Rich Kissed, Working Class Kicked: Obama’s Ugly ‘New Deal’ Aims to Gut Social Security
This article by Jon Queally is re-posted from Common Dreams.
Reports indicate that Obama has willingly affronted public opinion, sound economics, and his political base of supporters by agreeing to make significant cuts to Social Security, health programs, education, and other programs while at the same time making some of the most odious benefits for the nation’s financial elite permanent.
In a new deal—though certainly out of step with “the New Deal”—offered by the White House late Monday, President Obama showed that he’d rather cut health and social service programs for the nation’s poor and elderly than allow tax rates for some of the nation’s wealthiest individuals to go up.
Long holding that tax rates should go back to previous and modestly higher rates for all individuals making $250,000 or more, Obama has now given that popular promise away by offering to make the Bush tax cuts permanent for all those making $400,000 or less in exchange for a deal with Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner.
In addition, reports the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein in his review of what may be in the final agreement, he says, the payroll tax cut, which middle class workers have enjoyed during the current economic down turn– and what Klein classifies as “one of the most stimulative policies”–will be allowed to lapse. Klein called it “perverse” to do such a thing.
To make up for this loss of revenue, Obama has put cuts to Social Security benefits on the table by changing the way cost-of-living adjustments are calculated. The change, known as the “chained CPI” which would alter the way payments are calculated, is a cynical ploy by the White House, say most critics, because politicians likely feel they can get away by calling it an “adjustment” rather than a “cut.”
But make no mistake, say economists and experts, it’s a cut. And, over the long-term, a significant one. As a recent brief by the Center for Economic and Policy Research explains:
Over time, changing to the Chained CPI would result in significant cuts to Social Security benefits: a cut of roughly 3 percent after 10 years, about 6 percent after 20 years, and close to 9 percent after 30 years. In addition, lower-income retirees would lose much larger proportions of their income than wealthy ones.
Progressives were rightly outraged by Monday’s announced offer.
“Using the debt ceiling to hold the country hostage to exact otherwise unacceptable cuts in education and other vital domestic programs is disreputable policy and politics. Offering to hold off a year before taking the next hostage does not remove the threat,” said Campaign for America’s Future co-directors Robert Borosage and Roger Hickey.
Their clear message to the Obama and other Democrats considering accepting this kind of economic plan: “No deal.”
Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, which opposes cuts to the program, told the Huffington Post that moving to the chained CPI is terrible and painful policy. “Almost every elected official just spent an entire election season saying they wouldn’t cut the benefits of those 55 and older. The truth is the chained CPI hits everyone’s benefits on day one,” he said. “It hits the oldest of the old and disabled veterans the hardest. If it wasn’t being bandied about as being ‘on the table,’ I would guess that it was created as an office joke to see who could create the most noxious and offensive policy possible.”
And the Social Security cut is just a sample of what else the President included in what will be widely viewed as unnecessary concessions to the Republicans.
As the Huffington Post reports:
Obama’s offer would allow the payroll tax holiday to expire, meaning middle class workers will see smaller paychecks in 2013. Economists have warned that the recovery is too fragile to risk a broad tax hike on workers. It would also gradually reduce Social Security, pension and Medicare benefits seniors are due to receive, taking a small bite up front, but building up to much larger cuts over time.
Obama’s concession to Republicans is opposed by a majority of Americans, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll. Fifty-two percent of survey respondents said the payroll tax cut should be extended to avoid raising taxes on the middle class, while 22 percent said that it should be allowed to expire to help pay down the debt. Extending the payroll tax cut received bipartisan support: 64 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans in the survey said they supported the extension.
Despite widespread opposition not only within his base, but among many Republicans and independent voters, a deal along these lines looks very close to being reached.
As the The New York Times reports: “The two sides are now dickering over price, not philosophical differences, and the numbers are very close.”
To economic progressives, like Demos senior fellow Robert Kuttner, the reported offer is what many feared.
As Kuttner wrote just weeks ago, when Obama seemed to taking a firmer negotiating stance:
The budget deal of 2011—the one that created the automatic sequesters—has already taken $1.7 trillion out of domestic spending over a decade. There is almost nothing left to cut on the spending side of the equation, except Social Security and Medicare—which are not the prime drivers of the current deficit and which do not belong in this debate at all.
As Obama points out in his moments of resolve, we just had an election to decide whether to raise taxes on the rich, or to cut Social Security and Medicare. He won. The party that would favor the wealthy and sock the middle class yet again lost.
As the bargaining gets serious, the president has a very strong hand. But he needs to play it a lot better than he has been doing.
In that piece, Kuttner wondered if Obama could be “saved from his own impulses to cave in for the sake of splendid bipartisanship (and needlessly appeasing Wall Street).”
It looks like we have the answer. No.
Low-Wage Workers’ Wildcat Winter Spreads To Chicago
This article by Jake Olzen is re-posted from ZNet.
Hundreds of workers and supporters gathered in Chicago’s Cityfront Plaza on Thursday to speak out against the ways that major retail and fast food corporations are weakening the city’s economy with poverty-level wages. Marching along the Magnificent Mile and its throngs of holiday shoppers, the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago (WOCC) chanted and passed out leaflets supporting their “Fight for 15” campaign for a $15 per hour wage. Coming in the wake of the Walmart workers struggle for better working conditions, these and other low-wage workers now beginning to organize across the country in retail and restaurant industries are becoming a force to be reckoned with as they gain support from consumers and community organizations.
The newly-minted union in Chicago — representing workers from over 100 employers — launched the Fight for 15 campaign to raise the standard of living for the more than 18,000 workers who keep the city’s busiest shopping areas running.
On November 15, WOCC announced its intention to form a union to represent the interests of retail and restaurant workers in the Loop and the Magnificent Mile. The union has until February 14 to file with the National Labor Relations Board for formal recognition. WOCC’s hope is to be able to negotiate directly with retailers for a minimum $15 per hour contract. In less than a month, over 500 workers have already joined the union. During Thursday’s action, a letter from WOCC was delivered to the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association demanding a response to their campaign for better wages by December 22.
Parthenia Barnes, who is on the WOCC steering committee, says the immediate goals are to increase union membership as well as garner public support for the campaign.
Barnes works full-time at Chicago’s downtown Macy’s, making $8.25 per hour. As a single mother of four — and she recently took temporary custody of her nephew — the long hours and low wages make paying the bills and staying involved in her kids’ lives an endless struggle. But Barnes, along with other retail and restaurant workers in Chicago, have had enough.
On Black Friday, WOCC workers joined with striking Walmart workers to demonstrate at various stores and make the case to employers and the public that retail workers need a just, living wage. Hundreds of workers participated in the November 23 actions along the Magnificent Mile and engaged customers in their push for better wages and working conditions.
In addition to public actions, a high-profile report from Stand Up! Chicago, a coalition of community and labor organizations, and Action Now, a grassroots organization for working families, gives credence to workers’ claims that their employers can afford to give them raises. “A Case for $15: A Low Wage Work Crisis,” the first in a series of reports about the widespread effects of poverty in Chicago, details the crisis of low wages for Chicago’s retail and restaurant workers.
“The idea is to give validity to the point workers are making,” said Victor Perez, one of the authors of the report. “We are proving that the cost of giving workers $15 an hour is relatively small compared to the total revenue that companies bring in and what it would cost them to give their workers a raise.”
Retailers and restaurants in the very profitable, high-end shopping areas targeted by the campaign post annual revenues of over $4 billion. To pay workers $15 an hour would cost between $103 million and $130 million — 2.6 to 4.5 percent of total revenue for corporate retailers. Furthermore, researchers found that executive pay for 50 of the publicly traded companies with operations in downtown Chicago was 407 times greater — or $4,011 an hour more — than a typical workers’ wage of $9.80 an hour. The report also found that increased wages would generate $179 million in economic activity and provide relief for already strained public assistance resources that many employers force low-wage workers to depend on.
Catherine Murrell, communications director of Stand Up! Chicago, notes the key role that clergy and community leaders have in supporting the workers’ cause because of how low wages are hurting neighborhoods. “The Fight for 15 is a matter of where people live, not just where they work,” she said.
High crime accompanies high poverty rates, and many of Chicago’s neighborhoods plagued by violence also see the highest rates of low-wage workers. That is one reason why community organizing groups see the WOCC campaign as part of a larger struggle to better the schools, end poverty and decrease violence. Higher wages for service industry workers — at little cost of real wealth to corporate bottom lines — has profound social and economic benefits for families and communities. To stay the course with poverty-level wages, as recent studies show, runs the risk of further social breakdown for future generations.
According to Murrell, low-wage jobs have accounted for the vast majority of jobs gained since 2008. Wages nationwide are now so low that millions of workers are below the poverty line and qualify for public assistance. Will there be nationwide campaigns for worker justice now that low-wage service workers comprise such a significant sector of workforce growth? In Chicago, for example, the share of employees between the ages of 18 and 64 working in low-wage jobs rose to 31.2 percent last year from 23.8 percent in 2001.
While we’ve yet to see a nationally-coordinated campaign for low-wage workers across industries, the local support for the Fight for 15 campaign — which includes religious organizations, traditional labor groups, neighborhood alliances, Occupy offshoots and students — is part of a broader series of efforts to defend working and poor people from ultra-wealthy corporations and government-imposed austerity. The emerging, but limited, labor uprisings — from fast food workers in New York City and Chicago to the Michigan “right to work for less” union protests — are the birth pangs of a re-invented labor movement that is returning to its roots: fighting for the basic livelihoods of workers.
Earlier today, MLive posted a story that mildly summarizes a New York Times article about the GOP and the DeVos family’s role in getting Right to Work (RTW) legislation rammed through the State and signed into law by Gov. Snyder last week.
The Mlive story doesn’t provide much information from the New York Times piece, but does give DeVos hatchet man Greg McNeilly space to defend his boss Dick DeVos.
The MlIve story is less than 200 words and certainly paints DeVos as a savvy political player instead of the shrewd people of the 1% that uses his family’s wealth to impose repressive policies on the people of Michigan and around the country.
We reported the DeVos family’s role in getting RTW legislation passed in a posting earlier this month, which provided information that MLive rarely does. We pointed out that the DeVos family has been a major financial donor to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which was the real architect for the RTW legislation that was pushed by the Republican members of the State and then signed into law by Snyder.
We also pointed out that the West Michigan Policy Forum, which several members of the DeVos family are involved with, has also been pushing for RTW laws in Michigan since their founding in 2008. The 2012 conference held by the West Michigan Policy Forum held in September featured a whole session on RTW, a session led by someone from the Mackinac Center.
The New York Times article doesn’t have a great deal of new information, but it is an affirmation of what some of us have been saying about the prominent role that the DeVos family has played in pushing through this repressive legislation.
The Times piece does state, “A union-backed ballot measure to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the State Constitution was defeated, thanks to an aggressive campaign against it that was financed in part by $2 million of DeVos family money.” Interesting that the MLive story did not include that information.
There was one comment in the MLive story that is relevant in terms of the current “discourse” from those supporting RTW, which claim that this was “retribution” for Prop 2. DeVos spokesperson Greg McNeilly is quoted as say, “It had nothing to do with retribution (for Proposal 2), but (that union-backed ballot proposal) did serve a timeliness factor because it made the issue fresh. It put the issue on the agenda.”
It’s unfortunately, but not surprising that readers of MLive have to find other sources that expose the DeVos family for their tactics of subverting democracy with money.
For readers of this blog, the tepid treatment of the DeVos family role in the RTW fiasco is all the more reason why we need an independent media and why we need to make the DeVos family the target of our collective anger.
Help Stop the Killing of More Than 500 Polar Bears Each Year from International Trade in Fur and Parts
This article By Andrew Wetzler is re-posted from EcoWatch.
Now that the world’s delegates have returned home from climate negotiations in Doha, many ministries are turning their attention to other international environmental agreements—and the consequences of climate change that echo in their implementation. One of those agreements is CITES—the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. For the second time in three years, the U.S., now supported by the Russian Federation, has proposed ending the international trade in polar bear fur and parts. This trade, fueled by soaring prices and fed solely by Canada, contributes to the killing of 500 to 600 polar bears every year, provides cover for poaching in Russia and has resulted in an unsustainable hunt for many polar bear populations.
Isn’t the biggest danger to polar bears climate change? Of course it is. In fact, it is because of climate change that we need to give polar bears the best possible chance they have to survive climate change through the end of this century, by which time humanity will hopefully been able to stabilize the atmosphere.
That’s why the U.S. proposal is so important. While climate change is threatening polar bears across the Arctic, we need to adopt policies to keep their populations as robust and healthy as possible. The most obvious way to do this is to address the second biggest threat to polar bears: the fur trade. That means stopping other sources of mortality (like unsustainable hunting) that can drive polar bear populations down.
The fate of the U.S. proposal largely lies in the hands of the European Union. As a block that controls dozens of votes at the rapidly approaching CITES meeting, Europe can swing what animals get protected—and those that are left behind. Our sources tell us that Europe’s position remains in flux with many European countries sitting on the fence.
Will Europe stand up and help the U.S. and Russia end international trafficking in their parts? The next few weeks will decide that question and, with it, the fate of hundreds of polar bears.
Many countries are still upset that the U.S. Congress never ratified the Kyoto Protocols, resentment that Canada is trying to exploit as it defends its polar bear hunt. But that sad fact shouldn’t be used to distract us from what we can do for polar bears today and other animals endangered by climate change. Nor should it distract us from a few other facts: in the last year the U.S. has moved aggressively to regulate the biggest source of global warming, carbon dioxide, through domestic law. Between those regulations and a shift to lower-carbon fuels, the U.S. has substantially reduced it emissions of climate change gasses. In 2011, U.S. emissions of energy-related carbon dioxide were 8.7 percent below 2005 levels. By contrast, since 2005 Canada has walked away from the Kyoto Protocol and invested heavily in polluting tar sands oil fields.
Polar bears need our help.
Obama’s War on Syria and its Implications
This article by Shamus Cooke is re-posted from Counter Punch.
The Obama administration has already declared war on Syria, even if it isn’t “official” yet. Consider the facts, all of them acts of war: The U.S. now recognizes a group of Syrian exiles to be the official government of Syria; the U.S. is providing direct support for rebels attacking the government; the U.S. has coordinated with NATO to place advanced missile systems — and 400 U.S. troops — on Syria’s border with Turkey; Obama has drawn a “red line” that, if Syria crosses, would result in U.S. direct military intervention. If any other country made similar moves toward the U.S., there would be no question that war had been declared.
All the strategic steps that led to the Iraq war are being repeated. Obama has assembled a Bush-style international “coalition of the willing” of nations to topple the Syrian government; 130 countries have put their names on paper in support of toppling the Assad government.
In reality, however, the core of the group is the U.S./Europe NATO alliance and the Gulf monarchies. The rest of the “coalition” are economic and political satellites of these main groups, who would sign onto to any military adventure that the rich nations demanded of them, since otherwise the poorer nations would have their military, financial, or political aid frozen.
Europe’s increased lust for blood is a relatively new phenomenon; the European divisions that erupted during the Iraq war and then the Libyan invasion seem to have been smoothed over. Now even Germany aims to directly join the war efforts, intending to send missiles and troops to the Turkish border as well.
But NATO is still a U.S.-dominated military alliance. Any NATO military action is in reality a U.S. led effort, since the European armies are miniscule in comparison, and lack much of the technological sophistication of U.S. weaponry. The advanced Russian missile systems that Syria is equipped with demand a direct U.S. military role to neutralize.
Like Bush, Obama is using his coalition of the willing to distract from the fact that he is circumventing the UN, and thus bringing the post WWII system of international conflict resolution — already on life support — closer to death.
Also like Bush, Obama strategically exploited the UN to weaken Syria with sanctions, and when further UN action was not possible — because of the objections of China and Russia —Obama threw aside the UN and opted for NATO, a U.S./European military alliance built specifically as a deterrent to the now-defunct Soviet Union.
Again like Bush, Obama has crafted a false motive for war. Obama has stolen Bush’s “weapons of mass destruction” but substituted “the use of chemical weapons” as a bogeyman worthy of military intervention. Obama’s bogeyman is as false as Bush’s was. The New York Times reports:
“…the effect of that statement [that Syria was planning to use chemical weapons] was somewhat undercut when France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, asserted during a news conference that such reports were unconfirmed.”
This lack of confirmation hasn’t bothered the U.S. media, who remain content repeating as truth any report issued by U.S. intelligence, no matter the past lies that have cost countless deaths in Iraq and elsewhere.
Of course the U.S. government has zero legitimacy to hand pick a “replacement” government for Syria, since the U.S. is universally hated in the region after the destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the ongoing drone wars against Pakistan and Yemen. No sane Syrian would invite the U.S. government to “liberate” their country.In fact, a coalition of Syrian opposition groups inside of Syria, the National Coordination Committee (NCC) — virtually ignored by the U.S. media — opposes military intervention, demanding the conflict be addressed through political means.A leader of the NCC is Hassan Abdul Azim, who correctly states:
“We refuse on principle any type of military foreign intervention because it threatens the freedom of our country.”Another prominent ongoing lie repeated by U.S. politicians and media is that the Syrian government is on the verge of collapse. This lie is effective in that it creates an urgency to “take action.” It also paints a picture of the conflict coming to an end that resonates well with Americans.The reality is that the Syrian western-backed rebels have staged daring high-profile attacks that have been largely repulsed by government counter-attacks. But in each instance the U.S. government has used these attacks as an excuse to ratchet up their support to the rebels and now to place U.S. missiles and troops on Syria’s border. Of course if the Syrian government does fall, Obama has absolutely no plan on how to “stabilize” the country, since the most effective rebel fighting force — the Al-Nusra Front — has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.
Obama and his NATO and Gulf monarchy allies have created an extremely unstable situation in Syria. They have already torn the Syrian social fabric to shreds with their support of the rebels, but in so doing they’ve pushed many Syrians closer to supporting their government, who they see as a protector against the rebels that have used large scale ethnic-religious cleansing and other war crimes to subdue the population.
Thus, the Syrian government still retains a popular base, ensuring that the already bloody catastrophe will continue with no end in sight, especially since Obama has “regime change” as his goal and is encircling the country with missiles and U.S. and European troops. Iran and Russia will continue to bolster the Syrian government.Under these tense conditions a broader war can break out any moment. The U.S. can claim that the Syrian government is about to employ chemical weapons as an excuse to directly intervene. Or perhaps Turkey — a NATO member — will claim that Syria fired missiles into its territory, and thus Obama will act to “defend” its ally.When war “officially” breaks out, Iran might then increase its direct support for the Syrian government with troops —funneled through Iraq — giving the U.S. another excuse to “defend” itself, and pushing the conflict into Iran. Hezbollah in Lebanon or Israel may intervene too, since both have a direct interest in the outcome of the Syrian conflict. Any number of scenarios could play out that drag other nations into the war, including Russia, who is already supporting the Syrian government. Many of these scenarios have already begun on the proxy level and need only a shove to ensure they explode into a full-scale regional war.
A nation under attack creates a feeding frenzy logic from those countries looking to opportunistically exploit the situation. This proxy war in Syria is on the brink of a much larger disaster, with the potential to annihilate the Middle East through a new round of war and barbarism.
Fighting Back in Michigan Part II: A West Michigan Strategy
In Part I we proposed several tactics that could be used to develop a more radical mass movement capable of overturning the recent set of repressive laws passed in Lansing.
A summary of those tactics are as follows:
- We need to claim our roots, which means we need to rediscover and embrace the radical roots of many of the movements (labor, LGBTQ, women’s, immigrant, etc) most impacted by recent legislative policy.
- We need to redirect financial resources to organizing where we are. If we were not spending the millions we currently are on failed electoral campaigns, we could be spending it to both do more direct organizing in our workplaces, neighborhoods, etc., and engage in more mutual aid with those who do not have access to decent housing, healthy food, health care, etc.
- We need to develop our own independent media. It should be clear that our issues are not honestly or accurately represented in the commercial media, so we need to develop real autonomous and independent media that not only represents our various movements, but also is created by our movements.
- We need to engage in intersectional organizing and solidarity. The point here is that we need to have a more holistic and shared analysis of institutional oppression to better respond to root causes of our problems. We also need to find ways to support each other by engaging in acts of solidarity so that we have each others’ backs at all times.
- We need to stop thinking about elections as the main strategy. Electoral politics is only one tactic to engage in and it is not the most important in the long run. Most of the gains we have made over the past 200 years in the US have been through social movements, not from voting.
- We need to create new and radical ways of living. What we mean here is that in addition to dismantling systems oppression, we need to create new ways of governing ourselves that relies on direct democracy and autonomy.
A West Michigan Strategy
I think it is important to begin by stating that the ideas we just summarized can also be applied to West Michigan. There is not that much that is unique to West Michigan that would warrant an entirely different strategy. However, there are specific tactics and dynamics in West Michigan that we should consider, especially in light of recent legislative attacks coming from Lansing.
First, I think it is important to recognize who makes up the power structure in West Michigan and their role in promoting the recent legislative attacks on various popular sectors.
In September, we posted a story that presented information of what was called A Grand Rapids Power Analysis. We identified individuals and organizations that use their money and political influence to determine government policy. We know that the DeVos family and many others from West Michigan have financed the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which was the main architect of the recent Right to Work legislation that became law. We also know that the local Chamber of Commerce, places like the Right Place Inc. and the West Michigan Policy Forum have all pushed hard for Right to Work policies for years. These groups, individuals and families have also often attacked and funded campaigns attacking reproduction rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights and even anti-democracy groups like the One Kent Coalition.
Second, once we have identified those individuals, families and organizations pushing for neoliberal and repressive policies, we need to organize to fight them with whatever tactics necessary. We need to out them in part of our larger public education and independent media work.
Third, we need to confront them with various means of direct action to disrupt their ability to continue imposing their will on the LGBTQ community, working class people, women and immigrants. Here we need to be creative and determined if we are to be effective.
One of the most effective ways would be to put economic pressure on them. This could mean taking action that would cost them money, such as boycotts or other actions that would make it costly for them to continue imposing repressive policies on us.
For example, we could be demanding the dismantling of entities like the DDA, which use public tax dollars but make decisions with a non-elected group of people. We could engage in occupation of buildings and public spaces that have been taken over by the private sector.
We should be using financial and other resources to organize workers in the businesses owned by DeVos, Van Andel, Kennedy and the other businesses identified in our local power analysis.
Another way to fight against the local power elite is to not take their money. Too often, even progressive entities in this community, take money from these rich bastards, which not only gives them more legitimacy, it makes it harder for others to confront them. This would include not allowing them to sit on the boards of local non-profits, which allows them to influence the direction grassroots work might take.
Think of it this way. DeVos family members have funded Right to Work legislation, anti-LGBTQ campaigns and efforts to dismantle public education. We know that they contribute lots of money to redirect local policy and culture. For example, why should we continue to support ArtPrize, which is primarily a project funded by Dick & Betsy DeVos. Labor unions and the LGBTQ community should be boycotting ArtPrize and trying to get their friends and allies to do the same. This doesn’t mean we can’t support local art projects. In fact, we can instead support projects like Avenue for the Arts, ArtPeers and lots of other art projects that do not rely on funding from families and companies that attack workers, the LGBTQ community, etc.
Lastly, we need to create local ways of doing things that do not rely on the existing power structure of West Michigan. We need to create more autonomous entities and movements that can challenge the local power elite and engage in mutual aid and solidarity.
Efforts such as The Really, Really Free Market, Food Not Bombs, Mutual Aid GR, the Grand Rapids chapter of the IWW, the worker run collective Bartertown, the recent movement of undocumented immigrants, the local bike coalition, independent food cooperatives, the groups working on food justice and housing collectives are a good start, but they are not enough to challenge the power of the local elites.
Imagine if more workers were organized and had lots of solidarity to engage in sit-down strikes or wildcat strikes? Imagine if allies of the LGBTQ community would not support any structure that denied that community equal rights and engaged in boycotts or direct action which would not allow them to continue to fund hate? Imagine if people engaged in acts of solidarity with people denied access to basic health rights?
Imagine if we also redirected the money we are no longer spending on supporting systems of oppression and shared it through acts of mutual aid, such as housing, healthy food, health care and education. Imagine if our varying movements and sectors that have been attacked by recent legislation were to building a stronger coalition, not so much to make demands on the rich and powerful, but to dismantle systems of power and create autonomous, self-sustaining communities based on justice and equality?
We cannot hope to move in this direction if we continue to accept, support and allow the current power structure to do what they want. We need a strategy that simultaneously dismantles this power and creates news ways of living with each other and the planet.
Let me end by quoting one of our great spokespersons of liberation, Frederick Douglass:
“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong, which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
This article by Making Change at Walmart is re-posted from ZNet.
US Walmart workers were joined by Walmart workers in nine countries on Friday to call for an end to Walmart’s attempts to silence workers for speaking out for changes at the world’s largest employer. As Walmart workers and community supporters marched in front of a Walmart store in Miami, workers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Zambia and India held their own rallies, marches, and other actions at Walmart and Walmart subsidiary stores. During the protests, workers cited the negative impacts that the silencing is having on their families, the economy and the company’s bottom-line.
At the protests across the globe, workers held a moment of silence to honor the victims of the factory fire in Bangladesh that tragically claimed the lives of 112 workers. Recent reports show that Walmart “played a leading role in blocking an effort” to improve electrical and fire safety systems in factories in the country.
“Walmart must stop its attempts to silence those who speak out. We are standing up for what is right for our families and the global economy,” said Elaine Rozie, an OUR Walmart member from the Hialeah store in Miami Gardens, Fl. Rozie is a seven-year associate who despite works full-time at Walmart still has to depend on public assistance to make ends meet. “As the largest retailer in the world, Walmart should be setting a standard for good, safe jobs. The benefits of having steady, well-trained workers in stores and along the supply chain will help Walmart improve customer service ratings and its reputation, which is good business.”
“We are inspired by OUR Walmart members who are standing up for a better future for all of our families,” said Louisa Plaatjies, a worker from South Africa. In October, workers from seven countries – where workers all have union representation – launched the UNI Walmart Global Union Alliance to fight for fairness, decent working conditions, and the fundamental human right of freedom of association. ”We are will continue to stand up with our brothers and sisters in the United States until Walmart starts listening to the workers that keep the store running.”
The global protests held today build on the ongoing calls for change at Walmart. In November, community members and Walmart workers held more than 1,000 demonstrations, including strikes in 100 cities, during the Black Friday shopping rush in protest of the company’s illegal attempts to silence workers for speaking out about the company’s manipulation of hours and benefits, efforts to try to keep people from working full-time and its discrimination against women and people of color. The Black Friday strike wave came a little more than a month after OUR Walmart leaders held the first-ever strikes against the mega-retailer. In just one year, OUR Walmart has grown from a group of 100 Walmart workers to an army of thousands of Associates across 43 states.
“The Walmart workers may come from different cultures and continents but they are united in their opposition to Walmart’s cynical and systematic squeezing of its employees to maximize profit, be it the US dollar, the South African rand, the Indian rupee, the Argentine peso or any other currency,” said the International UNI Global Union General Secretary, Philip Jennings. “Walmart has gone too far. US Walmart workers have had enough and they are fighting back as we saw on Black Friday and every day since. The Alliance is standing with them not just in solidarity but in strength and in action.”
Workers like Jesus Vargas, who have been illegally fired, targeted by management or other retaliation for speaking out, are also raising their voices. More than 30 federal charges against Walmart have already been filed, with another 60 allegations against Walmart’s illegal threats currently under investigation.
“Walmart, we will not be silenced,” Vargas said. Vargas, who was unjustly fired for speaking out at his store in California, has filed a federal charge against Walmart. “We are coming together to be heard and to create good jobs that workers in America and across the globe need.”
With so many Americans struggling to make ends meet and Walmart taking in $16 billion in profits and compensating its executives $10 million each, workers and community leaders have been calling on Walmart and Chairman Rob Walton to address the wage gap the company is creating. At the same time frontline Walmart workers are facing financial hardships, the Walton Family – heirs to the Walmart fortune – are the richest family in the country with more wealth than the bottom 42% of American families combined.
Workers’ concerns about wages and staffing have been affirmed by newly uncovered company pay-plans exposed by the Huffington Post, recent poor sales reports and a new study on wage trends in the retail industry. Huffington Post uncovered what reporters call “a rigid pay structure for hourly employees that makes it difficult for most to rise much beyond poverty-level wages.” Meanwhile, last week’s sales reports show that understaffing, which affects workers’ scheduling and take-home pay, is also having an impact on company sales. Last week’s sales report showed that Walmart’s comp store sales are about half what competitors like Target reported in the same quarter, continuing a pattern of underperformance by the world’s largest retailer.
As workers and community supporters call for changes at Walmart, a new report by the national public policy center Demos, shows that better jobs at Walmart and other large retailers would have an impact on our economy. A wage floor equivalent of $25,000 per year for a full-time, year-round employee for retailers with more than 1000 employees would lift 1.5 million retail workers and their families out of poverty or near poverty, add to economic growth, increase retail sales and create more than 100,000 new jobs. The findings in the study prove there is a flaw in the conventional thinking by companies like Walmart that profits, low prices, and decent wages cannot coexist.
Fast-Food Workers Ride Crest of “Simmering Strike Wave” Sweeping Nation
This article by Sarah Jaffe is re-posted from ZNet.
Isaac Ferguson has worked at the McDonald’s on 51st and Broadway for four years. In all that time, he’s gotten exactly one raise of 10 cents an hour; after four years, he makes $7.35. “The price of a MetroCard went up, the price of food went up, they never decided to pay us more,” he said.
Last week, Ferguson and 200 other fast-food workers in New York City went on strike. And while they no doubt have a long road ahead before their bosses give in to their demands of $15 an hour and recognition of their independent union, the Fast Food Workers Committee, things have already changed a little.
“The boss’s attitude has changed,” Marty Davis, who works at the Wendy’s at 425 Fulton Street, explained. “He’s more nice about things, though he still requires the same things as far as effort, going quick, doing the same things.”
And Pamela Flood, whom I met last week leading chants on the picket line outside that same Wendy’s, told me that her boss at Burger King, who used to refer to her by her first name, is back to calling her Miss Flood.
Truvon Shim took the stage with Flood at both the fast-food workers’ rally on strike day, and Thursday’s rally of low-wage workers from across the city. He came to tell his story of losing everything in his Far Rockaway home to Superstorm Sandy, but also had his own victory to share.
Shim had asked his boss at Wendy’s for a few days to deal with the storm’s aftermath, but when he called to be added back to the schedule, was told there were no available hours. However, this week, along with an organizer from New York Communities for Change (NYCC), the group that began the fast-food worker campaign, Shim met with his general manager and was promised he’d get his hours back.
That same Wendy’s where Shim and Davis work saw the most dramatic action when one worker was threatened with firing. According to Jonathan Westin, organizing director at NYCC, community leaders – including City Councilman Jumaane Williams, the Working Families Party’s Dan Cantor, Camille Rivera of United NY and nearly 100 others – held a rally inside and outside of the store until the boss agreed to let her go back to work. Davis added, “That opened a lot of people up in the store, that you cannot fire us for believing in our rights and taking action. It opened up a lot more people’s eyes that weren’t with us, to want to go on strike now.”
Labor Rising
“There seems to be something of a simmering strike wave in the country,” said Frances Fox Piven, professor of sociology and political science at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center and author of many books, including Poor Peoples’ Movements.
The one-day strikes held by the fast-food workers, like the recent wave of strikes at Walmarts around the country, are something different from a traditional strike (though we’ve seen those in recent months too, most dramatically with the Chicago Teachers Union). The one-day strike, organized to disrupt business but not to shut it down, Piven noted, isn’t about winning. It’s about identifying the group, about respect, about demonstrating to other workers that they can take action, but not exposing the workers to the risk of prolonged loss of the income they have little of already.
“They’re organizing and advocating for low-wage workers in ways that are not in an established New Deal framework,” Ruth Milkman, sociologist of labor at the CUNY Graduate Center, and at the Joseph F. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, explained. The difficulties of running a traditional National Labor Relations Board election are well-known now.
“That system has become so dysfunctional, increasingly people are looking for alternatives,” Milkman continued. “Structurally it makes sense given the rollback of New Deal reforms that we’ve seen, the growth of inequality, the extreme immiseration.”
Like organizers before the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, the organizers working with low-wage workers these days focus on issues beyond just those of the workplace; it’s worth noting that this campaign began with NYCC organizers working on housing issues. Connecting labor and community issues is a hallmark of NYCC’s work, and campaigns like this one, like the organizing of grocery store workers, child care providers, car wash workers, is the legacy of its founder, Jon Kest, who passed away this week of cancer on the eve of the workers’ rally. Greg Basta of NYCC said, “Seeing this campaign come to fruition was what really was keeping him fighting.”
Piven found it “heartening” that established unions are recognizing and supporting this kind of social movement organizing. In New York, at least, low-wage workers are banding together not just across an industry – as fast-food workers from multiple locations and franchises have come together to create a union – but across the city, supporting one another in solidarity actions and standing together in Times Square, calling for better treatment and government action on workers’ issues.
Combined with recent victories by Domestic Workers United and home health care workers, they’re successfully challenging the country – and the labor movement – to expand its definition of good jobs.
After all, Milkman noted, factories didn’t provide good jobs until the unions that formed the CIO in the 1930s organized them. “It’s appropriate in my view to be nostalgic for the high wages and pensions and health care associated with those jobs, but the jobs themselves were pretty unpleasant; anyone who’s ever done one can tell you that,” she pointed out. “In terms of the high levels of routinization, fast food is similar.”
What’s more, she noted, the usual arguments against unions don’t apply as easily to minimum-wage, no-security jobs. “Nobody can say these are fat and happy workers with pensions,” she said. Instead, they’re workers who are devalued along with their labor by the rest of society. “When you’re making so little money,” Pamela Flood said, “people don’t respect you.”
Even their treatment on the job makes them feel like they don’t matter. In the McDonald’s where he works, Isaac Ferguson explained, there’s an elevator that the bosses get to use, but the workers have to climb stairs. “It’s the kind of job where people look down on you,” he said.
Yet the fast-food workers’ struggle is about more than just them. It’s about whether we’re going to have good jobs in the country at all in the future. “If you look down your nose at these folks, you may find yourself with some of the same problems they have not that far down the line,” said Joshua Freeman, professor of history at CUNY’s Queens College and the Murphy Institute. “In a lot of ways the fast food workers are the wave of the future in terms of our fates, in the downward spiral of the last few decades, as wages and benefits seem to be eroding for most Americans.”
And Milkman noted that nostalgia for manufacturing often doesn’t acknowledge the reality that it is a smaller proportion of all jobs on the planet, because of automation. “It’s never going to be like it was in the past,” she said.
Unemployment is still high in the US (the numbers for November found the unemployment rate at 7.7 percent), which usually presents a problem for organizers, as workers are afraid to lose their already-precarious jobs. Yet paradoxically it can also provide an incentive, as workers are less tempted to quit the job they have when they know there are few out there, and more inclined, perhaps, to stay and fight.
“Economists say that people don’t organize in hard times and there’s some truth to that, but the biggest surge in organizing was in the Great Depression,” Milkman noted.
***
“Hello, fellow low-wage workers!” Prince Jackson called to the crowd stretching down 42nd Street Thursday evening. The rally, led by fast-food workers, airport workers like Jackson, car wash and grocery store workers who have won labor battles in recent months, went on for blocks and spilled off the sidewalk- police barricades weren’t enough to hold back the hard-hatted building trades workers, who cheerily took the street.
The workers were addressed by politicians and clergy, mayoral candidates Bill DeBlasio, Bill Thompson and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who refused to answer questions from this reporter as to whether she’d allow a paid sick days bill come up for a vote.
“The overarching picture is a fight for economic fairness,” said Michael Kink of the Strong Economy for All coalition. “In New York City and New York State, the only sector of the economy that is generating more jobs is low-wage work.”
After the rally in Times Square, groups of workers broke out for actions at different targets, including the office of Rep. Peter King, pushing him over “fiscal cliff” negotiations, calling for an end to the Bush tax cuts on the rich, protecting Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid and an investment in jobs.
“The Wendy’s workers who make minimum wage and their checks bounce? Their CEO makes millions and his checks do not bounce. He would be the one getting the huge tax breaks,” Kink said, pointing out that nearly a third of the automatic spending cuts that would be triggered if there’s no deal by January on the so-called fiscal cliff are to state and local governments. That would include cuts to Section 8 housing, emergency housing, food pantries, food stamps and more programs that help low-wage workers and the unemployed.
Now is the time, Kink argued, to push for a good deal that would extend the payroll tax cut for workers and make sure unemployment benefits are still there for those out of work. “Putting the class issues first is a winning strategy.”
“We’re seeing labor being absolutely central to American politics once again,” CUNY’s Freeman said. Debates over the rights of workers, benefits, issues that were pushed off the agenda after World War II are now central once again. “We’re seeing a zillion battles across the country in state capitols, in front of McDonalds, in warehouses, in the port of Los Angeles. Difficult times for working people have put these questions on the forefront. Labor’s on the defensive, but occasionally on the offensive also.”
For Marty Davis, it was simply time to act. “I just felt like it’s now or never; we had to take a stand for something. We might as well take a stand for this – hopefully we can make an impact and get what we want for us, for the future, for everyone that works hard.”
The Racist Roots Of ‘Right To Work’ Laws
This article by Chris Kromm is re-posted from ZNet.
This week, Republican lawmakers in Michigan — birthplace of the United Auto Workers and, more broadly, the U.S. labor movement — shocked the nation by becoming the 24th state to pass “right-to-work” legislation, which allows non-union employees to benefit from union contracts.
While Michigan’s momentous decision has received widespread media attention, little has been said about the origins of “right-to-work” laws, which find their roots in extreme pro-segregationist and anti-communist elements in the 1940s South.
The history of anti-labor “right-to-work” laws starts in Houston. It was there in 1936 that Vance Muse, an oil industry lobbyist, founded the Christian American Association with backing from Southern oil companies and industrialists from the Northeast.
As Dartmouth sociologist Marc Dixon notes in his fascinating history of the period [pdf], “The Christian American Association was the first in the nation to champion the ‘Right-to-Work’ as a full-blown political slogan.”
Muse was a fixture in far-right politics in the South before settling into his anti-labor crusade. In his 1946 book “Southern Exposure,” crusading journalist Stetson Kennedy wrote:
The man Muse is quite a character. He is six foot four, wears a ten-gallon hat, but generally reserves his cowboy boots for trips Nawth. Now over fifty, Muse has been professionally engaged in reactionary enterprises for more than a quarter of a century.
As Kennedy described, these causes included opposing women’s suffrage, child labor laws, integration and growing efforts to change the Southern political order, as represented in the threat of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Muse’s sister and associate at the Christan American Association, Ida Darden, openly complained about the First Lady’s “Eleanor Clubs” saying they (as related by Kennedy):
…stood for “$15 a week salary for all nigger house help, Sundays off, no washing, and no cleaning upstairs.” As an afterthought, she added, “My nigger maid wouldn’t dare sit down in the same room with me unless she sat on the floor at my feet!”
Allowing herself to go still further, the little lady went on to say, “Christian Americans can’t afford to be anti-Semitic, but we know where we stand on the Jews, all right.
The Association also suspected Catholics — which Dixon notes caused the downfall of their crusades in neighboring Louisiana.
But for far-right conservatives like Muse, as well as industry groups like the Southern States Industrial Council, labor — including black labor — posed an especially dangerous threat in Texas. Thanks to a burgeoning wartime economy, along with labor organizing drives spearheaded by the Congress of Industrial Organizations and, to a lesser extent, the American Federation of Labor, unions were rapidly growing in Texas. After hovering around 10 percent of the workforce during the 1930s, union membership exploded by 225 percent during the next decade.
Muse and the Christian American Association saw danger. Not only were the unions expanding the bargaining power — and therefore improving the wages and working conditions — of working-class Texans, they also constituted a political threat. The CIO in particular opposed Jim Crow and demanded an end to segregation. Unions were an important political ally to FDR and the New Deal. And always lurking in the shadows was the prospect of a Red Menace, stoked by anti-communist hysteria.
Working in concert with segregationists and right-wing business leaders, Muse and the Association swiftly took action. Their first step in 1941 was to push an “anti-violence” bill that placed blanket restrictions on public union picketing at workplaces. The stated goal was to ensure “uninterrupted” industrial production during World War II, although Texas had the fewest number of strikes in the South, and the law applied to all industries, war-related or not.
Their success with the “anti-violence” bill spurred Muse and the Christian American Association to push for — and pass — similar laws throughout the South. Mississippi adopted an anti-violence statute in 1942; Florida, Arkansas, and Alabama passed similar laws in 1943. It also emboldened them to take on a much bigger prize: ending the ability of labor groups to run a “closed shop,” where union benefits extend only to union members.
In 1945, the Christian American Association — along with allies cemented in earlier anti-union legislative battles, including the Fight for Free Enterprise and the vehemently anti-union Texas Lt. Gov. John Lee Smith — introduced a right-to-work bill in Texas. It passed the House by a 60 to 53 margin, but pro-New Deal forces stopped it in the state senate. Two years later, thanks to a well-funded campaign from the Association and industry — and internal divisions between the craft-oriented AFL and the more militant CIO — Texas’ right-to-work bill was signed into law.
While working to pass right-to-work legislation in Texas, Muse and the Association took their efforts to Arkansas and Florida, where a similar message equating union growth with race-mixing and communism led to the passage of the nation’s first right-to-work laws in 1944. In all, 14 states passed such legislation by 1947, when conservatives in Congress successfully passed Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartly Act, enshrining the right of states to pass laws that allow workers to receive union benefits without joining a union.
Civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., who saw an alliance with labor as crucial to advancing civil rights as well as economic justice for all workers, spoke out against right-to-work laws; this 1961 statement by King was widely circulated this week during Michigan’s labor battles:
In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights.
Interestingly, 11 years later, Kansas also passed a right-to-work law, with the support of Texas-born energy businessman Fred Koch, who also viewed unions as vessels for communism and integration. Koch’s sons Charles and David went on to form the Tea Party group Americans for Prosperity, which pushed for the Michigan right-to-work measure, and is now advocating for states that already have such laws, like North Carolina and Virginia, to further enshrine them in their state constitutions.
And what about Muse? According to the Texas State Historical Association:
Muse died on October 15, 1950, at his Houston home, where his efforts with the Christian Americans had originated. At the time of his death he was working on a right-to-work amendment to the federal Constitution.
This article is by Miranda Blue is re-posted from Right Wing Watch.
Former Susan G. Komen executive Karen Handel, the Georgia Republican politician who has been largely credited with the cancer charity’s disastrous decision last year to withdraw its grants to Planned Parenthood, spoke yesterday to the Family Research Council.
Promoting her book about the episode, “Planned Bullyhood,” Handel accused Planned Parenthood of launching an “unprecedented, premeditated, Mafia-style assault” on Komen. Further, she alleges that Planned Parenthood “literally co-opted the color pink” from Komen in a sinister “bait and switch.”
