What Has Capitalism Done for Us Lately ?

Bill Moyers and Company

 

English: Picture of Sheila C. Bair, Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

See this video.  It includes good explanations of cooperative work sites and ownership, such as Sacramento Municipal Utility District ( electric power).

 

http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-what-has-capitalism-done-for-us-lately/

 

It includes Sheila Bair, formerly of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.  A Republican. Critic of the bail outs. Author of, Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street from Wall Street.   She discusses the issues of banking crisis and why we have not reformed our reformed our banks.

Change the draft immigration bill

As the Senate Judiciary Committee continues the “mark up” process on S.744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights asks individuals and groups to join them in signing an Open Letter to the Committee to adhere to the principles of human rights, labor rights, fairness and justice.

They ask for changes in the following.

1. Substantially improve the path to citizenship.
2. Access to a green card should not be dependent upon a “secure border”.
3. The filing fees are too high.
4. Maintain the core commitment to family reunification as a criteria.
5. Continue the Diversity Visa program.
6. End the prioritization of increase in border enforcement and militarization of the border.
7. End the current immigration detention system.
8. Ensure access to full labor protections and labor rights.
9. End the temporary worker programs as soon as possible.

10. End the enhanced deportation programs.

DSA is a member of the National Network.

If you would like to endorse as an organization, please click here.

 

 

Labor Wrestles With Its Future

Harold Meyerson

Labor wrestles with its future
By Harold Meyerson,

Since the emergence of capitalism, workers seeking higher pay and safer workplaces have banded together in guilds and unions to pressure their employers for a better deal. That has been the approach of the American labor movement for the past 200 years.

That approach, however, has begun to change. It’s not because unions think collective bargaining is a bad idea but because workers can’t form unions any more — not in the private sector, not at this time. There are some exceptions: Organizing continues at airlines, for instance, which are governed by different organizing rules than most industries. But employer opposition to organizing has become pervasive in the larger economy, and the penalties for employers that violate workers’ rights as they attempt to unionize are so meager that such violations have become routine. For this and a multitude of other reasons, the share of unionized workers in the private sector dropped from roughly one-third in the mid-20th century to a scant 6.6 percent last year. In consequence, the share of the nation’s economy constituted by wages has sunk to its lowest level since World War II, and U.S. median household income continues to decline.

Unions face an existential problem: If they can’t represent more than a sliver of American workers on the job, what is their mission? Are there other ways they can advance workers’ interests even if those workers aren’t their members?

The South: Labor’s Elephant in the Room #1ufuture

by Street Heat

While encouraging, the recent uptick in discussions regarding the future of the labor movement will be limited in its impact unless the strategic nature of the U.S. south is included in the exchange.

It is somewhat mystifying that while acknowledging the urgency of labor to address its shortcomings, the critical role that the U.S. south plays in stymieing labor’s ascendancy has received little to no attention. More concerning is the fact that the south’s centrality to labor’s resurgence and ultimate survival is not even acknowledged in this increasingly vigorous discussion.

The combination of  anti-worker laws, repression against people of color and reactionary politics has allowed the enemies of labor to define an entire geographic area as a bulwark against movements for social justice. The south provides the critical majority of electeds who have held the line against pro-worker reforms (along with most other progressive legislation) and its laws have provided a template for laws passed in the “war on workers” in northern states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and New Hampshire.

Defending Unions on May Day

Obama’s West, Texas Memorial Speech: No Mention of Workplace Safety

by Mike Elk

Mike Elk

(April 25) Today, President Obama spoke at a memorial service at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, for the 15 people who were killed in the West Chemical and Fertilizer Plant explosion. Standing in front of caskets and large photos of many of the firefighters killed, President Obama said, “To the families, the neighbors grappling with unbearable loss, we are here to say you are not alone. You are not forgotten. We may not all live here in Texas, but we’re neighbors too. We’re Americans too, and we stand with you.”

Obama’s remarks in West come three years to the day after he gave a similar speech eulogizing the 29 miners who died in 2010’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion. But in that speech, Obama used the memorial to make the case for workplace safety.

“How can we let anyone in this country put their lives at risk by simply showing up to work; by simply pursuing the American Dream?” said the president. “We cannot bring back the 29 men we lost. They are with the Lord now. Our task, here on Earth, is to save lives from being lost in another such tragedy; to do what must be done, individually and collectively, to assure safe conditions underground–to treat our miners like they treat each other–like family.”

Today’s memorial speech in Texas, notably, did not include any such calls for increased workplace safety measures.

Union Suppression Movement- Part 2

America’s Union Suppression Movement (And Its Apologists), Part Two

Leo Casey on April 18, 2013
This is part two of a two-part post. The first part can be found below.

As the war against American unions reached a fever pitch in recent years, there emerged a small group of right-wing academics and think tanks that have taken up the anti-union cause in intellectual circles. Of particular note for our purposes are Terry Moe’s book, Special Interest, and a recent study, How Strong Are U.S. Teacher Unions?, which was jointly sponsored by the Fordham Institute and Education Reform Now. [6]

Since I’ve already written a critique of Moe’s book for the American Political Science Association’s journal, Perspective on Politics, my focus here is mainly on the Fordham/ERN report.

Both publications tell a very similar story (all the more remarkable given the political and economic context I discussed in Part I of this post), in which incredibly powerful teacher union Leviathans invariably win the day in all manner of educational and public policy fights. The Fordham Institute’s Michael Petrilli offered a ten-second sound bite for this meme, when he recently wrote that teacher unions “were the Goliath to the school reformers’ David.”

How does one find one’s way to such an unfounded conclusion? With an ideological analysis that has only the thinnest veneer of social science.

Take the most basic issue in this narrative, the supposed “power” of teacher unions. As I used to teach my Political Science students, power can not be understood as a static, fixed property possessed by an individual or a group, but must be seen as a relationship among various players. Like any other political actor, a teachers union possesses no power in the abstract, but only in relation to other parties – school districts; school boards; state education departments; county, state and federal governments; corporations; political parties; parents groups; and so on, across the field of education policy players. Yet, in discussing the power of the “Goliath” teachers union, Moe and the Fordham/ERN report make no mention of the greater relative power of the education reform “David.”  This omission is telling for three important reasons:

The Union Suppression Movement

America’s Union Suppression Movement (And Its Apologists), Part One

Leo Casey on April 17, 2013
Last week, in “Is There A ‘Corporate Education Reform’ Movement?”, I wrote about the logic of forming strategic alliances on specific issues with those who are not natural allies, even those with whom you mostly disagree. This does not mean, however, that there aren’t those – some with enormous wealth and power – who are bent on undermining the American labor movement generally and teachers’ unions specifically. This is part one of a two-part post on this reality.

The American union movement is, it must be said, embattled and beleaguered. The recent passage of the Orwellian named ‘right to work’ law in Michigan, an anti-union milestone in the birthplace of the United Auto Workers and cradle of American industrial unionism, is but the latest assault on American working people and their unions.[1] Since the backlash election of 2010 that brought Tea Party Republicans to power in a number of state governments, public sector workers have faced a legislative agenda designed to eviscerate their rights to organize unions and bargain collectively in such states as Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hampshire and Virginia.

Fueling these attacks is an underlying organic crisis that has greatly weakened the labor movement and its ability to defend itself. Union membership has fallen from a high point of 1 in 3 American workers at the end of WW II to a shade over 1 in 9 today. [2] At its height, American unions had unionized basic industries – auto, mining, steel, textiles, telecommunications – and had sufficient density to raise wages and improve working conditions for members and non-union workers as well. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report for 2012, organized American labor has fallen to its lowest density in nearly a century. Today, American unions have high density in only one major sector of the economy, K-12 education, and in that sector unions are now under ferocious attack. [3]

Rep. Ellison Introduces Robin Hood Tax–Supporters Will Rally on Saturday

by Kenneth Quinnell

Rep.Keith Ellison

On Wednesday, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) introduced the Inclusive Prosperity Act (H.R. 1579), which would create a financial transaction tax that would raise billions of dollars in new revenue. The tax is similar to one that existed in the United States until 1966 and that is levied in 40 countries around the world. Another 11 countries are currently considering joining them.

‘This is a huge day,’ Rep. Ellison announced at a press conference within view of the Capitol. ‘This is a small tax on Wall Street transactions to meet the needs of our nation. Didn’t America step up to the plate when Wall Street needed help? It will reduce harmful market speculation. Gambling on Wall Street does not benefit our society.’

Supporters of the bill will rally on April 20 in Washington, D.C.

[To get directions. RSVP and share with others on the Robin Hood Tax USA Facebook event page If you can't attend the rally and the march, you can still show your support for the Robin Hood Tax on Facebook by using the," I support the Robin Hood Tax" image as your profile picture.--Talking Union]

Kenneth Quinnell is a blogger for the AFL-CIO Now blog, where this post originally appeared.

Wisconsin Labor Educator Don Taylor on labor’s need to innovate

Union Labor News, publication of the South Central (Wisconsin) AFL-CIO  sat down with Don Taylor, Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Extension’s School for Workers, for a wide-ranging interview on the state of the union movement.  We think the interview should be of  interest to Talking Union readers across the country,

Don Taylor

“There was a time when being in a union was illegal.” Don Taylor from the School for Workers was talking about the ups and downs of the labor movement.

Plenty of downs have hit US workers in the past few years. Taylor rattled off a litany of other states and what they tried, and often succeeded in making illegal: Nebraska tried to abolish its state labor board; Massachusetts made health care non-negotiable for municipal employees; Indiana and Michigan passed anti-labor right-to-work laws and only a governor’s veto stopped it in New Hampshire; collective bargaining limits were overturned by referendum in Ohio; Tennessee tried to make it a felony to be on a picket line; the list goes on and on.