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JUNE 2009
EMPLOYED HIT HARDER THAN ANY TIME
SINCE THE DEPRESSION
ANTI-UNION FIAT HAS SORRY RECORD
MAY 2009
SEVERAL STATES OUTSOURCE FOOD
STAMP CALLS TO INDIA
RECESSIONS: THE PAY LOSS YOU CAN
HAVE FOREVER
BREAKTHROUGH: IT'S OKAY TO TALK
ABOUT WORKER OWNERSHIP
MEN EARN MORE THAN WOMEN EVEN
IN COMMON WOMEN JOBS
LESS THAN HALF OF UNEMPLOYED ARE
RECEIVING BENEFITS
APRIL 2009
THE IMPORTANCE OF UNIONS IN THE
LAST ELECTION
THE COST OF DISSIN' LABOR UNIONS
MARCH 2009
IBM WANTS TO OUTSOURCE WORKERS
AS WELL AS WORK
UTAH'S FOUR DAY WORK WEEK PROVES
POPULAR
CLINTON'S WELFARE PROGRAM BOMBING
IN RECESSION
FEBRUARY 2009
THE POOREST PLACE IN AMERICA
UNIONS: THE FOLKS WHO BROUGHT
YOU THE US AIRWAYS RESCUE
JANUARY 2008
CHANGE IN WAY UNEMPLOYMENT IS
COUNTED MAY UNDERSTATE PROBLEM
DECEMBER 2008
THREE REASONS FOR THE AUTO CRISIS
LEFT OUT OF THE BAILOUT: THE POOR
OCTOBER 2008
THE FALLACY OF THE 401(K)
Marie Cocco, Washington
Post - Despite the hype, the data on 401(k)s have never -- ever
-- shown that these accounts were creating a mass of workers
who would be able to retire with security, let alone luxury.
The 401(k)s didn't expand
the proportion of the work force with pension coverage, notwithstanding
claims that shifting to accounts that required workers to contribute
would make employers more willing to offer the benefit. Less
than half of workers have any type of pension coverage from their
current employer at all, according to the Center for Retirement
Research at Boston College.
For those who do have
retirement accounts, the bottom line has long been grim. In 2004,
the last year for which data are available, the median balance
in IRA and 401(k) retirement accounts was $35,000, according
to the Federal Reserve. For those nearest to retirement -- households
headed by someone between 55 and 64 -- the median balance in
2004 was $60,000. That's enough to generate about $400 a month
in retirement income, according to the research center. . .
More recently, even companies
with healthy, traditional pension systems have frozen those plans
(effectively abandoning their pledges to longtime workers) and
replaced them with 401(k)s. Why? "Shifting from a defined-benefit
plan to a 401(k) plan will reduce required employer contributions
from 7 to 8 percent of payrolls to the 3 percent employer match,"
Munnell and a team of researchers wrote in a 2006 paper.
This was never about empowering
workers to reap the rewards of financing their own retirement.
It was about reducing corporate costs.
AUGUST 2008
HOW WALL STREET WRECKED YOUR RETIREMENT
JULY 2008
NYC LABOR OFFICIAL SAYS UNIONS
HAVE TO HELP NON-UNION WORKERS
MOTHERS IN WORK FORCE DECLINING
Sharon Johnson, WeNews
- The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 60 percent
of married mothers are now in the work force, 4 percentage points
lower than in 1997. The rate of married mothers of infants who
work fell 6 percentage points to 53 percent. With mothers representing
about two-thirds of adult women those figures help explain why
the United States is one of only two industrialized countries--the
other is Japan--out of 23 where women's work force participation
rate fell between 1994 and 2006, according to data from the Paris-based
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Reversal
of Trend
From the 1950s through
the 1990s the percentage of U.S. women in the paid work force
steadily increased. But that trend has begun to reverse and today
3.3 million fewer women are working than would be if the trend
had continued.
While a spate of news
reports has explained the trend as women preferring to stay home
or "opting out," an array of women's policy groups
disagree. The real explanation, they contend, is a workplace
that fails women on some basic interlocking fronts: inflexible
scheduling requirements, job discrimination, lack of child care,
lack of parental leave, lack of sick leave.
Researchers for the San
Francisco-based Center for WorkLife Law found 13,000 cases of
discrimination that showed that mothers were 79 percent less
likely to be hired and 100 percent less likely to be promoted
because they are held to a higher standard than non-mothers in
their companies. . .
The United States, Swaziland,
Liberia, Lesotho and Papua New Guinea are the only countries
among 173 surveyed in 2007 by the Institute for Health and Social
Policy at Montreal's McGill University that don't guarantee paid
maternity leave to new mothers.
The Family Medical Leave
Act, which provides 12 weeks of job-protected leave to new parents
or adoptive parents or caregivers of elderly relatives, only
applies to firms with 50 workers or more, said Williams. "This
disproportionately affects women who earn low wages . . . or
work for small companies."
Then there's the cost
of child care, which ran between $4,000 and $20,000 a year per
child in 2001, according to a study from the Children's Defense
Fund in Washington. . .
WHAT DO WORKING-CLASS VOTERS WANT?
A FAIR DEAL
Steven Greenhouse, TPM
Cafe Workers of course recognize there is no magic wand to make
unfairness disappear, but my interviews around the country convinced
me that workers are nonetheless eager for political leaders to
take some serious steps to ease the big squeeze.
Make jobs less stressful:
For many Americans, wages are so low that they need to work two
jobs, and many women with children under three are working fulltime
to help their families make ends meet. As my book explains, all
of this is making it devilishly difficult to balance job and
family. The United States is the only industrial nation that
doesn't guarantee paid sick days, paid maternity leave or even
paid vacation to its workers.
The European Union guarantees
a minimum of four weeks paid vacation per year for every worker,
but a dismaying number of American workers told me that they
receive absolutely no paid vacation and no paid sick days. If
those workers miss two days' work to care for a flu- stricken
child, they miss two days' pay--and as a result they perhaps
won't have enough money to put food on the table. Many workers
would like Congress to do what California and Connecticut are
considering, mandate at least five sick days per year, and what
California, New Jersey and Washington State have already done,
guarantee paid maternity leave. Those are the type of family-
friendly measures that both family-values conservatives and pro-worker
progressives can support.
Increase opportunity and
mobility: Many Americans who are not in the country club set
worry that they won't be able to send their children to college,
making it harder for their kids to move up in the world. Each
year more than 400,000 high school graduates who are qualified
to attend a four-year college do not go because they and their
families can't afford it. Pell Grants used to cover 84 percent
of the average annual cost at a state university in the 1970s;
now they barely cover one third the cost. The college system
is so skewed that at the nation's top 146 colleges, just 10 percent
of the students come from the bottom half of households by income,
and just 3 percent from the bottom quarter. . .
Ease the pain caused by
globalization: Many workers rail against free-trade agreements
because they see that globalization has destroyed many factory
jobs and helped hold down wages, and they are searching for something,
anything, to blame. While most workers recognize that globalization,
offshoring and imports are inescapable facts of modern life,
many would love to see the nation's political leaders do some
high-visibility jawboning to discourage companies from reflexively
moving jobs overseas, just as President John F. Kennedy once
did some powerful jawboning to discourage the nation's steelmakers
from raising their prices.
Many workers want better
life preservers to prevent those hurt by globalization from being
pulled under. Retraining programs for those who lose jobs to
globalization are often poorly funded and poorly managed--and
those programs are available only to laid- off factory workers,
not laid-off software engineers and other white-collar workers
whose jobs are offshored to India or other countries.
Here's a little-known,
but highly disturbing fact--the nation has lost more than one-fifth
of its manufacturing jobs since 2000. That's 3.7 million jobs
that typically provide middle-class wages and benefits. Many
laid-off workers want better retraining programs and stepped-up
federal efforts to encourage the creation of good-paying manufacturing
jobs, perhaps in future-oriented, green industries like producing
hybrid cars.
Strengthen the social
safety net: After the Great Depression dragged down millions
of Americans, Franklin Roosevelt, Congress, corporate America
and organized labor built an impressive safety net of good wages,
good health insurance, good pensions and strong job security.
But nowadays with job security disappearing and many workers
losing health coverage and pensions, the safety net has been
falling apart. Many workers complain that it is hugely unfair
that they and their children often lose health coverage when
they lose their jobs. Little wonder that two-thirds of Americans
say they want Washington to enact universal health coverage,
even if means increasing taxes.
Workers also voice considerable
dismay about what is euphemistically called "the retirement
security system." The solid pensions of old that provided
monthly benefits after retirement are being replaced by 401(k)s,
which often resemble a Swiss-cheese retirement scheme because
one-fifth of eligible workers don't participate and many who
do empty out their 401(k)'s when they lose a job-- they need
money to live on. That leaves many workers with far too little
savings to retire on.
The retirement savings
system is broken and badly needs fixing. In The Big Squeeze,
I recommend creating a new universal savings system, like Germany's,
that would be built on top of Social Security and would guarantee
virtually every worker enough to retire on.
From my interviews across
the country, I got the sense that many working-class voters would
be delighted if this year's presidential candidates adopted a
great Republican's--Teddy Roosevelt's--version of the Fair Deal:
"Our aim is to promote prosperity and then to see that prosperity
is passed around."
Steven Greenhouse is the
NY Times' labor correspondent whose new book is The Big Squeeze
JUNE 2008
GLOBAL VIOLENCE, PROTESTS GROW
OVER SOARING PRICES
THE NEW SLAVERY: PRISONERS WORKING
FOR CORPORATION
NYC LABOR OFFICIAL SAYS UNIONS
HAVE TO HELP NON-UNION WORKERS
STEVEN GREENHOUSE, NEW
YORK TIMES - Ed Ott, the executive director of the New York City
Central Labor Council, an umbrella group for the city's labor
unions, has an unexpected and unnerving warning for New York's
more than one million union members. He warns that their wages
and living standards will be threatened unless the city's unions
do far more to lift the incomes and living standards of the city's
nonunion working poor, including restaurant workers, supermarket
cashiers and taxi drivers. . .
He said that many low-income
workers who receive no paid vacation or sick days were bound
to ask why many municipal workers are entitled to 40 days off
per year - combining vacation days, personal days and sick days
- in their first year on the job. . .
Mr. Ott is glad that many
union members - for instance, construction workers, telephone
workers and teachers - have achieved middle-class status. But
he voiced frustration that many unions showed little concern
about lifting the status of low-wage nonunion workers. He made
his remarks at a time when the number of nonunion workers has
soared in traditionally union- dominated industries like construction
and hotels. Mr. Ott sees two working classes in New York: a unionized
one that is doing well and a nonunion one that is struggling
to get by. . .
Mr. Ott took the unusual
step of inviting the Taxi Workers Alliance, a group of several
thousand nonunion immigrant taxi drivers, to join the Central
Labor Council. In his view, unions need to embrace immigrant
workers and work closely with their advocacy groups. The labor
council is working with Domestic Workers United to help enact
legislation in Albany to improve wages and benefits for nannies
and housekeepers. The labor council is also trying to make common
cause with the Freelancers Union, a Brooklyn-based group that
is seeking to provide affordable health and disability benefits
to tens of thousands of freelancers and independent contractors.
SEIU ENDORSE CONYER'S
SINGLE PAYER PLAN
The SEIU convention went
on record in support of HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation
introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). The SEIU is the
thirteenth international union to endorse HR 676. Other international
unions that have endorsed HR 676 are UAW, NEA, ILWU, NALC, IAM,
Plumbers & Pipefitters, Musicians, UE, CNA/NNOC, SMWIA, IFPTE
& OPEIU.
HR 676 would institute
a single payer health care system in the U.S. by expanding a
greatly improved Medicare system to every resident. HR 676 would
cover every person in the U. S. for all necessary medical care
including prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient
services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, dental,
mental health, home health, physical therapy, rehabilitation
(including for substance abuse), vision care, chiropractic and
long term care. HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676
would save billions annually by eliminating the high overhead
and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs.
HR 676 currently has 90 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers. It
has been endorsed by 435 union organizations in 48 states.
ONE IN FOUR AMERICANS CALL THEIR
WORKPLACE A DICTATORSHIP
ZOGBY One out of every
four working Americans describes their workplace as a dictatorship,
while just 34% of bosses in the American workplace react well
to valid criticism, according to a new Workplace Democracy Association
- Zogby Interactive survey.
The survey also found
that less than half of working Americans - 46% - said their workplace
promotes creative or inventive ideas, while barely half - 51%
- said their co-workers often feel motivated or are mostly motivated
at work.
TROUBLE IN THE SEIU
STEVEN GREENHOUSE, NY TIMES As 2,000
convention delegates gather in Puerto Rico, the Service Employees
International Union is about to jettison a time-honored union
tradition - having members go to their union representatives
with their questions and grievances. The delegates are expected
to vote to have union members rely on call centers instead to
handle their problems.
Union officials say these 24-hour
centers would provide the union's members with faster and more
expert service, usually in their own language, and would free
up union representatives to focus on the union's No. 1 goal:
organizing more workers.
But some union leaders and members
complain that the call centers would hurt the union and its members.
"Sometimes you can't get through to these centers,"
said Eva Lozada, a home-care worker from Oakland, Calif. "It's
like talking to an A.T.M. This will be bad for the union."
This is just one of the complaints
that Andrew L. Stern, the union's president, faces as he seeks
to transform the union, already the nation's fastest growing,
to make it grow even faster. . .
"He's taking things in a bad
direction because he's taking steps without involving any workers,"
said Sal Rosselli, president of United Healthcare Workers West,
which represents 140,000 S.E.I.U. members in California. . .
In recent months, the union's top
leaders have come under fire for accepting lower increases in
wages and benefits in some hospital contracts in exchange for
the hospital corporations' agreeing not to fight unionization
drives at some of their hospitals. Moreover, the union's leaders
have been criticized for negotiating secret deals with some employers
that gave the service employees the green light to organize workers
at certain locations designated by the employer, while the union
made some concessions on pay or other areas.
Those moves have some members complaining
that they have been left in the dark. But Mr. Stern's allies
say those moves are innovative strategies to speed union growth.
MORE FROM FIGHT BACK NEWS
MAY 2008
GOVERNMENTS OF 20 COUNTRIES AHEAD
OF U.S. IN WORKPLACE FLEXIBILITY
A NEW REPORT by the Institute for
Women's Policy Research and the Center for Work Life Law at the
University of California, finds that of 21 countries reviewed,
17 have statutes that allow parents to move to part-time work
or otherwise adjust their working hours; 12 have statutes to
help workers adjust work hours for training and education; 11
allow reduced hours with partial pension prior to full retirement;
5 allow working time adjustments for those with family care-giving
responsibilities for adults; and 5 countries give everyone the
right to alternative work arrangements.
According to the latest data from
the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, college-educated
women in the United States are now less likely than women in
many other high-income countries to participate in the labor
market. Participation in the U.S. labor force for women aged
24-54 has stalled in the last decade while 19 of 20 other high
income countries surveyed have seen growth during the same period.
Most countries target statutory
regulation at specific circumstances, such as family caregiving
responsibilities, old age or lifelong learning. More recent is
an all encompassing approach that provides a mechanism for changing
working time arrangements to all employees, irrespective of why
they want change.
The Institute for Women's Policy
Research conducts rigorous research and disseminates its findings
to address the needs of women, promote public dialogue, and strengthen
families, communities, and societies. IWPR focuses on issues
of poverty and welfare, employment and earnings, work and family,
health and safety, and women's civic and political participation.
The Center for WorkLife Law, based
at the University of California Hastings College of the Law,
is a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that seeks
to eliminate employment discrimination against employees who
have caregiving responsibilities for family members, such as
mothers and fathers of young children and adults with aging parents.
WorkLife Law works with employees, employers, attorneys, legislators,
journalists, and researchers to identify and prevent family responsibilities
discrimination.
SEIU: EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL STRUGGLES
PENSION FUNDS: THE NEXT SHOE TO DROP?
JOHN EDWARDS LAUNCHES NEW CAMPAIGN TO REDUCE
POVERTY
TWO MAJOR UNIONS MAKE SECRET AGREEMENTS
WITH CORPORATIONS
KRIS MAHER, WALL STREET JOURNAL
Two of the nation's largest labor unions have struck confidential
agreements with large employers that give the companies the right
to designate which of their locations, and how many workers,
the unions can seek to organize.
The agreements are raising questions
about union transparency and workers' rights. A summary document
put together by the unions says it is critical to the success
of the partnership "that we honor the confidentiality and
not publicly disclose the existence of these agreements."
That includes not disclosing them to union members.
The agreements involve workers who
provide food, laundry and housekeeping services on an outsourced
basis. The employers are Sodexho Inc. and the Compass Group USA
unit of London-based Compass Group PLC. The unions are the 1.7
million-member Service Employees International Union, or SEIU,
and Unite Here. The unions say they negotiated a similar agreement
with Aramark Corp. but that Aramark broke the deal last year,
and they're trying to reach a new one. An Aramark spokesman declined
to comment on that.
The unions defend the agreements
and their secrecy, saying they've helped workers join unions
in growing industries at a time of declining union membership
in many sectors. Last year, 7.5% of private-sector workers belonged
to unions, compared with 17% 25 years ago. The agreements have
"resulted in tens of thousands of workers getting unions"
and been a major advance for the labor movement, said the president
of Unite Here, Bruce Raynor.
He defended keeping them confidential,
saying the companies involved insisted on that for competitive
reasons. . .
Labor experts said agreements such
as those the SEIU and Unite Here reached open a window on a big
debate within organized labor: what kind of tradeoffs to make
. . .
A key question in the agreements
is determining at which sites a union can organize. Unite Here's
Mr. Raynor said specific sites where unions can organize are
selected jointly by the companies and the unions.
The unions gave up the right to
strike and to post derogatory language about the companies on
bulletin boards. With Compass, the unions agreed to these restrictions
"anywhere in the world." In exchange, the companies
agree not to oppose union organizing at the designated locations.
But limits are also set. "Local
unions are not free to engage in organizing activities at any
Compass or Sodexho locations unless the sites have been designated,"
says the confidential summary.
ENFORCING FUN IN THE WORKPLACE
WRITERS SHOW HOW A UNION CAN WORK
HOW THE LABOR UNIONS BLEW THIS ELECTION
FIRST THE WRITERS, NOW NUDE MODELS REVIVE
STRIKES
GOVERNMENT SAYS CORPORATIONS BAN BAR UNION-RELATED
E-MAIL
LOCAL FARMERS BUCKING FOOD SAFETY RULES
EVEN CORPORATE BOSSES ADMIT THEY'RE OVERPAID
U.S. INCOME GAP SETS POSTWAR RECORD
INDICATORS: ROBBER BARONS STILL DOING WELL
APRIL 2008
THE BIG SQUEEZE
Steven Greenhouse
STEVEN GREENHOUSE SAN FRANCISCO
CHRONICLE - Some people ask me why I called my new book, "The
Big Squeeze." The answer is simple: The nation's corporations
have been squeezing workers every which way in their drive to
push down labor costs. This, unfortunately, has left the nation's
workers (and consumers) weakened and weary even before we feel
the full brunt of a recession that will inevitably mean unemployment
and lower paychecks for many Americans.
This squeeze has taken one especially
disturbing form: many corporations have cut costs by violating
wage-and- hour laws. Managers at Wal-Mart, Pep Boys and Family
Dollar, told me that they secretly erased hours from employees'
time records because of fierce pressures to minimize costs. At
many companies, managers strong-arm employees into working off
the clock; hourly employees who clock out at, say, 5 p.m., are
ordered to work an hour or two extra unpaid. Swift & Company,
Smithfield Foods and Wal-Mart each employed, directly or through
contractors, more than 1,000 illegal immigrants, who often accept
lower wages than native-born workers.
In my research, I found that many
companies also squeeze workers by treating them with a shocking
lack of dignity. A Wal-Mart cashier in Kansas City told me that
managers were so stingy about bathroom breaks that some cashiers
ended up soiling themselves. RadioShack had the gall to fire
400 workers at its Fort Worth headquarters by e-mail, the message
saying, "Unfortunately your position is one that has been
eliminated." Corporate executives told Myra Bronstein, a
software engineer in Seattle, that as long as the company did
well and she worked hard - she put in many 14-hour days - she
would have a job. But one day the company suddenly fired Bronstein
and 17 other engineers, telling them that if they wanted any
severance pay, they had to spend the next four weeks training
the workers from India who would be replacing them.
The biggest squeeze has been on
wages and benefits. During the economic expansion that began
in November 2001, corporate profits soared, while productivity
per worker rose more than 15 percent. Nonetheless, hourly wages
for the typical worker have inched up by just 1 percent since
then, after inflation, while median income for working-age households
has fallen nearly $2,400 to $54,726 since 2000, according to
the most recent Census Bureau report on poverty and income.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation,
employee premiums for family-health insurance coverage have doubled
in seven years, rising by $1,650 on average. And the number of
Americans without health insurance has jumped by 8.6 million
since 1999, to 47 million. Many young people just starting work
are finding it surprisingly tough, because entry-level wages
have slid since 2001, after inflation, while the percentage of
entry-level jobs offering health or pension coverage has fallen
as well.
For millions of Americans, the up
escalator toward the American dream has stalled, although those
at the very top have thrived. Income for the middle-fifth of
Americans has risen a modest 21 percent since 1979 (largely because
both spouses, taken together, are working far more hours than
before). Meanwhile, income for the top 1 percent has more than
tripled. One study found that the top 1 percent has 22 percent
of all reported income, up from 9 percent in 1980. The top 1
percent earns more after tax than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.
Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard president,
has calculated that if income inequality had remained unchanged
since 1979, the bottom 80 percent of Americans would be earning
$670 billion more per year - or $8,000 more per household.
ORDER
MANY
ON FORTUNE TOP 50 AT BOTTOM OF LIST FOR EMPLOYEES
PHIL MATTERA, DIRT DIGGERS DIGEST
Fortune magazine has come out with the latest edition of its
list of the 500 largest publicly traded U.S. corporations, and
all the attention will be paid to which companies rank higher
or lower based on revenue. For the average person, another measure
of the performance of those giant corporations may be more relevant:
the extent to which they are depressing wage rates by getting
rid of unions or continuing to keep them out of their operations.
. .
One way to gauge this is to look
at the new 10-K filings that companies have been issuing in recent
weeks. Each of those documents-annual reports submitted to the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission-has a section on employees
in which companies have traditionally given an indication of
the extent to which their workforce is unionized.
I decided to look at these sections
for the top 50 on the new Fortune list. I found that, of that
group, only five reported that a majority of their U.S. employees
are covered by a collective bargaining agreement: General Motors,
Ford, AT&T, Kroger and UPS. An additional half dozen reported
that a minority of their U.S. workers have union protection:
Verizon (40%), Boeing (36%), General Electric (15%), Costco (11%),
AmerisourceBergen (4%) and Wellpoint ("a small portion").
Two companies-United Technologies and Marathon Oil-mention unions
but don't indicate the extent of their presence. The remaining
35 companies (State Farm and Freddie Mac don't file 10-Ks) make
no reference to unions or declare they are union free.
MARCH 2008
CALIFORINIA JUDGE ORDER STARBUCKS TO PAY
MORE THAN $100 MILLION IN BACK TIPS
CNN A Superior Court judge on Thursday
ordered Starbucks to pay its California baristas more than $100
million in back tips and interest that the coffee chain paid
to shift supervisors. San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia
Cowett also issued an injunction that prevents Starbucks' shift
supervisors from sharing in future tips, saying state law prohibits
managers and supervisors from sharing in employee gratuities.
Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil
said the company planned an immediate appeal of the ruling, calling
it "fundamentally unfair and beyond all common sense and
reason." The lawsuit was filed in October 2004 by Jou Chou,
a former Starbucks barista in La Jolla, who complained shift
supervisors were sharing in employee tips. The lawsuit gained
ground in 2006 when it was granted class-action status, allowing
the suit to go forward for as many as 100,000 former and current
baristas in the coffee chain's California stores.
QWEST SUPERVISOR TELLS WORKES TO USE URINE
BAGS TO SAVE BATHROOM RUNS
AP- Union officials in Colorado
say a Qwest supervisor tried to cut down on lengthy bathroom
breaks by telling workmen to use disposable urinal bags in the
field. The manager distributed the bags to 25 male field technicians,
telling them not to waste time leaving a job site to search for
a public bathroom, the Rocky Mountain News reported. "We
deal with a lot of silliness in corporate America, but you've
got to admit, it takes the freakin' cake," Reed Roberts,
an administrative director at the Communications Workers of America
District 7, told the newspaper. . . Qwest spokeswoman Jennifer
Barton said, "There's no policy whatsoever" requiring
field technicians to use the bags. . . Roberts said he had complained
to Qwest's corporate labor relations department. He said the
company has made an issue of the amount of time wasted by workers
returning to the garage or central office for bathroom breaks.
But he said it appears this manager "took it upon himself
to cut down on the time technicians spend to go to the bathroom."
BANANA REPUBLIC BECOMES SWEATSHOP
TARGET
GUARDIAN, UK One of the biggest
fashion retailers in the US last night began an investigation
into allegations that workers in India who make its clothes are
being forced to work more than 70 hours a week for as little
as 15p an hour. Ahead of today's high-profile opening of its
three-story European store in London, Banana Republic said it
was "deeply concerned" by the claims and insisted it
made frequent factory visits to check that suppliers complied
with the law and with the company's ethical code. . . The alleged
plight of the Indian workers who are making Banana Republic's
clothes will be publicized by the charity War on Want, which
plans a demonstration at the opening of the London store. . .
Garment workers interviewed by the Guardian near Delhi claimed
they were verbally abused if they complained, saying they could
be docked money for petty disputes. Other workers said they had
been "coached" to lie about the amount of overtime
they had to do; the overtime is meant to be capped at two hours
a day.
ENFORCING FUN IN THE WORKPLACE
MATT LABASH, WSEEKLY STANDARD -
Wilmington, Del. If you're a loyal employee like me, you occasionally
check your company's Vision Statement to make sure all the T's
in "empowerment" have been crossed, and the I's in
"mission" have been dotted. But if you come across
buzzwords like "excellence" and "leadership,"
you should know that your corporate culture is sadly behind the
curve--those terms are as '90s as Reebok Pumps, Zima, and Total
Quality Management. There's a new core value on the loose, and
it goes by the name of "Fun."
Maybe you assumed the fun stopped
when the tech bubble burst. Or at least you hoped it did. After
all, who could stand to read yet another profile of the ubiquitous
IPO-enriched dot-commissar, who'd get the toe of his footie-pajamas
(which he wore in his nonhierarchical workspace) caught in the
brake of his indoor Razor scooter, causing him to bump into the
Pachinko-machine/copier, making him spill his Tazoberry Crème
Frappuccino all over the conference-room foosball table? Ahhhh,
the boyish hijinks of it all. With the benefit of hindsight,
we can all now agree that the real fun was watching dot-com execs
ride their Segways to the unemployment line.
But if you thought the fun stopped
there, you're sadly mistaken. Like a diseased appendix bursting
and spreading infectious bacteria throughout the abdomen, fun
is insinuating itself everywhere, into even the un-hippest workplaces.
Witness the August issue of Inc. magazine, the self-declared
"Handbook of the American Entrepreneur." Emblazoned
on its cover was "Fun! It's the New Core Value." Beneath
that was a photo of Jonathan Bush, the CEO of athenahealth, which
helps medical practices interact with insurers. Bush was tearing
his shirt apart to reveal a Batman costume underneath, the same
costume in which he gave a full presentation to a prospective
client after making a deal with one of his employees that if
the latter lost 70 pounds, the management team would dress as
superheroes for a day.
But that's just the beginning. There
are 18 pages of similar stories to instruct and inspire employers
to keep their employees happy at all costs, because happy employees
make for happy customers. There are rubber chickens, Frisbee
tosses, mustache-growing contests, pet psychics, interoffice
memos alligator-clipped to toy cars, and ceremonies that honor
employees for such accomplishments as having "the most animated
hand gestures." Perks include on-campus wallyball courts,
indoor soccer fields, air hockey, ping pong, billiards, yoga
and aerobics classes, company pools and hot tubs, and Native-American
themed nap rooms so that employees can sleep (sleep!) at work.
And that's all at just one company--Aquascape, a supplier to
pond-builders based in St. Charles, Illinois. . .
JANUARY 2008
HOW THE LABOR UNIONS BLEW THIS ELECTION
IAN WELSH, HUFFINGTON POST - Unions
in America have been in a decline for over 60 years. Union membership
has dropped from almost 35% of all workers in 1945 to less than
15% today. In fact, union membership has declined to almost exactly
the same percentage as it was in 1930 before FDR took power and
encouraged the growth of unions. . . The mainline old unions
centered around industrial concerns like GM and Ford have shrunk
to a tiny fraction of their former self; and despite the efforts
of the SEIU unions and others, new economy workers mostly have
not been organized.
The National Labor Relations Board,
created by the Wagner Act in 1935 as independent agency of United
States Governments holds the official mandate to conduct elections
for labor union representation and to investigate and remedy
unfair labor practices. Under the Bush administration, the NLRB
has:
- made it impossible for large numbers
of workers to join unions;
- potentially reclassified many
workers as supervisors (including many nurses) in order to remove
them from unions;
- passed numerous rulings which
treat employers in one way, and unions in another.
The union movement, it is fair to
say, is in many respects in its weakest position in over 60 years.
Another 4 or 8 years of a Republican
presidency could doom American unions, pushing them below 10%
and subjecting them to more and more hostile NLRB rulings, which
will cripple what ability they have to organize. Even a moderate
Democratic president who halts the slide at the NLRB but doesn't
reverse it will leave unions in a shaky situation. . .
Amongst the Democratic candidates
it's safe to say that Hilary Clinton, who has as her main advisor
a union buster and whose husband did very little for unions,
would be a largely status quo President. Her board would be decent,
she'd be bad but not awful on trade, and she wouldn't sink a
lot of personal capital into union issues.
As with many things with Obama,
it's hard to determine how good or bad he'd be, but one has to
have their doubts about a Democratic candidate who argued that
union advertisements in Iowa were unacceptable, and who acted
as if union money were the equivalent of corporate money. Certainly
there are those who see unions and corporation as little different--but
they aren't friends of unions.
John Edwards has spent the last
four years working with unions, walking their picket lines and
making their cause his. He's clearly the most pro-union of the
three remaining candidates; his primary issue is economic justice
and he believes that corporations have too much power. His campaign,
from the very beginning, was predicated on union support.
But unions didn't reciprocate.
Lists of major union endorsements
make this clear. AFL-CIO unions predominantly endorsed Clinton,
and in fact more major unions endorsed Clinton than anyone else,
with Edwards coming in second in the endorsement stakes. Most
recently Nevada's largest union, the culinary union endorsed
Obama and is working hard for him in that key swing state.
Now let's imagine a world in which
labor had taken a strong stand and endorsed the candidate who
was most pro-labor, John Edwards. Edwards came in second in Iowa,
behind Obama by 8%. It is hard to believe that if unions had
come in, say 4 months ago, and used their ground machine (still,
even today, probably the best organizing machine in the Democratic
party) that they couldn't have swung the election 8 points. .
.
And here's the thing--neither Clinton
nor Obama, should they win now, will feel a massive debt to Labor.
The endorsements were useful and appreciated, and they helped.
But they weren't desperately needed. The payback will be a slightly
better NLRB, but not enough to save American labor. . .
I can only assume that labor read
too many polls and made too many political calculations. . .
The irony here is that if labor had taken a strong stand and
put their own best interests first instead of triangulating and
currying political favor, the strongest pro-labor candidate would
be in the lead today.
DECEMBER 2007
WHAT HAPPENED TO LABOR UNIONS
PAUL KRUGMAN, NY TIMES - Once upon
a time, back when America had a strong middle class, it also
had a strong union movement. These two facts were connected.
Unions negotiated good wages and benefits for their workers,
gains that often ended up being matched even by nonunion employers.
They also provided an important counterbalance to the political
influence of corporations and the economic elite.
Today, however, the American union
movement is a shadow of its former self, except among government
workers. In 1973, almost a quarter of private-sector employees
were union members, but last year the figure was down to a mere
7.4 percent. . .
It's often assumed that the U.S.
labor movement died a natural death, that it was made obsolete
by globalization and technological change. But what really happened
is that beginning in the 1970s, corporate America, which had
previously had a largely cooperative relationship with unions,
in effect declared war on organized labor.
Don't take my word for it; read
Business Week, which published an article in 2002 titled How
Wal-Mart Keeps Unions at Bay. The article explained that "over
the past two decades, Corporate America has perfected its ability
to fend off labor groups." It then described the tactics
- some legal, some illegal, all involving a healthy dose of intimidation
- that Wal-Mart and other giant firms use to block organizing
drives.
These hardball tactics have been
enabled by a political environment that has been deeply hostile
to organized labor, both because politicians favored employers'
interests and because conservatives sought to weaken the Democratic
Party. "We're going to crush labor as a political entity,"
Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist, once declared.
GOVERNMENT SAYS CORPORATIONS
BAN BAR UNION-RELATED E-MAIL
RAW STORY - Employers have the right
to bar employees from sending union-related E-mails using company
servers, the New York Times reports. The National Labor Relations
Board ruled 3-2 that an employer, using internal company policy,
has the right to classify a union-related communication as a
"non-job-related solicitation." The two dissenting
board members noted that E-mail has become a major form of communication
in the workplace, and disagreed with the majority's assertion
that a company's "property rights" trump an employee's
right to organize and discuss workplace-related issues with other
workers.
The ruling involved The Register-Guard,
a newspaper in Eugene, Ore., and e-mail messages sent in 2000
by Susi Prozanski, a newspaper employee who was president of
the Newspaper Guild's unit there. She sent an e-mail message
about a union rally and two others urging employees to wear green
to show support for the union's position in contract negotiations.
. .
"Anyone with e-mail knows that
this is how employees communicate with each other in today's
workplace," said Jonathan Hiatt, general counsel for the
A.F.L.-C.I.O. "Outrageously in allowing employers to ban
such communications for union purposes, the Bush labor board
has again struck at the heart of what the nation's labor laws
were intended to protect - the right of employees to discuss
working conditions and other matters of mutual concern."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3086937.ece
NOVEMBER 2007
'OFFICE' STAFF EXPLAIN WRITERS' STRIKE
AUGUST 2007
GREAT MOMENTS IN BRITISH LABOR
DISPUTES
TIMES UK - Last week, the Employment
Appeal Tribunal celebrated its 30th anniversary. We marked the
occasion by trawling the archives and dusting off some of the
more colorful UK employment disputes from the past few years.
- Tony Price, the managing director
of WStore UK, an IT company based in Surrey, demanded that his
80 staff submit to a DNA test after a piece of chewing gum got
stuck to a directors' suit trousers. When his global e-mail pointing
out the firm's chewing gum ban leaked to the media, Price cheekily
suggested he would force staff to take lie detector tests to
flush out the culprit. . .
- The cliche of men in the armed
serves cheering themselves up with top-shelf literature is well
established, but it was too much for the Reverend Mark Sharpe,
37. The trainee chaplain left the Royal Navy declaring himself
"horrified" by the amount of pornography below decks
and issued a claim for sexual harassment and discrimination on
the ground of his religious beliefs. At a tribunal in Exeter,
the Navy admitted sexual harassment but denied the religious
discrimination charge. Reverend Sharpe accepted an undisclosed
sum in damages and is now a rural rector.
- Sally Bing, a 31-year-old town
clerk, won her claim for sexual discrimination and victimisation
against the mayor of Chard, Tony Prior, after the 67-year-old
putative lothario became infatuated with her. "We were standing
shoulder to shoulder looking at a wall map of Chard," the
mayor explained. "When she stood close to me, it sent a
sexual thrill through me. That was possibly when I wondered whether
she had sexual feelings towards me." The married Prior invited
Bing on a walking tour of Andorra, and his advances eventually
became so bad she rearranged the furniture in her office to create
an escape route in case he appeared. . .
- Wayne Simpson, an EDF Energy salesman,
lost his L28,000-a-year job after he sent a customer a picture
of himself sitting naked drinking whisky in a bubble bath. Simpson
had met the female customer while selling door-to-door on Tyneside;
he obtained her number and later sent the picture with a message
saying, "Fancy going out for a drink sometime?" The
woman didn't and instead reported him to the company and the
police. Simpson accused EDF of lacking a sense of humor. "I
wasn't even showing off my naughty bits," he said.
- Sue Storer, a 48-year-old teacher
at Bedminster Down Secondary School in Bristol, sought damages
of L1 million for sex discrimination and constructive dismissal
claiming she had been forced to sit in a chair that made embarrassing
sounds every time she moved. . . Requests for a new chair had
been repeatedly ignored while male colleagues were given sleek,
executive-style chairs, she said. Her claim was thrown out.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article2047646.ece
JULY 2007
WHAT WORKERS DON'T LIKE ABOUT
MEETINGS
Disorganization tops the list as
the biggest frustration for meeting attendees, according to a
new "Ouch Point" study by Opinion Research USA that
measured the tolerance thresholds of U.S. workers at business
meetings.
Of 1,037 full or part-time workers
polled, 27 percent ranked disorganized, rambling meetings as
their top frustration, followed by 17 percent who said they were
annoyed by peers who interrupt and try to dominate meetings.
Respondents considered Black Berry
use less intrusive than people falling asleep during a meeting
-- 9 percent of respondents were bothered by co-workers nodding
off, compared to just 5 percent who said they get frustrated
by others checking e-mail. Respondents also cited cell-phone
interruptions (16 percent) and meetings without refreshments
(6 percent) as more annoying than the much-maligned Black Berry.
Among the other "ouch points"
ranked by respondents were: meetings without bathroom breaks
(8 percent) and people leaving the meeting early or arriving
late (5 percent). Only 4 percent of respondents said they were
most frustrated by meetings that start late and those that end
without distributing a written recap.
Respondents from the Northeast were
less bothered by disorganized meetings than those from other
parts of the country. Additionally, respondents over the age
of 55 considered meetings without a bathroom break a significant
issue, and for respondents ages 18 to 24, serving food is a priority
at meetings.
http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200705/meetings.html
MAY 2007
DC LABOR - Unionized professional
women receive better wages and benefits than women in the non-union
sector but women still make less than their male counterparts
according to a new fact sheet. "The union difference is
quite apparent when you look at the median weekly wages"
for professional women, according to Professional Women: Vital
Statistics, a fact sheet just published by the Department of
Professional Employees (DPE), AFL-CIO. Examples include "union
preschool and kindergarten teachers earned a whopping 56.7% more
than their non-union counterparts…union librarians earned
almost 29% more than their non-union counterparts, while union
social workers and counselors earned 27 and 26.4% more, respectively."
But the wage gap "still plagues the American workforce,"
says the report. In 2006, the "median weekly earnings for
women were 80.8% those of men."
http://www.dclabor.org/
L.A. GANG MEMBERS FIND NEW HOME
IN LABOR UNIONS
SAM QUINONES, LA TIMES - A large and growing number of Southern
California gang members . . . have joined building-trade unions
over the last decade as construction work has boomed. These good-paying
jobs were once reserved for those with family connections, as
fathers recruited sons. But today, beset by nonunion competition
and an aging membership, unions have stepped up recruitment in
minority enclaves where many young men have criminal pasts. Now
homeboy recruits homeboy.
Members of Dog-patch, in Bellflower,
and West Side Wilmas, in Wilmington, are in the Ironworker Union
Locals 416 and 433. Members of the 204th Street gang in the Harbor
Gateway area of Los Angeles are in the Sheet Metal Workers Local
105. And members of the South Side 18th Street Tiny Diablos are
Teamsters.
"We probably make up the majority
of the workforce now," said Albert Frey, once a Crip and
crack dealer, now an apprentice with the Steam-Refrigeration-Air
Conditioning-Pipefitters Union Local 250. . .
For decades, membership in the building
trades was tightly restricted. Unions controlled most of the
work sites throughout Southern California and kept their numbers
low. Most members were white. But even that wasn't enough to
get into a union. . .
By the early 1990s, veteran union
members were retiring and membership fell, while work and nonunion
contractors flourished.
WHY WORKING LESS IS BETTER FOR
THE GLOBE
DARA COLWELL, ALTERNET - Americans
are working harder than ever before. The dogged pursuit of the
paycheck coupled with a 24/7 economy has thrust many of us onto
a never-ending treadmill. But of workaholism's growing wounded,
its greatest casualty has been practically ignored -- the planet.
. .
Americans work more hours than anyone
else in the industrialized world. According to the United Nations'
International Labor Organization, we work 250 hours, or five
weeks, more than the Brits, and a whopping 500 hours, or 12 and
a half weeks, more than the Germans. So how does ecological damage
figure in to the 40-plus workweek?
Do the math: Longer hours plus labor-saving
technology equals ever-increasing productivity. Without high
annual growth to match productivity, there's unemployment. Maintaining
growth means using more energy and resources, both in manpower
and raw materials, which results in increased waste and pollution.
Unsurprisingly, the United States
is the world's largest polluter. Housing a mere 5 percent of
the world's population, it accounts for 22 percent of its fossil
fuel consumption, 50 percent of its solid waste, and, on average,
each citizen consumes 53 times more goods than a person in China,
according to the environmental nonprofit, Sierra Club.
When people work longer hours, they
rely increasingly on convenience items such as fast food, disposable
diapers, or bottled water. Built-in obsolescence has become standard
business practice -- just throw it away and make more -- leaving
mountainous landfills in its wake. "Earning more often means
spending money in ways that are environmentally detrimental.
We're finding that to compensate for lack of time, you actually
need more money to work those extra hours," says Monique
Tilford, acting executive director of the Centre for a New American
Dream, a Maryland group promoting environmentally and socially
responsible consumption. "When people are time-starved they
don't have enough time to be conscious consumers. The overarching
theme of our organization is to remind Americans that every single
dollar they spend has a carbon impact, to make the connection."
If the world started clocking American
hours, then it would be detrimental to its environmental health.
According to a paper issued by the Center for Economic and Policy
Research in Washington, D.C., if Europe moved towards a U.S.-based
economic model, it would consume 15-30 percent more energy by
2050. This would impact fuel prices worldwide and boost carbon
emissions, resulting in additional global warming of 1-2 degrees
Celsius. Any reductions in greenhouse gas emissions made through
conservation, cleaner fuels or green technology would be overwhelmed
by increased industrial output.
"Productivity normally increases
every year, but we haven't seen massive productivity gains reflected
in our working hours," says Mark Weisbrot, CEPR's co-director,
who also authored the study "Are Shorter Work Hours Good
for the Environment?" "Because there's no limit to
what we can consume, a change of values has to take place if
the planet stands a chance of survival."
http://www.alternet.org/environment/52077/
MARCH 2007
NETFLIX LETS EMPLOYEES CHOOSE
HOW MUCH VACATION THEY TAKE
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS - When it
comes to vacation, Netflix has a simple policy: take as much
as you'd like. Just make sure your work is done.
Employees at the online movie retailer often leave for three,
four, even five weeks at a time and never clock in or out. Vacation
limits and face-time requirements, says Netflix Chief Executive
Reed Hastings, are "a relic of the industrial age."
"The worst thing is for a manager
to come in and tell me: 'Let's give Susie a huge raise because
she's always in the office.' What do I care? I want managers
to come to me and say: 'Let's give a really big raise to Sally
because she's getting a lot done' - not because she's chained
to her desk.". . .
Netflix's time off rules - or lack
thereof - are part of a broad culture of employee autonomy instilled
in the company when Hastings founded it a decade ago. The executives
trust staffers to make their own decisions on everything - from
whether to bring their dog to the office to how much of their
salary they want in cash and how much in stock options. Workers
are treated, as chief talent Officer Patty McCord likes to say,
as adults.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_5493698
FEBRUARY 2007
UNION MEMBERSHIP DROPS TO 12
PERCENT
WILL LESTER, ASSOCIATED PRESS - The number of wage and salary workers
who were union members dropped to 12 percent of the work force
last year, the lowest percentage since the government started
tracking that number over two decades ago. The number of workers
in a union was 20 percent in 1983, when Bureau of Labor Statistics
first provided such comparable numbers, and that number has been
declining steadily. More than a third of American workers, about
35 percent, were union members in the mid-1950s.
JANUARY 2007
SOME SEE IMMIGRANT RAIDS PART
OF RIGHTWING ATTACK ON LABOR UNIONS
AMY TAYLOR, DRUM MAJOR INSTITUTE
- Is there another agenda behind the recent surge in workplace
raids? Some commentators argue that in addition to a pre-holiday
show of force on the issue of illegal immigration, the raids
are part of a larger conservative agenda aimed at creating a
climate of fear to undermine union organizing efforts.
Union membership is at an all time
low at 12.5%, and not because workers are uninterested in joining
them. Union members and potential members face real challenges
to organizing in the workplace. A recent commentator cites a
"long-standing conservative political objective to eradicate
unions" which has led to 30% of employers terminating pro-union
workers when faced with an organizing drive. Even more employers
will threaten to close a worksite or attempt to use bribery and
favoritism to convince workers to oppose the unions. Furthermore,
the governmental agency charged with addressing unfair labor
practices is the supposedly independent National Labor Relations
Board, notoriously bureaucratic and run by anti-union presidential
appointees. Suffice it to say that it is no coincidence that
union membership is down. And as membership levels have gone
down, wages have stagnated and employee benefits have been slashed
across entire industries.
The reasons for such anti-union
fervor are obvious. Union members had wage increases that were
double the rate of non-union members in 2005. Employers work
hard to keep union membership down to save their own costs.
This is where immigrant workers
come in. The great organizing power of immigrant communities
have often been viewed as fringe movements and placed outside
of the progressive agenda. This has been viewed as a great failure
of the progressive movement. In order for working Americans to
protect their livelihood, they must join hands with the new face
of workers in the U.S., and that includes immigrant workers.
Unions are, for the most part, already
on board and have been outspoken supporters of legislation creating
a pathway to legalization for undocumented workers. Union leaders
understand the connection between immigration reform and the
future of organized labor -- if immigrants did not face daily
threats from their employers because of their immigration status,
they would be more likely to join the ranks of organized labor
fearlessly. . .
If immigrant workers are threatened
underground even more than they already are through the use of
scare tactics such as workplace raids, it will not only be their
families who have less in the bank at the end of the year. The
power of organized labor will continue to decline if unions cannot
join hands with immigrant workers to fight for a living wage
and better working conditions.
http://www.dmiblog.com/
BOSSES RECEIVE LOW RATINGS FROM
EMPLOYEES
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY - The abusive
boss has been well documented in movies and even the Internet.
Now, a Florida State University professor and two of his doctoral
students have conducted a study that shines some light on the
magnitude of the problem and documents its effects on employee
health and job performance. . .
Working with doctoral students Paul
Harvey and Jason Stoner, Hochwarter surveyed more than 700 people
who work in a variety of jobs about their opinions of supervisor
treatment on the job. The survey generated the following results:
- Thirty-one percent of respondents
reported that their supervisor gave them the "silent treatment"
in the past year.
- Thirty-seven percent reported
that their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
- Thirty-nine percent noted that
their supervisor failed to keep promises.
- Twenty-seven percent noted that
their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees
or managers.
- Twenty-four percent reported that
their supervisor invaded their privacy.
- Twenty-three percent indicated
that their supervisor blames others to cover up mistakes or to
minimize embarrassment. . .
http://www.fsu.com/pages/2006/12/04/BigBadBoss.html
OCTOBER 2006
GOP RUN LABOR BOARD MOVES TO
KICK MILLIONS OF WORKERS OUT OF ITS PROTECTION
DALE RUSSAKOFF WASHINGTON POST - The National Labor Relations Board ruled
yesterday that nurses with full-time responsibility for assigning
fellow hospital workers to particular tasks are supervisors under
federal labor law and thus not eligible to be represented by
unions. . . Labor leaders decried the ruling, with AFL-CIO President
John Sweeney saying it "welcomes employers to strip millions
of workers of their right to have a union by reclassifying them
as 'supervisors' in name only." The labor-backed Economic
Policy Institute said the new definition could affect 8 million
workers who give direction to fellow workers in fields ranging
from construction to accounting. . .
The ruling defines workers as supervisors
if they give assignments to other workers, if they are held responsible
for the performance of those assignments and if they exercise
independent judgment rather than follow an employer's detailed
instructions. NLRB members Wilma B. Liebman and Dennis P. Walsh,
the only Democrats on the board, argued in dissent that the definition
was so broad it "threatens to create a new class of workers
under Federal labor law: workers who have neither the genuine
prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary
employees."
AUGUST 2006
AMERICANS THINK MORE HIGHLY OF
WAL-MART THAN OF LABOR UNIONS
RASMUSSEN - Fifty-eight percent
of Americans have at least a somewhat favorable opinion of labor
unions while 33% disagree and have an unfavorable view. . . By
way of comparison, 69% of Americans have a favorable opinion
of a company the unions love to hate-Walmart. Twenty-nine percent
have an unfavorable opinion of the retail giant. Forty-eight
percent (48%) have a favorable opinion of General Motors while
21% hold the opposite view. The volunteer Minutemen who organized
patrols of the Mexican border are viewed favorably by 54% and
unfavorably by 22%.
Fifty-three percent (53%) of men
have a favorable opinion of labor unions along with 61% of women.
White Americans are less likely to have a favorable opinion of
unions than others. Thirty-and-forty-somethings have less favorable
views than those under 30 and over 50.
This year, 38% of Americans say
they celebrate Labor Day as a time to honor the contributions
of workers in society. Forty-five percent celebrate the holiday
as the unofficial end of summer.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/August/laborUnions.htm
AMERICAN FAMILIES WORKING 500
HOURS MORE ANNUALLY THAN 30 YEARS AGO
ROBERT KUTTNER, BOSTON GLOBE - Labor was created by the machinists union
in New York in 1882 as a "workingmen's holiday." Unions
all over America adopted the idea. By 1894, Congress passed legislation
making Labor Day an official holiday. The day also celebrated
the act of organizing, politically and in the workplace, to improve
livelihoods and lives. Today, the politics have largely been
leached out of it. Labor Day is a long weekend that marks summer's
end. And that extra day of rest is needed more than ever. Government
statistics show that the typical family works about 500 more
hours a year than families did 30 years ago, because it takes
two incomes to make it. Even so, family incomes are failing to
keep pace with the cost of living.
This past week, these items have
been in the news:
- The Census Bureau reported that
median incomes for working-age families were down again, for
the fifth straight year. Real median income for households under
age 65 is down by 5.4 percent since 2000, even though the economy
has grown every year. All of that gain has gone to upper-bracket
people and corporate profits.
- The Pew Research Center released
an extensive survey on public attitudes about the economy. Pew
reported, "The public thinks that workers were better off
a generation ago on every key dimension of worker life -- be
it wages, benefits, retirement plans, on-the-job stress, the
loyalty they are shown by employers." And, statistically,
the public is right.
- The Globe recently reported that
chief executives of nonprofit hospitals now routinely make more
than $1 million. University presidents are not far behind.
- The Economic Policy Institute
(on whose board I serve) has released its annual, encyclopedic
report, "The State of Working America." Among its findings:
. . . Employer-provided health coverage declined from 69 percent
in 1979 to 56 percent in 2004. The top 1 percent's share of interest,
dividends, and capital gains has risen from 37.8 percent in 1979
to 57.5 percent in 2003.
40% OF AMERICANS WORKERS TAKING
NO VACATION THIS SUMMER
GUARDIAN, UK - It is already common
knowledge, on the beaches and in the cafes of mainland Europe,
that Americans work too hard - just as it is well known on the
other side of the Atlantic that Europeans, above all the French
and the Germans, are slackers who could do with a bit of America's
vigorous work ethic. But a new survey suggests that even those
vacations American employees do take are rapidly vanishing, to
the extent that 40% of workers questioned at the start of the
summer said they had no plans to take any holiday at all for
the next six months, more than at any time since the late 1970s.
. .
The survey by the Conference Board
research group, along with other recent statistics, suggests
an epidemic of overwork among ordinary Americans. A quarter of
people employed in the private sector in the US get no paid vacation
at all, according to government figures. Unlike almost all other
industrialized nations, including Britain, American employers
do not have to give paid holidays.
The average American gets a little
less than four weeks of paid time off, including public holidays,
compared with 6.6 weeks in the UK - where the law requires a
minimum of four weeks off for full-time workers - and 7.9 weeks
for Italy. One study showed that people employed by the US subsidiary
of a London-based bank would have to work there for 10 years
just to be entitled to the same vacation time as colleagues in
Britain who had just started their jobs. . .
Even when they do take vacations,
overworked Americans find it hard to switch off. One in three
find not checking their email and voicemail more stressful than
working, according to a study by the Travelocity website, while
the traumas of travel take their own toll. . .
Left to themselves, Americans fail
to take an average of four days of their vacation entitlement
- an annual national total of 574m unclaimed days.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1854765,00.html
LABOR UNION FORMED AT CHINESE
WAL-MART
KFSM - An official Chinese news
agency says the first labor union at a Wal-Mart store in China
has been formed following a lobbying campaign by the country's
official union group. The official Xinhua News Agency reported
today that 30 employees at a Wal-Mart store in the southeastern
city of Quanzhou, in Fujian province, voted Saturday to form
a union.
http://www.kfsm.com/Global/story.asp?S=5216647
APRIL 2006
TRANSIT UNION CHIEF CHEERED AS
HE GOES TO JAIL
ZITA ALLEN, AMSTERDAM NEWS - TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint
turned himself in Monday, April 24 at the Manhattan jail known
as the Tombs, to begin serving a 10-day sentence for leading
the city's first transit strike in 25 years, but not before getting
a hero's send off.
Thousands gathered for a kick-off
rally in front of the Brooklyn courthouse where, only days before,
Judge Theodore Jones had fined the union millions, suspended
its dues check-off and handed down Toussaint's sentence. Labor,
political and community leaders sang his praises before marching
across the Brooklyn Bridge. At one point, marchers chanted his
name so loudly it rumbled like thunder as they passed through
the concrete canyons near City Hall. "Toussaint! Toussaint!
Toussaint!"
For many, Toussaint was following
in the footsteps of freedom fighters like the Haitian hero whose
name he shares, Toussaint L'Overture. In a speech delivered just
before entering jail, Toussaint shied away from comparisons with
those who faced jails and bullets to overcome oppression, but
said, "I stand on their shoulders and I can see by their
light. I am inspired by the example, in our own union and elsewhere,
of leaders who understood that if the cause is just then the
penalty must be borne."
At the pre-march Brooklyn rally,
speaker after speaker said Toussaint's imprisonment is about
more than just the transit strike.
New York State AFL-CIO head Denis
Hughes said it was about an unjust Taylor Law that slaps public
employee unions and their leaders with huge penalties if they
fight for their right to decent wages and benefits while an uncooperative
management gets off "scot-free." Hughes pledged to
fight to make the Taylor Law "a thing of the past."
Stuart Appelbaum, head of the Retail,
Wholesale and Department Store Union, challenged the MTA "to
do their part and accept the contract" offered in December
and overwhelmingly ratified recently by TWU Local 100 members.
Congressman Major Owens saw this
as a "life and death struggle" for the labor movement.
Accusing Republicans of trying to wipe out the movement, Owens
said "swindlers" and "butchers" in Washington
are already greedily eyeing their pension funds. Pointing to
Enron and other corporations hit by pension scandals, he warned,
"They must not be allowed to touch public pension funds."
Declaring solidarity with Toussaint
and members of TWU Local 100, Patrick Lynch, head of the policemen's
union, stood with his father, a veteran of historic TWU strikes
of 1966 and 1980, and said, "When my father walked the picket
line he was not a criminal and neither are you. When you walked
out you were fighting for the pensions of every person in this
city--union and non-union alike.". . .
Just as he prepared to enter the
jail, Toussaint declared, "The entire labor movement is
being forced to abandon the idea that a militant trade union
can fight back if necessary to protect the lives and security
of our membership. All over the U.S. workers are being asked
to accept declining standard of living, an end of pensions, reductions
in health care and speed-ups in productivity. At the same time
the pay and benefits for corporate managers are exploding. The
era of relative equality in America is ending. Should we sit
still and watch as the gap widens between the rich and the mass
of working poor?"
THE COST OF DEPENDING ON TIPS
TALIA BERMAN, WIRETAP - Last Monday
at lunch in a Spanish restaurant in New York City, server #228
earned $12. Tuesday at lunch, $14. Thursday night and Friday
night: $480 total. On Saturday morning at lunch, she made $75.
Last summer, in August, the slowest restaurant month of the year
(except in vacation towns), she made less than $500 -- and didn't
make rent.
Thanks to tipping, restaurant service
is one of the most erratically paid professions in the United
States. In some states, tips comprise 100 percent of a server's
income, and all but seven have separate, decreased minimum wages
for tipped employees. On the federal level, the minimum hourly
wage for tipped employees is $2.15. In Kansas, it's $1.59.
With a wage this low, most or all
of it is diverted to payroll taxes, leaving servers and often
table bussers and food runners to survive on the whims of their
wining and dining guests.
So how do servers survive? As it
turns out, many of them don't -- servers have a greater turnover
rate than virtually any other profession. Tipping is part of
the problem, according to Michael Lynn, associate professor of
Consumer Behavior at Cornell University's Hotel School and an
expert on tipping norms and practices, "Part of it has to
do with tipping itself. It's an unsure source of income. If you
are a professional server making money on tips, it is difficult
to establish credit ratings and to buy a house.". . .
http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/34988/
MARCH 2006
THE MEDIA'S WAR ON LABOR
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT and least
covered aspects of media bias is the dislike of labor by the
corporate press. From public radio's board room-sucking Marketplace
to the lack of labor beat reporters on the staffs of newspapers
and the networks, and from labor stories being ignored or buried
on the business pages to a consistent pro-business bias in stories
involving workers, it is hard to find a greater example of the
fraud of media "objectivity."
In keeping with our tradition of
quantifying what you can't reform, we are launching a business
bias rating service on major labor stories. Our standard is simple:
how many paragraphs do you have to read before you find out labor's
side of the story?
Since we obviously can't analyze
every story, we hope readers will provide us with particularly
admirable or egregious examples.
The get started, here are the number
of paragraphs you had to go through to get the union's side of
the story in the matter of the Delphi buyouts:
NEW YORK TIMES: 26
DETROIT NEWS: 22
WASHINGTON POST: 11 in the news section, 27 in the business section
FEBRUARY 2006
TODAY IN HISTORY
1864 -- The Collar Laundry Union
forms in Troy, New York. Led by Kate Mullaney, a National Labor
Union activist, the union successfully increases earnings for
laundresses from 2 dollars to 14 dollars a week. In May 1869,
the women strike for a wage increase with support of the whole
city. Seven thousand attend a mass rally. As the strike drags
on with no end in sight, Mullaney and the union organize a cooperative
called the "Union Linen Collar & Cuff Manufactory."
The co-op provides work for members and combat employer attempts
to starve them out. But the strike ended in defeat when the companies
eliminate their jobs by putting a new paper collar on the market.
The union breaks up and the cooperative is closed
http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/0201.htm
JANUARY 2006
APPROVAL OF LABOR unions has certainly
declined since 1936 - from 72% to 58% says Gallup. But over the
past quarter century the figures have been remarkably stable
- almost the same today as in 1978 (58% vs 59%)
DECEMBER 2005
THE DISAPPEARING PENSION
PROGRESS REPORT - In a move the
company called a "restructuring" that "reflects
the realities of our changing world," Verizon Communications
announced that it will be cutting pension benefits for 50,000
of their managers. "Verizon is the latest in a long line
of U.S. companies that have phased out defined-benefit [pension]
plans." Under such a plan, the employer assumes the risk
and workers are guaranteed a set monthly payment in their retirement
based on length of service, age, and other factors. As USA Today
warns, "The traditional pension, once considered a bedrock
of retirement, is eroding for many American workers -- and working
for a financially strong company is no guarantee a full pension
will be there at retirement." Verizon's move may signal
the beginning of the end of traditional pensions in yet another
industry.
Around 50,000 managers will no longer
earn pension credits after June 30, 2006, and next year's managerial
hires will receive no credits at all; current retirees will retain
their full pensions. In exchange for the pension freeze, managers
will be eligible to invest in 401(k) plans. In words similar
to those used by President Bush to sell his "ownership society,"
Verizon's chairman said, "The changes will also provide
employees a transition to a retirement plan more in line with
current trends, allowing employees to have greater accountability
in managing their own finances and for companies to offer greater
portability through personal savings accounts." Said Pension
Rights Center director Karen Friedman: "If a company as
large as Verizon goes in this direction it could encourage others
to do likewise to the detriment of the retirement security of
millions of American workers."
Many big telecom firms have already
taken such steps, with Verizon being only "the latest in
a long string of companies to decide to halt the growth of its
pension plan either to remain competitive, save money or reduce
exposure to regulatory uncertainty." Verizon competitors
AT&T and BellSouth are considering cutting pensions costs
as well. "Chances are, when they see this they'll all be
huddling up," tech analyst Robert Rosenberg said. "This
most likely will be the first of several similar announcements
that we'll see." Both Motorola and Hewlett-Packard have
already "embarked on similar overhauls, switching emphasis
from a defined-benefit plan to 401(k)s and shifting the burden
for saving and investing to employees."
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.,
a federal corporation that insures pension benefits and is financed
by employers, reported an accumulated shortfall of $22.8 billion
over the past several years. According to Labor Department figures,
the 29,651 companies that offer single employer private pension
plans underfunded their pension liabilities last year by $450
billion. This is especially prevalent in the airline and automotive
industries, with Delta, Northwest, and others dumping their pension
liabilities onto PBGC as part of bankruptcy proceedings. Pension
legislation has failed to address much of the problem and what
reform proposals exist have stalled in Congress. . .
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/prarchives
NOVEMBER 2005
LABOR CONFLICT INCREASING
ZNET - [Wall Street Journal] reporter
Kris Maher [writes that] strikes are spreading along with other
employer-labor fights and company-sponsored lockouts. These are
so far largely defensive battles against management efforts to
cut wages and benefits, but they could be more. And it's not
just graduate assistants taking on greedy NYU and Radio City
Music Hall musicians battling with Cablevision. It's Verizon
Wireless workers and telecom workers at Sprint Corp. and copper
workers at Asarco LLC, too. Labor action is back in the news,
big time. . .
Maher cites Bureau of National Affairs
statistics showing "231 work stoppages initiated through
the end of August, compared with 202 in the same period last
year, with the vast majority being strikes." . . . Strikers
seem to be getting results, too.. Boeing machinists got a better
health-care package after striking, though the outcome is unclear
at Delphi Corp., where the nation's largest car-parts manufacturer
refuses to back away from King Kong sized takeaways in wages,
health care and pensions.
One thing that helps militant job
actions sprout and succeed is that the economy is in recovery,
at least statistically. Historically, it's during economic recoveries,
when the labor market tightens, that unions do best, both on
the picket line and at the bargaining table. It's also why conservative
economists value a degree of unemployment, as a way of tempering
wage demands. The real growth in labor organizing in the mid-1930s
came on the heels of a mini-recovery, and the nation's largest
strike wave hit after World War II, when the economy boomed even
as workers salaries stayed frozen at war levels.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=19&ItemID=9138
OCTOBER 2005
FIRST THEY GO FOR YOUR PENSION,
THEN YOUR RESTROOM BREAK
LOUIS AGUILAR, DETROIT NEWS - In
a memo that was distributed Tuesday to workers at Ford's Michigan
Truck plant in Wayne, plant managers said too many of the factory's
3,500 hourly workers are spending more than the 48 minutes allotted
per shift to use the bathroom. The extra-long breaks are slowing
production of the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator sport
utility vehicles that are built there, the company said.
"In today's competitive environment,
it is important that Michigan Truck plant immediately address
this concern to avoid the risks associated with safety, quality,
delivery, cost and morale," the memo said. . .
Ford supervisors will begin collecting
weekly data on the amount of time workers spend on bathroom breaks
and "respond appropriately," the memo said. Several
workers are crying foul. They say the real issue is that sales
of the Expedition and Navigator have been plummeting for much
of the year as high gasoline prices prompt consumers to switch
to more fuel-efficient models.
When times get tough, some managers
at Michigan Truck get "petty," said Jody Caruana, a
Michigan Truck hourly worker and a committee member for United
Auto Workers Local 900, which represents workers at the plant.
. .
Bathroom monitoring is just one
of a number of "incredibly stupid ideas" being floated
by automakers, said Sandy Munro, CEO of Munro & Associates,
a manufacturing consulting firm in Troy. . . "It's a giant
throwback to the bad old days of the '70s and '80s, when you
squeezed the guy at the bottom of the heap any way you could,"
Munro said. "That only causes lots of discontent, and only
someone from Harvard could think of something as stupid as monitoring
bathroom time." . . .
The memo ends on an upbeat note:
"We look forward to putting this concern behind us as we
obtain your personal commitment in supporting our joint focus
on embracing change."
http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0510/27/A01-363210.htm
BLACK UNION MEMBERS DISAPPEARING
LOUIS UCHITELLE, NY TIMES - Despite a growing economy, the number
of African-Americans in unions has fallen by 14.4 percent since
2000, while white membership is down 5.4 percent. For a while
in the 1980's, one out of every four black workers was a union
member; now it is closer to one in seven. This loss of better-paying
jobs helps to explain why blacks are doing worse than any other
group in the current recovery. Labor leaders have acknowledged
the disproportionate damage to African-Americans, but they decline
to make special efforts to organize blacks and offset the decrease,
saying that all groups need help. That lack of priority angers
one prominent black scholar.
"The future of black workers
is very bleak indeed if they lose their place in the union movement,"
said William Julius Wilson, a professor of sociology and social
policy at Harvard. "I would hope there would be an effort
on the part of union leaders, white and black, to address this
very important issue. They haven't done so as yet."
The decline was particularly sharp
last year. Overall union membership fell by 304,000, and blacks
accounted for 55 percent of that drop, the Bureau of Labor Statistics
reports, even though whites outnumber blacks six to one in unions
(12.4 million to 2.1 million). The trend seems likely to continue
and perhaps accelerate as General Motors and its principal parts
supplier, Delphi, cut costs in their struggle to be profitable.
"We have lost 20,000 members
since the end of 2000 in Detroit and its suburbs alone,"
said Linda Ewing, director of research for the United Auto Workers,
"and a large number of the workers in the auto and parts
plants in this area are black."
MAY 2005.
. .
THE WAL-MART ALTERNATIVE: COSTCO
MOIRA HERBST, LABOR RESEARCH - These
days, the story goes, consumers demand low prices, meaning goods
must be produced and sold cheaply - and retail wages must be
kept as low as possible. Companies like Wal-Mart insist they're
feeling the squeeze and must pay workers poverty wages - even
while netting $10.5 billion in annual profits and awarding millions
to top executives.
But there's another company that
is breaking the Wal- Mart mold: Costco Wholesale Corp., now the
fifth - largest retailer in the U.S. While Wal-Mart pays an average
of $9.68 an hour, the average hourly wage of employees of the
Issaquah, Wash.-based warehouse club operator is $16. After three
years a typical full-time Costco worker makes about $42,000,
and the company foots 92% of its workers' health insurance tab.
How does Costco pull it off? How
can a discount retail chain pay middle-class wages and still
bring in over $880 million in net revenues? And, a cynic may
ask, with Wal-Mart wages becoming the norm, why does it bother?
A number of factors explain Costco's
success at building a retail chain both profitable and fair to
its workers. But the basic formula is one the labor movement
has been advocating for decades: a loyal, well-compensated workforce
means a more efficient and productive one.
Though only about 18% of Costco's
total workforce is unionized, union representation creates a
ripple effect and helps determine labor standards in all stores.
. .
A 2004 Business Week study ran the
numbers to test Costco's business model against that of Wal-Mart.
The study confirmed that Costco's well-compensated employees
are more productive. The study shows that Costco's employees
sell more: $795 of sales per square foot, versus only $516 at
Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart (which, like Costco, operates
as a members-only warehouse club). Consequently Costco pulls
in more revenue per employee; U.S. operating profit per hourly
employee was $13,647 at Costco versus $11,039 at Sam's Club.
The study also revealed that Costco's
labor costs are actually lower than Wal-Mart's as a percentage
of sales. Its labor and overhead costs (classed as SG&A,
or selling, general and administrative expenses) are 9.8% of
revenues, compared to Wal-Mart's 17%.
http://www.laborresearch.org/print.php?id=391
CORPORADO SUES BECAUSE LIBRARY
WANTS TO USE UNION LABOR
DENNIS YUSKO, ALBANY TIMES UNION - An Albany company sued the Clifton Park-Halfmoon
library's Board of Trustees, claiming the board's decision to
use union labor for its new $15 million facility discriminates
against nonunion workers. The suit -- filed by attorney Joel
Howard in state Supreme Court on behalf of E.W. Tompkins Inc.,
a nonunion shop -- seeks a restraining order against the library
board to stop it from awarding contracts for the project until
the matter is settled.
"By including this union-only
project labor agreement with the bid project, the trustees will
not allow me to use my own workers if I win the bid," E.W.
Tompkins President Tom Colloton said.
Project Labor Agreements, or PLAs, do not prevent nonunion companies
from bidding on work, but they guarantee bid winners use mostly
union labor on a job.
 LABOR'S RIGHTWING
FOREIGN POLICY
LABOR DIVIDE GROWS SHARPER
THOMAS B. EDSALL, WASHINGTON POST - Four dissident union presidents have demanded
that their members' names be removed from the AFL-CIO's master
list of 13 million households, attacking what many consider to
be organized labor's most important tool to influence political
campaigns and legislative proceedings on Capitol Hill. "It's
the heart and soul of labor," said an official at the AFL-CIO
who is worried about the growing hostilities within the labor
movement. Top Democrats in the House and Senate have privately
voiced concern over the latest development in the split between
federation President John J. Sweeney and four major unions determined
to force him out of office. . .
The action by the presidents of
the Service Employees International Union, Teamsters, Laborers
and Unite Here is the most serious attack on Sweeney's administration.
The membership of the four unions exceeds 4 million, a third
of the AFL-CIO total. John Wilhelm, who runs the hospitality
industry division of Unite Here, is considering challenging Sweeney
for the presidency of the federation when the AFL-CIO meets in
Chicago in July. In addition, SEIU President Andrew Stern has
threatened to pull out of the AFL-CIO unless major policy and
program changes are made.
APRIL 2005
JOHN SWEENEY'S TIES TO WAR HAWKS
http://www.laboreducator.org/sweenhawk.htm
HARRY KELBER, LABOR NOTES - AFL-CIO
President John Sweeney has declined to explain why his name and
title appear on a list of supporters of the Project for the New
American Century, an organization whose prime activity is to
promote the establishment of an American global empire through
the use of military and economic power.
On the list of "people associated"
with the Project, besides Sweeney, are: Vice President Dick Cheney,
a founder; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Florida Governor
Jeb Bush, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and
a gallery of neo-conservatives, many from the American Enterprise
Institute and the Heritage Foundation. The list is "current
to Dec. 2004."
The Project for a New American Century
is a think tank, founded in 1997, whose principles are now the
governing foreign and military policies of the Bush administration.
In September 2000, the Project released a "grand plan"
that called for sufficient combat forces to fight and win multiple
major wars and be equipped for "constabulary duties"
around the world, with American rather than U.N. leadership.
The Project supports the doctrine of pre-emptive war and the
development of a new generation of nuclear weapons.
Union members are entitled to know
what, exactly, is Sweeney's relations with the PNAC? What prompted
him to collaborate with an organization that, to say the least,
is hardly a friend of organized labor?
Sweeney is a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations, regarded as the most influential think
tank on foreign and economic policy, whose recommendations are
often adopted by the government. Executives from 200 "international
companies representing a range of sectors" participate in
special Council programs. They include the largest commercial
banks, insurance companies and strategic planning corporations.
Petroleum, military and media companies are also well represented.
How is Sweeney's presence on the
Council of any benefit to the 13 million union members he represents?
Doesn't his name on the Council imply support for its activities?
BLACKS LEFT OUT OF LABOR REFORM
http://www.blackcommentator.com/128/128_cover_labor.html
BLACK COMMENTATOR - Far from ameliorating
the crisis afflicting what's left of organized labor in the United
States, a number of 'reforms' proposed by some of the nation's
largest unions appear as attempted rollbacks of historic gains
won by Blacks, Latinos and women unionists a decade ago. Simply
put, the vast changes in AFL-CIO structures demanded by the giant
(and heavily minority) Service Employees International Union,
the Teamsters and others, contain no formal mechanisms to ensure
that core labor constituencies have a voice remotely commensurate
with their numbers and strategic importance. . .
'If the ten largest unions will
comprise the Executive Committee, no Black that I'm aware of,
or woman that I'm aware of, heads up a union of that size,' said
William Lucy, President of the 33-year-old Coalition of Black
Trade Unionists. 'How does our voice get in that decision making
process? How do we talk about the value of organizing as a community
empowerment process? Who do we discuss that with?'
FEBRUARY 2005
PROPOSAL FOR LABOR: SPEND MONEY
ON ORGANIZING, NOT CAMPAIGNS
JONATHAN TASINI, PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF THE
NATIONAL WRITERS UNION
- For the last 25 years, employers have broken labor laws with
impunity and fired tens of thousands of workers trying to organize.
By every measure, life for most workers has become more difficult.
Few politicians challenge the right of corporations to run the
workplace like a dictatorship. . .
I admire the fire and dedication
of the labor people who pour their souls into campaigns. But
we've been acting on the belief that the political arena could
make up for our declining numbers and weakness in the workplace.
Our money and troops have squeezed out a few victories for Democrats.
But we've remained passengers, not drivers of the political vehicle.
. .
So my proposal is simple: During
the coming two-year election cycle, labor should not write a
single check to a federal candidate or a political party. Let's
take the money - and, more important, our focus and energy -
and pour it into organizing new workers, kicking the stuffing
out of the Wal-Mart family, pushing a national campaign for healthcare
for all and advancing the labor-environment-sponsored Apollo
Alliance, a brilliant idea to pour billions of dollars into good-paying
jobs through new sustainable-energy projects. . .
Given that virtually every incumbent
is reelected in Congress, there is no chance the Democrats will
be in a position to retake either the House or Senate in the
next cycle - nor will Democratic incumbents lose. And, if by
some miracle the Democrats recapture Congress, the chances are
less than zero that they would attain a filibuster-proof margin
in the Senate. Serious labor law reform is a pipe dream for a
long time to come - even if we could get full Democratic Party
support, which is doubtful.
NUMBER OF UNION WORKERS IN MARYLAND
PLUMMET
http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=25&sid=419382
I-WEI J. CHANG CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE
Union membership in Maryland dropped by 82,000 people from 2003
to 2004, a reflection of the continuing "demise of the industrial
base" in the state, said labor and business officials. The
U.S. Department of Labor said in late January that union membership
in Maryland fell from an estimated 354,000 to 272,000, while
the share of state workers who were union members fell from 14.3
percent of the work force to 10.9 percent. . .
"Nationwide, sectors in which
unions have been stronger are losing jobs for various reasons,"
said Fred Feinstein, a visiting professor at the university's
School of Public Policy. "We've heard about outsourcing
and globalization and companies moving overseas to take advantage
of lower wages." . . .
One labor observer said the declining
union numbers point to "a challenge" for unions to
rethink their strategy of the last 70 years. Unions should start
organizing internationally, since many U.S. companies and businesses
operate overseas, said Bill Barry, director of labor studies
at the Community College of Baltimore County. "Building
global unions is an essential part of the 21st century,"
he said.
THE CASE FOR A LABOR DAILY
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02082005.html
[As we have pointed out, there have
been some 2,000 labor newspapers published in America in the
past and Lindorff joins us in urging a revival of the tradition
that helped to build the labor movement]
DAVE LINDORFF, COUNTERPUNCH - The
union leadership continues to squander untold millions of dollars
on publicity campaigns and publicity departments, trying to get
its story told in [a] biased and uninterested media.
It's time to take at least some
of that money and put it to much better use, by subsidizing the
creation of an independent but pro-labor daily newspaper - a
publication that would have its own reporters in Washington,
D.C., New York, and key labor areas like Detroit, St. Louis,
Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and that would cover
all the news in the country and the world from a perspective
that takes working people and their viewpoints into account.
I propose that such a paper be published
on-line, not on paper. Why? The cost of printing a newspaper,
and of getting it delivered to millions of homes across the country,
would be prohibitive, and the money would be better spend on
having a crack staff of reporters and editors. These days, working
families for the most part have computers and online access,
so there's really no need for paper. An added advantage is that
if the publication obtained a mass list of union members' email
addresses, members could receive a brief news summary of the
day's headlines each morning as an alert message, with a link
to the publication.
Having the seed money for such a
daily news journal come from the labor movement would free the
publication from the constraints that have sapped the will and
integrity of the corporate press. A few million dollars might
seem like a lot of money to the unions, but since the many millions
more spent on publicity for the most part just go into media
office wastebaskets, it's really not a big new expense-just a
shifting of funds to a much more productive use.
The key to the success of such a
publication would be its independence. It would have to move
way beyond the traditional captive labor media, and even be ready
and able to write critically about the labor movement when necessary.
If there were not this independence, the venture would be doomed
from the start.
SEIU TRIES ORGANIZING IN THE
SOUTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/national/06janitors.html
STEVEN GREENHOUSE, NY TIMES - The
Service Employees International Union, the nation's fastest-growing
labor union, is undertaking one of the largest private-sector
organizing drives in the South in decades, seeking to represent
7,000 condominium workers, mostly immigrants, in the Miami area:
janitors, concierges, parking valets, security guards and building
engineers.
Not since 1963, when the textile
workers' union began an ultimately successful 17-year battle
to organize 4,000 Carolina millworkers with J. P. Stevens, has
labor undertaken such a far-reaching effort in the South, a region
known for its hostility to unions.
The president of the service employees'
union, Andrew Stern, is leading a campaign to remake the labor
movement, and his aides assert that if unions are serious about
reversing their decline and helping low-wage workers nationwide,
they need to expand below the Mason-Dixon line. . .
Union officials also acknowledge
a secondary motive: to try to transform the politics of the region
and the nation by creating conditions in which labor-friendly
candidates can be elected here.
The service employees are spending
hundreds of thousands of dollars on this campaign, using 14 full-time
organizers, starting a Web site and running advertisements. The
union's underlying message is simple: immigrant janitors and
concierges who earn $7 to $11 an hour, often with modest benefits,
can do far better if they band together and unionize. The labor
pitchmen are quick to point out that unionized janitors and doormen
in New York, Chicago and San Francisco earn $15 to $19 an hour.
BLACK UNIONISTS QUESTION SEUI-TEAMSTERS
PLAN
http://www.blackcommentator.com/124/124_cover_black_unionists_pf.html
BLACK COMMENTATOR - The push to
'streamline' and consolidate the structures of the AFL-CIO threatens
to diminish the influence of Blacks in the labor movement. 'They
want bigger unions,' said Bill Lucy, head of the Coalition of
Black Trade Unionists, referring to leaders of the Service Employees
International Union, the Teamsters, the Communications Workers
of America and others. 'They want power players, big unions in
charge. The end result is diminution of community power.'
Blacks make up about 30 percent
of organized labor, concentrated in the urban centers, says Lucy,
who is also Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). However, the
proposed AFL-CIO restructuring would concentrate power and resources
in the headquarters of a few large union chiefs, and away from
the metropolitan area Central Labor Councils. 'Our fortunes lie
at the local level. Most of the national leaders are talking
about getting a bigger bang for the buck.' We lose out on this.'
The driving force behind revamping
the AFL-CIO is Andrew Stern, president of SEIU, the nation's
largest and fastest growing union, with 1.6 million members.
Stern has threatened to pull out of the labor federation if it
does not essentially replicate the measures he has taken in his
own union, where many locals have been forced to merge and the
Washington headquarters maintains tight reins on resources and
decision making. Stern's plan ­ which many in labor consider
to be a kind of ultimatum ­ would rationalize union activity
by grouping members according to trade and, ultimately, eliminate
all but 20 of the AFL-CIO's 60 unions, altogether. . . .
Lucy is the first to point out that
'the structure of the AFL-CIO is nonproductive in the areas of
political action and community outreach,' but views the Stern-
Hoffa alternatives as even more inimical to Black interests.
LABOR'S NEW BOSS, ANDY STERN
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/magazine/30STERN.html
MATT BAI, NY TIMES MAGAZINE - The
S.E.I.U. is a different kind of union, rooted in the new service
economy. Its members aren't truck drivers or assembly-line workers
but janitors and nurses and home health care aides, roughly a
third of whom are black, Asian or Latino. While the old-line
industrial unions have been shrinking every year, Stern's union
has been organizing low-wage workers, many of whom have never
belonged to a union, at a torrid pace, to the point where the
S.E.I.U. is now the largest and fastest-growing trade union in
North America. . .
All of this makes Andy Stern --
a charismatic 54-year- old former social-service worker -- a
very powerful man in labor, and also in Democratic politics.
The job of running a union in America, even the biggest union
around, isn't what it once was. The age of automation and globalization,
with its ''race to the bottom'' among companies searching for
lower wages overseas, has savaged organized labor. Fifty years
ago, a third of workers in the United States carried union cards
in their wallets; now it's barely one in 10. An estimated 21
million service-industry workers have never belonged to a union,
and between most employers' antipathy to unions and federal laws
that discourage workers from demanding one, chances are that
the vast majority of them never will.
Over the years, union bosses have
grown comfortable blaming everyone else -- timid politicians,
corrupt C.E.O.'s, greedy shareholders -- for their inexorable
decline. But last year, Andy Stern did something heretical: he
started pointing the finger back at his fellow union leaders.
Of course workers had been punished by forces outside their control,
Stern said. But what had big labor done to adapt? Union bosses,
Stern scolded, had been too busy flying around with senators
and riding around in chauffeur-driven cars to figure out how
to counter the effects of globalization, which have cost millions
of Americans their jobs and their pensions. Faced with declining
union rolls, the bosses made things worse by raiding one another's
industries, which only diluted the power of their workers. The
nation's flight attendants, for instance, are now divided among
several different unions, making it difficult, if not impossible,
for them to wield any leverage over an entire industry.
Stern put the union movement's eroding
stature in business terms: if any other $6.5 billion corporation
had insisted on clinging to the same decades-old business plan
despite losing customers every year, its executives would have
been fired long ago.
''Our movement is going out of existence,
and yet too many labor leaders go and shake their heads and say
they'll do something, and then they go back and do the same thing
the next day,'' Stern told me recently.
WHAT'S GOING ON IN AMERICAN LABOR?
http://www.alternet.org/story/21073/
[A summary of the struggle now going
on in the labor movement]
CHRISTOPHER HAYES, IN THESE TIMES
- It's a concrete possibility we will wake up one morning and
there won't be a single American labor union left. For 30 straight
years, American organized labor has been hemorrhaging members,
power and influence. [Fifty years ago, 35 percent of workers
belonged to unions, today just 12 percent do (and only 9 percent
in the public sector).] There are already 22 states in which
"right-to-work" rules effectively outlaw collective
bargaining; the National Labor Relations Board, entrusted with
the sacred duty of protecting the human right to organize, has
been turned into just another way station for GOP corporatist
hacks; and the American manufacturing sector, once the backbone
of the movement, has been eviscerated by globalization.
Faced with the possibility of permanent
irrelevance, different factions of the AFL-CIO have recently
been engaged in a knock-down, drag-out fight over what is to
be done. Despite occasional coverage in the mainstream media,
this has drawn just a smattering of attention in liberal publications
and the blogosphere. But progressives everywhere need to realize
that they have a powerful stake in its outcome: Without the American
labor movement there is no American left, and the debate taking
place right now could very well determine if the movement survives.
THIS CHART, prepared by
David Swanson gives an example of why the federal government
isn't the political salvation that many liberals think. Shown
in dark green are states with a minimum wage higher than the
federal standard and have an inflation index; light green states
are higher than the federal law and blue are states considering
action. In addtion 123 cities and counties have passed living
wage laws. In other areas, including the enviroment, smoking
laws, and gay and women's rights state and localities have also
led the way. FULL STORY
DECEMBER 2004
HOFFA AND STEIN UNITE AGAINST
SWEENEY
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak20.html
ROBERT NOVAK, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
- The barons of the American labor movement gathered Jan. 10
at the AFL-CIO fortress across Lafayette Park from the White
House, with doors closed to the public as usual. The AFL-CIO
Executive Committee's agenda prepared by President John Sweeney
allotted 30 minutes for reform of the labor federation. But James
P. Hoffa of the Teamsters insisted much more time was needed
to debate badly needed changes.
As Hoffa desired, more than two
hours were spent on proposals by him and Andrew Stern of the
Service Employees International Union. They would diminish the
influence of the AFL-CIO, returning power to individual unions.
Hoffa would cut in half money the unions give to Sweeney, suggesting
that his presidency has failed in the basic task of signing up
new workers.
No final decisions were made, but
Sweeney cannot stand up to the Teamsters and the SEIU -- the
federation's two largest unions. Preferring to operate by consensus,
Sweeney is unlikely to resist. Decentralization of power would
mark labor's most important organizational change since the AFL
and the CIO merged in 1955. Whether it ends the movement's long
decline, it means Jim Hoffa and Andy Stern will eclipse Sweeney
or whoever succeeds him.
NOVEMBER 2004
OFF THE CLOCK WORK COMING UNDER FIRE
STEVEN GREENHOUSE, NY TIMES - In
interviews and in affidavits supporting employee lawsuits, more
than 50 workers from a dozen companies said they were required
to do unpaid work despite federal and state laws that prohibit
it and despite recent lawsuits against Wal-Mart and other companies
that have highlighted the problem. "It is prevalent,"
said Alfred Robinson, director of the wage and hour division
of the Labor Department. "It is one of the more common violations
of the Fair Labor Standards Act."
Though there have been no formal
studies of the practice or of its overall cost to employees,
the workers interviewed said off-the-clock work took place at
a variety of companies: A&P, J. P. Morgan Chase, Pep Boys,
Ryan's Family Steakhouses, TGF Precision HairCutters and Ms.
LeBlue's company, SmartStyle, which is part of the Regis Corporation,
the nation's largest chain of hairstylists. SmartStyle and many
of the other companies say they bar off-the-clock work, and they
are fighting the lawsuits. . .
Off-the-clock work can take many
forms. Employees are sometimes told that it is the way people
advance in a company, and other times they are forced to show
up early or stay late under threat of losing their jobs. Although
many employees fear retribution, a number of workers said they
were now willing to talk because they were angry and involved
in lawsuits seeking back pay.
THE FORGOTTEN SELF-EMPLOYED
SELF EMPLOLYED UNITE - There are
over twenty million self-employed Americans. They account for
nearly 3/4 of American businesses. The labors of the self-employed
are as old as agriculture, and as new as computer programming.
Unfortunately, Democratic politicians, like Republican politicians,
have little history of supporting legislation that would help
the self-employed. In fact, most politicians have so little respect
for the self-employed, that they seldom refer to this producer
group by name, 'self-employed'. Usually, the self-employed only
see their name on tax forms, or hear their name when their accountants
give them the bad news concerning the Self-Employment Tax.
Democratic and Republican politicians
indirectly refer to them as 'small business', but the term 'small
business' is code to the self-employed for being ignored. The
Small Business Administration gives the self-employed less than
1/10th of 1% of SBA loans.
No other income group in the nation
pays a draconian flat tax anything like the Self-Employment Tax.
It exists because the self-employed have virtually no representation
in Congress-- despite the fact that they make up about 15% of
the work force in the United States, and are the backbone of
rural and many local urban economies. 90% of farmers are self-employed:
to save the family farm, the self-employed must be saved.
About 30% of the self-employed have
no health insurance. This is primarily because the current market
approach to the purchase of health insurance reflects a market
economy in which the economies of scale reward large buyers.
Consequently, health insurance rates for the self-employed are
much higher than for any other producer group, and are often
unaffordable. If the United States does not adopt a single payer
universal healthcare system, the federal government must at least
step in to broker health insurance rates that reflect the twenty
million self-employed producers in the United States.
Governor Howard Dean has put forward
a plan that would allow the self-employed to buy the same health
insurance as offered to members of Congress for a flat rate equaling
7.5% of a self-employed family's income.
LABOR 'REFORMERS' WOULD TAKE CONTROL FROM
LOCALS
HERMAN BENSON, NEW POLITICS - What
John Sweeney did unto Lane Kirkland in 1995 may now be done unto
him. On September 18, this year, Sweeney announced he would run
for reelection as AFL-CIO president, along with Rich Trumka,
secretary-treasurer, and Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice-president.
But his term of office doesn't expire until mid 2005, almost
two years to go.
Ordinarily, such a premature declaration
would seem strange. Not this time, however, because Sweeney needs
to forestall a not-so-subtle drive by five international union
leaders to push him out. They had planted stories in Business
Week and in the American Prospect about his probable "retirement"
in 2005 (news to him!); they were already mulling over the choice
of his successor. The pressure on Sweeney continues. When the
New York Times reported that he would run for reelection, it
added, "Some labor officials questioned whether Mr. Sweeney
might reverse himself and . . . not seek another term."
[What "officials?"]
The five were banding together,
they said, because at a time when labor must grow or die, the
AFL-CIO remains passive and impotent. Calling for change, they
propose to show the way to organize the unorganized. And so memories
of the 1995 AFL-CIO convention in New York! That's when Sweeney,
at the head of a coalition of international presidents, proclaiming
that labor must grow or die, called for change and proposed to
lead the federation in a drive to organize the unorganized. His
drive for change succeeded only partially. He was elected AFL-CIO
president to head a new leadership; he beat the drums for organizing;
he called upon affiliates to put forces in the field; he recruited
hundreds of eager students for demonstrative summers of organizing.
But it didn't work. Now, eight years
later, back to square one. Despite his exhortation, the response
from the established labor leadership was limp. There have been
some gains in organizing, but the unionized section of the private,
nongovernmental workforce remains at the dangerously low 9 percent.
Now, the five restive international
union leaders, publicly expecting Sweeney to bow out, have joined
together in a formal organization, partially inside the AFL-CIO
and partially outside, complete with a name, New Unity Partnership.
Time and tide wait for no one. They intend to reorganize themselves
and then demonstrate to the labor movement how to organize the
unorganized. The implication of their message: Lane Kirkland
and Tom Donahue, the AFL-CIO old guard and all their predecessors,
talked of organizing; but did nothing. Sweeney promised to organize,
but accomplished next to nothing. But this time, really and now,
they will organize.
Together, the five international
presidents make up an odd combination: Douglas McCarron, Carpenters
union; Bruce Raynor, UNITE; John Wilhelm, Hotel union; Terrence
O'Sullivan, Laborers; Andy Stern, Service Employees.
In 1995, the Carpenters and UNITE
both voted for the old guard against Sweeney, the reformer. The
other three backed Sweeney. When McCarron pulled the Carpenters
out of the AFL-CIO, Sweeney announced that Carpenter locals would
be barred from AFL-CIO state and city federations. In a serious
rebuff, an unusual coupling of the building trades and the New
Unity Partnership defeated Sweeney and blocked his move. . .
Unlike Sweeney, the Partnership
starts out with a scientific plan scrupulously worked out on
paper by research workers, complete with graphs and statistical
charts. The NUP program is inspired by a 44-page analysis prepared
by Stephen Lerner of the SEIU organizing staff. The key aim of
any organizing effort, according to this plan, is for unions
to win a decisive market share in industries by increasing "union
density" and controlling the "labor supply" and
so gain the ability "to take wages out of competition and
raise standards."
According to Lerner, here's the
problem: "The current structure of the labor movement stands
in the way of organizing workers and building increased strength
for workers at every level of the labor movement." And so,
they would reorganize the labor movement, but really reorganize
it: Unions must stop taking the lazy way out; no more picking
up whatever is easy to organize; and so no more "general
workers unions" that reach out for anyone who will pay dues,
from laborers to nuclear scientists. They must concentrate on
increasing that "density" in their assigned basic markets.
We have to get rid of that clutter of little organizations, those
"corner store" unions which are happy with a tiny,
selective membership so long as they pay enough dues to sustain
the officers' salaries.
The graphs and charts demonstrate
that American industry is shaped into 15 great segments: services,
government, manufacturing, mining, etc. And so, we have to get
rid of that useless proliferation of impotent unions and organize
into 12-15 big, powerful unions, each in its defined industrial
segment. To get there, we must eliminate the defectives, merge
some, swap locals and members, and end with those powerful few,
each with its authorized clearly defined sphere of influence.
. .
Like many a grand plan emanating
out of the minds of great thinkers, the NUP project requires
that its leaders be endowed with extraordinary authority. Naturally,
they are impatient with questions of union democracy. Not necessarily
hostile to the idea as an abstraction, but impatient with anyone
who would focus on the subject as a practical need.
JUNE 2004
THOMAS B. EDSALL WASHINGTON POST - The AFL-CIO
has failed to keep up with the changing workplace and must be
radically reinvigorated -- or replaced -- if the labor movement
is to survive, the president of the nation's largest union said
yesterday.
A loose federation of 13 million union workers, the AFL-CIO wields
little control over the 65 individual unions that are its members
and has not been effective at creating a single, powerful voice
for American organized labor, Andrew L. Stern, president of the
Service Employees International Union, told a national convention
of his union in San Francisco.
"Our employers have changed, our industries have changed
and the world has certainly changed, but the labor movement's
structure and culture have sadly stayed the same." Union
activists must "either transform the AFL-CIO or build something
stronger that can really change workers' lives," Stern said.
The AFL-CIO's loose structure "divides workers' strength.
. . . It has no enforceable standards to stop a union from conspiring
with employers to keep another stronger union out or from negotiating
contracts with lower pay and standards."
Stern's speech was an unusual public display of displeasure with
the labor federation. Although he gave voice to a frustration
some labor leaders feel privately, many of those leaders were
upset yesterday that Stern spoke so forcefully just months before
the presidential election. Union leaders have been lining up
behind Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and want to show no sign
of weakness in the campaign. . .
Stern is perhaps the most outspoken member of the New Unity Partnership,
an alliance of SEIU, the Laborers' International Union of North
America, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International
Union, UNITE and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. All but
the Carpenters are AFL-CIO members. The partnership has repeatedly
warned that declining union membership threatens the viability
of organized labor, especially in the private sector, which has
seen a steady decline in union workers.
Stern, who aides said is not considering abandoning the AFL-CIO,
noted that when the American Federation of Labor and the Congress
of Industrial Organizations merged in 1955, more than one in
three U.S. workers was a union member. Over the past 49 years,
that has declined to one in eight for the entire labor force,
and one in 12 for the private sector.
ANOTHER BLOW TO EUROPE'S 35 HOUR WORK WEEK
FINANCIAL TIMES - French workers at a car
components factory owned by Bosch on Monday dealt a blow to the
country's law limiting the working week to 35 hours, as they
unilaterally accepted demands from the private German automotive
group to work longer for the same pay. The near-unanimity of
the vote at Bosch's Vénissieux plant near Lyon is expected
to encourage other companies to seek ways of securing greater
flexibility in Europe's rigid labour markets, in the absence
of political will for reform. [sic] The vote was the first of
its kind in France and could set a precedent for a gradual de
facto reversal of the 35-hour week. . .
In Germany, moves to extend working hours
could become unstoppable. Siemens had said it would otherwise
shift production to Hungary - a threat that Nicolas Sarkozy,
French finance minister, described as "a form of extortion
that would be unthinkable over here". . . .
Mercedes staff plan new demonstrations on
Tuesday and on Friday in protest at the car group's plans to
cut costs by €500m ($622m) a year at German factories, including
the introduction of extended working hours. Talks are expected
to resume on Tuesday. . .
The CFDT union, which represents a majority
of Bosch's workers at the plant and supported the plan, said
it was a "one-off solution to a one-off problem" and
that it would not accept this type of agreement becoming a "reference-point
for employers".
REUTERS - Buried inside the official
U.S. employment report each month is a little-known figure that
gives a much less rosy picture of the labor market than the headlines.
The government agency that produces the data also publishes an
alternative measure that tries to capture the hidden unemployed,
those who are not included in the official unemployment rate
for various statistical reasons. That broader measure is dramatically
higher, at 9.7 percent in May, compared with the official level
of 5.6 percent. That's an extra 5.96 million people, in addition
to the 8.2 million "officially" unemployed, who are
waiting on the sidelines and may at some point step back into
the labor force. . . None of the unemployment measures include
the 1.7 percent of the male wage-earning population who are in
prison, or another 1.36 million men, according to the Bureau
of Justice Statistics. Indeed, the labor force participation
rate is at its lowest level since 1988 -- lower even than in
the last recession.
APRIL 2004
EMPLOYERS DOCTORING TIME CARDS
NY TIMES - Experts on compensation
say that the illegal doctoring of hourly employees' time records
is far more prevalent than most Americans believe. The practice,
commonly called shaving time, is easily done and hard to detect
- a simple matter of computer keystrokes - and has spurred a
growing number of lawsuits and settlements against a wide range
of businesses.
Workers have sued Family Dollar
and Pep Boys, the auto parts and repair chain, accusing managers
of deleting hours. A jury found that Taco Bell managers in Oregon
had routinely erased workers' time. More than a dozen former
Wal-Mart employees said in interviews and depositions that managers
had altered time records to shortchange employees. . .
Officials at Toys "R"
Us, Family Dollar, Pep Boys, Wal-Mart and Taco Bell say they
prohibit manipulation of time records, but many acknowledge that
it sometimes happens.
9/11 CO-CHAIR IS UNION BUSTER
TOM ROBBINS, VILLAGE VOICE - New School University--founded by left-leaning
intellectuals more than 80 years ago--is taking a page from anti-labor
corporations in fighting an ongoing union-organizing battle.
Despite a mail-in vote last month in which a majority of part-time
faculty members casting ballots voted to be represented by a
division of United Auto Workers, university president and former
U.S. senator Bob Kerrey is asking that the results be thrown
out, saying the vote wasn't sufficiently representative of employees.
Some 65 percent of the school's
1,600 eligible adjunct faculty members voted in the February
27 election, with 530 voting in favor of the UAW and 466 opposed.
Such elections are normally binding on employers, but corporate
lawyers are increasingly contesting them in a bid to block unionization.
EYAL PRESS, NATION - As the UAW points out, 1,043 of 1,602
eligible faculty voted, a proportion significantly higher (65
percent) than the 48 percent who voted in the 1994 contest that
sent Bob Kerrey to the US Senate. . .
Adolph Reed, a political scientist
at the New School, notes that despite its unique history, the
university's actions should not be viewed in isolation. "President
Kerrey's response to this campaign has been more worthy of the
CEO of Wal-Mart than the president of a university, but it fits
into a broader tapestry--the casualization of the academic labor
force, the increasing prominence of corporate values in university
governance."
MARCH 2004
AFL-CIO BACK IN BED WITH CIA
KIM SCIPES LABOR NOTES - The AFL-CIO
is once again on the scene, this time in Venezuela, just as it
was in Chile in 1973. Once again, its operations in that country
are being funded by the U.S. government. This time, the money
is being laundered through the quasi-governmental National Endowment
for Democracy, hidden from AFL-CIO members and the American public.
Once again, it is being used to support the efforts of reactionary
labor and business leaders, helping to destabilize a democratically-elected
government that has made major efforts to alleviate poverty,
carried out significant land reform in both urban and rural areas,
and striven to change political institutions that have long worked
to marginalize those at the lowest rungs in society. And also
like Allende's Chile, Venezuela's government under president
Hugo Chavez has opposed a number of actions by the U.S. government.
DECONSTRUCTING UNEMPLOYMENT
DANA MILBANK, WAHSINGTON
POST - "The unemployment rate of 5.6 percent continues to
be below the averages of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s," said
Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, using a phrase echoed by the
White House press secretary, and by the secretaries of Commerce
and the Treasury. But Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), the No. 2 Democrat
in the House, called the employment report "pathetic"
because 2.3 million jobs were lost on President Bush's watch.
He said "long-term unemployment is at its highest level
in 20 years."
Who's correct? Actually,
they both are.
Unemployment was
6.2 percent in the 1970s, 7.3 percent in the 1980s and 5.8 percent
in the 1990s. Therefore, February's 5.6 percent is better than
the average of each of the past three decades. That rate may
seem counterintuitive, given the loss of so many jobs. The reason
is that millions of Americans who might otherwise be working
have taken themselves out of the labor force.
At the moment, 65.7
percent of civilians are in the labor force, lower than any annual
rate since 1987. The Labor Department says that 4.6 million Americans
want jobs but are not in the labor force, and that 1.7 million
of those have searched for work and are available. Of those,
484,000 are called "discouraged workers" -- people
who looked for work in the past year but not in the past four
weeks because they concluded they couldn't find jobs.
IS AFL-CIO HELPING U.S. STAGE ANOTHER VENEZUELAN
COUP?
HARRY KELBER, LABOR
EDUCATOR - Hardly any union member knows anything about the AFL-CIO's
American Center for International Labor Solidarity, because it
operates largely as a clandestine organization. It was established
in 1997 to replace the four regional organizations under former
AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, whose staffs had worked with
CIA agents to destabilize democratically-elected governments
in the Dominican Republic, Guyana and Chile and to undermine
governments that were either friendly to the then Soviet Union
or hostile to American business interests. . .
Solidarity Center
gets three-quarters of its budget from government sources, with
annual grants from the State Department, the Agency for International
Development, the Labor Department and the National Endowment
for Democracy. The AFL-CIO also donates a significant amount
to the Center. Repeated attempts to get a complete list of donors
and the amount of their contributions have been rebuffed. . .
Solidarity Center
maintains offices and staffs in at least 26 countries. They include
Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Croatia, Paraguay, Sri Lanka, Thailand,
Venezuela and Zimbabwe. It's not clear how Solidarity Center's
operations in these countries have any relevance to the problems
of American workers and their unions. But they do have importance
for the U.S. State Department and President Bush's foreign policy
advisers by providing them with channels to U.S.-financed labor
movements in countries around the world.
Solidarity Center
was thrust into an embarrassing limelight by an article that
appeared in the New York Times on April 25, 2002 under the headline,
"U.S. Bankrolling Is Under Scrutiny for Ties to Chavez Ouster."
The article by Times writer Christopher Marquis listed numerous
grants by the National Endowment for Democracy to various pro-coup
groups in Venezuela, prior to the April 11 coup against the democratically-elected
president, Hugo Chavez.
Marquis wrote: "Of
particular concern is $154,377 given by the endowment to the
American Center for International Labor Solidarity, the international
arm of the AFL-CIO, to assist the main Venezuelan labor union
in advancing labor rights."
The article noted:
"The Venezuelan union, the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers
led the work stoppages that galvanized the opposition to Mr.
Chavez. The union's leader, Carlos Ortega, worked closely with
Pedro Carmona Estanga, the businessman who briefly took over
from Mr. Chavez in challenging the government."
How the Center's
$154,333 to the CTV was spent is still unclear. Stan Gacek, assistant
director for the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Department,
says it was for internal union elections, but CTV's Institute
director, Jesus Urbieta, says the money was used for conducting
training courses. . . A series of work stoppages by the CTV,
followed by prolonged, widespread strikes, paved the way for
the "democratic revolution" on April 11, 2002, with
Pedro Carmona, a pro-U.S. businessman, selected to run the country.
Carmona's first act was to dissolve the National Assembly. .
.
The opposition to
Chavez hasn't given up and neither has the Endowment, which is
still handing out grants totaling more than one million dollars
to organizations it feels can be of use in the anti-Chavez movement.
Available records show that NED contributed $116,000 to the Solidarity
Center every three months, from September 2002 to March 2004.
In return, the Center had to submit five quarterly reports, whose
contents were obviously designed to please its benefactor.
AFL-CIO GOES
AFTER CHINA ON TRADE
ALBERT B. CRENSHAW
WASHINGTON POST - The AFL-CIO yesterday petitioned the Bush administration
to pressure the Chinese government to increase wages and improve
working conditions there, arguing that worker "repression"
in China constitutes an unreasonable trade practice that violates
U.S. law.
More than 700,000
U.S. workers have lost jobs over 10 years "as a direct result
of violations of workers' rights by the Chinese government,"
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard L. Trumka said at a news
conference yesterday. He said the number, based on 2001 data,
is conservative, and that China's "workforce is so large
and its labor repression so comprehensive that it is dragging
down standards for the entire world economy."
The petition to
U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick is the first brought
on behalf of labor under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
AFL-CIO chief economist Thea Lee said corporations have used
it to protect intellectual property, and "if this law can
be used to protect intellectual property rights, it can be used
to protect workers' rights."
Zoellick has 45
days to respond to the petition. A spokesman, Richard Mills,
declined to comment on it but said, "We are committed to
aggressively enforcing our trade laws."
MORE ON WHY THE GROCERY STRIKE FAILED
RUTH MILKMAN, TOM
PAINE - Once upon a time, strikes were a tool used by labor unions
to advance the interests of their members and to extract higher
wages and improved benefits. In recent decades, however, with
unions on the defensive against increasingly aggressive corporations,
strikes have morphed into an employer weapon. The massive four-and-a-half
month labor dispute that just ended this week, affecting 70,000
workers from San Luis Obispo to the Mexican border, must be understood
in this context...
Strikes are the
equivalent of war in the labor relations arena, and the employers
planned their offensive like a military operation. When the union
belatedly decided to strike, only the Safeway-owned stores, Kroger
and Albertson's immediately announced they would lock their workers
out. All three chains meticulously prepared for the conflict,
hiring thousands of replacement workers well in advance of the
strike deadline, obtaining commercial drivers' licenses for their
managers, and even recruiting truck drivers who could replace
any Teamsters who went out on sympathy strikes. They entered
into a pact among themselves to share any profits for the duration
of the conflict, an arrangement whose legality has since been
called into question. Their public relations machines were well
oiled for the occasion as well, pouring out endless newspaper
ads and other messages to the public to create the impression
that their demands were modest and reasonable..
Unfortunately, the
UFCW failed to capitalize on the enormous public sympathy the
picketers evoked. In retrospect it's clear that they did not
realize the enormity of the challenge they were up against until
very late in the process. Twenty-five years of labor peace left
them poorly prepared for war. Their own members entered the fray
with only limited information about the strike issues, and equally
important, the union failed to communicate effectively with the
wider public until several months had elapsed. The UFCW, as a
traditional "business union," was not practiced in
the innovative tactics that other unions have developed to effectively
confront employers in a hostile political and economic environment.
And sadly, the longstanding tradition in the U.S. labor movement
of decentralization and local autonomy meant that the more savvy
unions that could have unleashed such tactics were not invited
to help until it was much too late.
WHY THE GROCERY CHAINS WON
PETER DREIER AND
KELLY CANDAELE, ALTERNET - The 60,000 grocery workers who went
on strike almost five months ago have reluctantly ratified a
contract that most consider a setback in terms of their wages
and benefits. In Los Angeles and around the country, the labor
movement and its allies hoped the strike would be settled on
the union's terms -- without significant givebacks. Instead,
employees will now shoulder increased costs for health care benefits
and a "two-tier" wage system will bring new hires in
at dramatically reduced levels.
United Food and
Commercial Workers members and others in the labor community
are asking themselves whether this result was inevitable -- the
inexorable logic of economic forces over which neither the grocery
chains nor the union had control -- or were there strategic missteps
that could have been avoided. In other words, had the UFCW done
things differently, could they have won the strike?
The answer is important
because unions throughout the country will be looking at the
strike and drawing lessons from it. The grocery chains are feeling
their oats from this contract settlement. . .
In a classic divide
and conquer strategy, the stores calculated well in advance that
they could take billions of dollars in losses in their Southern
California stores but cushion their losses by operating unimpeded
throughout the rest of the country. The three chains have a total
of 6530 stores nationwide, while workers in only 860 stores in
Southern California were on strike. The corporate chains convinced
most institutional investors that they could amortize any losses
over a period of years if they could beat down their labor costs
significantly nationwide by starting in California. The grocery
chains knew that the UFCW had a limited strike fund. Employees
need to work or risk losing their homes, their health insurance
and their kids' college tuition.
There is a reason
why the United Auto Workers negotiate a national contract that
covers all locals and the three major automobile manufacturers
under one agreement. It keeps the employer from playing one small
local off against another, utilizing givebacks from one group
to pressure the same from another.
The Hotel and Restaurant
Employees unions, which also negotiates contracts with major
hotel chains on a local basis, is currently designing a national
strategy to align their local contracts with other large city
contracts throughout the country.
Historically, unions
have won major strikes through grass roots solidarity, organizational
preparation and the astute cultivation of community and political
support. The UFCW's campaign should have been nationwide from
the start. Through national action such as boycotts, picketing
of stores throughout the country, and the early involvement of
the AFL-CIO, the union could have demonstrated early on that
they could affect the employers beyond Southern California.
When the United
Farm Workers were attempting to organize in the California grape
picking industry beginning in the 1960s, their boycott of Gallo
wine engaged virtually every community in the nation. Millions
of shoppers started making the connection between their consumer
choices and the conditions of workers in the California grape
fields.
In the recent grocery
strike, however, it wasn't until three months into the strike
that the national AFL-CIO was brought in to galvanize support,
but little was done to mobilize allies in cities across the country.
Even in California, the state AFL-CIO initiated a statewide boycott
only a few weeks ago.
HOW TO ORGANIZE 50 MILLION WORKERS
HARRY KELBER, LABOR
EDUCATOR - Independent studies have shown that there are as many
as 50 million unorganized workers who say they want to join a
union. That number is substantially more than three times the
13 million who are members of the AFL-CIO. That's the richest,
highly favorable field for organizing since the 1930s, and we
should take advantage of it.
It is probably true
that millions of workers are scared to join for fear of losing
their jobs. The AFL-CIO has frightened many of them by constantly
repeating a litany of ways that employers can use to intimidate
and fire them for even talking about a union. They are constantly
being told by both employers and labor leaders that joining a
union is a risk, not a right.
But there must be
millions of workers who would like to join a union but have never
been asked. They've figured out that they can get better wages
and benefits with a union than without one, but they don't know
where to go to join, or what happens next when they do join...
Let's establish
AFL-CIO Recruiting Centers in every city and community where
unions have a presence. They should be staffed by union members
who know how to answer questions from unorganized workers. The
centers should have plenty of union literature and samples of
union constitutions and contracts. The walls should be lined
with posters and photographs of labor's achievements. And the
centers should be open to the public.
Most important,
each center should build a database of workers who are interested
in joining, containing information about their occupation, workplace,
where they can be reached and other relevant data. AFL-CIO Recruiting
Centers should also be set up on the Internet, performing many
of the same functions as those on the ground.
WHAT IS THE AFL-CIO DOING IN VENEZUELA?
FEBRUARY 2004
GROCERY WORKERS SHAFTED IN NEW
CONTRACT
JOHN O'DELL LA TIMES - Grocery workers,
hungry to return to their jobs, overwhelmingly approved a new
three-year contract this weekend, ending a nearly five-month
strike and lockout that cost the supermarket chains almost $1.5
billion in lost sales and disrupted the shopping patterns of
millions of consumers throughout Southern California... "It
was take it, or there's the door," said Ralphs cashier Carlos
Beltran, 25, who voted "yes" at Local 770's polling
place in Hollywood. "They are all thieves, the companies
and the unions. They're just sticking it to us." Still,
not everyone was unhappy. "I'm glad we're going back to
work, and I supported the strike," union member Andrea Gonzales
said after hearing the results Sunday night...
The contract will put veteran workers
and new hires in separate pay and benefits tiers for the first
time. The newly hired will receive substantially less in wages
and benefits, slashing stores' labor costs... "What these
companies got is cheap labor so they can perform in the stock
market," said Danny Mauro, 52, a clerk at Ralphs.
The union claimed a victory in healthcare
coverage: Under the contract, veterans won't have to pay for
their coverage in the first two years, and not in the third year
if contributions from the companies are enough to cover costs.
If not, the estimated cost would be up to $5 a week for individual
coverage and up to $15 a week for family coverage. But workers
now will have co-payments for medical services that were paid
in full by their insurance under the contract that expired Oct.
6.
Instead of raises, veterans will
get lump sum payments this year equal to 30 cents an hour for
every hour they worked in the 12 months before the old contract
expired.
FORTY HOUR WEEK FADING INTO HISTORY
HARRY WESSEL ORLANDO SENTINEL -
"Americans work more hours by far than any other workers
in the world," said Benjamin Balak, who teaches economic
history at Rollins College in Florida. "If you want to be
a high-income wage earner, you have to work like a dog. If you
want leisure in today's economy, you'll be stuck in a low-income
job. It's income or leisure." For many if not most professionals
today, Balak said, working in excess of 40 hours a week "is
expected. You don't have an option."
Recent government surveys appear
to contradict Balak. They show the amount of weekly hours put
in by full-time workers has remained virtually unchanged since
the mid-1970s - 43 hours then, 42.9 hours now. But there is more
to it than meets the eye because the surveys include both salaried
and hourly workers. An unpublished U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
study, for example, finds that those in administrative, managerial
and executive occupations spent an average of 45 hours at work
each week in 2002.
Hourly workers, who must by law
be paid time-and-a-half for overtime, tend to work about 40 hours
a week, just as they did in the '70s. It's among the growing
number of salaried workers - who aren't eligible for overtime
- where the extra hours largely are being worked. Currently,
about 50 million U.S. employees are not eligible for overtime;
about 71 million are eligible.
THE PRICE OF BEING PRO-UNION
STEWART ACUFF, AFL-CIO ORGANIZING
DIRECTOR - In the United States, when private sector workers
in America try to form a union through the National Labor Relations
Board process, they are subjected to weeks, months or even years
of harassment, surveillance, subtle and overt intimidation, and
retaliation -- including demotions, suspensions, firings, and
sometimes beatings.
When the miners at an American Electric
& Power coal mine in southern Ohio tried to form a union
last winter, 31 were laid off because of the company's poor financial
performance. Six weeks later -- just a week before the workers
were to vote in an NLRB election -- the remaining workers received
$1,000 plus bonuses a week for "good financial performance."
This sort of anti-worker, hypocritical whipsawing is now typical
of American corporations, which frequently employ legal "consultants"
and attorney attack dogs who go to any length to stop workers
trying to organize.
Three years ago, Human Rights Watch
issued a report documenting the fact that the United States is
in violation of international law and internationally accepted
human rights standards for failing to protect the rights of American
workers to freely form unions. According to the NLRB, an average
of 20,000 American workers a year are victimized by their employers
for organizing and union activity. Cornell University scholar
Kate Bronfenbrenner has documented the abuse. According to her
research:
· In 90% of unionization
efforts, the employer hires a consultant to frustrate the will
of the workers;
· In 70-80% of campaigns,
the employer conducts forced meetings to harangue the workers
against the union and, more insidiously, holds one-on-one supervision
meetings;
· 50% of the time, the employer
threatens to close the work site; and
· In over one-quarter of
all unionization efforts, activists are fired.
The effects on our society of depriving
workers of a fundamental human right are devastating: declining
civic and political activity, steadily eroding retirement system,
an ever-widening wage and income gap, growing poverty, and a
dangerous rightward drift of our cultural and political life.
CORPORATIONS USING NEW BUSH
OVERTIME RULES TO RIP OFF EMPLOYEES
KIRSTIN DOWNEY WASHINGTON POST -
Some companies are interpreting language in new national overtime
pay rules as possibly allowing them to exempt workers who have
received military training. . . Under federal law, workers who
are "learned professionals" are presumed to have control
of their own time and are exempt from receiving overtime pay.
Historically, that category included workers such as doctors,
lawyers, scientists, theologians and others with advanced degrees.
In proposing changes in the rules last spring, the Labor Department
said in the Federal Register that "the exemption is also
available to employees in such professions who have substantially
the same knowledge as the degreed employees, but who have attained
such knowledge through a combination of work experience, training
in the armed forces, attending a technical school, attending
a community college or other intellectual instruction."
UNION MEMBERSHIP CONTINUES TO DECLINE
AFL-CIO LEADERS ARE TO BLAME
are eligible.
HOW DOES
YOUR STATE'S MINIMUM WAGE
COMPARE WITH THE FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE?
GREEN STATES HAVE HIGHER RATES,
BLUE STATES ARE THE SAME, YELLOW STATES HAVE NO MINIMUM WAGE
LAW, AND RED STATES ARE BELOW THE FEDERAL LEVEL
DEPT OF
LABOR
JANUARY 2004
TOP UNION LEADERS MAKE OVER $200,000 A YEAR
HARRY KELBER, LABOR EDUCATOR - Robert
Chase, president of the independent National Education Assn.,
the largest union in the United States with 2.7 million members,
was paid almost $223,000 in 2002, while Sandra Feldman, president
of the rival American Federation of Teachers, with one-mullion
members, received $328,941. . Why does Doug Dority, president
of the United Food and Commercial Workers, deserve to receive
$329,792 a year, the highest salary of any of the AFL-CIO's 64
international union presidents? The UFCW is only the fifth largest
in the labor movement. But Andrew Stern, president of the Service
Employees International Union, the largest within the federation,
earns only $210,000. . .
Teamsters for a Democratic Union,
a long-established reform group, annually publishes its "100,000
Club" of Teamster officials earning six-figure salaries.
The list contains 270 names for 2002, a 20% increase over the
preceding year, according to the TDU.
The 35,000-member United Electrical,
Radio and Machine Workers pays its president the same salary
as the highest paid worker in the electrical industry. His salary
last year was $48,888. The UE philosophy is that the people who
work for the union should not be too removed from the daily lives
of the people they represent.
The International Longshore and
Warehouse Union maintains a close relationship between officer
salaries and the earnings of its 35,000 members. "That was
always a matter of pride, something Harry Bridges institutionalized
— that he would never earn more than the average longshoreman,"
says ILWU spokesman Steve Stallone. "He was president of
the union for 40 years, and it's only recently that it was raised
above that."
INCENTIVES LURE MANY TO QUIT, EVEN WITH
A LEAN JOB MARKET
WAL-MART LOCKS IN WORKERS AT NIGHT
NY TIMES - For more than 15 years,
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, has locked
in overnight employees at some of its Wal-Mart and Sam's Club
stores. It is a policy that many employees say has created disconcerting
situations, such as when a worker in Indiana suffered a heart
attack, when hurricanes hit in Florida and when workers' wives
have gone into labor. Mona Williams, Wal-Mart's vice president
for communications, said the company used lock-ins to protect
stores and employees in high-crime areas. She said Wal-Mart locked
in workers - the company calls them associates - at 10 percent
of its stores, a percentage that has declined as Wal-Mart has
opened more 24-hour stores. Ms. Williams said Wal-Mart, with
1.2 million employees in its 3,500 stores nationwide, had recently
altered its policy to ensure that every overnight shift at every
store has a night manager with a key to let workers out in emergencies.
FORTY HOUR WEEK FADING INTO HISTORY
HARRY WESSEL ORLANDO SENTINEL -
"Americans work more hours by far than any other workers
in the world," said Benjamin Balak, who teaches economic
history at Rollins College in Florida. "If you want to be
a high-income wage earner, you have to work like a dog. If you
want leisure in today's economy, you'll be stuck in a low-income
job. It's income or leisure." For many if not most professionals
today, Balak said, working in excess of 40 hours a week "is
expected. You don't have an option."
Recent government surveys appear
to contradict Balak. They show the amount of weekly hours put
in by full-time workers has remained virtually unchanged since
the mid-1970s - 43 hours then, 42.9 hours now. But there is more
to it than meets the eye because the surveys include both salaried
and hourly workers. An unpublished U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
study, for example, finds that those in administrative, managerial
and executive occupations spent an average of 45 hours at work
each week in 2002.
Hourly workers, who must by law
be paid time-and-a-half for overtime, tend to work about 40 hours
a week, just as they did in the '70s. It's among the growing
number of salaried workers - who aren't eligible for overtime
- where the extra hours largely are being worked. Currently,
about 50 million U.S. employees are not eligible for overtime;
about 71 million are eligible.
DECEMBER 2003
THE UNEMPLOYMENT MYTH
AUSTAN GOOLSBEE, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO,
IN NEW YORK TIMES - The government's announcement on Tuesday
that the economy grew even faster than expected makes the current
"jobless recovery" even more puzzling. To give some
perspective, unemployment normally falls significantly in such
economic boom times. The last time growth was this good, in 1983,
unemployment fell 2.5 percentage points and another full percentage
point the next year. That's what happens in a typical recovery.
So why not this time? Because we have more to recover from than
we've been told. The reality is that we didn't have a mild recession.
Jobs-wise, we had a deep one.
The government reported that annual
unemployment during this recession peaked at only around 6 percent,
compared with more than 7 percent in 1992 and more than 9 percent
in 1982. But the unemployment rate has been low only because
government programs, especially Social Security disability, have
effectively been buying people off the unemployment rolls and
reclassifying them as "not in the labor force." In
other words, the government has cooked the books. It has been
a more subtle manipulation than the one during the Reagan administration,
when people serving in the military were reclassified from "not
in the labor force" to "employed" in order to
reduce the unemployment rate. Nonetheless, the impact has been
the same.
Research by the economists David
Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Mark Duggan
at the University of Maryland shows that once Congress began
loosening the standards to qualify for disability payments in
the late 1980's and early 1990's, people who would normally be
counted as unemployed started moving in record numbers into the
disability system - a kind of invisible unemployment. Almost
all of the increase came from hard-to-verify disabilities like
back pain and mental disorders. As the rolls swelled, the meaning
of the official unemployment rate changed as millions of people
were left out.
By the end of the 1990's boom, this
invisible unemployment seemed to have stabilized. With the arrival
of this recession, it has exploded. From 1999 to 2003, applications
for disability payments rose more than 50 percent and the number
of people enrolled has grown by one million. Therefore, if you
correctly accounted for all of these people, the peak unemployment
rate in this recession would have probably pushed 8 percent.
BOOKMARKS
THE
BETRAYAL OF WORK
Beth Shulman
Fast food jobs constitute less than
5% of all low-end jobs. Low-wage, low-reward jobs are all around
us and include: security guards, nurse's aides and home health-care
aides, child-care workers and educational assistants, maids and
porters, call-center workers, bank tellers, data-entry keyers,
cooks, food preparation workers, waiters and waitresses, cashiers
and pharmacy assistants, hair dressers and manicurists, parking-lot
attendants, hotel receptionists and clerks, ambulance drivers,
poultry, fish and meat processors, sewing-machine operators,
laundry and dry-cleaning operators, and agricultural workers.
As important as these jobs are,
most of us do not even notice them. When we do so, it is almost
always in a negative light. In the public view, low-wage jobs
tend to be lumped together and referred to as "hamburger
flipper," insinuating both a lack of real skill and social
value. Policy analysts and public officials refer to "low-wage,
low-skilled" jobs as if the two terms were inseparable.
This mistakenly assumes that if a job pays poorly, it must be
because it does not call for many skills. In fact, these jobs
require knowledge, patience, care and communication.
America's low-wage workers are mostly
(nearly two-thirds) white, female, high school educated and have
family responsibilities. Teenagers comprise only 7% of the low-wage
workforce. Minorities and women are disproportionately found
in low-wage jobs and occupy the lower rungs of the ladder within
this workforce.
Mobility will not bring significant
advancement to most low-wage workers. Even after a 25 year period,
half of those in the lowest 20 percent of wage earners had not
moved above that group and of those that moved half had only
moved to the next highest wage group, still below the median
wage.
In the next ten years, the low end
of the job market will account for more than 30% of the American
workforce. Employers will hire nearly twice as many food-service
workers as software engineers, hire as many cashiers as they
do computer-support specialists an hire more than twice the number
of customer-service representatives as they do computer systems
analysts. The reskilling approach will do little to improve the
lives of most workers in these low-wage jobs, jobs that will
continue to grow as a proportion of our economy. What these workers
need is to be adequately rewarded for the skills they already
possess.
As profound as the impact of global
trade has been on our economy, it does not preclude improving
the wages and working conditions for lower-wage workers. Only
a small portion of low-wage jobs are actually in industries such
as manufacturing that compete globally. Most lower-wage jobs
are and will continue to be in the non-tradable service and retail
sectors. Checking out groceries, waiting on tables, servicing
office equipment, caring for children, tending the sick and cleaning
up for the rest of us must take place in a specific location
where the child, patient or customer is present.
Workers in similar jobs in other
industrialized countries have fared far better than American
workers. Low-income Americans have living standards that are
13% below that of low-income Germans, 17% below low-income Belgians
and 24% below the average income of the bottom 20% of Swedes.
This is despite the fact that the median American enjoys a standard
of living far above the median German, Belgian or Swede. ORDER
'PAID TIME OFF' ALTERS THE WORKPLACE
KIMBERLY BLANTON, BOSTON GLOBE -
More than two-thirds of US employers in a survey by the Society
for Human Resource Management have paid-time-off banks, nearly
double the number in 1999. During the recent economic downturn,
employers seized on the plans to crack down on unscheduled absences
by employees who call in "sick" to cover for a day
off to shop or care for a child. . .
Companies promote the policy as
rewarding employees who never call in sick by giving them more
days to use at their discretion. Employers say they design these
programs to provide workers with more flexibility to deal with
family logistics because they combine vacation, sick, and personal
days into one pool, unlike traditional plans that allot a set
number of days for each purpose. Community Services Council includes
holidays in its time-off bank, but most employers do not. . .
But paid-time-off plans have a downside,
say some consultants and employees. When employers adopt them,
the number of days in each employee's time bank is usually less
than the combined total of vacation, sick, and other days in
the old plan. Workers with protracted illnesses who use all of
their banked PTO days have few or no days left for vacation.
And employers, when rolling out the plans, may take the opportunity
to usher in stingier time-off policies for a segment of their
work force or for the newly hired. . .
NOVEMBER 2003
RECOVERED HISTORY
From
Divided We Fall:
The Story of the Paperworkers' Union
and the Future of Labor
By Peter Kellman
Today people in the labor movement
don't talk about labor and capital. We talk about labor and management
or industrial labor relations. Management represents capital
in the workplace and society. Labor has forfeited to capital
any claims over the direction of society and it has conceded
to management all issues except those of wages, hours, and working
conditions. And now that the unionized industrial workforce is
down to nearly nine percent of all industrial workers, management
prerogatives also dominate the arena of wages, hours, and working
conditions.
The big questions being debated
at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries were:
in whose interest would the society be run -- capital or labor?
Who would set the parameters of the political debate? Who would
define education? Would the culture be consumer oriented or cooperative?
Although the polarization between
capital and labor largely ended in the early 1920s, a public
discussion that questioned the role of capital continued into
the late 1940s. Then the Cold War's withering hand, McCarthyism,
clamped a suffocating lid on any serious questioning of the role
of capital being the dominant force in the United States. To
argue otherwise was declared unpatriotic by the people in power.
Many who continued to raise questions lost their jobs and some
were put in jail. Unions that refused to buckle under were run
out of the AFL and the CIO. "In 1949 the CIO purged unions
representing 900,000 workers for refusing to purge themselves
of Communist leaders and support government policies such as
the Marshall Plan."
The New Deal and the CIO greatly
improved the lives of many people for many years. But what happened
to the CIO? What happened to the New Deal? Neither Franklin D.
Roosevelt nor John L. Lewis wanted a revolution. Roosevelt wanted
to create a full-production economy that he hoped would eliminate
poverty and at the same time keep most of the profits going into
the bank accounts of the people he grew up with, the already
rich. Lewis wanted the laboring people he grew up with to get
a bigger piece of the pie, but he didn't question in any fundamental
way the role of the rich in running the society.
Labor, by Lewis's standard, produces
and consumes but does not contest the role of the corporate elite
in deciding what is produced or consumed, what and how fast resources
are extracted, what our children are taught, who our heroines
and heroes are, and, most importantly, in whose interest the
society is run -- capital or labor? Lewis's militant -- but still
pro-capitalist -- view of the world is commonly held by many
labor people.
In studying most accounts of labor
history, we are led to believe that the Knights of Labor and
the I.W.W. were marginal, quirky movements -- not part of the
modern labor movement, which supposedly began with the National
Labor Relations Act of 1935 and the CIO in 1937. Underlying this
view of labor history is the assumption that the Knights and
the I.W.W. were naïve and immature because they dared to
challenge the hegemony of the corporate state, while the AFL
and the CIO were mature because they accepted the role of the
corporate elite in directing our society and determining the
future of our culture. The leaders of the AFL and the CIO saw
the role of the state as limited to decreasing the severity of
corporate harm and providing a safety net for the working class.
The membership of the Knights and
the I.W.W. saw material goods as necessities -- not as the purpose
of existence. They rejected the notion that most human activity
should be geared toward creating consumer goods. They rejected
a society where those who invest money should earn a profit and
those who risk and invest life and limb should only receive a
wage. The Knights and I.W.W. fought for "eight hours for
work, eight for rest and eight for what we will," while
Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Chisholm had people working 12 hours
a day, six or seven days a week. The radical unions rejected
the notion that corporate managers should define for the common
people the very essence of life. But because the CIO accepted
corporate hegemony, modern corporate/labor history tries to make
us believe that the modern labor movement began with the CIO.
Just as the CIO never fundamentally
questioned the liberal vision of Franklin Roosevelt, neither
did the AFL-CIO of the 1980s ever raise any fundamental objections
to the conservative vision of Ronald Reagan. Both eras provided
excellent opportunities for organized labor to challenge the
direction of the society advocated by those in power. But in
neither case did labor throw down the gauntlet.
Meanwhile, the corporate managers
were allowed to continue to consolidate more and more wealth
and power and the unions were not. The period in which workers
got more money, better benefits, and better working conditions
ended in 1973 when real wages peaked in this country. Meanwhile,
the corporations had Taft-Hartley and the "prudent man"
rule passed by Congress to prevent the unions from using the
deferred wages of workers -- pension and benefit funds -- to
buy the industries in which they work. Thus, the most important
institution of the working class, the union, is legally prevented
from consolidating economic wealth and power in the same way
as labor's chief adversary, the corporate elite, does.
Most of today's union leaders have
trouble dealing with the idea that unions can only survive if
they challenge the existence of a corporation. The way they see
it, it's the corporation that feeds the membership, not vice
versa.
In the 1970s, Ray Rogers developed
a union strategy called the "Corporate Campaign" and
successfully used his tactics against the J.P. Stevens textile
corporation. This strategy sets the union on a path that will
lead to the destruction of a corporation if it doesn't come to
terms with the union's demands. But this approach goes against
the grain for most union leaders because the unions' bottom line
in our society, as defined by the National Labor Relations Act,
is to deliver industrial peace for the corporation, not to threaten
or contest the existence of those corporations. As a UPIU international
vice president once said to me, in spite of the fact that the
International Paper Company had just locked out 1,200 workers
for a year and permanently replaced another 2,000, "We can't
destroy this company; we have contracts with it at other locations."
In the late 1970s, organized labor proceeded to isolate Rogers
and neutralize his militant tactics.
Another problem union leaders have
with the Corporate Campaign is its emphasis on the mass mobilization
of the membership. Union leaders who are trained to sit down
with management to negotiate contracts are, for the most part,
very ill at ease with an active membership. In fact, many find
an active membership threatening. There are several reasons for
this relationship between the leadership and the membership,
but the most important is the way most unions are structured.
In most unions and union organizations
like the AFL-CIO, the campaigns run by those seeking national
office are conducted not amongst the membership at large but
among those local leaders who cast large numbers of votes based
on the size of their locals. The result is that only a handful
of people decide who speaks for labor in this country. And that
handful is generally pretty far removed from the everyday life
and pressures of actual rank-and-file union members.
Consequently, people seeking leadership
in these union organizations go to the meetings of, interact
with, and learn the skills necessary to win elections among the
union's elite, and therefore usually have no reason to learn
the skills of mass public debate and organizing to keep their
jobs. This contributes to the scarcity of high union officials
who are able to speak effectively at public meetings, motivate
and active their own membership, or deal appropriately with the
media. These leaders are spawned in an institution where they
play an insider's game. This is what the institution of organized
labor trains its leaders to be: inside players and inside politicians,
not mass organizers or mass leaders.
Organized labor presently operates
with a vision that assumes a society where corporate managers
make the decisions in the plant about what is to be made and
how it is to be made. And on the outside it accepts a system
in which corporate-financed think tanks, media, foundations,
trade organizations (their unions), and political contributions
are used to control the political process and determine how the
overall society will function, not just the one in the workplace.
So organized labor's activity is aimed at dealing with the problems
of adding members and getting better wages and benefits for them,
which is based on the belief that we live in a democracy governed
by the rule of law and labor obeys the law. The theory is if
you don't like the laws, organize and change them through the
electoral process.
This has been the operating theory
of the AFL since its 1947 convention. Despite the AFL's position
that Taft-Hartley was unconstitutional, George Meany's claim
that it was "the law of the land" and must be obeyed
eclipsed the previous theory that labor is bound to disobey unconstitutional
laws. The new theory has tied labor's body and soul to the mast
of a sinking ship because it is based on a lie. Workers don't
have rights. Meany was content to live off a large membership
that would soon begin a half-century decline that labor has yet
to reverse.
If we want to live in a democracy,
we must make a radical departure from the vision of the CIO and
the AFL. You can't have a democracy when one group accumulates
profits and the other works for wages, because the one that gets
the profits will use that money to become more and more powerful,
and that power will be exercised and accumulated in both the
political and the economic realm. That is why union membership
in this country peaked in the 1950s and real wages for 80 percent
of the population have been declining since the early 1970s,
along with the quality of family life and the environment. That
is why our governments are being privatized and our public schools
and public radio are now covered with corporate advertising.
As the rich get more powerful they use that power to take more
from the rest of society -- to invade more of our space, to exploit
more of our labor. With the corporatization of our hospitals,
prisons, and welfare programs, the rich are even profiting from
our misery.
The good news is that labor is very
effective in its day-to-day tactics. Unions do organize workers.
Unions do represent workers. Unions do motivate members to vote
in political elections. But these tactics are based on a false
vision of America, followed by a strategy that has failed to
halt labor's decline.
[Divided We Fall: The Story of the
Paperworkers' Union and the Future of Labor, by Peter Kellman,
is now available from Apex Press. Price: $29.95 plus $4.00 shipping.
Send check to: Apex Press, P.O. Box 337, Croton-on-Hudson, NY
10520]
THE REAL REASON PENSIONS ARE BEING CUT
JEAN SHAOUL, WORLD SOCIALIST - How
is it that state pensions, the first piece of social insurance
to be introduced more than 100 years ago in Western Europe and
still the most significant aspect of the welfare state, are supposedly
no longer affordable at the beginning of the twenty-first century?.
. .
It is indisputable that life expectancy
has increased and there are more pensioners living longer in
the advanced capitalist countries. But this has not been a problem
since it has been offset by a declining birth rate, leaving the
dependency ratio-the number of dependants (those under 16 or
over 59 years of age) per adult worker-largely static if not
declining.
Data from the United Nations' World
Population Prospects: The 1998 Revision shows that the dependency
ratio actually declined between 1950 and 1998. In the developed
world the dependency ratio declined from 64 to 61, while it rose
from 88 to 90 in the least developed countries. Thus in those
countries where state pensions actually exist the age structure
of the population is not the source of the problem. . .
Like all welfare provision, pensions
represent in the final analysis a deduction from the surplus
value extracted from the working class and realized for the capitalist
corporations and their owners in the form of profit. Any increase
in the retirement age or reduction in pension benefit - be it
in the form of corporation tax or employers' contributions to
a state and/or occupational pension plan - represents an attempt
by the capitalist class to increase their profit or the rate
of return on capital employed.
WORKER UNHAPPINESS GROWING
WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - Fewer
Americans are happy with their jobs and more are willing to go
elsewhere than was the case two years ago, according to a report
by Reston-based jobs site Career Builders. The survey of about
2,400 full and part-time workers reports that nearly one in four
are dissatisfied with their current job, up 20 percent from two
years ago. Six in 10 say they plan to leave their jobs for other
pursuits within the next two years. . . The survey also found
53 percent of men are unhappy with their pay, up from 43 percent
two years ago, and 48 percent of workers think their workloads
are too heavy, a slightly higher response than 2001.
POVERTY: THESE JOBS SUCK
CITY LIMITS - Having full-time work
is no guarantee you'll avoid economic hardship in New York. Nearly
a quarter of people with full-time jobs that don't pay enough
to bring them above the poverty line fell behind on rent in the
last year, 21 percent put off dealing with medical problems and
27 percent couldn't get the meds a doctor prescribed, according
to the Community Service Society's second annual survey of New
Yorkers living on less than 200 percent of the federal poverty
line. CSS's poll of 753 city residents also found that 44 percent
of respondents working full-time got not health insurance, 63
percent didn't get a single day of paid sick leave, and 64 percent
did not get paid vacation.
FUN FACTS ABOUT THE CURRENT LABOR SLUMP
TOM PAINE - A number of factors
must be considered in order to understand the severity of the
current labor slump:
The record length of time that jobs
have failed to recover: Prior to the current slump, jobs had
never fallen over a two and a half year period since monthly
job numbers began in 1939. As of October 2003, payroll jobs had
fallen by 2.4 million below the level of March 2001.
The growth in the working age population
since the recession began in March 2001: Even as jobs were shrinking
by 1.8 percent, the working age population (i.e., the number
of people of working age) was growing by 3.4 percent. Had job
growth kept up with working age population growth over that period,
6.9 million more payroll jobs would have been filled in October
2003.
The effect of the "missing"
labor market on the unemployment rate: The unusually prolonged
loss of jobs has caused an unprecedented number of people to
refrain from actively looking for work, and therefore to be excluded
from the unemployment measurement. Had the labor force grown
more in line with the population - as it has in past labor slumps
-another 2.3 million people would have been in the labor force
in October 2003.
The loss of wage and salary income:
Although real hourly wages have grown since the start of the
recession, those gains have been more than offset by declines
in the number of jobs and the amount of hours paid per job. The
U.S. labor market has remained mired in a slump since the recession
began in March 2001.
This slump saw the longest duration
of job loss - 28 months.
This slump is the first time in
which there was not a full recovery of jobs 31 months after the
recession began.
HOW PENSIONS ARE DISAPPEARING
NY TIMES - A year shaved off an
estimate here, a decimal point's difference there can significantly
reduce a company's pension obligations on paper.
OCTOBER 2003
RISING HEALTH CARE COSTS KEY TO CALIFORNIA
STRIKE
NANCY CLEELAND AND MARLA DICKERSON,
LA TIMES - When Southland supermarket workers went on strike
Saturday, their main beef was an employer proposal to cut back
their health plan. Mechanics with the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority are upset over the same thing. And health benefits
are key to the contract fight that has prompted a sickout by
Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies. Around Southern California
and across the country, attempts by employers to curtail medical
benefits have become the top issue in labor contract talks, setting
off a wave of strikes and other job actions that are likely to
escalate as health insurance costs continue to balloon. "It's
at the core of every major contract struggle," said Kate
Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell
University. "And it's going to be an issue until we see
some national solutions." In fact, at least half the strikes
in California this year have been staged over health benefits,
according to Ken Jacobs, a researcher at the UC Berkeley Labor
Center. He counted 11 such work stoppages in a four- month period
this year in Northern California.
WHY CAN'T A UNION ORGANIZE EVEN ONE WAL-MART?
HARRY KELBER, LABOR EDUCATOR - After
years of trying, the one million-member United Food and Commercial
Workers, an AFL-CIO affiliate, has been unable to unionize a
single one of Wal-Mart's 4,750 supermarkets, despite a heavy
investment of money and resources in its organizing campaign.
The best that the union's large
staff of organizers has been able to achieve is its only "historic"
breakthrough back in Feb. 17, 2000, when the meat cutters in
the delicatessen department of a Wal-Mart supermarket in Jacksonville,
Tex. voted 7 to 3 in favor of the UFCW in a National Labor Relations
Board election. The union was unable to capitalize on this toehold
victory to organize the entire store.
The UFCW can't blame its organizing
failures on the grounds that the nearly one million people who
work for Wal-Mart (the world's largest employer) are so happy
with their pay, benefits and working conditions that they don't
need a union. The average pay for Wal-Mart employees (they're
called "associates") is $8.23 an hour or $13,861 a
year. That's well below the federal poverty line of $14,630 a
year for a family of three.
Wal-Mart's health-insurance plan
is considerably below par, compared with those in the retail
industry. It requires a six-month waiting period for new hourly
employees. Its deductibles are as high as $1,000, triple the
norm. It raised premiums 50% during the past two years. It does
not cover retirees.
. . . Two years ago, the giant retailer
had to shell out $50 million to 69,000 workers in its Colorado
stores, whose class-action suit cited overwhelming evidence of
an enormous amount of off-the clockwork by employees. Wal-Mart
also paid $485,000 to 10 former Hispanic employees in a discrimination
suit. Family members of deceased Wal-Mart employees are suing
the company because it took out about 350,000 insurance policies
on the lives of its workers, made payable to the company.
. . . The UFCW might have won the
trust of Wal-Mart employees if it had led them in their law suits,
but apparently it didn't get directly involved. Even though unionized
store employees average about 30% or more in wages and benefits
than those at Wal-Mart, UFCW organizers haven't been able to
persuade a majority of workers at even one store to join the
union.
The abysmal failure at Wal-Mart
highlights the fact that AFL-CIO unions in the private sector
won't try to unionize scores of corporations with a work force
of 30,000 or more. . . If AFL-CIO unions can't organize the big
companies, how are they to grow?
SLOWING STREAM OF NEW JOBS HELPS TO EXPLAIN
SLUMP
DAVID LEONHARDT, NY TIMES - A lack
of hiring, rather than a wave of layoffs, appears to be the main
problem afflicting the American economy. Even as unemployment
continued to mount last year, the number of jobs being eliminated
fell below the level in the late 1990's, according to a new government
report. But the number of jobs that businesses created in 2002
dropped to its lowest level since 1995. Compared with the size
of the economy, the rate of hiring was even slower than during
the weak recovery of the early 1990's.
The results come from a survey that
the Bureau of Labor Statistics published for the first time yesterday,
offering a fuller picture of the nation's long jobs slump. The
government previously reported only the net change in employment,
which does not explain whether a weak job market like the current
one stems mainly from layoffs or from companies' unwillingness
to hire.
The new numbers portray an economy
stuck in neutral, with workers no longer losing their jobs at
the rapid pace of 2001 but with relatively few new job opportunities
popping up. In the last three months of 2002, 7.8 million jobs
were eliminated, while 7.7 million were created, according to
company records studied by the bureau.
WAL-MART'S HEALTH BENEFITS 40%
BELOW U.S. AVERAGE
BERNARD WYSOCKI JR. AND ANN ZIMMERMAN,
WALL STREET JOURNAL: Wal-Mart makes new hourly workers wait six
months to sign up for its benefits plan and doesn't cover retirees
at all. Its deductibles range as high as $1,000, triple the norm.
It refuses to pay for flu shots, eye exams, child vaccinations,
chiropractic services and numerous other treatments allowed by
many other companies. In many cases, it won't pay for treatment
of pre-existing conditions in the first year of coverage.
The payoff: Last year, average spending
on health benefits for each of the company's roughly 500,000
covered employees was $3,500, almost 40% less than the average
for all U.S. corporations and 30% less than the rest of the wholesale/retail
industry, according to estimates by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
As the nation's biggest private
employer, with a U.S. payroll of 1.16 million, Wal-Mart could
carry enormous influence with this approach at a time when all
companies are struggling to contain the soaring cost of health
care. In 2003, some 13% of U.S. employers trimmed health benefits,
while seven percent increased them, according to the Kaiser Family
Foundation, a nonprofit research group in Menlo Park, California
SEPTEMBER 2003
RETIREES FLOOD JOB MARKET
RON SCHERER, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
- While seniors were also hired in large numbers during the booming
late 1990s because of labor shortages, the trend has continued
during faltering economic times, as cautious employers turn to
those they see as reliable as well as inexpensive. Employment
experts believe the surge in senior workers is likely to have
a spillover effect on the labor force as a whole, since they
are competing with younger workers for available positions. .
. In fact, over the past year, individuals 55 and over are the
only age group that has been able to find work. For many seniors,
the stimulus to go back to work is a sharp drop in income - in
large part because of the steep decline in interest rates. According
to the Bureau of Economic Statistics, interest income has fallen
about $26 billion in the past two years.
VACATION STARVATION
JOE ROBINSON, ALTERNET - In this
country, vacations are not only microscopic; they're also shrinking
faster than revenues on a corporate restatement. A survey by
Internet travel company Expedia has found that Americans will
be taking 10 percent less vacation time this year -- too much
work to get away, said respondents. This continues a trend that
has seen the standard U.S. vacation, as measured by the travel
industry, buzzsawed down to a long weekend.
Some 13 percent of companies now
provide no paid leave, up from 5 percent five years ago, according
to the Alexandria-based Society for Human Resource Management.
In Washington state, a whopping 17 percent of workers get no
paid leave. Vacations are going the way of real bakeries and
drive-in theaters, fast becoming a quaint remnant of those pre-downsized
days when we didn't have to keep the CEO in art collections and
mansions. The result is unrelieved stress, burnout, absenteeism,
rising medical costs, diminished productivity, and the extinguishing
of time for life and family. . .
Vacations are being downsized by
the same forces that brought us soaring work weeks: labor cutbacks,
a sense of false urgency created by tech tools, fear and guilt.
Managers use the climate of job insecurity to stall, cancel and
abbreviate paid leave, while piling on guilt. The message, overt
or implied, is that it would be a burden on the company to take
all your vacation days -- or any. Employees get the hint: One
out of five employees say they feel guilty taking their vacation,
reports Expedia's survey. A new poll of 700 companies by Com
Psych Corp., a Chicago-based employee assistance provider, found
that 56 percent of workers would be postponing vacations until
business improved.
The whole neurotic vacation system
is based on guilt, on the notion that you are never worthy enough
to take time off. The guilt works, because we are programmed
to believe that only productivity and tasks have value in life,
that free time is worthless, though it produces such trifles
as family, friends, passions -- and actual living.
AFL-CIO
TO STICK TO DOMESTIC ISSUES
HARRY KELBER, LABOR EDUCATOR - The
AFL-CIO Executive Council, at its meeting in Chicago on Aug.
5-6, decided to continue its virtually unbroken silence about
events in Afghanistan, the Middle East and the war in Iraq. At
a press conference, AFL-CIO's political director Karen Ackerman
stated that organized labor would have the "biggest ever"
campaign to defeat President George Bush in the 2004 elections.
But in response to reporters' questions, she said that the AFL-
CIO campaign would focus exclusively on domestic issues. . .
Some national union leaders have
privately told us the rationale for the AFL-CIO's anomalous political
position. The issues of war and peace are too divisive, they
say, at a time when labor needs to be united. Many union members
feel it is their patriotic duty to support our government in
the war in Iraq and the young men and women who are fighting
and dying there.
Other union members believe that
it was a mistake for President Bush to launch a pre-emptive war
in Iraq with only Great Britain as our ally, and that our troops
should be brought home, now that Saddam Hussein's hateful regime
has been overthrown. But by its silence, the AFL-CIO is not being
neutral. It is, in effect, giving President Bush a blank check
to conduct the war in Iraq and wherever else he deems necessary,
for as long as he decides and whatever the cost. . .
CORPORADOS VS. LABOR
LABOR EDUCATOR: An estimated 10,000
workers are fired each year simply for wanting to join a union.
• In one-third of the cases
where workers vote for a union, employers never agree to a first
contract.
• Employers spend $300 million
a year on consultants trained to stop workers from forming unions.
• At least 50% of businesses
threaten to shut down if employees decide to form a union.
• 91% of employers force employees
to attend ³captive audience² meetings designed to indoctrinate
them against unions.
• 75% of employers use supervisors
to hold one-on-one meetings with workers to discourage any pro-union
sentiment.
AMERICA'S INCREDIBLE SHRINKING VACATION
ELLEN GOODMAN, BOSTON GLOBE - Americans
have always been a touch suspicious of leisure. Our Puritan patriarchs
not only famously regarded idle hands as the devil's workshop,
they believed the grindstone cleared the path to salvation. We've
long been wary of both the idle rich and the idle poor as threats
to our democracy.
In the early 20th century a few
hard-working researchers declared that a little time off was
a good thing. Not surprisingly, they decided that "brain
workers" needed a rest from days spent laboring in the minds,
while physical workers could do without it. The idea of vacations
finally caught on in the middle and working classes, but it was
never codified into the law.
Now we arrive at the summer of the
incredible shrinking American vacation. It's predicted that we'll
take 10 percent less time off than last year, and last year was
no week at the beach. Americans have notoriously fewer vacation
days than workers in any other industrialized country. While
Europeans get four or five weeks paid leave by law, and even
the Chinese get three weeks, we average about eight days after
a year with one company and 10 days after three years. Thirteen
percent of American companies offer no paid vacation at all.
Even more remarkable than how few
days we get is how few we take. We essentially give back $21
million in time owed but not taken. And in an Expedia poll, one
out of five workers said they feel guilty taking vacations.
WORK TO LIVE
- The average middle income family now works four months more
in total hours than they did in 1979 (economists Barry Bluestone,
Stephen Rose)
Some 80% of men and 62% of women
work more than 40 hours a week, according to the International
Labor Organization
Almost 40% of Americans now work
more than 50 hours a week, reports U.S. News and World Report
and a survey by the National Sleep Foundation
Americans work up to 12 weeks more
in total hours per year than the Europeans
Half of all U.S. travel is in two
or three-day microscopic bits (Travel Industry of America)
Twenty-six percent of Americans
take no vacation at all (Boston College survey) |