Labor

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.

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."

Open Letter From Europe Against American Labor Intimidation Practices

Dave Johnson — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:00:07 -0400

“EMPLOYEES OF U.S. SUBSIDIARIES OF GERMAN COMPANIES, ESPECIALLY T-MOBILE USA, SHOULD BE ABLE TO EXERCISE THEIR UNRESTRICTED RIGHT TO OPT FOR ORGANIZED REPRESENTATION IN THE COMPANY WITHOUT FEAR.”

In an ad in the NY Times yesterday, 11 leading German legal scholars and politicians called on Deutsche Telekom and other German companies to stop using American-style union-hating tactics at their American subsidiaries. In particular they asked these companies to “end all collaboration with U.S. consultants who advise employers how to fight employee representation.”

Remarkable

What is remarkable about this letter is the difference between European and American attitudes toward working people and labor rights. In Europe it's just a given that working people have dignity and respect. To Europeans it is shocking to see a company try to fight against its own workers! In the US working people face an atmosphere of constant intimidation, always pushing for lower wages, cuts in benefits, longer working hours, and subservience.

The letter speaks for itself, please read it: (click for original)

To T-MOBILE USA and Other U.S. Subsidiaries of German Companies

AN OPEN LETTER ON WORKERS’ RIGHTS

Globalization and the current crisis present particular challenges for the economy. Germany’s social market policy faces these challenges with its commitment to stakeholder values including employees and its responsibility towards the community. The respect for the interests of different players has already proven to be beneficial in previous periods of change. Essential elements of this approach are respectful cooperation and a balance of the differing interests of employees and employers. Since employees are in a structurally weaker position compared to employers, the freedom of association and freedom of opinion as human rights are especially vital.

The signatories urge that the employees of U.S. subsidiaries of German companies, especially T-Mobile USA, should be able to exercise their unrestricted right to opt for organized representation in the company without fear. They must not be influenced, pressured, or intimidated by employers if they exercise their basic right for freedom of association. The human right of freedom of speech notably entails this right as well.

Even in the Federal Republic of Germany there are shortsighted employers and lawyers who believe they can get away with a lack of integrity and respect toward unions and work councils and who think they can forgo cooperation. Practical experiences and scientific studies show, however, that employer conduct based on this model will ultimately be harmful to the company.

We encourage T-Mobile USA and the other U.S. subsidiaries of German companies to take these experiences to heart and to abandon all efforts at union avoidance. Likewise, we ask them to end all collaboration with U.S. consultants who advise employers how to fight employee representation.

Däubler-Gmelin, Prof. Dr. Herta, former Federal Minister of Justice, attorney, Berlin

Baum, Gerhart R., former Minister of the Interior, attorney, Düsseldorf

Müntefering, Franz, former Federal Minister for Labor and Social Affairs, German MP, Berlin

Schmoldt, Hubertus, former Chairman of the Labor Union IG Mining, Chemical and Energy

Hensche, Detlef, former Chairman of the Labor Union IG Media, attorney, Berlin

Merzhäuser, Michael, attorney, Berlin

Dieterich, Prof. Dr. Thomas, former President of the Federal Labor Court and former Judge of the Federal Constitutional Court, Kassel

Blüm, Dr. Norbert, former Federal Minister for Labor and Social Affairs, Bonn

Struck, Dr. Peter, former Federal Minister of Defense, President of Friedrich – Ebert – Foundation, Berlin

Däubler, Prof. Dr. jur. Wolfgang, university professor (labor law, business law, international law), Bremen

Schwegler, Dr. Lorenz, former Chairman of the Union for Trade, Banking and Insurance Carriers, attorney, Düsseldorf

Learn more at www.WeWorkBetterTogether.org

Did you see that last line? Learn more at www.WeWorkBetterTogether.org

Reminder: March 22 Verizon Day Of Action!

Dave Johnson — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:11:56 -0400

On March 22, workers from the Communication Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers will be joined by thousands of supporters to rally around the country to stand up to corporate greed, and in support of good jobs for the 99%. The rally will also support the U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act that I have been writing about. This is a chance to stand up against Verizon's fight to destroy unions and middle class America.

Click here to sign up to help out, and for more information.

Go to this site and scroll down a bit for event locations.

From the site:

MARCH 22: VERIZON DAY OF ACTION

Verizon has made tens of billions in profits and its top executives walked away with $283 million in the last four years. But when it comes to the 45,000 workers who made Verizon's success possible, suddenly the company cries broke.

Verizon has sent thousands of American jobs overseas and wants to outsource even more jobs, gut pensions, charge current and retired employees thousands of dollars more for health benefits, and cut disability benefits for workers injured during their jobs.

On March 22, CWA and IBEW workers and thousands of others will be rallying around the country to support good jobs and the U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act. Join us.

About The Call-Center Bill

The U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act is a bipartisan bill to help fight the offshoring of call-center jobs and protect consumers. This proposed legislation would let the public know which companies are engaging in sending jobs out of the country, let customers ask to use an American call center instead, and ban federal grants or guaranteed loans to American companies that move call center jobs out of the US.

Today many call-center jobs are being moved out of the country, mostly to India and the Philippines. This costs American jobs, and can be very frustrating to consumers who have to speak to people who they cannot understand because of language problems or cultural differences. The U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act gives consumers the right to ask where the person they are speaking with is based, and ask for an American-based representative instead. Among the things this bill would accomplish:

Require the Department of Labor to publicly list firms that move call center jobs overseas.
Make these firms ineligible for any direct or indirect federal loans or loan guarantees for five years.
Require 120 day advance notification of a proposed move off-shore.
Require call center employees to tell U.S. consumers where they are located, if asked.
Require that call centers transfer calls to a U.S. call center if asked.

Previously:

March 7: It's Time To Pass The Call-Center Bill

Dec 13: Call-Center Bill Would Let Customers Ask To Talk To Americans

Dec 16: Who Protects Info You Give To Offshored Call Centers?

March 22 Verizon Day Of Action!

Dave Johnson — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:26:48 -0400

Click here to sign up to help out, and for more information.

Go to this site and scroll down a bit for event locations.

From the site:

MARCH 22: VERIZON DAY OF ACTION

Verizon has made tens of billions in profits and its top executives walked away with $283 million in the last four years. But when it comes to the 45,000 workers who made Verizon's success possible, suddenly the company cries broke.

Verizon has sent thousands of American jobs overseas and wants to outsource even more jobs, gut pensions, charge current and retired employees thousands of dollars more for health benefits, and cut disability benefits for workers injured during their jobs.

On March 22, CWA and IBEW workers and thousands of others will be rallying around the country to support good jobs and the U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act. Join us.

About The Call-Center Bill

Require the Department of Labor to publicly list firms that move call center jobs overseas.
Make these firms ineligible for any direct or indirect federal loans or loan guarantees for five years.
Require 120 day advance notification of a proposed move off-shore.
Require call center employees to tell U.S. consumers where they are located, if asked.
Require that call centers transfer calls to a U.S. call center if asked.

Previously:

March 7: It's Time To Pass The Call-Center Bill

Dec 13: Call-Center Bill Would Let Customers Ask To Talk To Americans

Dec 16: Who Protects Info You Give To Offshored Call Centers?

Workers Of The World – Pay Attention

Dave Johnson — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:14:39 -0400

There’s something happening here. What it is is becoming clear. There’s a company blocking a union over there, and that’s telling you you’ve got to beware.

Breaking unions strikes deep. Back to your country it will creep. It starts when they pay low wages and exploit workers here. Pretty soon you’re fighting them there.

Last month, in Will American Anti-Labor Policies Infect Europe?, I warned German workers to pay attention to the way their Deutsch Telkom is behaving toward workers at their subsidiary company T-Mobile here in the US.

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.

... 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?

... 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?

... 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?

Since then a delegation of German workers came to the US to see for themselves. The results were not encouraging. German Delegation Ends T-Mobile Tour Stunned by U.S. Anti-Unionism,

After the meeting, Conny, a Deutsche Telekom retail employee, reflected:

It makes me really angry that employees are intimidated and harassed when they want to join a union. Companies like T-Mobile seem to use every possible tactic to prevent unionization.

I think our colleagues are quite brave and have a lot of courage as they fight for their rights despite their own personal risks. They are all employed on an at-will basis, which means that they can be fired from one day to another. So they really worry about their future.

... For the German workers who came on the trip, their experiences have helped personalize the struggles of T-Mobile workers who live and work an ocean away. Their conviction to stand together with T-Mobile workers in this country is stronger and more deeply felt.

Before they headed back to D.C., Werner Schönau, Dieter Badel and Helmut Angerer summed up the week they spent with various T-Mobile employees:

We want to say that we are deeply impressed by the stories people told us on our trip and by the concrete experience we had. In particular, the personal reports from employees of T-Mobile US about their working conditions and the avoidance tactics of the union had us moved deeply. We really hope that this delegation is at least a small contribution for improving the working conditions and workers rights [for T-Mobile workers]

…We definitely won’t give up in the future. We will use every opportunity to talk with our German co-workers about the experience we had during this week. We will encourage them to ask questions, also tough questions, to our management about what’s going on at T-Mobile in the USA.

To get involved with the global campaign to form a union for T-Mobile USA workers, visit: http://www.weworkbettertogether.org/ and http://www.weexpectbetter.org/

Here We Go Again - This Time Australian Company

An Australian company operating in the US fired a truck driver for making an emergency stop to use a bathroom (pretty bad) but the real reason was she was supporting union organization (really bad.) This company has a union in Australia, but is doing things like this here. Australian Trucking Corporation Condemned After Firing a Female Driver for Making Emergency Pit Stop at a McDonald's,

An $8.8 billion Australian transportation corporation has escalated its attack on its Latino-American workers by firing a mother of three for stopping to use a McDonald's restroom during her delivery route. The cruel termination of Xiomara Perez, a 46-year-old port truck driver who has already been outspoken about the filthy, unsanitary outhouses that lack running water at her worksite, occurred amidst a rise of pro-union solidarity actions by Perez and her co-workers.

… "It's not safe to 'hold it' when you have to relieve yourself. Toll's management has been looking for any little excuse to fire those of us that speak out in support of us forming a union with the Teamsters. They have obviously been spying on us and the worst thing they could pin on me as retaliation is a quick stop to use the restroom at a McDonalds."

… Friday's discriminatory firing ironically occurred on International Women's Day -- and during the week its local U.S. executives received a visit from three Toll drivers from Sydney and a union official for the Transport Workers of Australia. The union's rank-and-file and leadership are outraged that the company treats their U.S. counterparts as second-class citizens when the company allows its 12,000 Down Under drivers to negotiate strong contracts with middle class pay, benefits, and safety improvements.

… The Los Angeles Toll drivers have sought representation by the Teamsters union. Toll has delayed their legal right to vote on a union by exploiting weak labor laws.

More information about the organizing effort at Toll Group is available here: http://grimtruthattollgroup.com/

So this is a warning to working people in countries that respect the rights of 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.

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.

Labor's Fight Is OUR Fight

Dave Johnson — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:33:34 -0500

Unions have been fighting the 1% vs 99% fight for more than 100 years. Now the rest of us are learning that this fight is also OUR fight.

The story of organized labor has been a story of working people banding together to confront concentrated wealth and power. Unions have been fighting to get decent wages, benefits, better working conditions, on-the-job safety and respect. Now, as the Reagan Revolution comes home to roost, taking apart the middle class, the rest of us are learning that this is our fight, too.

The story of America is a similar story to that of organized labor. The story of America is a story of We, the People banding together to fight the concentrated wealth and power of the British aristocracy. Our Declaration of Independence laid it out: we were fighting for a government that derives its powers from the consent of us, the people governed, not government by a wealthy aristocracy telling us what to do and making us work for their profit instead of for the betterment of all of us. It was the 99% vs the 1% then, and it is the 99% vs the 1% now.

We, the People

Democracy is when We, the People decide things together -- collectively -- for the common good of all of us. Our country originated from the idea of We, the People banding together to watch out for and protect each other, so we can all rise together for the common good, or "general welfare." Collectively we make decisions, and the result of this collective action is decisions that work for all of us instead of just a few of us. This is the founding idea of our country.

Unions Protect The Interests Of Working People

The same is true for unions. Unions work to bring We-the-People democracy to the workplace. Like the old story about how it is harder to break a bundle of sticks than the same sticks one stick at a time, unions are organizations of working people, banding together so their collective power can confront the power of concentrated wealth. By banding together in solidarity, working people are able to say, "No, you can't do that!," and bargain for a better life for all of us.

Organized Labor Sets The Standard

The benefits that unions win don't just go to the union members, they become the standard. When labor won the fight for an 8-hour day and 40-hour workweek with overtime pay, that became the standard. When labor fought for minimum wages, that became the standard, when labor fought for workplace safety, that became the standard. Labor's fight is a fight to set the standard for the rest of us.

Labor stands up to the 1%, and uses their organized power (bundle of sticks) to win better pay, benefits and working conditions for the 99%.

"Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts."
-- Molly Ivins.

Eroded Rights

Working people banding together to bargain with management -- "collective" bargaining -- is a fundamental right in the United States, but this right has eroded along with the rest of our democracy. For many years, the mechanisms of government that were supposed to enforce these rights were "captured" and instead were working against the rights of working people. Bob Borosage explains, in, The Forgotten Leading Actor In The American Dream Story,

Globalization gave manufacturers a large club in negotiations—concessions or jobs get shipped abroad. And often the reality was concessions AND jobs got shipped abroad. Corporations perfected techniques, often against the law, to crush organizing drives, and stymie new contracts for the few that succeeded. The National Labor Relations Board, stacked with corporate lobbyists under Republican presidents, turned a blind eye to systematic violations of the law.

So now union workers are down to about 7 percent of the private workforce. Virtually the only growing unions are public employees— teachers, nurses, cops. Not surprisingly, conservative Republican governors, led by Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Ohio's John Kasich, used the budget squeeze caused by the Great Recession to go after these unions, combining layoffs with efforts to eviscerate the right of public employees to organize and negotiate.

The Fight Is On

"Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women of their right to join the union of their choice."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Dorian Warren, at Salon in America’s last hope: A strong labor movement, writes,

The fate of the labor movement is the fate of American democracy. Without a strong countervailing force like organized labor, corporations and wealthy elites advancing their own interests are able to exert undue influence over the political system, as we’ve seen in every major policy debate of recent years.

Yet the American labor movement is in crisis and is the weakest it’s been in 100 years. That truism has been a progressive mantra since the Clinton administration. However, union density has continued to decline from roughly 16 percent in 1995 to 11.8 percent of all workers and just 6.9 percent of workers in the private sector. Unionized workers in the public sector now make up the majority of the labor movement for the first time in history, which is precisely why — a la Wisconsin and 14 other states — they have been targeted by the right for all out destruction.

... Contrary to the intent of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which made it national policy to encourage and promote collective bargaining, the NLRA now provides incentives for employers to break the law routinely and ignore any compulsion to negotiate collective agreements. When there is little outrage for the daily violations of workers’ liberty (employers fire workers illegally in 1 in 3 union campaigns for attempting to exercise freedom of association), our democracy is in peril.

Restore The Middle Class

Unions brought us a middle class, and now that the power of organized labor has eroded we find ourselves in a fight to keep the middle class. Borosage again,

We emerged from World War II with unions headed towards representing about 30% of the workforce. Fierce struggles with companies were needed to ensure that workers got a fair share of the rewards of their work. Unions were strong enough that non-union employers had to compete for good workers by offering comparable wages. Unions enforced the 40-hour week, overtime pay, paid vacations, health care and pensions, and family wages. Strong unions limited excesses in corporate boardrooms, a countervailing power beyond the letter of the contract. As profits and productivity rose, wages rose as well.

When unions were weakened and reduced, all that changed. Productivity and profits continued to rise, but wages did not. The ratio of CEO pay to the average worker pay went from 40 to 1 to more than 350 to 1. CEOs were given multimillion-dollar pay incentives to cook their books and merge and purge their companies. Unions were not strong enough to police the excess. America let multinationals define its trade and manufacturing strategy, hemorrhaging good jobs to mercantilist nations like China.

The result was the wealthiest few captured literally all the rewards of growth. And 90% of America struggled to stay afloat with stagnant wages, rising prices and growing debt.

Support Bargaining Rights For Labor

We all need to understand that labor's fight is our fight. Now that labor is under attack across the country, we need to understand that we are also under attack. As labor loses rights and power, all of our pay and benefits fall back. We need to support the rights of working people to organize into unions and bargain collectively, to fight our fight, the 99% vs the 1%. This battle right now is the whole ball game.

"To a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right-wingers hate that."
-- Janeane Garofalo

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.