How unions are unfairly scapegoated for Detroit's woes

By Marc McDonald 

There are many reasons for the catastrophic decline of the once-mighty U.S. auto industry over the decades. But it's unfair and inaccurate to point the main finger of blame at unions, the usual scapegoat.

The world's two dominant auto-exporting nations are Germany and Japan. The auto industries in those two nations are heavily unionized. And what's more, unions in Germany and Japan are backed up by strong pro-labor laws that U.S. workers could only dream of.

Although the auto industries of Germany and Japan are heavily unionized, those two nations have absolutely crushed the U.S. auto industry in markets around the world in recent decades. And they've consistently beaten Detroit on its own turf, as well.

In fact, the only reason the U.S. even still has a domestic auto industry at all these days is that Japan Inc. deliberately pulled its punches with "voluntary export restraints" in the 1980s. The latter was a shrewd move by Tokyo to head off moves by the U.S. to raise trade barriers.

Many Conservatives and "free-market" advocates love to scapegoat unions as the cause for Detroit's decline. But as usual, the GOP's simplistic analysis has little to do with the real world.

The fact is, if unions are so bad, then why do the auto industries of Germany and Japan continue to go from strength to strength in conquering world markets? I've done quite a bit of world travel myself and I've seen a number of nations where American cars are a very rare sight on the roads these days. But I have yet to see a country where the roads aren't filled with Volkswagens, BMWs and Toyotas. (It's true that Japan has struggled in China, but that is for political reasons, not competitive reasons).

Although no "free market" U.S. economist would ever admit this, it's clear that unions have actually helped increase the competitiveness of the Japanese and German auto industries.

Read more »

Railroading right-to-work

By Mustang Bobby

Laura Conaway at The Maddow Blog has a good summary of the rush by the Michigan legislature to pass right-to-work in the state where the modern labor movement was born:

Right to Work legislation has moved through so quickly that one Republican lawmaker voted against it because, he said, "We literally weren't given the legislation to read until minutes before voting." From experience with Right to Work in other states, conservatives and liberals agree that the rule is catastrophic for unions, with significant cuts in membership, and lower wages and benefits.

What's all the more interesting is that up until about twenty minutes ago, Gov. Rick Snyder had no interest in passing right-to-work and he was bragging about how well the state was doing in terms of the economic recovery (i.e., GM and Chrysler's rebound). Now all of a sudden the economy is on the edge of going under unless this law passes.

If, as the Republicans are always telling us, the labor union movement is dying and has no power left to wield, why do they suddenly need this kind of legislation in the first place?

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

On the Chicago teachers strike

By Mustang Bobby

I was going to write a long rant in support of the teachers on strike in Chicago, but Charlie Pierce beat me to it and nobody does rants like him:

I am not flexible about this. If you want to look tough at the expense of public-school teachers, you are a snob or a coward, or perhaps both. Every member of this MSNBC panel that Digby found, including all the liberals and all the Democrats thereon, can bite me, seriously. If I have to read one more smug, Ivy League writer from Slate talking, as the big strike goes on, about public-school teachers as though they were unruly hired help, I may hit someone with a fish. Let Matt Yglesias do 20 percent more work for four percent less pay and see how he likes it. The idea that, say, "Chuck" Lane cares more about "the kids" than do the people walking the picket lines in Chicago is damned near close to obscene.

I couldn't agree more.

To any of you out there who think that teachers have it "easy," that they only work when school is in session, and wow, it must be nice to have all that time off (I get that too, even though my job with the district is full time and summer is the busiest time), I issue the following challenge: go to your neighborhood public school and shadow a teacher for a week. See what they go through, see what they have to do to be ready to put on classes, get ready for the next one, grade papers, go to all the meetings, attend all the after-school and weekend events like football, basketball, and baseball games, drama productions, deal with the parents, work with individual kids before or after class, try to keep up with the professional development requirements, duck the occasional violent outburst, and then listen to some politician or pundit carry on about how public sector union employees are lazy and want it all. Yeah, you'd be walking a picket line, too, if you had the chance.

Oh, look, I ranted anyway. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Bad teachers: The Republican politics of vilification

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

Republicans like to call themselves patriots, but they're the party of discord and division, among other things vilifying entire regions, entire states, entire cities. (E pluribus unum is their anti-motto.)

In '88, it was Massachusetts, whence hailed Michael Dukakis and, worse, liberalism. In '08, it was the coasts, home to Sarah Palin's detested elites, in contrast to the all-American heartland of her fantasies.

This year, it's Chicago, Obama's degraded hometown, and Romney-surrogate Republicans are going all-out trying to connect the president to its supposed political and union thuggery.

You know, to political bosses like Rahm Emanuel, his ex-chief of staff, and to public-school teachers behaving like the Khmer Rouge.

Except, of course, that they're not. The Chicago Teachers Union went on strike not because it's made up of a bunch of thugs, or a bunch of layabouts being manipulated by a bunch of thugs, but because it wants fair pay, reasonable working conditions, and the best educational environment for students -- all perfectly reasonable demands that are being blocked by the city, led by Emanuel.

I'll let others debate the details, but here's where Republicans are contradicting themselves:

They vilify Chicago because of people like Emanuel, but here they're siding with Emanuel, even if they won't admit it, against the teachers. So what is it? Do they like Big Bad Chicago or not?

It hardly matters. Consistency is not their aim, just cheap political points. Besides, it's not Chicago they loathe, it's "Chicago," the nightmare they concoct in their propaganda.

And now, of course, they're trying desperately to connect Obama to the teachers, led by Mitt himself:

Obama has not taken sides in the standoff between Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the president's former chief of staff, and the city’s teachers union.

But Romney, who routinely slams teachers unions as an obstacle to education reform, is trying to break that silence by accusing Obama of cozying up too close to labor in general.

"President Obama has chosen his side in this fight, sending his vice president last year to assure the nation's largest teachers union that 'you should have no doubt about my affection for you and the president’s commitment to you,'" Romney said in a statement. "I choose to side with the parents and students depending on public schools to give them the skills to succeed, and my plan for education reform will do exactly that."

Again, Romney lies. Obama may have affection for teachers -- who doesn't? oh, right, Romney and the Republicans -- but that doesn't mean he necessarily supports this strike action.

Furthermore, he and his party do not support public education in any meaningful way. Rather, they support bleeding the public-school system to benefit private education that itself benefits the select few, and mostly the rich, leaving everyone else behind, American public schools in ruins, teachers underpaid, infrastructure collapsing, education next to impossible.

This is not to say the strike isn't bad news for Obama and that Romney won't be able to, and make every effort to, take advantage of it.

But here again there is that contradiction. The president's own education policies suggest that he is indeed in line with Emanuel. And so once again Romney is trying to have it both ways, vilifying both Chicago and the teachers union and then both Obama and the teachers union. Obviously, he's hoping something sticks, but it's the usual nonsense of someone who prefers the politics of vilification to the politics of principle, and whose entire campaign is based on contradiction and dishonesty.

My Challenge to Rush Limbaugh: Why don't you insult a union worker to his face?

By Marc McDonald

Just as he despises women and minorities, Rush Limbaugh really has it in for labor unions. He is constantly bashing them (as Media Matters and other watchdog sites have noted over the years). Like most Republicans, Limbaugh is convinced that union workers are lazy, pampered, overpaid and leeches on society. He has even called union members "thugs" and questioned their patriotism.

I find it really rich that Limbaugh would consider union workers pampered and overpaid. This, coming from a mega-millionaire whose idea of "work" is to sit on his fat ass in his air-conditioned studio, spewing lies into a microphone for a few hours a day. No wonder Limbaugh pulls down hundreds of millions of dollars from anti-union corporate America.

Memo to Limbaugh: you don't have a f*cking clue as to what real work is. I'm talking about the sort of physically demanding work done every day by millions of ordinary blue collar union workers across America.

Maybe if Limbaugh had ever actually done any real physical work in his life, he wouldn't have the bloated physique of Jabba the Hutt.

I myself know a thing or two about physical labor, having worked in grueling blue collar jobs much of my life, often for little pay and crappy benefits. I once had a job leveling foundations, where I had to crawl underneath houses, lugging heavy equipment. I don't which was worse: the stifling heat, the claustrophobic conditions---or the snake that once slithered over my face while I was lying on my back underneath a house.

In later years, I worked on factory assembly lines -- but the work wasn't much easier. I once worked at a factory gate assembly job, where the razor-sharp gate components often sliced my fingers. At the end of a shift, my uniform was often so blood-splattered that anyone who saw me likely assumed I worked as a butcher.

Of course, I'm hardly alone in my experiences as a blue collar worker. Tens of millions of us toil away every day and we find that it's increasingly difficult to earn a living, no matter how hard we work.

There's only one way to know what it's like to struggle as a working-class person these days -- and that's to live the life first-hand. I suspect that people like Limbaugh (who came from a wealthy background) thinks he understands what it's like to be struggling and working-class in America. And if that's the case, he's even more delusional that his radio ramblings would indicate.

It really galls me when I hear this fat piece of sh*t Limbaugh spew out his anti-worker, anti-union diatribes. Limbaugh wouldn't know real work if it bit him on the ass. For that matter, people in Limbaugh's elite social circles never have any real face-to-face contact with ordinary working Americans. (It's laughable that Limbaugh claims to be a fan of Walmart -- does anyone really think he shops there?)

Which brings me to my challenge for Limbaugh.

Limbaugh: I challenge you to go to any factory in any mean, down-on-its-luck Rust Belt city. I challenge you to walk up to the assembly line and tell the union workers to their face that they're pampered, overpaid and that they're "thugs" and not patriotic.

Oh, and be sure to bring along a lot of OxyContin -- because when you insult these union workers, you're going to be in a lot of pain after they beat the sh*t out of you.

Of course, being the chickensh*t coward that you are, I'm sure that you'll never take me up on this challenge.

Instead, you'll continue to sit in one of your lavish mega-million-dollar mansions, smoking your fancy $200 cigars and drinking your $1,000 bottles of fine French wine. You'll continue to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars for spewing your lies into a microphone and attacking ordinary people who do real work for a living.

Enjoy your lavish lifestyle while you can, Limbaugh. Someday it's all going to come crashing down on your head. History shows what happens in nations where millions of people grow increasingly hungry and desperate, while a pampered leech class rakes in obscene amounts of money, while presiding over (and controlling) a corrupt and out-of-touch political system. Just ask Marie Antoinette.

You can ignore my challenge, Limbaugh. But you're not going to be able to ignore the angry cries of the hungry mob when it comes crashing through your front gate some day.

(Cross-posted at BeggarsCanBeChoosers.)

Mitt Romney flips and flops on Ohio's anti-union law

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(UPDATE: Romney clarified his position on Wednesday. He's "110 percent" anti-union. "I fully support Gov. Kasich's Question 2 in Ohio," he said. "I'm sorry if I created any confusion there." Sure, except that his refusal to be clear was clearly intentional. He likely only clarified his position because he was called out on it. He's going against the majority of Ohioans on this, but pandering to the right-wing GOP base -- and to the party's new mainstream -- would appear to be more important.)

Mitt Romney appeared to depart from the Republican race to the bottom yesterday by refusing to endorse Ohio Gov. John Kasich's law (SB 5) that denies collective bargaining rights to unionized public sector workers. (The law will be put to a state-wide vote in two weeks, and polls show a solid majority (57% according to a poll released yesterday) of Ohioans favoring repeal.) The thing is, Romney endorsed the law back in June. This, of course, is typical Romney. He says one thing when he wants to appeal to the right, another when he wants to appeal to public opinion. As Steve Benen writes:

Think about what transpired: the Republican presidential frontrunner visited with a Republican phone bank to offer support for the Republican campaign to curtail collective bargaining rights. But Romney refuses to take a position on the issue? He's "supportive" of their efforts, but he won't say whether or not he agrees with their efforts? 

Seriously?

Putting aside party and ideology, it's hard to shake the realization that Mitt Romney lacks a certain political courage. He's so desperate to calculate how every decision might affect his ambitions that he struggles to remember what he believes, and either ends up cowardly ducking issues or taking both sides of nearly every fight. It can be hard to watch, and even harder to respect.

Basically, Romney just says whatever he thinks he needs to say to maximize his political appeal, and that means flipping and flopping all over the place. Unlike Perry and Bachmann, he may not always be racing to the bottom in terms of ideology (it's hard to know what he really thinks about SB 5), but he's certainly leading the way, well ahead of Newt Gingrich, in terms of shameless pandering and self-promotional opportunism. This is one of the major reasons why so many Republicans are suspicious of him, or outright loathe him, and why even as the frontrunner with divided and often embarrassing conservative opposition he can barely crack 25% percent support in polls. He's just so transparent, and it's just so obvious what he's up to.

What else is new?

It all comes down to this, America: Don't be cruel.

Guest post by Ramona

Ed. note: I'd like to welcome a new guest blogger to The Reaction -- Ramona of Ramona's Voices, an excellent blog that I recommend highly. I first came across Ramona while I was doing the blog round-up at Crooks and Liars a while back and since then I've become a big fan. There's just something about her. She's serious but without pretension, providing perceptive commentary with both depth and levity. In addition to the post below, check out recent posts on Erin Burnett and Occupy Wall Street and on the religious test in American politics, as well as her regular "Friday Follies" feature, a round-up of the week that was. Go read her blog and look forward to more guest posts from Ramona down the road. But let's start with this one. It is, if I may say so, outstanding. -- MJWS

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Ramona is a freelance writer based in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Her blog, "Ramona's Voices," is liberal-leaning, with such a small amount of navel-gazing you'll hardly even notice. She is also on the masthead at dagblog, a gathering place for dissidents and reprobates and other friendly people.

Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times, September 14, 2011:

WASHINGTON -- Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.

And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1997.

Economists pointed to a telling statistic: It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard.

''This is truly a lost decade,'' Mr. Katz said. ''We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we're looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.''

The bureau's findings were worse than many economists expected, and brought into sharp relief the toll the past decade -- including the painful declines of the financial crisis and recession -- had taken on Americans at the middle and lower parts of the income ladder. It is also fresh evidence that the disappointing economic recovery has done nothing for the country's poorest citizens.

The report said the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line last year, 15.1 percent, was the highest level since 1993. (The poverty line in 2010 for a family of four was $22,314.)

When all is said and done, if we can ever get beyond the grand-standing, the bloviating, the harumphing, and the chest-pumping, the awful truth is that millions and millions of American citizens are now among the chronically hurt because of the current no-fault-of-their-own economic crisis, exacerbated by the current we'll blame them anyway political climate.

Families are hurting. Our elders are hurting. Children are hurting. Future generations will be hurting. We've let yesterday slip by and tomorrow shows no great promise. The time to do something is now.

Everybody knows that something must be done, but what keeps the wheels from turning, from moving us forward, is an ongoing, time-wasting argument about how best to appear to be saving the country while saving face, saving precious personal skins, saving the privileged elite.

There is no point wasting time talking about past history -- a couple of centuries worth of the same mistakes, the same indulgences at the top, the same misery at the bottom -- when nobody is in the mood to learn from it.

We have now become one of those countries known throughout the world for deliberate cruelty to its own citizens -- the kind of despised country whose citizens we ourselves would have taken pity on not so long ago.

It's cruel to pretend that, while it may be true that unprecedented numbers of America's children have experienced hunger or homelessness, or a desperate, unrequited need for health care, no single sweet child of ours is affected. We're masters at shutting our eyes to real, live, scared, and suffering kids.

It's cruel to play games with needed unemployment benefits by pretending they're one more example of undeserved governmental handouts to the lazy or misbehaving.

It's cruel to humiliate the jobless even more by pretending that anyone without a job isn't looking hard enough.

It's cruel to pretend that outsourcing and off-shoring have nothing to do with the loss of millions of life-sustaining jobs.

It's cruel to pretend that workers don't need or deserve representation when the need is so much greater now.

It's cruel for the richest country in the world to give private insurance companies the power to deny anyone health care and pretend that people aren't dying because of it.

It's cruel to allow profiteers to attempt to kill off one major historic source of national pride -- public education for every child without regard to race, creed, or income level -- and pretend that a) the public schools did it to themselves, and b) no child is being left behind because of our negligence.

It's cruel to divert our national treasure, including and especially our young men and women, to foreign wars that don't concern us or affect us nearly as much as our own at-home social and economic wars.
But the cruelest reminder is that we almost had it in our grasp -- a fair and prosperous country we could be proud of -- and we let it slip away.

There's no pretending it didn't happen. There are enough of us still around who remember a different country, where it looked as if the American Dream would actually become a major possibility. It was taken away from us, not by happenstance but by the mean and deliberate actions of politicians and power brokers.

You can say it a million different ways, but what it comes down to is cruelty by a thousand cuts. There was a time when we all would have fought against that sort of thing.

I'll say it again: This is some strange new century...

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

Occupation distraction: The incoherence of the Occupy Wall Street movement

Guest post by Infidel753

Infidel753 was born in New York state, grew up in California and now lives in Oregon. His area of academic specialization was the Middle East. He is a life-long atheist and long-time liberal with a special interest in social issues and technology.

(Ed. note: This is Infidel's second guest post for us. You can find his first, on the ignorant fundamentalism of the Republican Party, here. -- MJWS)

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I'm increasingly worried that the Occupy Whatever movement could do the progressive cause in this country some real harm. It's sucking up attention and enthusiasm which, especially right now, are needed elsewhere.

If you haven't already, please read the critiques I linked to in the last link round-up over at my place, by Joseph Cannon and Feminisnt. The problem with the Occupy movement is that (a) it does not have specific, clearly-articulated goals, and (b) there is no sense of how, exactly, the actions it is taking are going to achieve whatever the goal is.

The movement claims inspiration from Tahrir Square. But Tahrir Square had a clear goal -- the end of the Mubarak regime. And it succeeded because it was a mass movement -- the protests drew hundreds of thousands of participants, not just thousands. When the Occupy movement can get 300,000 mainstream Americans together in one protest, in one place, and they stay there for weeks or months, it may accomplish something, but right now it seems very far from that point.

Others have drawn inspiration from the Arab Spring. Earlier this year, anti-austerity demonstrations in Portugal and Britain drew hundreds of thousands of participants. Yet notice that even they have not been able to force their governments to change course, partly because these were one-day events, big but quickly over. Also, democratic governments are less brittle than dictatorships.

Today, the people of Greece are launching their own campaign against the austerity policies which their craven rulers are forcing on them at the behest of the EU -- a campaign of mass strikes and a tax revolt. They've got a chance if participation is high enough -- hundreds of thousands of working people, not just thousands of people from the fringe.

Some have made an analogy with the Teabaggers, hoping that the Occupiers can become a similar force for the left. But insofar as the Teabaggers have accomplished anything, they did it by focusing on electoral politics -- supporting candidates and getting them into office. Amorphous ranting against "the system" has certainly been there, but that's not what got things done.

How many of the Occupiers voted in 2010 -- when a collapse of turn-out enabled the Republicans to take the House and create the paralysis they decry? How many will vote next year?

So far I see nothing that suggests the Occupy movement has the potential to achieve any concrete results whatsoever (well, there's one small exception, but I'll get to that in a moment).

Right now, we do have an opportunity to achieve something real. With his American Jobs Act (AJA), Obama has finally broken away from the Republican navel-gazing over the deficit that has consumed Washington for months, and made a serious proposal to deal with the greatest concern of mainstream Americans -- unemployment. Economists agree that the plan will stave off another recession at least. As Booman Tribune points out, Obama is finally doing what his critics on the left say they want -- drawing a line in the sand and showing willingness to fight for what the country needs. The Republicans insist the plan is DOA, but mass public pressure has swayed legislative outcomes before -- never forget how, in 2007, a mass outpouring of public fury (which crashed the Senate's telephone system) stopped an illegal-alien amnesty which had bipartisan support and was considered a done deal. Who's to say that a similar mass display of support now couldn't scare enough Congressional swing votes to get the AJA through?

Yet when I look around the liberal blogs today, I'm seeing very little being posted about the AJA, and a lot being posted about the Occupiers. The energy and enthusiasm which, properly focused, might actually get something done, is being diverted into what looks like an exercise in plowing the sea.

As I mentioned, I do see one small sign of hope about the Occupy movement. This is the fact that it's attracting some significant support from unions. Unions are pragmatic and not ideological; they have clear goals and know what works and what doesn't work to achieve those goals, and they're very engaged with electoral politics and the Democratic party. And -- forgive my bluntness -- their decision-makers are people older and more experienced than those who seem to predominate among the Occupiers.

If the union connection can help the Occupy movement become coherent -- help it develop specific practical goals and grow into a large-scale, sustained movement with a plan for achieving those goals -- then it may actually get something done. (And by "large-scale" I mean what I said about Tahrir Square above. 500 people in each of 15 cities doesn't mean anything.) A sign of this would be if the movement starts pushing for action on the AJA.

(Cross-posted at Infidel753.)

Jimmy Hoffa fires up crowd with call for peaceful political change, conservatives freak out

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Pants wet with righteous outrage, conservatives have been freaking out (see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here -- it's all over the right-wing blogosphere) over Teamsters head Jimmy Hoffa Jr.'s aggressive remarks in Michigan yesterday, warming up the crowd for President Obama:

President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.

A call to violence! A call for blood to flow in the streets!

Conservatives are right to be angry. Wouldn't we be angry if it were the other way 'round. Weren't we angry over Palin's irresponsible "in the crosshairs" rhetoric, particularly after the Giffords shooting?

Yeah, well.

The thing is, these conservatives, piling on and not bothering to look into what Hoffa actually said, are missing something: context.

As Media Matters notes, Fox News (surprise, surprise) edited Hoffa's speech to make it appear he was calling for violence. Specifically, they edited out the context. Hoffa wasn't talking about a violent uprising, he was talking about voting, about winning at the polls. Here's what he actually said:

President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. And President Obama, we want one thing: jobs, jobs, jobs... That's what we're going to tell him... When he sees what we're doing here, he will be inspired. But he needs help. And you know what, everybody here's got a vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong.

(I watched the clip. And I have transcribed his speech verbatim. Funny how many in the media can't do that, or can't be bothered to, even those supposedly without a partisan agenda.)

The first quote above is from RealClearPolitics. It conveniently omits the point about voting (and about jobs). And this is what other conservatives are doing as well, from Fox News on down.

But it's not just the right-wing media. Consider this headline from ABC News: "Hoffa On Tea Party: 'Let's Take These Sons Of Bitches Out!'" No, that's only part of what he said, and the headline misses the point about voting as well. The post includes part of the part about voting, but the focus of the post is clear, and highly misleading.

Look, it can certainly be argued that Hoffa said some inappropriate things -- or rather that some of what he said he said in an inappropriate way using inappropriate rhetoric. I'm not sure he needed to be so militaristic, that he needed to refer to the political struggle with the Tea Party and with the right generally so aggressively, and that he needed to say those sons of bitches needed to be taken out. Sure, he was fired up, but come on, even if the other side uses such language, we can show a bit more restraint, can we not?

Well, you know what? What's wrong with being fired up? Given what's happening to the economy (and not because of Obama but because of the corporatocracy that runs America), what's happening to workers and to families just trying to make ends meet, what's happening with a political system that empowers wealth and dismisses the concerns of the vast majority of the population, isn't it right to be angry, to want to fight back? Isn't that what Hoffa, however inelegantly, was calling for, for a more engaged struggle to take the country back from the plutocrats who dominate both parties, the media, and pretty much every segment of society?

And, no, he wasn't irresponsibly calling for bloodthirsty violence, for literal warfare, but responsibly calling on people to use their constitutional right to vote to achieve meaningful change at the ballot box.

Lest we forget, isn't that what democracy is supposed to be all about?

IKEA sucks

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I used to shop there, I admit, back in my grad school days. But at some point you come to realize that it's all crap. And that's hardly the worst of it, at least in Danville, Virginia:

[T]hree years after the massive facility opened here, excitement has waned. Ikea is the target of racial discrimination complaints, a heated union-organizing battle and turnover from disgruntled employees.

Workers complain of eliminated raises, a frenzied pace and mandatory overtime. Several said it's common to find out on Friday evening that they'll have to pull a weekend shift, with disciplinary action for those who can't or don't show up.

Lovely.

On a related note, I saw Made in Dagenham the other night, the true story (with the characters fictionalized for the sake of the movie) of women machinists at Ford's Dagenham plant in England going on strike in 1968 over being reclassified as "unskilled" and being paid significantly less than men. It wasn't just about their appallingly poor treatment at Ford, though, it was about the fight for equal pay generally, and it was a remarkable milestone in the history of labour.

The movie itself is rather trite and formulaic, both plot and characters, but it's really enjoyable, with a fantastic performance by Sally Hawkins as the shy, unassuming heroine who leads her sisters not just against Ford but against the male-dominated union establishment. (I hated Black Swan and Natalie Portman's showy, largely one-note performance. Either the wonderful Hawkins (see Happy-Go-Lucky for more wonder) or Winter's Bone's Jennifer Lawrence should have won the Best Actress Oscar.)

In many ways, we have come a long way since 1968. Equal pay across the board is still an unrealized ideal, but at least there is less discrimination in the workforce, against women or otherwise. But what's going on at IKEA, not to mention at Wal-Mart and other companies big and small, shows that there's still an awfully long way to go.

Some things are still worth fighting for.

In "defense" of the Koch Brothers

By Carl

What's really interesting about this piece by United Steelworkers President Jon Geenen is how it's being spun by the low-normals of the right wing as a defense of the Koch brothers. It's not. It's a devastating attack on them tempered only by the warning that a boycott against them would shoot union members in the foot.

The good from Wisconsin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Republican assault on Wisconsin's public-sector unions is by no means a good thing, but there is actually some very positive news to report:

First, Republicans may very well have committed political suicide.

Second, the public is strongly behind the unions (and organized labor generally), and supportive of the right to bargain collectively, and against Gov. Walker and the Republicans.

Third, with a recall effort underway, a new poll shows solid majorities of voters against two Republican state senators, and the results of the poll, conducted before last night's vote, may actually understate the opposition.

Fourth, liberal-progressive groups are reporting huge fundraising boosts, particularly since last night's vote.

Fifth, according to Politico, "AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is anointing [Gov. Walker] the 'Mobilizer of the Year' for galvanizing union members and supporters into action," a development that bodes well for the elections next year, both for Obama and for Democrats across the country, including in labor-heavy rust belt states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, West Virginia, and, of course, Wisconsin.

Sixth, Republicans may have broken the law in passing the bill, meaning legal challenges and more trouble for those troubled Republicans.

Remember what I said about political suicide?

Wisconsin Republicans vote to take collective bargaining rights away from public-sector unions

By Michael J.W. Stickings

How did they do it? Well, by cheating, in a way. Or perhaps by committing political suicide. I'll let Ezra Klein explain:

Here's what just happened in Wisconsin: The rules of the state's Senate require a quorum for any measures that spend money. That's how the absence of the Senate's Democrats could stymie Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget law -- it spent money, and thus it needed a quorum.

But in a surprise move earlier today, Wisconsin's Senate Republicans rewrote the bill and left out all the parts that spent money. Then they quickly convened and passed the new law, which included the provisions stripping most public-employee unions of their collective bargaining rights but excluding everything in the law that spent money.

What happens next? Expect the protests over the next few days to be ferocious. But unless a judge rules the move illegal -- and I don't know how to judge the likelihood of that -- Walker's proposed law will go forward. The question is whether Walker and the Republicans who voted for it will do the same.

Polls in Wisconsin clearly showed that Republicans had failed to persuade the public of their cause. Walker's numbers dropped, while Democrats and unions found themselves suddenly flush with volunteers, money and favorable media coverage. And they plan to take advantage of it: Eight Wisconsin Republicans have served for long enough to be vulnerable to a recall election next year, and Democrats have already begun gathering signatures. Now their efforts will accelerate.

As indeed they should. But will Democrats succeed?

I really do think Republicans overreached here. They thought it would be easy to take down the public-sector unions, to deprive them of their very essence (the right to bargain collectively on behalf of their members, who on their own would never have such strength and who, as we know from pre-union days, would be abused in one way or another by their employers) -- perhaps just to stick it to them, perhaps as an opening shot against organized labor generally, perhaps to weaken the Democratic Party. But the grand right-wing conspiracy was exposed, backed by the Koch brothers and pushed by Republican business and other anti-government interests, and also by a popular governor who apparently without knowing it put his political career on the line.

To their credit, the people of Wisconsin rallied in support not just of their public-sector unions but of labor unions, and labor, generally. Republican legislators look bad, Walker himself looks especially bad, and all over the country Republicans who expressed their support for this assault and who are linked to the Koch brothers are implicated in what has become a deeply unpopular move.

The Republicans may have acted within the law by removing the money parts from what was a budget bill -- as if that makes any sense -- but their motives are clear and I suspect the people of Wisconsin will hold them accountable.

When those Democrats fled the state to prevent the state Senate from having a quorum, who knew where all this would lead? As people came to understand what the issue was all about, and just what these Democrats opposed, it didn't take long for the Republicans, both in Wisconsin and elsewhere, to expose themselves for what they are, which is the enemy of working people everywhere, the party of the plutocrats, the party of the Koch brothers.

Republicans traditionally hype the supposed "culture wars" to divert the attention of the non-wealthy away from economic issues and their pro-business, plutocratic ways, scaring low-information voters into their corner, whether it's civil rights or terrorism or any other "threat" to America. They're still doing that -- just look at what IRA-backer Peter King is doing -- and they've been successful doing it, but this time they seem to have awakened a self-awareness in the electorate that will not easily be denied.

Why we need labor unions

By R.K. Barry

I have supported labour unions for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a union household. My father was a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. I put myself through school in the late '70s and early '80s by working in unionized grocery store chains as a member of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

I remember at the time having discussions with people who didn't like unions. They either didn't think they were necessary or didn't think they were a positive force in the country. I could never understand this kind of logic, especially as it frequently came from working-class people.

Generally, I assumed that they didn't understand the history of the labour movement and how they benefitted even if they were not themselves a member of a union, how working conditions and compensation improved for everyone because of unions and how easy it would be for gains to be lost.

The bottom line for me has always been that unions are about respect for the employee, the ability to negotiate fair compensation certainly, but also a modicum of protection should relations with an employer sour for whatever reason. And to be clear, a problem could be, for example, the fact that you've been around too long and make too much money and they want to replace you with someone younger and cheaper.

Anyone who has ever had a job knows that things can go awry with one's supervisor or the organization with which one is employed. It's human nature in general terms, but it's also human nature in a highly competitive market economy. If you have ever worked in a union shop and a conflict arises with management -- and conflicts always arise -- you know that there are mechanisms to deal with the problem and that you have some protection from summary dismissal or other kinds of action contrary to your interests.

What I recall vividly about working in a unionized shop is that the workers feel better about themselves, have more self-respect and pride because they know that they are backed by a collective agreement that puts in place mechanisms to mediate problems and negotiate on their behalf.

It's not even that I think employers necessarily want to be bastards, but that our economic system is based on competition. The exigencies of competition can mean that employees are chewed up if they stand alone. Too many things can go wrong in a workplace for an employee -- too many things that are patently unfair -- to fail to see the need for collective bargaining.

It's been that simple for me for a long time. That the employer may not see it that way is pretty clear. But so what? Fair is fair, and if the only way to guarantee a degree of justice on the job is to level the playing field somewhat, what could be more American?

So it is not surprising to me that a strong majority of Americans, according to a recent poll, oppose depriving public sector employees of collective bargaining rights. Specifically, a New York Times/CBS poll indicated that 60 percent of Americans oppose taking away even "some" of public employees' collective bargaining rights.

Anyone who has ever had a job understands that securing a decent living frequently requires having the political and economic power to fight for your rights. Perhaps people are developing a new understanding, especially in lean economic times where fairness is one of the first things to go, that we hang together or we hang separately (metaphorically speaking).

James Gray Pope, who teaches constitutional and labor law at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, recently wrote: 

The idea that anybody who works hard should enjoy the American Dream harks back to the 1950s and 1960s, when unions were strong enough not only to win decent wages and benefits for their own members (who made up more than 30 percent of the private workforce, as opposed to 7 percent today), but also to induce many non-union employers to pay similar wages to avoid unionization. 

Those were the days of what economists call "The Great Convergence," when the incomes of rich and poor were relatively close, and all Americans shared to some extent in our country’s prosperity. 

As we know, those days ended and union membership declined precipitously, as did the gap between the very rich and the rest of us. As Professor Pope puts it: 

Unfortunately for American workers, corporate employers launched a relentless campaign against unions and union standards. In 1981, when President Ronald Reagan fired hundreds of air traffic controllers for refusing to accept his terms and going on strike, employers took it as a green light to break unions. They discovered that they could instill fear and discourage organizing by firing workers for joining unions and threatening to close facilities if workers voted union. 

Public-sector unions are one of the last strongholds of the union movement in America so, clearly, we should not be surprised that conservatives everywhere, who seem hell-bent on doing the bidding of corporate power, either want to weaken them dramatically or destroy them outright. 

Our economic system, for better or worse, is a competitive system. At the end of the day, it's better for the system taken as a whole if both management and labour have enough power to make the relationship fair. 

As I have written elsewhere, the concentration of wealth and power in America is now such that it should be inconceivable that we would want to dismantle one of the few oppositional forces that has in our history been able to provide a counterweight to that wealth and power. 

It seems that a lot more Americans are now understanding this. Perhaps when this current skirmish is over, we will have Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to thank for helping more people understand. 

The high numbers in support of collective bargaining for public-sector unions suggests to me that a lot of people understand that confronting the power of an employer as an individual is difficult at best and usually impossible. 

Sure, a lot of people may look at public-sector contracts and resent the fact that they themselves are not in such a strong position and side with conservatives. It seems that a lot more of us look at those public-sector contracts and ask why more of us can't have access to greater security in our working life and a better standard of living.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Truth in Comics

By Creature


If it's Sunday, it's Truth in Comics.

Jim DeMint thinks unions are the most powerful political group in the country. Really?

By R.K. Barry

(Let's make DeMint our Craziest Republican of the Day! -- MJWS)

Though I am quite used to Republican politicians saying spectacularly stupid things, there is the occasional comment that strikes me as particularly dim. In this case, it was something recently said by South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint in reference to attempts to bust public-sector unions in Wisconsin. He stated the following: 

The unions are the most powerful political group in the country today... Their power in politics is unprecedented. And without the unions, the Democrat Party fades away. The president is completely dependent for his reelection on the unions, and so are the Democrats. 

It's hard to know which part of this statement is more absurd, that unions are the most powerful political group in the country today or that the Democratic Party would fade away without them.

In a post-Citizens United world where corporate interests can throw piles of money at election campaigns, does anyone think that unions are actually the most powerful player on the partisan stage. Seriously?

Maybe DeMint is just full of shit and he knows it. Or maybe, like a lot of people on the right, he reasons that corporations are just like individuals expressing legitimate and uncoordinated support for candidates. They do not, on this view, share a common interest and should not be considered a political group at all. It's only unions, apparently, whose actions can be classed as organized.

That's the only way his comment can make sense to me. It's bullshit, of course, but not an uncommon view amongst conservatives.

They are an entertaining bunch. 

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Union-busting and the Koch brothers' plans for our future

By R.K. Barry

As we consider attempts by Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin to bust public sector unions, not to mention New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's constant rants against these unions in his own state, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that there is a plan afoot – a concerted effort by Republican politicians to do something that they always wanted to do but may not have previously seen a clear path to accomplish.

And, although former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been widely credited with saying that one should never let a good crisis go to waste, it seems his best students have been Republican governors.

Yes, the economy went to rat shit because of the malfeasance of Wall Street types, leaving everyone feeling vulnerable to personal economic collapse, which, in turn, has given Republican politicians the excuse they have longed for to get rid of public sector unions.

It's pretty simple. Point to people who have bargained their salaries and working conditions in good faith, have come to agreement with their employers as part of a legitimate negotiating process, and make them a target for others who are in precarious employment situations, or perhaps unemployed.

Feed on the worst aspects of human nature, which is to say that if some people are not doing well, others, with whom they may generally occupy the same economic class, should not be doing well either. Make it sound like everyone in a public sector union is driving a luxury car and vacationing in the Riviera. Divide working people so they cannot be a threat to the power of wealth and privilege in American. Make then forget who got us into this mess in the first place and stop them from asking annoying questions. Brilliant.

What is not being talked about enough, I believe, is that the assault on public sector unions is an assault on the idea that government is an effective force for good in our society. But, in this case, it's a two-for-one sale. Attacking public sector unions is an attack on the idea of an expanded role of government but also on the idea of unions: two forces that have always been a major impediment to massive private wealth in the United States doing whatever it chooses to do (while admittedly playing that role imperfectly).

Two things that wealth and privilege hate in America: government regulating their activities and working people having their own independent base of power. Take away collective bargaining for public sector unions and you clear the way for making government smaller and destroy yet another potential oppositional force. 

The rhetoric of someone like Governor Christie is priceless. In his world, gold-plated public sector contracts are paid for by working people who don't happen to be on the gravy train. This creates the potential of working people at each other’s throats with the goal of reducing the size of government and its ability to regulate the economy while destroying unions all at the same time. Who would have thought that an economic crisis could be so useful for the power elite?

How any working people can believe that smaller government and fewer effective unions will mean that they will have more freedom and autonomy to do the things they want to do is beyond me.

Whether one wants to go back and look at John Kenneth Gailbraith's theory of countervailing power or some variant of Robert Dahl's theory of pluralism, whatever else their defects, it's pretty obvious that there is real and concentrated economic power in America and those who hope to have real freedom and autonomy had better consider how they will come together, and organize, to challenge that power. Government at times can be helpful, unions as well, as can many different kinds of social movements.

Working people who fail to organize in their own interests or fail to support others who do will wonder how it is that their piece of the pie got so small.

Reduce the size and effectiveness of government, destroy the right of people to bargain collectively, to organize politically, and you will have ceded the entire playing field to the same Wall Street hacks and their cheerleaders in the Republican Party who have grown pretty comfortable with the growing inequalities of wealth in America.

The genius of the right is that they have always been able to find ways to get working people to fight amongst themselves.

Tea Partiers may think that reducing the size of government and the power of public sector unions will lead to a utopia where everyone, even the least among us, is free to realize his or her own version of the American Dream.

The Koch brothers sincerely thank you for being so naive.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Republicans, organized labor, and political suicide

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Go ahead, Republicans, in Ohio and elsewhere, keep on attacking public-sector unions and proposing/passing legislation to weaken collective bargaining and workers' rights generally.

We'll win.

Especially when your anti-union efforts go after police officers and firefighters. They're organized, too, you know.

Bring. It. On.

Mayor Mike blows it

By Carl 

This op-ed, to no great surprise, is a bundle of elitist hackery that speaks volumes about how Mayor Michael Bloomberg has handled New York City's finances through two budget crises.

It's not that he doesn't make some points (I'll get to those), but it's the overall tone of privilege, which is sort of funny coming from a billionaire, self-made or no.

To wit:

Across the country, taxpayers are providing pensions, benefits and job security protections for public workers that almost no one in the private sector enjoys. Taxpayers simply cannot afford to continue paying these costs, which are growing at rates far outpacing inflation. Yes, public sector workers need a secure retirement. And yes, taxpayers need top-quality police officers, teachers and firefighters. It’s the job of government to balance those competing needs. But for a variety of reasons, the scale has been increasingly tipping away from taxpayers.

Now, like I said, Mayor Mike has a point: There is an enormous burden on taxpayers to fund budget deficits. In New York City in particular, the budget by law has to be balanced (barring catastrophes) in order for the city to receive state funding. And the costs of pensions and health care are outstripping the rate of inflation, particularly at a time of near-zero inflation.

But... this article smacks of so much hypocrisy that I had no choice but to address it.

The argument you never hear, the argument that Mayor Mike ought to hear and then shut his piehole over, is this: Public-sector workers make MUCH LESS SALARY than their private sector counterparts. A clerk in a bank gets a 10-15% higher salary, plus vacation, plus paid sick time, and may even be eligible for a bonus each year.

Yes, that's right: a clerk at Goldman Sachs can make a bonus that brings his income significantly higher than the private sector premium already paid! The equivalent clerk at the city Department of Finance? Not so lucky.

So what makes people want to serve the public? It can't be the appreciation, a glance at the New York Post or FOX News will show any public servant just how appreciated they are. These outlets lie in wait for some poor soul who hasn't slept in three nights because his wife is due to deliver a baby to fall asleep on a park bench, even momentarily, so they can smear his face across front pages for millions.

Just ask an EMT who has to drive an ambulance down a crowded street to try to pick up a heart attack victim just how much appreciation he gets from motorists stuck behind his rig, lights flashing and EMTs hustling about. Why, the shouted "Hosannas" would make a stevedor blush!

It's not the salary or the awesome potential to make millions, because you know what? No one makes that kind of money in city government.

No, they do it because they get two guarantees: job security in tough economic times and the promise of a pension at the end of the road.

And even in New York City, thousands of civil servants have been laid off by the bushel and now there's talk of 6% of the teachers being axed, most from the poorest schools furthest behind grades... who will then be closed because they underachieve academically. Mayor Mike, with this article, demonstrates that even pensions are not above his vulgar rapacity.

It's a win-win for the billionaires that Bloomberg is kowtowing to! It's a lose-lose for the other nine million citizens who work their fingers to the bone, trying to make ends meet and give their kids some kind of leg up in life.

See, the dirtiest secret of them all is, we wouldn't be in this crisis if Bloomberg and his predecessors, particularly Rudy 9-11 Giuliani, hadn't given away the candy store to companies who even glanced at New Jersey and winked at the mayor. You want to understand why the city's finances are in the toilet? Companies like NASDAQ and Citicorp pay no taxes to New York City, of any consequence, based on sweetheart deals to retain their presences in our fair town.

The irony is, where the hell would they have gone? If you want to be taken seriously as a player, you have to have your offices in the biggest financial capital in the world (well, except that's now London, but I digress).

Even Lehman Brothers... LEHMAN BROTHERS, who couldn't make money in a market that practically printed it!... got tax incentives to stay here and build a garish headquarters in Times Square. And then went bankrupt.

But hey, Mr. Mayor, you go right on balancing the budget on the backs of the clerks and the firefighters and the teachers and the santitation workers and all the people who voted for you last time out, then hop your little jet to Bermuda to get away from the stench of burnt charcoal and chalk dust and uncollected trash... who needs you?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)