have threatened to have people fired from work or thrown in jail. All of these tactics are illegal under federal law.

... There are now thousands of people legally jailed because they aren’t paying their bills, ie. debtor’s prisons have returned. Occasionally elites let it slip that this is not an accident, but is their goal – former Comptroller General David Walker has wistfully pined for debtor’s prisons overtly (on CNBC, no less).

... This is part of the new social contract. The sheer percentage of consumers with third party collections in pursuit is striking. Additionally, the uptrend through both Bush boom and Obama bust years of the percentage of people being tracked down by third party collection agencies suggests we live in a different country than we did just ten years ago.

By having a functioning CFPB maybe we can start to get these credit bureaus under control, helping people instead of helping prey on people.

So these agencies are operating, starting to do their jobs, protecting regular, working people. The big companies, union-busters, scammers and other 1%ers are screaming over how unfair this is.

Working People Not Sharing Economy's Gains - How Do We Fix This?

Dave Johnson — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:37:41 -0500

Robert Reich says the economy's problem is that regular working people are not sharing in the gains that the economy makes. He says the idea that bringing back manufacturing will fix this is an illusion. I agree and disagree.

In Manufacturing Illusions, Reich writes that our challenge is not so much to bring back manufacturing jobs,

The real issue isn’t how to get manufacturing back. It’s how to get good jobs and good wages back. They aren’t at all the same thing.

... But American manufacturing won’t be coming back. Although 404,000 manufacturing jobs have been added since January 2010, that still leaves us with 5.5 million fewer factory jobs today than in July 2000 – and 12 million fewer than in 1990. ...

Even if we didn’t have to compete with lower-wage workers overseas, we’d still have fewer factory jobs because the old assembly line has been replaced by numerically-controlled machine tools and robotics. Manufacturing is going high-tech.

Bringing back American manufacturing isn’t the real challenge, anyway. It’s creating good jobs for the majority of Americans who lack four-year college degrees.

Manufacturing used to supply lots of these kind of jobs, but that was only because factory workers were represented by unions powerful enough to get high wages.

Reich says that while corporations are making record profits, American workers aren’t sharing the bounty. In fact wages are dropping even as jobs are (maybe) starting to return, concluding,

The fact is, American corporations – both manufacturing and services – are doing wonderfully well. Their third quarter profits (the latest data available) totaled $2 trillion. That’s 19 percent higher than the pre-recession peak five years ago.

... The fundamental problem isn’t the decline of American manufacturing, and reviving manufacturing won’t solve it. The problem is the declining power of American workers to share in the gains of the American economy.

Disagree

I disagree that "manufacturing isn't coming back." In many ways this echoes the now-infamous Steve Jobs line, "Those jobs aren't coming back." Reich writes that these jobs "compete with lower-wage workers overseas" but also that there are just going to be fewer of them because technology is replacing jobs.

OK, first, the competitive advantage of China and others isn't really lower wages, it is the overall working conditions forced on people who don't have a say. We can and must do something about that, or there will be a natural migration of our own working conditions downward to match the worst around the world. As I wrote yesterday, We, The People Have To Say, "No You Can't Do That". The choice for us really is just that stark. We must use democracy's power or lose it.

Next, jobs or not, we have to regain our manufacturing clout in order to tackle the trade deficit, which is draining our economy. This is a fundamental structural problem.

Finally, manufacturing jobs are different from other jobs, because of all the jobs that support those manufacturing jobs. They are a canary in the coal mine, or a spotted owl in an ecosystem -- it isn't about the manufacturing jobs themselves but the overall ecosystem of manufacturing. This is why manufacturing is so important, not just the jobs directly in the factories themselves on the day the widget is assembled.

It is also the lasting infrastructure and ecosystem that comes with manufacturing -- and stays. It requires enormous investment to create a manufacturing ecosystem. But once you've got it, it's hard to lose it, and once you lose it, it's hard to get it back. Not so much with services.

This is why China is targeting supply chains and not just manufacturing. They want that ecosystem. Manufacturing means suppliers and all the jobs involved there, and researchers and designers and other innovators (and their patents) follow the manufacturing. And so does the balance of trade, and the overall position on the world's economic ladder.

Agree

And this moves us directly to Reich's other point, which I absolutely agree with. We, the People have not been and are not sharing in the gains that "our" economy makes. This is the key problem of our economy today. This is the Reagan Revolution coming home to roost. (See this simple explanation, in charts.)

But this again comes back to having to do something about getting back the manufacturing jobs. The unions were broken by the trade deals, which enabled the 1% to say to the 99% "shut up and take it or we'll move your job, too." When the unions were broken the only real mechanism available to us to challenge the power and wealth of the 1% was broken. And so we stopped being able to demand a share of the gains of the economy.

Up to that point yes, the 1% were able to buy enough of the government, but we were able to organize around our jobs and say "no we will not let you ..." to the worst of the ravages of 1% capitalism. This was how we were able to force a certain amount of democracy on them. But after the trade deals broke the unions and the power to organize we were no longer able to do that. This has played itself out in the years since Reagan, but now the result of these changes are pretty clear in front of our faces. The stark choices are upon us.

The solution lies with us. We need to recognize this is a fight about democracy. This really is about the 99% vs the 1%. We, The People Have To Say, "No You Can't Do That" We have to understand what has been happening to us, how the 1% were able to use China as a wedge to break the unions and break democracy, and demand these "trade" deals be rewritten to actually help us -- and help the Chinese workers. We must not continue to let exploitation and lack of democracy reward the 1%ers. Democracy really is the best economics.

This means tariffs on imports made by people who do not have a say and are therefore exploited. This way those goods do not undercut the wages and working conditions of people here. Use those tariffs to subsidize our own exports so the exploitation does not undercut our own goods in world markets. The start is understanding the equation that exploitation is undercutting democracy, which is undercutting our whole economy.

Will American Anti-Labor Policies Infect Europe?

Dave Johnson — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:02:07 -0500

I want to send a warning to working people in Europe: when you let your businesses save money by mistreating workers in other countries, it might teach them to think they can save money by mistreating you, too. Over here in the US we have learned this the hard way. We entered into "free trade" agreements that enabled our businesses to take advantage of exploited labor in countries like China, and the plutocrats used that as a wedge against us here to drive down our wages, get rid of our benefits and break our unions. Now your own business leaders are taking advantage of eroded labor rights here, and if you let them get away with this they will want to bring these working conditions back to you.

Recently in the post Democracy V. Plutocracy, Unions V. Servitude I described how American companies use China as a wedge to drive down wages and labor rights here,

The threat is in the air: "Shut up and take the wage cuts or we will move your job to China."

... Workers in countries like China where people have no say have low wages, terrible working conditions, long hours, and are told to shut up and take it or they won't have any job at all. They are given no choice.

Increasingly workers here have their wages, hours, benefits, dignity cut and are told to shut up and take it or their jobs will be moved to China. Because we are pitted against exploited workers in countries where people have no say, we have no choice.

The unions are weakened, the government doesn't enforce or weakly enforces labor laws and regulations, age, gender or race discrimination laws, worker safety laws, so workers are placed in a terrible squeeze. Workers who try to organize unions are isolated, moved, smeared, fired, humiliated, whatever it takes.

In countries like Germany workers are still paid fairly well and have benefits and rights. Here our pay, benefits and labor rights have eroded terribly. This is the result of American companies using exploited labor in countries like China as a wedge to force concessions at home. Can the same chain of events attack wages, benefits and unions in Europe? Last May, Harold Meyerson’s LA Times op-ed, The U.S.: Where Europe comes to slum, described how European companies come here and behave like American companies,

… slumming in America is fast becoming a business model for some of Europe's leading companies, and they often do things here they would never think of doing at home. These companies — not banks, primarily, but such gold-plated European manufacturers as BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen and Siemens, and retailers such as IKEA — increasingly come to America (the South particularly) because labor is cheap and workers have no rights. In their eyes, we're becoming the new China. Our labor costs may be a little higher, but we offer stronger intellectual property protections and far fewer strikes than our unruly Chinese comrades.

… The auto companies of Europe and Japan have opened factories in the nonunion South over the last couple of decades. Not one of them has agreed to refrain from waging a union-busting campaign should their workers wish to organize. Their stance could not be more different from their attitude toward workers and unions in their home countries.

Meyerson describes the kinds of anti-union, anti-worker things these companies are learning how to do,

As a report released by Human Rights Watch late last year documents, companies that routinely welcome unions, pay middle-class wages and have workers' representatives on their corporate boards in Germany and Scandinavia have threatened their U.S.-based employees with permanent replacement by other workers as the penalty for protesting wage cuts (that was the German manufacturer Robert Bosch), ordered workers to report on fellow workers' pro-union activities (that was T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom) and disciplined workers who couldn't show up for unscheduled weekend shifts announced on Friday night (that was IKEA, according to an L.A. Times story).

T-Mobile’s Anti-Union Efforts

Here is an example. Germany’s Deutsche Telkom is trying to turn their wholly-owned subsidiary US company T-Mobile into a low-wage, low-benefit, union-free dumping ground. Is this an effort to ultimately bring these tactics back home to break Germany’s unions?

This is how T-Mobile is operating now: In May T-Mobile workers in upstate New York filed a petition for a union election. Over the next three months management used anti-union “isolate and pressure” tactics to erode support. Instead of letting the workers decide for themselves if they wanted a union, they contested the effort and brought in a “union avoidance” specialist firm.

The company used excuses to delay the election, and launched a propaganda campaign, making the workers hear a constant barrage of reasons to suspect union motives, suspect the benefits the union promised, and other reasons not to vote for a union. They were repeatedly required to leave their job to attend meetings and conference calls, on company time, where they were lectured, given misinformation, told they would lose benefits they currently had, that unions would make them pay $5,000 in dues every year, told again and again that the union was lying, that union organizers were only telling them things to get bonuses, told they must not ever talk to each other about the union on company time and that if they voted for a union the company would have to eliminate their jobs and contract out the work instead. After enough of this the workers withdrew the election petition.

The Sheer Weight Of This Wears You Down

When regular people who are just doing their jobs, who work hard and get up in the morning and go home tired and don’t make a lot have to face constant tactics of daily pressure by management, constantly being told that unions are evil and “unions bosses’ and “union thugs” are trying to trick them, and they are put under tactics that isolate them from being able to discuss what is true or not, finally the sheer weight of all of it together can be too much.

Again and again when workers try to form a union they are up against these tactics. Management repeatedly calls meetings where they give professionally-crafted propaganda speeches about all the terrible things that will happen if workers vote for a union. If a worker has the courage to stand up and talk about the good reasons for a union, they are excluded from future meetings and isolated from the other workers. (This is when a company stays legal and doesn’t just fire people who favor a union – not an uncommon tactic and it takes years for the company to be penalized for illegal firings, if it ever is.) In these situations management completely controls the message and keeps workers from hearing the other side.

Typical Here, Outrageous There

This all sounds normal to American workers, because this is what American companies do. This is what workers regularly face when they try to organize to make their workplace better and safer and get things like sick pay, decent wages and some benefits. We have sort of become used to this kind of treatment here. In America we have gone from 30% to 7% union membership because companies are allowed to fight unions, and routinely do things like this.

But T-Mobile is wholly owned by a German company. Germany respects workers rights and German workers would be absolutely shocked if they understood that a German company was doing this to workers. They would be shocked to even see a company try to stop a union – why would a good company want to?

Will American Anti-Labor Policies Infect Europe?

So here is the question for European working people to ask. Will Europe let the US be their China? American companies learned to use China as a weapon against workers here. Will European companies bring American anti-labor practices home as a weapon to break down European worker rights and living standards?

Will European companies learn to use American anti-labor practices against European workers? Or will European workers stop this in time? If you think this sort of thing can’t happen in Europe, just look at what is happening to Greek workers right now.

US workers are threatened with having to do things like China does them in order to compete. Will German workers be threatened and told things have to be like the US? Will they tell that German public that their policies need to be more “Business friendly?”

So this is a warning to European working people. Pay attention to what your companies are doing in the US. You really don’t want them learning to operate the way a lot of US companies operate, or your own wages, benefits and even your jobs could be on the line – like ours are here.

China Is Very "Business-Friendly"

Dave Johnson — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:52:02 -0500

China is very, very "business-friendly." Corporate conservatives lecture us that we should be more "business-friendly," in order to "compete" with China. They say we need to cut wages and benefits, work longer hours, get rid of overtime and sick pay -- even lunch breaks. They say we should shed unions, get rid of environmental and safety regulations, gut government services, and especially, especially, especially we should cut taxes. But America can never be "business-friendly" enough to compete with China, and here is why.

Workers In Dormatories, 12 To A Room, Rousted At Midnight

China is very, very "business friendly." Recent stories about Apple's manufacturing contractors have started to reveal just how "business-friendly" China is. Recently the NY Times' Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher exposed the conditions of workers at Apple's Chinese suppliers, in How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work. They describe how China's massive government subsidies and exploitation of workers mean, as Steve Jobs told President Obama, “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”

One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. ... New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

Right. No American plant can roust workers out of nearby dorms at midnight to force them onto a 12-hour shift. And the corporate conservatives criticize America for this, not China, saying we are not "business-friendly" enough to compete. This is because we are a place where We, the People still have at least some say in how things are done. (Don't we?) Later in the story,

The first truckloads of cut glass arrived at Foxconn City in the dead of night, according to the former Apple executive. That’s when managers woke thousands of workers, who crawled into their uniforms — white and black shirts for men, red for women — and quickly lined up to assemble, by hand, the phones.

“Business-friendly” = living 12 to a room in dorms, rousted out of bed at midnight for 12-hour shifts, working in a plant paid for by the government, using a neurotoxin cleaner that harms people but enables more production for companies like Apple.

Forced Labor Is The Real "Business-Friendly"

Arun Gupta at AlterNet, in iEmpire: Apple's Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think, writes,

Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months'-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.

... Foxconn and Apple depend on tax breaks, repression of labor, subsidies and Chinese government aid, including housing, infrastructure, transportation and recruitment, to fatten their corporate treasuries. As the students function as seasonal employees to meet increased demand for new product rollouts, Apple is directly dependent on forced labor.

... The use of hundreds of thousands of students is one way in which China’s state regulates labor in the interests of Foxconn and Apple. Other measures include banning independent unions and enforcing a household registration system that denies migrants social services and many political rights once they leave their home region, ensuring they can be easily exploited. In Shenzhen about 85 percent of the 14 million residents are migrants. Migrants work on average 286 hours a month and earn less than 60 percent of what urban workers make. Half of migrants are owed back wages and only one in 10 has health insurance. They are socially marginalized, live in extremely crowded and unsanitary conditions, perform the most dangerous and deadly jobs, and are more vulnerable to crime.

Please read the entire AlterNet piece, iEmpire: Apple's Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think. These things are not “costs” that we can compete with by lowering our wages, these things are something else.

Not JUST Low Taxes -- Massive Government Subsidies

These stories also describe how the Chinese government massively subsidizes these operations, assists their low-wage labor-recruitment schemes, and looks the other way at violations of labor and trade policies. The Chinese government is very "business-friendly." They hand money to businesses so they are much more able to "compete." They are so friendly to business that they even own many businesses.

Trade Secret Theft

Another area where China has very "business-friendly" policies is when their own businesses steal from non-Chinese businesses. This NY Times story, U.S. to Share Cautionary Tale of Trade Secret Theft With Chinese Official details just one case of the "unbelievably endemic" problem of Chinese theft of "intellectual property" -- the trade secrets that keep businesses competitive. In this case China's Sinovel sole the software that ran an American company's products, and immediately cancelled their orders for those products because they could now make them in China:

Last March, China’s Sinovel, the world’s second largest wind turbine manufacturer, abruptly refused shipments of American Superconductor’s wind turbine electrical systems and control software. The blow was devastating; Sinovel provided more than 70 percent of the firm’s revenues.

... Last summer, evidence emerged that Sinovel had promised $1.5 million to Dejan Karabasevic, a Serbian employee of American Superconductor in Austria.

If you steal the ideas, processes, techniques, expertise, plans, designs, software and the other things that give companies a competitive edge, then you don't have to pay them and you can just make the things yourself. When you get in bed with a very "business-friendly" country, you might find that they are more friendly to their own businesses. Because they consider themselves to be a country with a national strategy, not a self-balancing, self-regulating "market."

Trade Deficit Drains Our Economy

As a result of our ideological blindness, refusing to understand China's game, we have a massive trade deficit with them. This means hundreds of billions of dollars are drained from our economy, year after year. And to make up for this we borrow from them in order to keep buying from them. But this does not cause their currency to strengthen in the "markets" because China loves this game the way it is going, and intervenes against the markets to keep their currency low. And so it continues, year after year. We believe in "markets" they believe in rigging markets so they come out ahead...

Markets Can't "Compete" With This

Corporate conservatives tell us we need to be more "business-friendly" to "compete" with China. But at the same time Steve Jobs was being a realist when he said "the jobs are never coming back" because he understood that the current political climate, controlled by a wealthy few who benefit from China's "business-friendly" policies will not let us fight this. Why should these companies bring jobs back here, when over there they can roust thousands from dorms at midnight and make them use toxic chemicals for 12 hours a day for very low pay to make iPhone screens that he can sell at fantastically high prices? Why should they, unless We, the People tell them they can't do that to people, and that we won't let them profit from it?

As long as we continue to think that this is about "markets" competing, we will lose. China sees itself as a nation, and they have a national strategy to continue to be so "business-friendly" that our businesses can't compete. Our leaders and corporations may have "moved on" past this quaint nation thing but China has not.

We, The People Need To Act To Fix This

As long as we continue to send our companies out there alone against national economic strategies that engage entire national systems utilizing the resources of nations, our companies will lose. But the executives at those companies are currently getting very rich now from these schemes, so what happens in the future is not their problem. Maybe the companies they manage won't be around later, but that is not their problem. Others are concerned, but are forced to play the game because no one can compete with national systems like China's.

When everyone is in a position where something isn't their problem, or where they can't do anything about it on their own, it means this is a larger problem, and this is where government -- We, the People -- needs to get involved. It is our problem but we have been convinced that we -- government -- shouldn't interfere, or "protect" our industries, because "the markets" don't like "government" -- We, the People -- butting in. This is a very convenient viewpoint for few who are geting very, very wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

We Need A Plan

In U.S. must end China's rulers' free pass at Politico, AAM's Scott Paul writes, Read it, read it, read it!)

We shouldn’t fear China’s citizens. But we should be worried about the actions of its authoritarian — and, yes, still communist — regime that tightly controls the People’s Republic. And we should be downright terrified by some of our own leaders’ attitudes toward China.

... China is not merely the key U.S. supplier of cheap toys, clothing and electronics: Its government is also one of our foreign financiers. China achieved this status by defying the free market and its international obligations toward more open trade and investment.

[. . .] History didn’t do in the Soviet Union. A sustained and aggressive strategy did. China engaged our business and political elites — and seduced them into believing these policies were no longer necessary.

... There has been no strategy, no effort to prevail economically.

... No one is suggesting that China is an enemy and we should just update our Cold War strategies. No one can accurately define what China’s intentions are in terms of foreign policy or defense. But on the economic front, the lessons of the past are instructive: We need a plan.

We need a plan. We need to understand that China is not competing with us in "markets' they are competing with us as a nation. We need a national economic/industrial strategy that understands the urgent need to fight as a country to win the industries of the future.

It’s not just price, it is things a democracy cannot allow. We can’t ever be “business-friendly” ENOUGH. We have to do something else. We have to understand that We, the People -- the 99% -- are in a real fight here to keep our democracy, or we will lose what is left of it.

Democracy Is The Best Economics

When people have a say they demand good wages, benefits, reasonable working conditions, a clean environment, workplace safety and dignity on the job. We need more of that, not less of that. We must demand that goods made in places where people who do not have a say do not have a competitive advantage over goods made in places where people do have a say. And we must demand that those places give their people a say.

As long as we let democracy be a competitive disadvantage, We, the People will lose.

Invisible Americans: The Overlooked Millions Inside Those Job Numbers

Richard Eskow — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:08:45 -0500

Some politicians are saying that the latest unemployment report is good news, but it's not. It shows us that this country is still in crisis. It shows us that the government needs to act quickly and aggressively to create jobs, and to restore the lost earning power of the average American who has a job.

Mos of all it shows us that millions of struggling people are still invisible in the Nation's Capitol.

This week the Occupy movement is holding a series of "Take Back the Capitol" events in Washington. Let's hope it shines some light on the country's unemployed, under-employed, and under-earning millions. Until now, they've been pretty much invisible in that town.

The Invisible Americans are all around you. They're in your state, in your community, maybe in your family. Maybe they're your kids, just out of college. Maybe they're your fifty-something uncles and aunts, your grandparents, your grandchildren. They're right there in the jobs report, for anyone with the eyes - and the willingness - to find them.

Invisible: Millions of the long-term unemployed.

While some celebrated an unemployment rate of "only" 8.6 percent, half that change was explained by the fact that 315,000 people dropped out of the labor force. Job creation barely kept pace with the entry of new people into the workforce.

Those 315,000 people join the 5.7 million people officially classified as long-term unemployed. That number is at historically high levels, representing nearly half (43 percent) of all the jobless people in this country.

It's not that they don't want jobs. Most of them have fallen into despair. Even worse, what they may have fallen into is realism. Unless we use the power of government to do something, some of them will never work again. They're falling out of the "normal" economy and into a new reality of persistent joblessness and, for some, eventual poverty.

Invisible: Segregation on the unemployment line.

The official jobless rate for white people is 7.6 percent, versus 15.5 percent for African Americans and 11.4 percent for Hispanics.

And those are only the official numbers. The figures are much higher if you count the long-term unemployed, the under-employed, and "discouraged" workers.

In a nation that prides itself on being the land of opportunity, we're denying entire groups of people the chance for a better life.

Invisible: The jobless generation.

There's a silent epidemic of youth unemployment. Official teenaged unemployment is 23.7 percent, and the real rate is much higher. Recent college graduates face historically high jobless rates - along with historically high student debt.

Studies show that young people who begin their work lives un- or under-employed face an entire lifetime of lower income. By failing to act, we're betraying our own children and throwing away an entire generation of young people.

Invisible: The under-employed.

There's a silent epidemic of under-employment. There are 8.5 million people who want to work full-time but can only get part time work. in that category. That figure dropped slightly, but we don't know how much of the drop was due to people finding full-time work or being laid off altogether.

And remember, underemployed people aren't just making less money. In most cases they're also going without health insurance or other benefits. They're struggling on the margins of working America, barely surviving and never knowing how much money the'll earn from one week to the next.

Invisible: The vanishing public servant.

While Washington politicians drone on about "budget cuts," there's not much discussion of the fact that many of those cuts increase unemployment - at the Federal, state, and local levels. Government jobs have been dwindling since 2008, and the shrinkage is continuing a time when we need more of them.

Teachers, police officers, highway toll takers, postal workers - you name it, they're losing their jobs. And the only debate in Washington seems to be, How many more of them can we make unemployed?

Invisible: The drowning middle class.

Average hourly earnings for all nonfarm employees decreased last month by 1 percent. Average hourly earnings increased by only 1.8 percen over the last year, while the cost of living (measured by the Consumer Price Index) increased 3.5 percent.

Once again average Americans have fallen behind in earnings and has seen their standard of living decline. Meanwhile, incomes continue to skyrocket for the wealthiest Americans. Income inequality is the worst it's been since the Great Depression.

Welcome to the New Gilded Age.

Political Blindness

This week we heard almost nothing in Washington about direct action to address these crises. The Democrats' "payroll tax holiday" would provide urgently needed ongoing relief for the battered middle class, and would also have a mild job-creating effect. But it would do so in an inefficient way, and also needlessly and recklessly endangers Social Security.

Republicans have no solution at all - just more of the same policies that caused these problems in the first place.

Our neighbors deserve better than this. We deserve better than this. Change starts with a simple statement we can make to those around us, and they can make to us: You're not invisible. I see you.

People in Washington over-complicate the debate by tinkering at the margins: tax-break this, incentive that. Those things will have some effect, but there's a simpler and better way to fix the joblessness problem: Put people to work. At a time when this country needs trillions of dollar in infrastructure repair, government should hire people and get on with it.

George W. Bush had no problem doing that a few years ago. He signed a bill spending more than a quarter of a trillion dollars on infrastructure spending while the Republican Speaker of the House bragged about creating. But Republicans would apparently rather prolong the suffering so they can defeat Obama and the Democrats in 2012.

As for the Obama Democrats, either they don't understand the problem or they don't think it's politically smart to propose fixing it. I suspect it's the latter - and they're dead wrong. The President's jobs bill had some useful ideas. But the President went small on the fixes and, in his typical fashion, couldn't resist pushing useless conservative "job creation" ideas along with the good ones.

Far-Sighted

We need a massive jobs program now to fix our crumbling bridges, highways, railroads, dams, and public buildings. We need to fix wage stagnation by going back to the policies that built the middle class, beginning with stronger collective bargaining rights for working people. Unions were one of the engines of post-World War II prosperity, and the war on unions needs to stop.

We also need higher taxes for the wealthy, tax advantages for companies that hire, and higher taxes for those who make money by gambling, trading other people's debts, or hedging against the success of the American economy. We need to downsize the financial sector, which is capturing too much corporate profit and squeezing out job-creating businesses.

And we need to rebuild the firewall between banking and speculating, so we can end too-big-to-fail and the boom-and-bust cycle that keeps crashing the economy.

Vision Test

Some political party, maybe one that has had a reputation for defending the middle class, ought to say something this: We know what's going on out there. We understand the problem. Here's how we would fix it. We're going to introduce these measures in the House and Senate wherever and whenever we can, so you can see who's fighting for the Invisible Americans, and who's fighting against them.

But no party appears willing to do that, at least not without the presence of a non-partisan movement that forces it to act.

Someday historians will review this country's history to find those times when our people and our leaders responded to a crisis with vision and courage. They'll see the millions of Americans who rose to the occasion during the War of Independence, the Civil War, World War II, and the Great Depression.

But will they see us, or will we have become ... invisible?

Our political leaders need to be pressured - a lot - which is why the Occupy events in Washington are so important. We need to build and maintain a movement for real change, a movement that sees the invisible ones among us, a movement that sees each of us and makes us visible, a movement that fights unrelentingly for a better society.

Hope to "see" you soon - on the barricades.