AlterNet.org: Labor

U.S. Bancorp Oligarch Devotes Free Time to Dismantling Minnesota Orchestra

Sam Pizzigati, Portside — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:23:00 -0700

U.S. Bancorp CEO Richard Davis runs contract negotiations for non-profit behind the Minnesota orchestra. Last year he offered the musicians a contract that would cut their pay in half pay and increase health care premiums by up to $8,000. They refused, he locked them out of their jobs.

What do bank executives who make $19 million a year do in their spare time? They do the same thing they do in the hours they spend in their executive suites. They squeeze America's middle class.

That's not, of course, what the flacks at U.S. Bancorp, the nation's fifth-largest bank, will tell you. They'll inform you that the CEO of their Minneapolis-based banking giant, Richard Davis, graciously gives of his spare time to serve on the board of the nationally renowned Minnesota Orchestra.

True enough. But CEO Davis brings to that board much more than a fondness for fugues. He brings the same corporate executive arrogance that has shoved labor's share of the nation's economic output down to modern-day record lows.

This redistribution - from worker to boss - has been rushing ahead now for over three decades. Since 1980, as analyst David Cay Johnston noted last week, "corporate pre-tax profits have grown at almost twice the rate of pre-tax wages."

Behind this massive redistribution: a relentless corporate offensive to minimize labor bargaining power by any means necessary. Including "lockouts."

Richard Davis chairs the negotiating committee at the nonprofit responsible for the Minnesota Orchestra. Last October 1, Davis and his fellow corporate managers who run the nonprofit "locked out" the orchestra's musicians after they refused to accept a contract offer that would have cut musician pay by up to 50 percent and jumped annual health care premiums by up to $8,000.

Ever since then, the Minnesota Orchestra's near 100 symphony musicians have gone without salary, health insurance, and pension contributions, the basic building blocks of middle class security.

These musicians are not striking. Quite the contrary. They offered to keep working while bargaining negotiations continued. They also offered to submit "to impartial, final and binding arbitration under the guidance of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service."

U.S. Bancorp CEO Davis and friends rejected these offers. They chose instead to keep the musicians from working - and wait for them to cave.

Back in America's middle class golden age, in the middle of the 20th century, such management behavior would have been unthinkable.

Back then, any corporate chiefs who locked out their employees in the middle of a labor dispute risked becoming pariahs in their communities, the sort of shady operators who would never be invited to sit on the board of a prestigious nonprofit like the Minnesota Orchestral Association.

But elite attitudes toward lockouts started changing in 1975 when an ostensibly liberal pillar of the business community, Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, replaced striking workers with "replacement workers" and lived to tell the tale. Six years later, a newly elected conservative President, Ronald Reagan, fired and replaced striking air traffic controllers.

A new anything-goes corporate management approach to labor relations soon took hold. Lockouts, in this atmosphere, would become simply another option in the modern American management toolkit - and the federal regulator created to safeguard the right to good-faith collective bargaining, the National Labor Relations Board, would prove too feeble to offer up much resistance.

U.S. Bancorp CEO Davis has had an up-close chance to see how effective a management tool lockouts could be. Nearly two years ago, another major enterprise in Minnesota, American Crystal Sugar, locked out 1,300 workers.

The unionized workers at Crystal, the nation's largest beet sugar producer, had solid middle-class jobs that averaged $40,000 a year, plus overtime. But in 2011 contract negotiations Crystal management demanded huge health care cuts and work rule changes that would undercut the job security of long-term workers.

The workers voted not to accept the offer Crystal labeled "final."In August 2011, Crystal then locked them out.

The workers never struck. Crystal replaced them anyway. Last month, the worn-out workers, their unemployment benefits exhausted, voted to accept the same management attack on their middle-class contract they had rejected four times earlier. Crystal management had won a total victory.

U.S. Bancorp's Davis expected total victory when his lockout began, too. But the musicians have hung tough, buoyed by widespread community support. Still, the hostile environment management has created has taken a toll. About a quarter of the orchestra's 98 musicians have taken jobs elsewhere or retired.

"This lockout is destroying the Minnesota Orchestra, musician by musician by musician," viola player Sam Bergman told the audience at one benefit concert late in April.

Richard Davis personally took home $18.8 million in 2010 for his U.S. Bancorp labors, several million dollars more than the annual wage and benefit cost of the entire Minnesota Orchestra. Since becoming Bancorp CEO over six years ago, Davis has averaged about $10 million annually.

Imperial CEOs like Richard Davis owe their grand fortunes, in large part, to the grand squeeze American workers have suffered over the last generation. These execs have been squeezing so long they simply cannot operate any other way.

Even music, turns out, cannot soothe the savage beast.

Aficionados of fine music - and advocates for a more equal America - can now support the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra online.

[Labor journalist Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, writes widely about inequality. His latest book, The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970, has just been published.] - See more at: http://portside.org/2013-06-17/they-cant-stop-beethoven-can-they-orchest... journalist Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, writes widely about inequality. His latest book, The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970, has just been published.]

Labor journalist Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, writes widely about inequality. His latest book, The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970, has just been published.

Argentine Sex Workers Fight De-Humanizing Abuse with Legislation, Graffiti

Roberta Radu, The Guardian — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:48:00 -0700

Argentine sex worker union fights to change societal perceptions of prostitution and change laws that leave police harassment and brutality unchallenged.

On a Buenos Aires street corner, a Banksy-style graffiti shows a scantily clad woman leaning provocatively towards the edge of the building. Round the corner, the woman's hands reach out to a pushchair carrying a toddler. This, says the Argentine Prostitutes' Association (Ammar), is the reality of the sex trade in Argentina, where 87% of sex workers are single mothers.

The graffiti is part of a campaign led by Ammar, the first de facto trade union for sex workers in Latin America. For the past 19 years the group has been fighting to change the way society looks upon prostitution and make sex workers aware of their rights.

Ammar helped draft a bill due to be presented in the senate that would class sex workers as self-employed. If it becomes law, it would enable them to register with labour authorities, pay tax and get a pension.

"We wanted to show we are first of all women, mothers and breadwinners and then sex workers and that we need laws to protect us. Some of us chose this work and there should be a legal framework for it. We need it to end marginalisation and to empower us," Georgina Orellano, an Ammar activist and former sex worker said of the campaign.

Prostitution without pimps is legal in Argentina but Ammar activists believe the current legislation leaves sex workers exposed to police abuse because it does not establish any rights. Harassed by police officers at every corner, many women end up trapped by prostitution cartels that exploit them.

Given the growth of the illegal sex trade, Gustavo Vera, director of the Alameda Foundation, which campaigns against human trafficking, thinks such a law would be ineffective. In the past year, activists from his organisation have identified and closed down 140 brothels in Buenos Aires.

"Maybe a law like this would work in Sweden or Holland, but this is Argentina. Human trafficking is a serious issue and cartels are extremely powerful. I don't think there can be such a thing as prostitution by choice here," Vera said. "[Ammar] says prostitution can be a choice but is it really when financial circumstances push you into it?"

Orellano defends the right to choose because she considers herself and other women in the trade to be typical workers.

"There's an entire class that doesn't get to really choose. Does the maid or construction worker choose that job? Sex workers are no different. To put it bluntly, they use their hands to work, we use our body but we are all workers. It's not an easy choice but it's what we have to do."

Freelance journalist based in Buenos Aires. Follow her on Twitter.

BEST VIDEO OF THE DAY: This Union-Made Dance Video Actually Kicks Ass

Steven Hsieh, AlterNet — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:27:00 -0700

Working America demonstrates through dance the power of coworker collectivism.

This is awesome.

Working America, a community affiliate of AFL-ICO, produced this fierce video, demonstrating through dance the power of coworker collectivism. The video begins with a scenario that might ring true for far too many Americans: a worker is denied a previously scheduled day off, in this hypothetical case, for his sister’s wedding.

“Well, you could dance for it,” the boss man derisively suggests, before launching into a cheesy, old man-ish dance in 80’s gym gear.

That’s when it all goes down. A coworker comes to the would-be wedding attendee’s defense, stomping and snapping right in the face of the oppressive boss. Other workers see this and jump in, grooving, spinning, and getting creative with office supplies. With his colleagues on his side, our protagonist feels empowered enough to launch into an epic breakdance.

Of course, Working America’s surprisingly hip music video comes with a message at the end. It notes that “When workers stick together and protect each other on the job,” they’re “more likely to have a set schedule or regular hours,” “30 percent more likely to get paid sick leave,” among other benefits.

Watch:

Workers Are Taking Back Control of Their Unions from Stale Leadership

Mark Brenner, Labor Notes — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:38:00 -0700

As the labor movement fractures and atrophies, local workers are experimenting with radical new methods

The sight of tens of thousands of striking teachers and their allies marching through the streets of Chicago last fall had a back-story, a little-discussed trend in organized labor—reform movements.

Leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union had come to power as part of a vibrant internal movement, the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators. Dozens of reform groups like CORE have sprouted up across the country in the last five years—to challenge unresponsive leaders, resist concessions, build ties with the community, and promote internal democracy and member control.

SECOND TIME’S THE CHARM

What explains this resurgence? First, today’s reformers are often the latest manifestations of longtime currents.

Ron Carey, who won the first direct election for Teamsters president in 1991, campaigned from his position as president of New York’s Local 804. Sixteen years later a new crop of reformers emerged there, calling on the Carey legacy and making its name by stopping local pension cuts at UPS. The Members United slate is now in its second term.

In Chicago, CORE’s 2010 election run drew veterans of an earlier caucus that came to office in 2001. That caucus lost after one term, but the experience proved invaluable to CORE’s election bid—and to keeping on track once in office.

Some new reformers are pushing to correct earlier efforts that went off track, as in the case of New York’s subway and bus union, where the New Directions caucus elected Roger Toussaint president in 2000.

Though the product of a rank-and-file-oriented movement, Toussaint veered toward a top-down leadership style. Pushback and fallout from the union’s poorly prepared 2005 strike drove New Directions veterans to challenge Toussaint’s hand-picked successor. The Take Back Our Union caucus swept into office in 2010 and was recently re-elected.

The same dynamic was at play in 2011 when AFSCME 3299 board members and worksite leaders formed the Members First slate in the service workers union at the University of California. They contended that incumbents, who had been part of revitalizing a moribund local a decade earlier, had lost touch with the rank and file and were making too many concessions. Members First won five of the local’s six top offices.

While some reform efforts are spearheaded by longtime activists, principal officers in their forties and even younger are common among today’s reformers.

EMPLOYER SQUEEZE

A second factor is fallout from the management push for givebacks. Unions’ inability to counter short-staffing and wage cuts has bolstered the appeal of reform candidates who promise to stand up to the offensive.

One example is Rebuild 1101, which swept elections in New York’s largest telecom local, at Verizon, in 2011. Ten of the previous administration’s 13 top officers were retired and had lost touch with what the rank and file were facing, particularly speedup.

The election was also colored by that summer’s two-week strike, where the national union made the controversial decision—supported by the local’s old leaders—to return to work without an agreement and with Verizon still pushing concessions.

A similar example comes from the Public Employees Federation of New York, where members angry over concessions and a new tier in state pensions ousted incumbents in favor of the NY Union Proud slate.

GOOD GOVERNMENT

A third factor is member disgust at blatantly authoritarian or corrupt leaders.

For example, the New Leadership slate in Chicago’s Teamsters Local 743 made rooting out corruption and organized crime a pillar of its successful 2008 campaign.

The same challenges faced the New York District Council of Carpenters, under federal monitorship since the 1990s for corruption and mob involvement. In 2011, after the previous head of the local pled guilty to accepting kickbacks and bribes and a stronger oversight program was imposed, longtime reformer Mike Bilello was elected secretary-treasurer.

Carpenters reformers are also battling a wave of centralization. President Douglas McCarron has removed most vestiges of local control by creating regional mega-locals.

A similar move to consolidate power over locals was at the center of turmoil inside the Service Employees, who placed their third-largest, United Healthcare Workers West, in trusteeship in 2009.

Local leaders formed the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which rejects “partnership” with management. NUHW is now attempting to replace SEIU as the union for 45,000 service and technical workers at the Kaiser Permanente chain.

The desire for member control also fueled a slate of bedside nurses in the New York State Nurses Association, who won a board majority in 2011. Reformers organized a 2,000-person special membership meeting to overhaul the bylaws, which had allowed supervisors to serve as board members and left power in the hands of staffers.

D.I.Y. A NECESSITY

Rank-and-file reform movements are rekindling after top-down revitalization sputtered.

Long before the onset of the economic crisis in 2008, it was clear that neither the original revival promised with the 1995 AFL-CIO election of John Sweeney and his New Voices slate, nor the more centralized version of the rival federation Change to Win, could catalyze a labor upsurge.

Ironically, as structures of the institutional labor movement fractured and atrophied, more space was created for local leaders and rank-and-filers to experiment, looking less to their state or national bodies for guidance or permission.

TRIAL BY FIRE

But reformers also face a host of challenges—some more acute precisely because of the reform principles that propelled them to run in the first place.

First is the members’ mindset. The generation of unionists schooled in an earlier era of conflict and routine rank-and-file activity is fast disappearing.

Reformers may aim to transform the relationship between members and their union, but most rank-and-filers are more familiar—and comfortable—with the union-as-lawyer model than with unions as vehicles for self-organization and collective action.

Absent that self-organization, reformers’ failure to deliver improvements can create disappointment, cynicism, and backlash.

A second serious challenge is that of running the union. Few jobs—whether teaching special ed, pulling telephone cable, or working in the ER—prepare new officers for the avalanche of responsibilities that comes with administering a union, particularly one with dozens of staff and a multi-million dollar budget. The pressure is even greater for officers who try to work their jobs and run the union, too.

For officers overwhelmed with the steady stream of details and fires to put out, little time remains to develop more leaders or invest in long-term planning. Promised changes can fall by the wayside.

Third, new leaders may meet suspicion from higher-up officials and staffs resistant to change. Fourth, many find out, once in office, that the only tie binding reformers was the shared desire to oust their predecessors. Such divisions can derail the reform agenda entirely.

Of course, the greatest challenge facing reformers is the stunning power imbalance between employers and unions, which can throw a wrench in the best-laid plans.

Despite these challenges, more unionists are taking on the job of reform, pushed by the desire to save their unions and keep employers from implementing their unfettered agenda. In the process they are bucking the conventional wisdom that workers should live with less than previous generations.

Mark Brenner is the Director of Labor Notes.

Judge: Unpaid Interns on "Black Swan" Film Should Have Been Paid

Kristen Gwynne, AlterNet — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:07:00 -0700

In a big victory for production interns, a federal judge granted class-action status to a suit against Fox Searchlight Pictures.

A federal judge granted class-action certification to a lawsuit challenging Fox Searchlight Pictures' use of unpaid production interns yesterday. Two interns on Fox's blockbuster film "Black Swan" filed the lawsuit in 2011, claiming that the company's internship program violated New York Labor Law, particularly minimum wage and overtime. Judge William Pauley ruled that the internship was advantageous to employers, who used unpaid interns for positions that should have been paid.

Their tasks included answering phones, ordering lunch, and making travel plans for other employees, while tracking purchase orders, taking out the trash, and putting together office furniture.

"They worked as paid employees work, providing an immediate advantage to their employer and perfomed low-level tasks not requiring specialized training," Judge Pauley said, "The benefits they may have received -- such as the knowledge of how a production or accounting office functions or references for future jobs -- are the results of simply having worked as any other employee works, not of internships designed to be uniquely educational to the interns and of little utility to the employer. They received nothing approximating the education they would receive in an academic setting or vocational school."

Fox told the Hollywood Reporter they are "very disappointed" with the "erroneous" rulings, and "will seek to have them reversed by the 2nd Circuit as quickly as possible."

As NBC News notes, "The 'Black Swan' case was the first in a series of lawsuits filed by unpaid interns":

In February 2012, a former Harper’s Bazaar intern sued Hearst Magazines, asserting that she regularly worked 40 to 55 hours a week without being paid. Last July, a federal court ruled that the plaintiff could proceed with her lawsuit as a collective action, certifying a class of all unpaid interns who worked in the company’s magazines division since February 2009. This February, an unpaid intern sued Elite Model Management, seeking $50 million.
After a lawsuit brought by unpaid interns, Charlie Rose and his production company announced last December that they would pay back wages to as many as 189 interns. The settlement called for many of the interns to receive about $1,100 each — amounting to roughly $110 a week in back pay, for a maximum of 10 weeks, the approximate length of a school semester.

Since When Does Positive Economic Outlook Correlate with Anti-Worker, Anti-Union Policies?

Sean McElwee, AlterNet — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:19:00 -0700

A closer look at ALEC's "Rich State, Poor State" report shows it uses partisan metrics to encourage anti-worker laws aimed at destroying unions.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) released its 2013 Rich State, Poor State rankings report in May. The report ranks states by “economic outlook,” but by the report's standards a positive economic outlook is narrowly defined by the extremity of regional anti-worker laws and regulations. ALEC’s metrics are more concerned with ideology than economic growth, prioritizing twisted value judgments over facts.

ALEC’s selective reasoning is blatantly obvious in its ranking of Mississippi as the state with 10th strongest economic outlook, largely because of low taxes, low minimum wage and weak unions. ALEC's rosy outlook on Mississippi is in stark contrast with this description of Mississippi from the Economist:

"Mississippi spends less per student on education than all but four other states. It has a law that directs extra funds to schools in poor counties, but has not complied with it, [David Jordan, a state senator from Greenwood] complains, shortchanging the neediest spots by a billion dollars over the past four years. In all the states of the region and at the federal level, [Christopher Masingill, joint head of the development agency Delta Regional Authority] concedes, budgets for education and development have been getting skimpier."

The Mississippi Delta is in a particularly bad position, The Economist further reports: "The entire county has ten private businesses (other than farms), employing just 99 people. Like the region as a whole, it suffers from low rates of education and high rates of obesity and diabetes."

ALEC’s ranking bears little resemblance to reality. A recent report by Peter Fisher finds that ALEC, “fails to predict job creation, GDP growth, state and local revenue growth, or rising personal incomes.”

Another example of the report's failure is the fact that this year’s BEA numbers show the economies of Washington, Oregon, California and Utah growing at about the same rate. Why does ALEC rank Utah as number one, while Washington is 36, Oregon is 44, and California is 47? The only reason for these rankings is a bias against progressive economic policy. Utah is bolstered by its anti-unionism, low workers compensation payments, low minimum wage, and regressive tax system. The other states, although growing just as quickly, are held back in the ALEC report by their liberal policies.

The purpose of these rankings is to push the ugly legislative agenda of ALEC, which gives a state like Wisconsin, with disturbingly low growth rates but shown a penchant of anti-unionism, a gold star while more union-friendly states get hit with low marks. ALEC assumes hat taxes drive wealthy people out of state, decreasing tax revenues. That’s false. Lower taxes will bring in more revenues? That’s false. Estate taxes reduce growth? That’s false.

The worst thing about the rankings isn’t the blatant partisanship masquerading as rigorous analysis. State governments take these rankings seriously, and change policy accordingly. When Peter Fisher analyzed how states that followed ALEC’s prescriptions performed, he found the states were more likely to see a decline in median family income and an increase in poverty. The purpose of ALEC’s rankings is not to promote growth, but to give conservative legislators’ intellectual credibility. Look, they have white papers too!

ALEC’s lobbying goes practically unopposed in some states because the American labor movement is a shell of its former self. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data for 2008 (the most recent year for which all countries are available) shows that the unionization rate for America is far below average. This means that in America we have two parties beholden to corporate interests and no counterbalance. Is it any wonder that Larry Bartels found in 2005 that politicians respond almost exclusively to the preferences of wealthy voters and ignore the needs of poor voters? There should be no surprise that lower unionization rates correlate with higher levels of inequality. But if the union movement in America remains suppressed by powerful corporations, it’s hard to imagine anything other than ALEC-style legislation winning the day.

Class of 2013: All Dressed Up and No Place to Work

Lynn Stuart Parramore, AlterNet — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:34:00 -0700

A weak job market, killer student loans and a crappy economy mean continued struggle for America’s college grads.

As members of the class of 2013 stepped on stage to receive their diplomas, the unemployment rate in America stood at 7.6 percent — a bit better than the past four years, but that ain't saying much. Before the financial crisis, students graduating in 2007 faced a much rosier jobless rate of only 4.7 percent. The fact of the matter is that the past four years of high unemployment numbers represent the worst economy the country has suffered in 70 years, and young adults are shouldering a hefty part of the burden.

When you look at the specific numbers for Millennials, things look even bleaker. As of April, the jobless rate for workers under age 25 was an alarming 16.2 percent. A study by the think tank Demos found that 18- to 34-year-olds make up 45 percent of those who can’t find work. That's a lot of stifled human potential.

In a paper, The Class of 2013, researchers at the Economic Policy Institute showed that young people are not searching in vain for jobs because they lack the appropriate skills or the right education, as many pundits would have it. Rather, they can’t find work because of the weak demand for goods and services. It's actually very simple: when a company can’t sell its goods and services because customers don’t have enough money to spend, it can’t hire more workers. You can be Super-Skilled Super Student, and if the economy isn't humming, you'll have trouble landing a job.

The EPI study also found that young people aren’t able to “shelter in school” and wait out the bad economy: the Great Recession didn’t make much of an impact on enrollment rates at college and universities. It also found that the wages of college grads between 2000 and 2012, adjusted wages for inflation, fell 8.5 percent.

"I’m starting to feel numb," said Karen S., who is trying to find a job while ringing up groceries at a Whole Foods in Manhattan. The 24-year-old from Queens graduated in 2012 with a degree in broadcasting. “I did well in my classes, and I looked forward to putting my knowledge and skills to use. Instead I ask, ‘Would you like a bag today?’”

Like Karen, many recent graduates are forced to take McJobs. EPI researchers found that their chances of getting employer-provided health insurance or pensions are fading fast. Between 2000 and 2011, the number of college grads receiving pension coverage from their employer plummeted from 41.5 percent to just 27.2 percent. Many graduates find that when they do get a job, there’s no real opportunity for advancement. They're stuck on a treadmill.

An increasing chorus of voices warns that college has become a bad investment, but the numbers don’t support that theory. Young people who hold a bachelor's degrees have about half the unemployment rate of those with only a high school diploma. When college grads have difficulty finding a job, it tends to worsen the problem for those with less education because they are forced to take less skilled positions, which squeezes out high school grads, and on down the line. It's a chain reaction.

Humanities-bashing has become all the rage as critics point to lower salaries for those majors when compared to majors like engineering, and unclear job paths. Florida governor Rick Scott is among a group of right-leaning politicians aiming to use the employment crisis as an opportunity to defund the humanities altogether: “If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education, then I’m going to take that money to create jobs,” he told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.” Leon Wieseltier, an editor at The New Republic, suggested in an address to Brandeis University that the anti-humanities crew may be more worried about what those students learn to think about than what sort of job they get, calling “a commitment to the humanities as nothing less than an act of intellectual defiance, of cultural dissidence.”

Regardless of whether you think it would be more helpful to the state of Florida to have more anthropologists, or, say, more bankers, it is a fact that only 27 percent of college grads actually take jobs directly related to their major. Good jobs in the modern economy are often complex and require multiple skills and bases of knowledge, which suggests that more interdisciplinary majors might be better suited to the job market that the siloed majors of traditional univeristy departments.

Defenders of the humanities emphasize that in an increasingly global world, the knowledge of history, literature, and the ability to communicate effectively are highly valuable. Damon Horowitz, director of engineering for Google, spoke at a 2011 Stanford University conference and went so far as to urge students to quit their technology jobs and get a PhD in the humanities. According to Horowitz, understanding how humans communicate, how their cultures develop, and how their history unfolds is as vital to a global company like Google as technical skills. (Where was he when I graduated??)

The battle over the humanities aside, it’s clear that college graduates need to find jobs, and better ones when they do. According to the EPI study, the surest way to help young workers is to support policies that help boost the overall employment rate, like fiscal relief to states, investments in infrastructure, an expanded social safety net, and — how’s this for an idea? — direct job creation programs.

The stakes are enormously high. The young people graduating today will feel the effects of the bad job market for decades to come. The Demos study found that if we simply continue to add jobs at the 2012 average rate, it would be 2022 before the country recovers to full employment and restores decent opportunities for those Americans who are just starting out. In the meantime, a whole generation of bright and capable young people is getting left behind. They are forming opinions of whether or not America is a place where a young person has a fair shot of creating a fulfilling life with meaningful work, and these attidudes will shape the country's future.

5 Ways the Tech Companies Are Making Monster Profits by Stealing from Our Future

Paul Buchheit, AlterNet — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:09:00 -0700

Companies like Apple and Google haul in huge profits, but invest minimally in America and skirt the tax laws that pay for the next generation's education.

Young people in America, and their parents and grandparents, are all contributors to the greatest revolution in technology in the history of the world. Yet as we heap praise and money on tech leader Apple, and generate billions in advertising revenue for Google and Facebook, we're not getting back as much as we're giving.

Yes, these companies provide quality products and much-desired entertainment. They deserve a sizable profit. But while they're making unprecedented profits, they're creating little more than low-wage positions, investing minimally in the country that funded their growth, and making a mockery of the tax laws that are supposed to pay for the next generation's education.

We all like free websites, but it's easy to miss the fact that they're not really free. We're all contributing, in little pieces from our purchases of ad-related products, to the fortunes of a few savvy and well-positioned individuals and corporations. And we're paying dearly for our communications devices.

Here, then, is a story of greed and duplicity that impacts all of us, especially America's young adults:

1. Tech companies built their businesses with our money and effort.

As summarized by Joseph Stiglitz, "Apple, like Google, has benefited enormously from what the U.S. and other Western governments provide: highly educated workers trained in universities that are supported...by government."

He's right. Public funding provided almost half of basic research funds into the 1980s, and even today supports about 60 percent of the research performed at universities.

Apple's first computer was introduced in the late 1970s. Apple still does most of its product and research development in the United States, with U.S.-educated engineers and computer scientists. Google's business is based on the Internet, which started as ARPANET, the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency computer network from the 1960s. The National Science Foundation funded the Digital Library Initiative research at Stanford University that was adopted as the Google model. Microsoft was started by our richest American, Bill Gates, whose success derived at least in part by taking the work of competitors and adapting it as his own.

2. They don't pay their required taxes.

Apple got its tax bill down to 9.8% in 2011. The company paid a combined US/foreign tax rate of 15.3% in 2008-'12, which comes to $25 billion in avoided taxes over that time. It uses tax schemes like the "Double Irish" to find tax havens for its profits, two-thirds of which remain untaxed overseas. According to the New Yorker, one of Apple's Irish subsidiaries (Apple Operations International) made $30 billion in profits from 2009 to 2012 but paid ZERO corporate income tax.

The long-time Cupertino, Calif. resident also avoids state taxes by claiming residence in tax-free Nevada. And while doing everything possible to avoid taxes, Apple is engaging in a massive stock buyback, which has the effect of enriching executives rather than investing in jobs or new technologies.

Google, like Apple, is a master of the Double Irish revenue shift to Bermuda tax havens, while using tax loopholes to bring a lot of the money back to the U.S. without paying taxes on it.

Microsoft is one of the biggest offshore hoarders, using tax strategies to bring much of its untaxed money back to the U.S., where the company also avoids state taxes.

3. They show contempt for the U.S. education system, which is underfunded because of unpaid taxes.

An Apple executive said, "We shouldn't be criticized for using Chinese workers. The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need." He's right about the skills issue. Half of the companies surveyed by the San Francisco Chronicle said they couldn't find qualified graduates for positions within their organizations.

But tech companies aren't paying the taxes needed to train America's young people to work for them.

As corporate taxes have plummeted, education financing has declined by 24 percent, and tuition at state schools has increased 72 percent. Since 1985, while consumer prices have approximately doubled, tuition has risen almost 600%.

Total state education cuts for fiscal 2012 were $12.7 billion. A study by Citizens for Tax Justice noted that 265 of our nation's largest companies avoided about the same amount in state taxes each year from 2008 to 2010.

Even at the most basic level of education, the lack of corporate tax money is evident. Spending on K-12 public school students fell in 2011 for the first time since the Census Bureau began keeping records over three decades ago.

4. They provide low-wage jobs, if any.

Libertarian Rand Paul proclaimed, "What we need to do is apologize to Apple and compliment them for the job creation they're doing."

Apple claims to have added 500,000 jobs to the U.S. economy, but it only has 43,000 U.S. employees. It is estimated that the company makes $400,000 profit per employee while paying an average of $12 per hour for its store workers.

And those are U.S. workers. Embarrassment turns to shame with a visit to the exploitative Foxconn factory in China.

In the U.S., more than half of college graduates were jobless or underemployed in 2011. Over the last 12 years, according to a New York Times report, the United States has gone from having the highest share of employed 25- to 34-year-olds among large, wealthy economies to having among the lowest. The Wall Street Journal recently noted that nearly 300,000 people with at least a bachelor's degree were making the minimum wage in 2012, double the number in 2007.

Our "representatives" in Washington are little help. In October 2011 Senate Republicans killed a proposed $447 billion jobs bill that would have added about two million jobs to the economy. More recently, only one member of Congress bothered to show up for a hearing on unemployment.

The result of all this, for our young adults, is an average of over $27,000 in student loan debt. Class of 2013 grads average an astounding $35,200 in college-related debt. For degree holders in the bottom quintile of Americans, the liability consumes nearly a quarter of their household income.

5. They turn Internet freedom into money.

We hear a lot of rosy predictions for the newest generation, such as this from Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner: "The good news is that information technology provides the iPod/Facebook generation with the means to find work and create careers that build on their own personal talents and interests...creating your own career will produce a stronger sense of satisfaction and fulfillment."

Create your own job? No, it doesn't work that way. Most young people are productive and reliable workers who perform best in the employment of an organization that has set up a process to utilize their skills. In his book Who Owns the Future? Jaron Lanier gives us an example of technology's opposite direction:

At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people...What happened to the wealth that those middle-class jobs created?

A Forbes response assures us that people are made richer by their "ability to take photographs." Apparently satisfaction with a nice snapshot pays the bills at Forbes.

Music is an even better example. Not long ago a "middle class" of music industry workers provided services and earned salaries. Now, as Robert Levine says in his book Free Ride, "For-profit technology companies deliberately set out to make money from piracy and never came up with a workable plan to pay artists...Napster was essentially building a business on piracy." Now the money is made by a few powerful organizations while the rest of us "share" for free.

Many of us have come to believe that "open" systems, with freely accessible information, serves all of us, and helps to even the field of opportunity. That's what Google would like us to believe. As Wired magazine writer Michael Wolff notes, "Google...may represent open systems and leveled architecture, but with superb irony and strategic brilliance it came to almost completely control that openness."

One of Google's aims is the weakening of copyright laws, and to that end it takes advantage of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act that allows copyrighted information to remain online unless the owner directly demands removal. It's making billions of dollars from the raw materials of millions of contributors. Sort of a "digital colonialism."

There is a possible solution to this, according to Levine and advocate Jim Griffin. A "blanket license" (or "collective license") grants rights for the distribution of works for fees, which are redistributed to copyright owners. Unfortunately for America, another generation of young adults has been led to believe that any collective action is a socialist threat. Success with the concept has primarily been realized in Scandinavian countries.

Ultimately, cooperative networking should enable young adults, and all the rest of us, to control our rights and properties. But first we have to understand how the big technology corporations are using us.

How Google and Silicon Valley Screw Their Non-Elite Workers

Jake Blumgart, AlterNet — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 12:24:00 -0700

Silicon Valley’s biggest firms outsource blue-collar and service jobs to subcontractors, who bid low by scrimping on labor standards.

Silicon Valley sparks the imagination. Its wealth of tech jobs, flashy startups and new media goliaths seems to point toward a better future, beyond post-industrial doldrums and slack labor markets. Work on Google’s idyllic Mountain View campus hardly looks like work at all.

But some Google employees are less equal than others. (Not everyone gets to ride the clown bikes.) Many of Silicon Valley’s blue-collar jobs are outsourced to subcontractors, a practice common with Google, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and other big tech firms. Usually the lowest bidder gets the contract, and in labor intensive industries such as security, food service, janitorial and landscaping the lower bids tend to come from firms with lower labor standards.

Security Industry Specialists, Inc (SIS) provides hundreds of security contractors to both Google and Apple. (SIS did not respond to interview requests or questions about the exact number of guards the two companies employ.) Tom Seltz, co-president of SIS, claims that the company offers $15 an hour for entry level employees, plus benefits for full-time workers: “We pay 80 percent of the healthcare premium, 100 percent of dental, and these employees have access to a 401k plan in which we match a portion of contributions.”

But according to SIS employees, everyone starts as part-time and must work their way to a full-time position. Part-timers have no health or retirement benefits, no paid sick leave and no vacation. The hours are unpredictable because the company calls them about a day in advance to dispense shifts. Turnover at SIS is high, partly due to draconian disciplinary measures that make it difficult to advance to a full-time position. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is trying to organize the guards, estimates that only 20 percent of SIS’s employees are full-time.

“Supervisors—they didn’t treat us like people,” says Manny Cardenas, the only guard to publicly endorse the unionization drive. “We got fired for small things. Zero tolerance. One guard, he told a janitor what time it was and because he used his cell phone to check the time he was fired.”

Cardenas reports that none of his peers have joined the cause. “My co-workers keep changing [referring to high turnover],” says Cardenas, who spoke at a pro-union rally outside the Google shareholders’ meeting on Thursday, June 6. “And they know that they’ll be fired, if they are getting fired for little things like cell phone to tell the time—they know something might happen.”

What that something is seems pretty clear. Since going public with his support for a union in January, Cardenas has only received one call for a shift. He hasn’t officially been fired by SIS, but the result is pretty much the same. (A charge that SIS illegally interfered in the organization drive by spying on worker meetings “may have merit,” according to William Baudler, regional director of the National Labor Relations Board, who dismissed the complaint “because the conduct at issue here is isolated.”)

The union attempting to organize Silicon Valley’s approximately 3,000 guards is SEIU-USWW (United Service Workers West), which represents the janitorial staff in many of the same buildings. The rally outside the shareholders’ meeting attracted between 40 and 50 people, including two San Jose councilmembers. Community groups addressed Google in an open letter released on the same day: “We urge you to find a more responsible security contractor, a company whose workers can have full-time hours, decent benefits and the fundamental freedom to form a union—without management interference.”

“The leaders in the market are Apple and Google and where they go, the others follow,” says Renee Asher, spokesperson for SEIU. “We want Apple and Google to sit down with us, we want to partner with them, as they have partnered with us in the past about income inequality, the rise of part-time jobs, and the number of good jobs being replaced with bad ones."

So far Google has made no public statement regarding the unionization drive and did not respond to interview requests for this article.

SEIU does have a history of targeting publicity-sensitive tech firms, especially those that put forward a progressive public image (e.g. Google’s “Don’t be evil”). The tactic has a history of success in Silicon Valley, producing victories in the Justice for Janitors campaigns of the 1990s and in subsequent rounds of contract negotiations, most recently in 2008 and 2012, although they usually try to distance themselves from the conflict. This statement from Dave Miller, a spokesman for Allied materials during the 2008 contract negotiations between the janitors and the cleaning companies, is typical: "We don't have a comment on it. Ultimately, it's between (the union) and the employer contractors that work for us.” But often the big tech firms eventually pressure their sub-contractors to reach a settlement. It is unclear if they will intercede on behalf of their security guards or if the union drive will succeed without their involvement.

According to Asher, the unionized janitors aren’t paid substantially more than their security guard counterparts. Indeed, in 2012 one of the points of contention was the janitors’ $28,000-a-year salary after almost 20 years of unionization, according to Dave Jamieson of the Huffington Post. But the bonuses janitors do get are stable, full-time jobs, dependable schedules, pensions, paid sick leave, vacation time and a healthcare plan with no deductible and small co-pays. They are not “at-will” employees—managers can’t fire them for just any reason—and their turnover rates aren’t so high.

Still it seems as though more should be possible, especially against the background of Silicon Valley’s immense wealth and the supposed progressive vision so many of the region’s moguls profess. But as George Packer’s recent New Yorker profile of the region attests, the tech elites seem to believe that they are doing good just by doing business. “I think our selfish interest actually aligns with the broader interest of creating jobs and growing the economy,” Joe Green, one of Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard classmates and associates, told Packer. The article presents Green as unusually politically aware among his peers. He doesn’t elaborate on what kinds of jobs are being created.

“The image is that Silicon Valley’s streets are paved with gold—the quality of life is extraordinarily rich,” says Bob Brownstein, director of policy and research for the labor-backed and San Jose-based Working Partnerships USA. “But the economy here is, at best, an hourglass economy. There are some extremely well-paid jobs at the top, a rapidly shrinking middle-class, and a large number of low-wage, dead-end, no-benefit service jobs. It’s not really an hourglass because the bottom is the part that’s growing fastest.”

A pair of recent reports indicate that Silicon Valley’s economy isn’t that much different from the rest of America's. Working Partnerships USA’s “Life in the Valley, 2012” report shows while corporate profits have rebounded, jobs and wages have not. Between 2000 and 2010 100,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared and real median household income plummeted by 19 percent. While earnings increased per capita, the windfall largely went to a relatively small portion of the population, while the portion of families who were middle-income (those making between $50,000 and $199,999) fell from 62 percent of households to 55 percent.

The 2012 Silicon Valley Index shows many of the same results, although it is published by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a collaborative that includes many of the region’s elites (Google’s Larry Alder sits on the board of directors). “Though the recovery is underway, income growth is mostly limited to high earners, and is not spread across other segments of the population,” reads the report, which also finds a decline in manufacturing jobs and middle-income households.

“There are a lot of other places in the United States that view Silicon Valley as a goal—they want to attract these kind of industries,” Brownstein says. “The important thing for those people to understand is that there are benefits associated with that but it does not solve all problems. It still produces an economy characterized by great and growing inequality and a substantial part of the workforce unable to earn enough to have a decent standard of living. We haven’t seen anything to suggest there is anything in the Silicon Valley model itself that mitigates these problems.”

The Most Dishonest Words in American Politics: 'Right to Work'

Steven Wishnia, AlterNet — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 16:43:00 -0700

Right-to-work measures appeal to freedom and choice, but they're all about busting unions.

“Right to work” is the most dishonest phrase in American political discourse. It sounds like it’s defending people’s right to earn a living. But as used by its supporters, it means making it impossible for workers to form an effective union, couched in the language of “freedom” and “choice.”

Specifically, it means laws banning “union shops,” in which everyone in a workplace has to join the union or pay a fee to cover the cost of union representation. Twenty-four states have such laws. All were in the South and West until last year, when Indiana and Michigan enacted them. Michigan’s law was rammed through the Republican-dominated legislature in a lame-duck session last December.

The Michigan law was “pretty devastating for the labor movement,” says Erin Johansson of American Rights at Work. It came in the state where the United Auto Workers’ six-week occupation of General Motors plants in Flint in 1937 won the victory that opened the doors for unions throughout American industry, the state whose union labor defined the working-class prosperity of World War II to the 1970s.

Both Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Dick DeVos, the heir to the multibillion-dollar Amway fortune who bankrolled the campaign for the law, stuck to the party line about “freedom.” Snyder said the law would give workers “the freedom to choose” and unions “an opportunity to be more responsible to their workers,” because instead of automatically collecting dues, they’d have to show workers “a value proposition.”

“Absolute horseshit,” responds Ed Ott, former head of the New York City Central Labor Council. “This is a total offensive against workers. They don’t want workers to have any say. After workers vote for a union, they don’t want them to maintain membership.”

This year, “right to work” measures were introduced in 17 states, according to Peggy Shorey, director of state government relations at the AFL-CIO. Ten were defeated, including those in Missouri, Kentucky, and New Hampshire, where Gov. John Lynch vetoed one in 2011. Republicans in the Ohio legislature introduced one in early May, but the state senate president said he didn’t want to give Democrats an issue to raise funds on. (Ohio voters overwhelmingly overturned draconian limits on unions in 2011.) Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced one in January, but it hasn’t gotten a committee hearing.

“It’s striking that they were not successful in passing it in Missouri,” says Shorey. The most significant measures still pending, she says, are in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In North Carolina, House Speaker Thom Tillis proposed making the state’s “right to work” law and a ban on public-worker unions an amendment to its constitution, after declaring that he wanted to keep North Carolina “the least unionized state in the United States.” In Pennsylvania, the sponsor is Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, chair of the State Government committee, who also sponsored the state’s voter-ID law and fulminates against “illegal alien invaders.”

Neither measure has made it out of committee, but “after Michigan, anything could happen,” warns Ott.

• ••

The Michigan and Indiana laws came as part of the 2011–'12 offensive against worker rights in the upper Midwest, but the concept emerged after the great union victories of the late 1930s. The phrase “right to work” was coined in 1941 by William B. Ruggles, an editorial writer at the Dallas Morning News who didn’t want to join a union. His bosses feared that federal laws and regulations backing union rights were forcing unions down the throats of employers and socializing industry. Ruggles proposed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to work with or without union membership.

Lobbyist Vance Muse, founder of an organization called the Christian Americans, picked up the campaign—but realized that it would be much easier to win state laws than a constitutional amendment. Without such a law, he argued. “white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.” He also said the law would help “good niggers, not these communist niggers.”

He won support from business groups, and Texas outlawed the union shop in 1943. Arkansas followed in 1944. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which restricted strikes and banned communists from being union officials, specifically allowed states to pass such laws, in its Section 14(b). By 1960, 18 states had done so, and Wyoming, Louisiana, Idaho, and Oklahoma trickled in over the next few decades.

In 1961, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “right to work” a “fraud,” saying that it “provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘works.’ ...Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining.” In 1965, the high-water mark of liberal power in Congress in the last 70 years, the House voted to repeal Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, but a filibuster in the Senate preserved the provision.

In today’s network of anti-union think tanks and lobbying groups, the two most concerned with right to work are the National Right to Work Committee and its offshoots, based in Washington’s Virginia suburbs, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, in Michigan.

The National Right to Work Committee, founded in 1955, has grown to include a legal offshoot, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, and the National Institute for Labor Relations Research. Reed Larson, who headed NRTWC for 45 years, touts the Foundation, established in 1968, as the nation’s first conservative litigating organization.

The committee proclaims that it is “dedicated to the principle that all Americans must have the right to join a union if they choose to,” but its masthead motto is “No one should have to be forced to pay tribute to a union boss to get or keep a job.”

Asked what these organizations have done to support the right to join a union, spokesperson Patrick T. Semmens says that there’s no risk that union membership will be outlawed, but “the right not to join or associate with a union...is not currently the law and therefore is our focus.”

In practice, responds Erin Johansson, if a worker complains to the National Labor Relations Board that she was illegally fired for union activity, it can take eight or nine years to get her job back. “We have nothing now. We don’t have a functioning NLRB,” she adds.

Republicans in the Senate have filibustered President Obama’s nominees to the NLRB for years, to prevent if from having a majority that recognizes workers’ legal rights. If the vacant seats are not filled by August, the board won’t have a quorum. In January, a federal court said Obama’s recess appointments were unconstitutional, and voided rulings they participated in. The National Right to Work Foundation filed an amicus brief in that case, the result of a lawsuit filed by the Chamber of Commerce-backed Coalition for a Democratic Workplace.

The Foundation has won several Supreme Court decisions banning unions from using dues collected from nonmembers for activities not directly related to collective bargaining—that is, supporting pro-union candidates or legislation. It’s also represented people who don’t want to join unions or pay dues, and calls strikebreakers “courageous individuals.”

The Foundation’s list of “Big Labor’s Top Ten Special Privileges” includes just about anything that would make a union effective.

It claims that union “monopoly bargaining” is “depriving employees of the right to make their own employment contracts.” In other words, it denies them their right to ask for a raise on their own and not get one—or to undercut the union by agreeing to work for less.

It claims that unions have the privilege to “strong-arm employers into negotiations,” because “unlike all other parties in the economic marketplace, union officials can compel employers to bargain with them.” As opposed to employers’ right to ignore workers or tell them, “you’re fired, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

It claims that union workers have the privilege to “refuse to work while keeping their job,” because they can’t be fired for going on strike. This isn’t exactly true. Employers can’t fire workers striking against unfair labor practices, but they can legally “replace” workers striking for more money. The union movement of the mid-20th century was strong enough so employers rarely did that until after 1981, when President Ronald Reagan fired striking air-traffic controllers. And if employers can fire striking workers, that makes it next to impossible to have a successful strike.

Semmens disagrees. “There were strikes before this special legal power was granted to organized labor,” he says. “Also, it wouldn’t be on that list if the same applied to nonunion workplaces, but currently it only applies to unions...hence it’s a special privilege.”

In reality, before federal law recognized union rights in 1935, many strikes ended with the workers being fired and blacklisted. One of the few that was partially successful was the “uprising of the 20,000,” a 10-week walkout by garment workers in New York in 1909–'10. Their employers refused to recognize the union, but gave the workers a raise and shorter hours.

On the other hand, the workers weren’t able to win stronger safety standards. One of the factories they struck was the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.

Since Reagan’s action, strikes have almost evaporated. In 1981, there were 145 major strikes, involving 729,000 workers, and that was one of the lowest numbers of the post-World War II era. Last year, there were 19 major strikes, by a total of 148,000 workers, and in 2009, there were five, by a mere 13,000 workers—the fewest since the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping records in 1947.

The Mackinac Center, a key backer of the Michigan right-to-work law, also denies that it’s anti-union, claiming that such laws don’t reduce unions’ bargaining leverage. On the other hand, its main complaint about union shops is that when workers can’t opt out of paying dues, “this gives unions a stronger voice at the bargaining table.”

Mackinac also supports eliminating government workers’ right to collective bargaining and opposes “prevailing wage” laws that require government-hired construction companies to pay union wages.

If one wants proof of the union slogan that “right to work” really means “right to work for less,” it’s in a book excerpt posted on the National Right to Work Committee’s Web site. In Stranglehold: How Union Bosses Have Hijacked Our Government, Reed Larson blames the New Deal for establishing the plague of “compulsory unionism.” He writes that the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, by setting minimum wages in various industries, “trampled the rights of workers” by denying them the freedom to make a contract to work for less money.

The Supreme Court, then profoundly anti-labor, agreed. In 1935, it held that the NIRA’s minimum wage was “an intolerable and unconstitutional interference with personal liberty and private property” because its effect, “in respect to wages and hours, is to subject the dissenting minority...to the will of the stated majority.”

For many on today’s far right, that decision represents a lost golden age of American jurisprudence. The dominant labor-law decision of the pre-1937 era was 1905’s Lochner v. New York, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a New York state law banning bakers from working more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week unconstitutionally infringed freedom of contract. It set a precedent used to rule against other wage-and-hour legislation and bans on “yellow-dog” contracts in which workers had to agree not to join unions. The Court also struck down laws against child labor.

The Court more or less overruled Lochner in 1937, when it upheld Washington state’s minimum-wage law in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote that the freedom to contract was not absolute, and that the law covered “a class of workers who are in an unequal position with respect to bargaining power, and are thus relatively defenseless against the denial of a living wage.” The “recent economic experience” of the Depression provided “an additional and compelling consideration,” Hughes added.

Current federal Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a George W. Bush appointee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, told the Federalist Society in 2000 that this decision “marks the triumph of our own socialist revolution,” because it gave property rights “a second-class status.”

The National Right to Work Foundation fits well into this movement. Of its 15 staff lawyers, 11 are members of the Federalist Society, five either got their law degrees or have taught at the religious-right law schools of Regent University and Ave Maria, and three have worked or interned at Charles Koch organizations.

• • •

National Right to Work, the Mackinac Center, the Center for Union Facts, and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, says Erin Johansson, are all “part of the web” of groups funded by the five main far-right foundations—the Waltons of Walmart’s Walton Family Foundation, the Coors family’s Castle Rock Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation.

“They’re an arm of companies,” she says. “Their intent is to destroy unions.”

Other major backers include Charles and David Koch, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Chamber of Commerce, which has become “much more militant, committed to eradicating the New Deal” since the Reagan era, says Ed Ott.

The Michigan law resulted from an array of local circumstances, says John Armelagos, vice president of the Michigan Nurses Association. Tea Party Republicans gained control of the legislature and governorship in 2010. Last November’s defeat of a union-backed ballot initiative to make it a constitutional right for workers to join unions encouraged “right to work” forces, and the bill had to be passed before the incoming legislature took office, because Democrats had gained enough seats to defeat it. But it wouldn’t have gotten through if the union movement was politically stronger, says Ott. The loss of union blue-collar jobs—only 7 percent of private-sector workers are union members—isolates public-sector workers politically, he explains. Nonunion low-wage workers “don’t get that they’re the only ones without benefits.”

The far right is good at “manipulating language” to get middle-class people to go against their interests, says Armelagos. “It’s not about the right to have a job. It drives down wages and increases income inequalities.”

The state AFL-CIO, the Michigan Education Association teachers’ union, and the state American Civil Liberties Union are challenging the law in court because it was passed without a public hearing, he adds. In the meantime, several unions, including the MEA and the Michigan Nurses Association, have gotten their contracts extended by five or six years in the hope that the law will be repealed by then.

The “right to work” network’s other main argument is that weakening unions stimulates job growth, that jobs are increasing in states with right-to-work laws. As companies often prefer to move to places with the lowest wages and the weakest safety regulations—witness the garment industry’s migration from the Triangle Shirtwaist Company to the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh over the last century—this makes sense, although Armelagos says, “companies are still moving out of Indiana.”

It’s harder to sell low wages to the public. In 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median weekly wage for union workers was $943 a week, compared to $742 for nonunion workers. To get around this, they argue that per capita income in “right to work” states, adjusted for the cost of living, is equal to, almost equal to, or more than it is in “forced union” states.

Texas has one of the highest per capita incomes in the nation once costs are factored in, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research claimed in April. However, that ignores how income is distributed, the difference between a billionaire in Dallas and a teacher in Austin or a convenience-store clerk in Waco. In the beginning of the Great Recession, seven of the 10 states with the worst gaps between the top and middle classes had “right to work” laws, and five of the 10 with the biggest gaps between rich and poor did, according to a 2012 study by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. On the Gini coefficient of economic inequality, six of the 10 most extreme states in 2012 were “right to work.”

Texas made all three of those top 10s.

“There’s a wing of the conservative business community that will accept no opposition,” says Ed Ott. “They’re not committed to democratic forms. It’ all about profit and privilege.” Still, he warns that employers should be careful what they wish for. The labor laws of the 1930s, he says, were passed to ensure smooth production, giving workers rights and better pay in order to prevent disruptions—but “in the absence of legal protection, direct action’s what you learn to do.” The great sitdown strikes of 1937 would be illegal today.

However, he laments that “we have not developed an effective political opposition.”

Shorey is more optimistic. “Our members’ understanding of this issue has gotten really clear,” she says. “It’s really about going after everyone in the middle class, driving down wages, creating unsafe working conditions.”

“This fight ain’t over,” says John Armelagos.

Half Lives: Why the Part-time Economy Is Bad for Everyone

Lynn Stuart Parramore, AlterNet — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 13:38:00 -0700

In America today, a whole job is increasingly hard to find.

Why is a whole job getting harder to find every day in America?

Ever since the financial crash, a growing number of people have been forced to take part-time gigs when what they really want is something increasingly out of reach: solid, full-time employment. Between late 2007 and May 2013, the number of part-timers jumped from 24.7 million to 27.5 million. A 2013 Gallup poll shows that one in every five workers is now part-time. Some folks, like students, may work part-time because they want to. Nothing wrong with that. But involuntary part-time employment is not a choice, it’s a burden. Often it means substandard jobs with crazy schedules that don’t pay nearly enough. According to the Labor Department, as many as a third of all part-timers fall into the involuntary category.

There are signs that their ranks are likely to swell.

Part-Time Nation

Employers have found a new excuse to drop full-time employees to part-time status: the Affordable Care Act. Diane Stafford of the Kansas City Star looks at a trend called the “Obamadodge,” in which bosses around the country, including Regal Entertainment Group, franchise owners of Five Guys, Applebee’s and Denny’s, and the owner of Papa John’s pizza chain, have announced plans to side-step new requirements that businesses with over 50 full-time-equivalent employees offer their full-time workers access to a qualified healthcare plan or pay a penalty.

The healthcare law defines a full-time employee as anyone working more than 30 hours a week, so the boss simply cuts workers' hours and hires additional part-time staff to make up the difference. Stafford notes that as many as 2.3 million workers across the country are at high risk of having their hours slashed to below the 30-hour mark.

Another rising trend is employers changing part-time workers’ schedules from week to week. According to a New York Timesreport, this manuever is becoming commonplace in the American retail and hospitality industries. Bosses use sophisticated software to track the flow of customers and purchasing patterns in stores, which allows managers to assign just enough employees to handle the anticipated demand. Instead of five- or six-hour shifts, workers get two- or three-hour shifts. They are often called in at the last minute, and have no way of predicting which days they’ll be working.

At Jamba Juice, for example, employers at Manhattan’s popular smoothie shop use weather forecasts and temperature checks to make micro-adjustments to weekly schedules. If the weather tomorrow is hot, the boss knows that more customers are likely to come in for a cool drink, so more employees will be called in for certain shifts. The managers of clothing stores use different variables to estimate shopping patterns. As with so many trends that negatively impact workers, Walmart is cited as a pioneer in the heavy reliance on part-time workers and the penalizing of those who have difficulty adjusting schedules.

The Times notes that according to a 2011 survey by the City University of New York, half of retail workers in New York City were part-time, and only 10 percent of part-timers had a set schedule week to week. One out of five said they had to be available for call-in shifts either all or most of the time. Obviously, single mothers and others who can’t shift schedules at the drop of a hat, like students trying to take classes, suffer miserably under the new paradigm. And there's little chance of working more than one part-time job if your schedule is in constant flux.

The Price of Part-time

Part-time workers are far more likely to be paid minimum wage than full-time workers (13 percent v. 2 percent). As they struggle to make ends meet, many will —if they can — take on multiple part-time jobs to compensate for indadequate hours and pay. Involuntary part-time employment stigmatizes workers, attacking their self-esteem and diminishing their expectations for the future. It disproportionately impacts women, younger workers and minorities. Forced part-time workers share far less than full-timers in America’s economic gains. Their purchasing power drops, as does their standard of living. Companies tend to invest less in training part-time employees, treating them like replacable widgets. They get less work experience, which makes it harder for them to transition to higher paying jobs down the line.

In the past, research on employment usually focused on only two categories of people: the employed and the unemployed. But in the last decade or so, more studies have devoted attention to the plight of the forced part-time worker and the underemployed. The findings are alarming.

The American Psychological Association reports a variety of ailments associated with underemployment, including depression, anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, low subjective well-being and poor self-esteem. Researchers have found that full-time work is critical not only to the mental well-being of workers, but to their physical health as well. An increase in chronic disease is but one of the ways that forced part-time workers suffer.

The story of Stacy M. is typical. She was fired from her job as an educator after 12 years and found part-time employment at a university center. Working 30 hours a week, her rate of pay was actually higher than her previous full-time job, but when she factored in the loss of benefits, including paid time off and employer subsidized health insurance, her net earning had dropped.

Stacy lives in Massachusetts, and since health insurance is mandated, she chose the family plan with the lowest premium. Even so, coming up with nearly $1,000 per month is a stretch, and her family earns too much to qualify for any subsidized plans. Her plan has a high deductible, so Stacy’s family gets hit with medical expenses they’d never had to pay in the past. “My recent followup to my PCP to check on my blood pressure after my annual physical in February will only be partially covered by our plan,” wrote Stacy in an email. “I can only imagine what our out-of-pocket expense will be for my son's cardiology checkup. Wonder why my blood pressure is elevated….”

As Stacy’s case shows, involuntary part-time employment not only hurts individuals, it puts a strain on families and can lead to negative effects on children, including increased stress, substance abuse, impaired relationships and a host of other ills. Communities suffer, too, as a result of the growing income inequalities that increased part-time employment tends to produce. People feel a keener sense of unfairness, despair and various kinds of tensions that fray the bonds between neighbors.

On a macroeconomic level, plenty of negative effects pile up when people face the kind of insecurity that forced part-time work often brings. They may squirrel away every penny to cover surprise medical expenses, for example, which hinders the whole economy. Econ 101 tells us that when people don't have money to spend, businesses can’t sell products and services. Part-time workers become increasingly dependent on public services, which strains state and municipal budgets.

What To Do?

The involuntary part-time trend is ultimately bad for the economy as a whole, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Many economists who follow the neoclassical school that has dominated the national conversation since the 1980s pretend that the trend is natural and inevitable, and that any intervention is useless or worse. The truth is that economic systems don’t operate by immutable “laws” like gravity. Economics is not like physics. Human beings work together and make decisions that shape our economic destiny. We can make good decisions and bad decisions.

We can decide to fund job training and support labor unions that are able to bargain for things like advanced notification of schedules and other protections. We can focus on job creation rather than misguided deficit reduction and austerity. We can support research on the effects, both social and economic, of increased involuntary part-time employment, and enact policies that discourage companies from shifting the burden of market fluctuations onto the backs of workers. We can expand, rather than constrict, the social safety net, and move towards single payer healthcare. We can demand benefits for part-time workers.

Or we can move increasingly to a paradigm of gross inequality, indentured servitude, monopolistic conditions, a decimated middle-class, increased poverty, and social unrest.

Let’s not kid ourselves: We need a robust political movement that is keenly focused on reversing these trends as well as a fundamental shift in the way we approach economic questions. We need to remember that what’s good for workers is good for the economy, and that you can’t built a solid economic foundation -- or a stable society -- on permanent job insecurity.

How Chains Like Walmart and Whole Foods Free Ride on Taxpayers at the Expense of Responsible Small Businesses

Stacy Mitchell, AlterNet — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 07:54:00 -0700

New data shows that by leaning on taxpayers, these chains are gaining an unfair financial advantage over more responsible businesses.

This article was published in partnership with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

It costs the Old Town Bike Shop in Colorado Springs about $24,000 a year to provide health insurance for four employees, according to owner John Crandall. Meanwhile, his largest competitors, Walmart and Target, foist much of their health care costs onto taxpayers, according to new data released by Massachusetts, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

By leaning on taxpayers, these chains are gaining an unfair financial advantage over more responsible businesses. "It's disturbing," said Crandall, who added that paying for health insurance was especially difficult last year when the shop didn't turn a profit.

Datapublished by the state of Massachusetts reveal that Walmart has 4,327 employees — approximately one-quarter of its workforce — enrolled in the state's Medicaid program. Insuring these employees and their dependents costs taxpayers $14.6 million a year. Target has an even larger share — more than one-third of its Massachusetts workforce, or 2,610 people — enrolled.

Eligibility is based on several factors, but adults are generally eligible for Medicaid in Massachusetts if their income is below 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,000 for a single person. Children are eligible when their families earn less than 150 percent of the poverty level.

According to IBIS World, Walmart's average hourly wage is $8.81 an hour. Low wages and lack of sufficient hours are two of the main issues driving nationwide strike actions by Walmart workers.

Of the 50 companies with the most employees on Medicaid in Massachusetts, almost half are retail and restaurant chains. The list includes CVS, Home Depot, May Department Stores, Sears, Kohl's, Walgreen, Lowe's, and Best Buy.

The public cost of ensuring that employees of these companies have health insurance and enough to live on represents, in effect, a hidden corporate subsidy.

Even Whole Foods, a high-end chain run by a self-proclaimed "Conscious Capitalist," makes the list, with about 17 percent of its employees enrolled.

"By the end of the summer, I'll have six Whole Foods stores within 15 minutes of me," said Michael Kantor, who co-owns Cambridge Naturals, an independent health store that pays 100 percent of the health premiums for full-time employees and half for part-time. Kantor has spoken out in favor of raising the minimum wage, which could lift many retail employees out of working poverty and enable them to afford insurance.

Similar data was recently released by Wisconsin and Missouri. Topping both states' lists are many of the same retailers, including Walmart, Target, Dollar General, and Home Depot, as well as restaurant chains such as Olive Garden and Red Lobster.

Medicaid costs likely represent only the tip of the iceberg in public assistance for employees of large chains. Although similar data on the usage of food stamps, housing assistance, and other programs is not available, estimates suggest that these costs are perhaps 2 to 3 times the cost of Medicaid alone.

In a report released last week, Democratic staffers in the House roughly estimate that Walmart employes require about $3,000 a year in public assistance on average. That works out to about $900,000 per supercenter and more than $4 billion annually in public costs nationwide.

Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and author of Big-Box Swindle. Catch her recent TEDx Talk: Why We Can't Shop Our Way to a Better Economy .

Hundreds of Garment Workers in Bangladesh Factory Potentially Sickened by 'Contaminated' Water

Steven Hsieh, AlterNet — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 07:53:00 -0700

As if Bangladeshi workers did not have it bad enough.

An estimated 450 garment workers became sick on Wednesday while working at a sweater factory in Bangladesh, and health inspectors are testing the water supply for contamination, the Associated Press reports.

Affected workers showed a slew of symptoms including vomiting, nausea and upset stomachs about two hours into their shift at Starlight Sweater Factory. The facility reportedly gets its drinking water from an underground reservoir, piped to the roof and distributed in jars.

This health crisis occurred amid heightened international concerns over working conditions in the country’s garment industry, following a historic factory collapse in the city of Dhaka that killed more 1,129 workers in April. That disaster put pressure on Western clothing companies to take a closer look at the loose safety standards in factories where their products are made.

Forty retailers, including H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Sean John and others, signed a binding accord last month aimed at improving safety standards in garment factories in Bangladesh. The five-year plan instructs companies to conduct independent safety inspections and report the findings, and also finance fire safety and facility improvements.

Two major American retailers—Walmart and Gap—noticeably refused to sign the accord, instead announcing that they would form an alternate agreement, likely non-binding. Representatives from the two companies are expected to testify in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing today.

Newest Strike Against Walmart Battles Years of Blatant Disregard for Workers

Sean McElwee, AlterNet — Fri, 31 May 2013 11:20:00 -0700

A dirty history of discrimination, abuse, intimidation, neglect and illegal strike suppression: that's Walmart.

Walmart has a long history of evading the law, abusing its workers, and suppressing strikes through illegal means. This week, OUR Walmart (Organization United for Respect) is beginning the first sustained strike against Walmart, and it’s about time. News of the strike arrives just as Walmart is facing public scrutiny for dumping toxic sludge into California’s sanitary sewers.

Walmart has also been in the news over the last several years for rampant sex discrimination. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Walmart in Dukes v. Walmart, a class action suit filed by Betty Dukes on behalf of one million female employees of Walmart. The court ruled that the employees of Walmart who had been harmed were “too diverse” a group. In May of 2012, 1,975 women filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In fact, one woman from every Walmart region in the country filed a complaint, all alleging pay discrimination. Lawyers hope that these diverse regional suits will be upheld by the Supreme Court.

Barbara Ehrenreich, who spent three months undercover working in Walmart, wrote an essay about the experience for Inequality Matters titled "Earth to Wal Mars," which she later adapated for the New York Times. She writes that Walmart puts strong pressure on employees not to unionize, requiring them to attend anti-union lectures where they are warned, "a pro-union vote is likely to lead to a company decision to shut down the factory.” A House Committee on Education and the Workforce report found:

In the last few years, well over 100 unfair labor practice charges have been lodged against Walmart throughout the country… Walmart’s labor law violations range from illegally firing workers who attempt to organize a union to unlawful surveillance, threats, and intimidation of employees who dare to speak out.

And Walmart follows through on its threats. When workers who cut and packaged meat in Walmart in February 2000 voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers union, many of their fellow workers nationwide decided follow suit and vote for unionization. Walmart responded by announcing a decision shift to using pre-packaged meat in the store. The employees had to wait three years before a court ordered Walmart into discussion with the union, a decision that was still in the appeals process in 2006. Walmart stalled, so the employees brought another complaint to the National Labor Board, accusing Walmart of illegal retaliation. The board ruled again in 2009 that Walmart would have to talk to the union. Both sides sat down in early 2009, but to this day no agreement has been reached.

Mother Jones r eports that, "In 10 separate cases, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that Wal-Mart repeatedly broke the law by interrogating workers, confiscating union literature, and firing union supporters." In one particularity brutal instance in 1997, Walmart fired four union supporters, "one of whom was beaten by the plant’s police on the day of the 1997 election." The workers were eventually reinstated—15 years later. In another case, a Walmart store on the verge of unionizing was shut down. Apparently, Walmart would rather close a store than run a unionized shop.

Walmart has also demonstrated a cycle of abuse via unpaid wages. Earlier this year, Walmart had to pay $1.1 million to 845 workers for unpaid wages. Ehrenreich writes ofworkers that were asked to work overtime without compensation, and in 2001 Wal-Mart was ordered to compensate 69,000 workers in Colorado for $50 million in unpaid wages. In 2008, Walmart paid a settlement fee of $54.25 million to workers in Minnesota, then had to settle another lawsuit that spanned the country to the tune of $352 million. The settlement covered 63 separate cases in 42 states. Last year, the Department of Labor ordered Walmart to pay another settlement fee of $4.8 million to 4,500 employees.

Among the meagre compensations alllotted to Walmart employees are health benefits. When Ehrenreich infiltrated Walmart, employees had to pay between $228 -$472 a month to opt into their health plan, which does not cover dependents. Fewer than half of the company's employees are covered for health. The 2004 House reportfound that between 41 and 46 percent of workers receive health benefits, which is significantly less than the national average of 66 percent. Workers who are covered pay 42 percent of the cost, compared with the 16 percent national average.

Many Walmart employees struggle to pay bills, and an internal document released last year revealed a hideous compensation plan. The document reveals the policy for raises:

"Low-level workers typically start near minimum wage, and have the potential to earn raises of 20 to 40 cents an hour through incremental promotions. Flawless performance merits a 60 cent raise per year under the policy, regardless of how much time an employee has worked for the company ..."

Because Walmart workers are so poorly compensated, they are encouraged to apply for food stamps and other welfare benefits at orientation. The effect is to shift costs from businesses to taxpayers. According to the House report: “one 200-person Walmart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year – about $2,103 per employee.”

Walmart settled a lawsuit in 2005 for $11 million for hiring and exploiting undocumented workers.

As if on some sort of perverse mission to violate every U.S. labor law in existence, Walmart has also been fined for using child labor, paid $6 million for discrimination against handicapped people, and threatened workers who file OSHA complaints telling them any fines would be taken from their paychecks.

Overseas, Walmart has come under fire for multiple incidents of child labor use, and continues to decline to compensate victims of the tragedy that occurred in their Bangladesh factories earlier this year.

Given the company's history, it is not altogether surprising that since OUR Walmart’s inception, Walmart has worked to crush the budding movement. A recent report from American Rights at Work found that as workers have increased their protests and demands—with notable actions like the Black Friday Strike last year—Walmart has retaliated aggressively. The continually disguise their acts of retaliation as routine enforcement of company policy and threaten to fire workers who speak out. OUR Walmart is the most recent attempt to stand up to the corporate bully. OUR Walmart maintains a petition that you can sign, but the most important show of solidarity is to avoid shopping at Walmart and encourage others to join in the boycott. Walmart is trying to ignore the strike, calling it a "publicity stunt," but if it starts to hurt their bottom line, they'll probably reconsider.

AlterNet Comics: Jen Sorenson on The Gap's Deadly Greed

Jen Sorensen, AlterNet — Fri, 31 May 2013 10:04:00 -0700

How many more lives will it take?

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