It’s ELECTION DAY (finally)

It’s been a rough and long campaign, but today’s the day to vote.  If you feel your vote doesn’t count, what evidence is there for that conclusion?  I have looked nto that question, and found that if people can be convinced that it pointless to vote, they just won’t bother.

Who benefits from such an outcome? Mostly the policies that would harm those who have been tricked into believing their vote doesn’t count.  Just look at who does vote – it’s the very same people who have made huge donations to conservative, anti-union, anti-working people candidates. They turn out in solid numbers while further down the income scale the turnout is spotty.

So please, go out to vote today – your vote matters, your choice can make a difference. Democracy requires participation, even vigilence as Thomas Jefferson once famously admonished. Staying at home on Election Day is just the opposite – we can realize only what we vote and work for.

It’s Time to Consider a National Basic Income

A teen participants in Rodeo Bible Camp practice roping a mechanical calf at the Goldendale, Washington fairgrounds. – Jeremiah Silverheart

When I first heard about the Bundy’s, the ranchers who were trying to takeover federal land in the west, I was furious. I still am as I hear that their case has opened in Portland, Ore. But I also have more understanding after hearing this Marketplace report about federal policy that both supports many jobs while destroying very different others, like ranching.

It is just another case where a national basic income would help mitigate economic change.  This concept, attributed to Sir Thomas Moore’s 1516 book “Utopia,” would have the federal government pay out a basic income to everyone in the country, whether they work or not, and whether they are rich or poor. It increasingly is looked at as we automate and globalize our economy, as we have eviscerated manufacturing job base, cut fishing and ranching jobs, and in general see a future where the question of “What jobs will we have in 100 years?” is asked with no answer. And then the question: How will the population survive if there are no jobs?  One answer is that we will have to pay out a Basic Income.

For one, race to the bottom wage employment would change as workers were not so desperate to work if they could get by on a Basic Income, would accelerate the inevitable shift to automate jobs. Target is already testing robot information centers in its stores, and has added self-checkout stations in its stores. If they had to compete for workers, and the cost to employ them inevitably rose, they would probably replace them with robots very soon. There is just about no job there that couldn’t be done with technology.  McDonald’s is also testing robotic food prep and service technology. It’s just over the horizon. So what will we do with all of those employees when that tech takes over?

The Basic Income idea is being tested in Finland and the Netherlands. It’s been a ballot measure in Britain. I’d like to see it be a NPR Oxford Style debate (I would be on the side of the “pro” team.)

Ding Dong the TPP Witch Is Dead (Probably)

Yesterday Politico reported that there a leagues of Republicans as well as many Democrats dropping support for the TransPacific Partnership Trade deal. This follows the 23 states that Bernie Sanders won in the primary battle, where he railed against trade deals written by and for only corporations. The TPP was especially bad, because it contains a sovereignty-killing provision that overrides governments for the benefit of corporate profit, along with all of the job-killing, wage suppression, economy upheaval measures of all past trade deals. While there is little to praise about Donald Trump, he is right about trade and he tapped an angry rust belt sentiment that both parties have until now ignored: “free trade devastates our jobs and leaves us high and dry.”

So it’s exciting to see at last politicians of both parties leaping off the “free trade” band wagon. They seem to realize only now that Trump has mashed his way to a tightening race, and could actually win that there are millions who have been hurt badly by free trade, and that maybe the TPP goes too far. Sen. Pat Toomey, who came to the senate 12 years ago as a pro-free trader, having served as president of the Club for Growth, a powerful free-trade advocacy group and has supported every trade deal that came before the senate since then, has recently backed away and encourages President Obama to back away from the TPP.

Sen. Tim Kaine backed off the TPP as soon as he joined the ticket this summer, having voted, like his fellow Virginia senator and most democrats, for “Fast Track,” which restricts discussion or debate on the TPP, the Senate can say only “yea” or “nay.” A call to Virginia Senator Mark Warner did not result in a clarification of his position. He has in the past refused to reveal his positions until he votes on an issue, but looking at his trade record, he has been as solid on free trade as Sen. Toomey has until now.

The vote on TPP may never come before the end of President Obama’s term. For one, anything Obama supports, the Republican majority opposes, and now with the rise of populist anger with all things trade, combined with the extremely limited days left to vote on anything, chances of a vote on this deal are unlikely. At most, the Senate will be in session just 23 days through the end of December, and they have to fund the federal government first, by Sept. 30th, which in the Senate calendar is only 4 days in session, before they break until Nov. 14. If this congress doesn’t vote on it, neither Hillary nor Trump support the deal, and would send it back for renegotiation, hopefully with labor and consumer representatives among the corporations. Under Obama, only corporations were allowed a seat at the table, with the unsurprising result that now is forcing would-be supporters to back track and drop support.

Hallelujah!

 

Labor Day Opportunity Lost

 

 

This Labor Day, AFL-CIO NOW Blog wishes all a Happy Labor Day, and encourages all to vote this fall. That’s lovely, but it could be so much more.
It fails to recognize the workers who do not have the day off: grocery, retail, and emergency workers.  The retail and grocery workers could and should enjoy a paid day off. What’s more, labor has ignored why Labor Day was founded. For so long, youth have no association with the “paid day off for all workers” concept and they won’t understand that that is another lost benefit of our once-upon-a-time shared prosperity. I have told several retail workers recently that they once upon a time would have had a paid day off on Labor Day, and they stare blankly at me in response, as if they can not conceive such a thing.

How many AFL-CIO members are paid to stay away from work today, versus how many just have the day off without pay? I don’t know the answer, but I’ll bet AFL-CIO hasn’t even thought to ask the question. Reporting such facts on Labor Day would be welcome.

A very good move for the NOW blog to make now in advance of next year’s Labor Day is to find out how the retail CEOs will spend Labor Day.  Is it part of a 2 week vacation in their multi-million dollar vacation home? Or a bacchanal in Italy? It will be much, much more generous than a single day off with pay, to be sure. They would have to start cultivating a secret source to get such info, but it would be appreciated and a great recruiting tool.

Another problem with today’s NOW post is that it fails to specify who you should vote for. OK, yeah, everyone knows this is a presidential election, but it also is a state legislature vote, and in some places there is a local vote too. I thought the AFL-CIO had a state strategy, so it would have been a great to link to a page where the reader could find what will be on their ballot this fall. Every state election board posts such information on their web sites. There could be resources regarding the state legislature candidates that the AFL-CIO endorses.

Had these things been included in the NOW Labor Day post, it would have meant so much more. As it is, it seems just “Labor Lite” information at the biggest union’s online presence.

Forget Labor Day Sales

Boycott Retail this Labor Day

As Labor Day sales and shopping ads roll into my e-mailbox this week and next, I am calling the 1-800 numbers of those retailers and telling them that Labor Day is for workers, not retail sales, and that I will stay away from all retail on September 5, 2016 in on honor of the day that was made to honor the worker.

After REI sent me a “Coming Soon” ad about Labor Day sales, I called REI, and told “Justin” who took my call that he and everyone who works for REI and their call centers should have a paid day off on Monday, September 5. That’s what Labor Day is about, not bargain shopping. I won’t cross the threshold of any retailer, and won’t shop online either on that day. He said that is something the REI “higher-ups” decide, and I asked him to pass my message to them. More importantly, I hope he thinks about Labor Day in this way and maybe begins to think about his job and his rights.

I hope you will join this effort to 1.) Call those 1-800 numbers and tell those retailers you won’t shop on Labor Day, and 2.) Follow through and go on a picnic or swimming or read book or do anything but shop on that day! Maybe even spend some time reading about inequality. Try some articles at this link to start: http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/income-inequality.

Tapping Into Gambling Thrills

I love Sunday programming on my local NPR Station, WAMU, in Washington, D.C. Today’s “Freakonomics” show began with an interesting question: Could you, when faced with an emergency need, assemble $2,000 within 30 days? It’s a question that the National Bureau of Economic Research asked in 2011, when it found that half of Americans could not meet that need, making them “fragile households.”

So what can be done to address this undesirable economic fact? One idea is a program that combines the thrill of potential lottery prizes with savings plans, called “Prize-Linked Savings” or PLS. What it means is that banks and credit unions can set up a kind of “no lose lottery” where participants deposit savings into their accounts, and win cash prizes on monthly and annual basis.

In Michigan, where the concept took hold first in the U.S.the “Save to Win”  awarded a $100,000 year-end prize to an elderly woman who had deposited $75 in her credit union savings account. She plowed some of the prize back into her restricted withdrawal PLS account, and some to buy a new furnace, and other home improvements. In Brittan, the concept has been wide-spread for 20 years.

Today there are 17 states, including my own, Virginia, that have passed legislation empowering savings institutions to create PLS programs. Some state governments have seen the PLS movement as a challenge to state lottery programs which has slowed the spread of PLS programs. Also, only non-profit credit unions that put customers, especially low-income people, ahead of profit, have joined the effort. Locked into taking profits from investments made with deposits, commercial banks are noticeably absent from the movement. (PLS programs direct profits from investments to prizes that in turn encourage savings deposits.)

Hopefully, there have been many groups getting together to brainstorm ideas to help low-income Americans gain financial instruments that serve them.  These efforts have been led by the “Doorways to Dreams” organization (D2D), a group that appears to be doing the justice that so many Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren followers believe must happen. We can not ignore the many that dwell on little despite working all the time while profits go to shareholders and executives. This PLS idea is just one idea among many to come that must take hold like seeds on the winds of change.

May it be so.

Long Lines, Short Shifts: A Solution In Sight

 

By Laura Dely

 

We have heard about the hours-long lines at airport security checks, but this morning I heard a comment that led my mind to an immediate solution: shift the 2,780 TSA security officers from part-time to full-time work. It would probably have a boost to the reported low morale among the TSA front line airport officers, and reduce the notorious loss of trained employees from the TSA airport security force.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, there is an emergency request to Congress to do just this. It would cost $28 million. And if Congress insists that money has to come out of another part of the budget, I suggest they look at reducing military aid to foreign governments engaged in oppression, such as Israel. We have our own grave security concerns, and our own history of oppression that we need to address, not add to it by funding the misery and injustice of repressive, land-grabbing governments in the Middle East.

But more on the part-time status of the TSA employees: I initially thought the TSA must have farmed out the workers to a private concern that you would expect to hire at part-time status, but no, it is the federal Transportation Security Agency.. Why is the federal government adopting this destructive, morale destroying, wage depressing, economy stalling policy adopted widely in the retail industry? Why isn’t the TSA Airport Security Officers union, the American Federation of Government Employees, making noise about this unfair, poverty-making policy?

I would like to know how much it costs to train an airport security check officer. Such information could help evaluate if the part-time hiring policy if wise and fiscally sound in an era of shrinking budgets, or if this is in fact penny wise and pound foolish.  There is little doubt that part-time work leads to economic stress and usually lack benefits.  We have to break this wrong-headed idea that we have to treat working people badly. We have decades of data that building a strong middle class through descent wages, good benefits, and full time work. We are building decades of data that the reverse course: breaking unions, reducing wages, hours, and benefits build stalled economies and inequality.

 

 

 

 

Pew Center: Middle Class Is Shrinking

Saturday May 14, 2016

This week the Pew Center released a fascinating report with an interactive graphic that allows you to look up how the middle class faired in your county since 2000. Guess what? Yes! The middle class is shrinking in nine-in-ten metropolitan areas that Pew looked at.

In “America’s Shrinking Middle Class: A Close Look at Changes Within Metropolitan Areas” looks at 60% of American Metropolitan Areas, so it is a significant trend study. It finds that the downward trend predominates in 87% of the localities examined.

We all have heard about the concentration of wealth in the upper income levels, stagnant middle and lower class wages, bull markets despite a stagnant economy with limpid growth, but we haven’t actually seen data that shows us how the middle class is shrinking. The loss of 5 million U.S. Manufacturing jobs over the same period roughly that the Pew Center examines helps explain a part of the trend.

U.S. corporate tax policy incentivizes off-shoring U.S. manufacturing jobs. Union busting reduces wages and benefits and hope that anything can be done to change things for the better. It makes workers afraid to fight back, and accepting of whatever they have even if they know its not enough to get by on. I’m encouraged by the Presidential Candidates who attract 1,000’s to their rallies where they talk about raising wages and inequality, but where will they go after the election?

We have elections every year in Virginia where I live. Next year every seat in the House of Delegates is up for election. If activists could engage some of that 25% to vote in that election, (which in 2015 the participation rate was a pathetic 29%), we could start to hope that change can happen. It’s also a gubernatorial election that bumps up voter participation, so this is a great opportunity to do effective outreach.

Let’s hope we can keep up the momentum of Democracy Spring. And thank you Pew for looking at what is happening to the middle class.

 

The Cause of Widespread Food Insecurity

My e-mail box this morning delivered a Brookings Institution study that again reports that there is widespread food insecurity or hunger in the United States. It recommends that the federal government increase funding for SNAP (food stamps).

The problem with this thinking is that it doesn’t address the underlying cause: wages are too low. The Brookings study reports that 85 percent of the people on food stamps work. I know from my own research based on Bureau of Labor statistics that one third of minimum wage earners are parents.

As I have written before, we need to return to the median wage as the basis of the federal minimum wage. From 1938 when the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted, to 1979, the federal minimum wage was roughly one half the national median wage. The economy then was much more balanced, with a boss: worker pay just 42:1. Today the ratio is at least 204:1 to 354:1, depending on the source; that’s a 1,000 percent increase since the 1950 ratio.

The U.S. lost it’s way under Ronald Reagan. That’s when we disconnected the minimum wage from the median wage, leaving it up to an increasingly rightwing congress to raise it when it felt like it, which wasn’t often. If we had a minimum wage today that was one half of the median wage, it would be $12.50, which is 72% more than our pathetic present wage. We need to base the wage floor on a rational threshold, not arbitrary whim

Who Knew Labor Has A Southern Strategy?

Thanks to this article from American Prospect (http://prospect.org/article/labor-goes-south-0), I learned that labor has a Southern Campaign, although it is decidedly a lower case effort.

Any effort to organize the unorganized, depressed wage south is good news though. And it’s probably very smart to make it a lower case strategy in a region that elects Republican Governors and state legislatures, much more so than the time of an earlier CIO effort that ended in flames and passage of the 1948 Taft-Hartley Act, that brought us the union-killer “Right-to-Work” provision.  Virginia has already made RTW law in my state, Virginia, but this year the Republican-controlled legislature considers a state Constitution ammendment that would enshine RTW in that great guiding document.

The end result is that labor always must be vigilant, just as Thomas Jefferson advised Democracy must work.