.
By MARC McDONALD
Note: welcome to readers of CrooksAndLiars.com.
Like Rodney Dangerfield, unions in America have long struggled to gain respect, especially since 1980. I've long been amazed at all the workers I've talked to over the years who are reluctant to support the union movement.
"Maybe unions were needed back in the 19th century era of Robber Barons," union foes argue. "But these days, unions are a dinosaur. They're no longer needed."
I've heard variants of the above argument repeatedly over the years, from both Republicans and even some Democrats. Of course, it makes no sense. It's like saying, "We already have Free Speech in America, so we no longer need the First Amendment."
Indeed, unions tend to get blamed for all kinds of ills facing present-day America. After all, wasn't it "greedy, overpaid" union members that resulted in America losing its manufacturing base?
That seems to be the Conventional Wisdom these days.
But there's only one problem. It's not only bullsh*t---it's the total opposite of the truth.
Unions, in fact, help make a nation more competitive.
Don't believe me?
Take a look at two of the most heavily unionized nations in the world: Germany and Japan. Both nations are thriving and have jobless rates far below the U.S. rate. Both nations still have large manufacturing sectors, which are heavily unionized. And both nations are exporting more than ever---even to low-wage nations like China. (Japan, for example, is one of the few nations on earth that has enjoyed a trade surplus with China much of the time in recent years).
In short, Germany and Japan are the polar opposite of the U.S. these days. While the U.S. continues to rack up record trade deficits, both Japan and Germany enjoy vast trade surpluses.
Not only are Germany and Japan heavily unionized, both nations have strong pro-worker laws that back up their labor movements. In both nations, for example, it's virtually impossible to fire full-time workers. Mass layoffs are very rare in both nations.
Every worker in Germany enjoys a minimum of six weeks' paid vacation per year. In fact the average is two months. And even in Japan these days, employees work fewer hours on average than Americans (who work the longest hours of any developed nation).
According to the International Labor Organization, "Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers."
Americans, in fact, are the most overworked people in the First World.
We're the only industrialized nation without a national paid parental leave benefit. We're the only nation without a legally mandated annual leave. We're the only First World nation with no required paid sick days.
All of this, of course, is due to the fact that organized labor in the U.S. is much weaker than other industrialized nations. In fact, unions having been going downhill since Ronald Reagan declared war on them in the 1980s.
But getting back to the original point of this article. One might ask: what does all this have to do with America's competitiveness?
A lot, actually.
It's clear that unions haven't been a hindrance to the economies of nations like Japan and Germany. In fact, it's clear that organized labor has been a key part of both those nations' success in growing their high-tech manufacturing export powerhouse economies.
If this sounds counterintuitive, consider the following question. Why has the U.S. consistently had a difficult time competing in high-tech manufacturing in recent decades? It's clear that a good part of the reason is that (unlike their counterparts in Germany and Japan), U.S. corporations have long been short-sighted.
While German and Japanese corporations typically plan decades ahead, U.S. corporations look no further ahead than the next fiscal quarter. In short, U.S. corporations have sacrificed their long-term health in return for short-term profit.
Which raises a question: why, exactly, have German and Japanese corporations consistently always planned way ahead? For example, why are both nations now working hard on industries of the future---industries that may take decades to reap financial rewards (think high-speed trains, advanced wind power, solar power and other green technologies).
The answer to this question is the fact that both nations have strong unions and pro-worker laws.
The fact that it is very difficult to fire workers in both nations seems like a recipe for economic decline. The reality is the total opposite. Japanese and German corporations plan very far ahead because they are forced to.
When it is extremely difficult to lay off staff, corporations find that they must take a very long-term view. It isn't sufficient (as is the case with U.S. corporations) to simply plan ahead for the next fiscal quarter. Instead, Japanese and German corporations must plan ahead at least a decade. And the lack of mass layoffs in both nations---which helps social harmony---is a bonus of the system.
Another advantage that unions bring the Japanese and Germans is the very fact that they work to bring generous benefits and pay to workers in those nations. When workers enjoy 6 weeks paid vacation, as the Germans do, you tend to have a workforce that isn't chronically burned out.
If you've ever driven a top-of-the-line Porsche, an Audi, a BMW, or a Mercedes, you know that the Germans make some of the highest quality products on earth. You don't get high-quality, top-of-the-line manufactured products when your nation's workforce is burned out (as most American workers are these days).
Another advantage: workforce stability, which encourages corporations to spend heavily on worker training. (U.S. corporations spend much less on training workers than Japanese and German corporations do).
True, the Japanese have a reputation for being an overworked people. But this is (at least compared to overworked American employees) an increasingly outdated stereotype. As I mentioned previously, Japanese workers these days actually work less hours than do Americans. And the laws preventing layoffs in Japan are even stronger than those in Germany.
In short, one could say that strong unions have the effect of "disciplining" corporations into taking the long-term view. Since organized labor in the U.S. is very weak, American corporations are under little pressure to look far ahead. Hence the short-sighted U.S. CEOs who only work to ensure that the next fiscal quarter is as profitable as possible.
Such short-sightedness has long been a disaster for U.S. industry. For example, Detroit's short-sighted policies have transformed U.S. automakers from a formerly world-beating industry into one that is currently only a pale shadow of its former self. Detroit's short-sightedness for example, was a disaster in the 1970s when U.S. automakers were cranking out gas-guzzling monsters that rapidly fell out of favor with consumers after the 1973 oil shocks. Detroit never really recovered.
True, there are other factors behind the strong high-tech manufacturing prowess of Germany and Japan. These include strong secondary public education, patient capital, and smart industrial and trade policies. But it's clear that unions and strong pro-labor laws play a key role, as well.
Showing posts with label unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unions. Show all posts
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Friday, September 24, 2010
I Smack Down a "Financial Times" Wingnut Columnist
By MARC McDONALD
Britain's The Financial Times is my favorite newspaper these days (indeed, I think it may be the best newspaper in the English-speaking world).
This might come as a surprise to those who know me as a flaming progressive. But the fact is, as a former newspaper journalist, I've come to appreciate over the years what makes a good newspaper.
The Financial Times (or "FT") has all the qualities that make a great newspaper in spades. Solid, in-depth reporting. Outstanding feature articles. No fluff or sleaze. Some of the best international news coverage anywhere. And, best of all, little obvious pro-business bias (despite the fact the FT is primarily a business newspaper).
This is in sharp contrast to Rupert Murdoch's The Wall Street Journal. The latter at one time was an outstanding U.S. newspaper that was only marred by an extreme right-wing editorial page. Sadly, under Murdoch's ownership, the entire paper now has an extreme right-wing bias.
The WSJ is, of course, ferociously pro-GOP. It also exists in its own parallel universe (like the rest of the Fox News/Drudge/Hate Radio propaganda machine). In the WSJ, for example, Ronald Reagan is an American hero who single-handedly won the Cold War. And global warming is a liberal conspiracy. And war criminals like Karl Rove are regarded as noble, distinguished statesman, who get regular columns to express their words of wisdom.
By contrast, The Financial Times is a welcome dose of reality. Here, global warming is accepted as the hard science that it is. And George W. Bush is called out for what he was: a disaster for both the U.S. and the world. And the Iraq War is rightly described as a fiasco.
Don't get me wrong: politically, the FT is not the Guardian. However, you get a lot more depth with the FT (as might be expected from a newspaper whose readership may have the wealthiest demographics of any newspaper in the world). A newspaper that has rich readers is able to attract high-paying advertisers, like BMW and Rolex. And that, in turn, leads to a bigger budget and a quality product.
It also reveals an interesting fact. Many wealthy readers don't want a newspaper that is the printed equivalent of Fox News. In fact, a lot of these rich subscribers regard the likes of Rush Limbaugh as a lightweight clown, just like progressives do. They wouldn't dream of wasting three hours a day listening to his OxyMoron ramblings.
What wealthy readers do want, though, is a highly concentrated dose of unvarnished truth. Just the facts, with no spin. In fact, I'd suspect that the CEOs, the prime ministers and the rich & powerful that make up much of the FT's readership can't afford any spin in their news. The info they get has to be accurate, it has to be top-quality, and it has to cover the world. It has to be free of fluff and tabloid sleaze. You won't read about Paris Hilton in The Financial Times.
Anyway, that's my theory as to why the FT offers such a superior newspaper. It shines in many areas that U.S. newspapers are truly lacking these days. Most U.S. newspapers offer abysmal international coverage, for example. And the quality of writing at most U.S. newspapers has consistently declined in recent years.
U.S. publishers have responded to declining circulations by slashing budgets and newsroom staff (an idiotic decision that has only led to newspapers continuing to decline in quality---which in turn hemorrhages readership). You don't get great journalism when your badly paid, over-worked journalists are struggling to find the money to simply pay the electric bill and put food on the table.
Anyway, I suppose this article thus far has read like a big ad for the The Financial Times. And so it's here that I'll point out that not everything is perfect with the FT. The paper does, from time to time, feature wingnut columnists, every bit as nutty as anything on Fox News.
And I recently smacked one of them down. Columnist Luke Johnson wrote a Sept. 22, 2010 piece denouncing unions. I responded with a letter to the editor that set the record straight. Both Johnson's column and my letter follow:
Unions are an obstacle to progress
By Luke Johnson
My earliest memories of unions in action are bad ones: in particular, my father being threatened in the late 1970s with a libel action by the late Jack Jones, then the boss of the Trades Union Congress, after a prescient article my dad had written denouncing the way strikes were ruining the British economy.
Experiences since have not changed those first impressions. In New York, a union city, I have witnessed how they rule the docks, Broadway, the construction industry and the hotel trade. Woe betide any naive overseas investors who want to risk their capital there. Classic American pragmatism is replaced by total closed shops, institutionalised entitlements and costs that are several times what they would be if a free market pertained.
If you contrast trade unions with entrepreneurs, the comparison is not flattering. Unions never create jobs or generate wealth – they simply attempt to redistribute it – usually by the threat of strikes. They see the world as a zero-sum contest. But business founders build companies, innovate and increase output through their ingenuity. More often than not, start-ups avoid unions altogether because they tend to act as an obstacle to change and progress. Frequently, new companies succeed because they are not burdened with out-of-date working practices that render the established players inefficient. Silicon Valley is not exactly renowned as a hotbed of union activism – its enterprising workers are too busy inventing the future.
Unions are usually engaged in trying to preserve the past, entrench privilege and resist technological advance. Britain’s Royal Mail underperforms desperately because its vast unionised workforce will not accept reforms and mechanisation. It will continue to decline if it fails to adapt, and will never attract the investment it needs to improve, until its unions adopt a more enlightened attitude towards modernisation.
Increasingly, unions rely for their power base on the public sector. They are also the principal paymasters of political parties such as the Democrats in the US and the Labour party in Britain. When in office, those politicians in turn bribe the unions with the taxpayer’s money.
The idea that public service was a calling for which citizens made sacrifices has been turned on its head. Now those in the public sector tend to enjoy higher salaries, better job security, work shorter hours and get far better pensions, and take more time off sick than their private sector counterparts.
In the global 21st century economy, industry is simply too competitive for the destructive and unrealistic behaviour of the union dinosaurs. Those elements of the private sector where US unions have called the shots, such as the Detroit auto industry, have been a disaster. Non-union plants have been far more productive and successful.
Ultimately, the British government might have to study what President Ronald Reagan did in 1981, when early in his tenure the US air traffic controllers insisted on huge new salary increases. Their demands were rejected, so 13,000 of the 17,500 union members walked out. Because they had signed an oath never to strike “against the public safety”, the government felt able to sack most of them. Meanwhile, non-striking controllers, their bosses and military personnel kept the skies open and more than half of all airports operated normally.
Within weeks, thousands of new recruits had joined the service to train as controllers at the old salaries. The fresh applicants provided undeniable evidence that unions exist partly to force up the cost of labour beyond a market rate. Remarkably, there were no accidents, and aircraft movements fairly rapidly recovered to levels prior to the strike. The old controllers never got their jobs back and their union was disbanded.
Militant, confrontational unions are a throwback that the west can no longer afford. They pretend to fight for causes such as equality, health and safety and skills. In reality their leaders are obsessed about two things only: money and power. I hope the public and our political classes remember that if there is conflict in the coming months.
Here, is my response to Johnson, which ran on the FT's "Letters" page on Sept. 24:
Unions played key role in developing U.S. middle class
From Mr. Marc McDonald.
Sir, In his column “Unions are an obstacle to progress” (Business Life, September 22), Luke Johnson unfairly blames unions for many of the woes currently afflicting U.S. businesses.
Mr. Johnson's arguments make little sense. For example, he claims that unions "called the shots" that led to the disaster that befell Detroit's carmakers.
But it was Detroit's chief executives, not the unions, that led the carmakers to ruin. It was the CEOs who consistently made short-sighted, disastrous decisions, such as betting the farm on clunky, gas-guzzling vehicles that eventually fell out of favour with consumers.
Mr. Johnson also completely ignores the experience of heavily unionised nations such as Germany, where carmakers continue to thrive. Unions are vastly more powerful in Germany than they are in the U.S. and they are backed up by strong, pro-labour laws that most U.S. workers could only dream of.
What Mr. Johnson, and other anti-union commentators, consistently ignore is the fact that unions in America played a key role in the creation of the great American middle class that made the U.S. the envy of the world for decades after the second world war.
It was only after Ronald Reagan crushed the union movement in the 1980s that the middle class began to shrink. The U.S. today has the biggest gulf between rich and poor of any first world nation. This economic polarisation has continued to grow, as unions have declined in power.
Marc McDonald,
Fort Worth, TX, U.S.A.
Britain's The Financial Times is my favorite newspaper these days (indeed, I think it may be the best newspaper in the English-speaking world).
This might come as a surprise to those who know me as a flaming progressive. But the fact is, as a former newspaper journalist, I've come to appreciate over the years what makes a good newspaper.
The Financial Times (or "FT") has all the qualities that make a great newspaper in spades. Solid, in-depth reporting. Outstanding feature articles. No fluff or sleaze. Some of the best international news coverage anywhere. And, best of all, little obvious pro-business bias (despite the fact the FT is primarily a business newspaper).
This is in sharp contrast to Rupert Murdoch's The Wall Street Journal. The latter at one time was an outstanding U.S. newspaper that was only marred by an extreme right-wing editorial page. Sadly, under Murdoch's ownership, the entire paper now has an extreme right-wing bias.
The WSJ is, of course, ferociously pro-GOP. It also exists in its own parallel universe (like the rest of the Fox News/Drudge/Hate Radio propaganda machine). In the WSJ, for example, Ronald Reagan is an American hero who single-handedly won the Cold War. And global warming is a liberal conspiracy. And war criminals like Karl Rove are regarded as noble, distinguished statesman, who get regular columns to express their words of wisdom.
By contrast, The Financial Times is a welcome dose of reality. Here, global warming is accepted as the hard science that it is. And George W. Bush is called out for what he was: a disaster for both the U.S. and the world. And the Iraq War is rightly described as a fiasco.
Don't get me wrong: politically, the FT is not the Guardian. However, you get a lot more depth with the FT (as might be expected from a newspaper whose readership may have the wealthiest demographics of any newspaper in the world). A newspaper that has rich readers is able to attract high-paying advertisers, like BMW and Rolex. And that, in turn, leads to a bigger budget and a quality product.
It also reveals an interesting fact. Many wealthy readers don't want a newspaper that is the printed equivalent of Fox News. In fact, a lot of these rich subscribers regard the likes of Rush Limbaugh as a lightweight clown, just like progressives do. They wouldn't dream of wasting three hours a day listening to his OxyMoron ramblings.
What wealthy readers do want, though, is a highly concentrated dose of unvarnished truth. Just the facts, with no spin. In fact, I'd suspect that the CEOs, the prime ministers and the rich & powerful that make up much of the FT's readership can't afford any spin in their news. The info they get has to be accurate, it has to be top-quality, and it has to cover the world. It has to be free of fluff and tabloid sleaze. You won't read about Paris Hilton in The Financial Times.
Anyway, that's my theory as to why the FT offers such a superior newspaper. It shines in many areas that U.S. newspapers are truly lacking these days. Most U.S. newspapers offer abysmal international coverage, for example. And the quality of writing at most U.S. newspapers has consistently declined in recent years.
U.S. publishers have responded to declining circulations by slashing budgets and newsroom staff (an idiotic decision that has only led to newspapers continuing to decline in quality---which in turn hemorrhages readership). You don't get great journalism when your badly paid, over-worked journalists are struggling to find the money to simply pay the electric bill and put food on the table.
Anyway, I suppose this article thus far has read like a big ad for the The Financial Times. And so it's here that I'll point out that not everything is perfect with the FT. The paper does, from time to time, feature wingnut columnists, every bit as nutty as anything on Fox News.
And I recently smacked one of them down. Columnist Luke Johnson wrote a Sept. 22, 2010 piece denouncing unions. I responded with a letter to the editor that set the record straight. Both Johnson's column and my letter follow:
Unions are an obstacle to progress
By Luke Johnson
My earliest memories of unions in action are bad ones: in particular, my father being threatened in the late 1970s with a libel action by the late Jack Jones, then the boss of the Trades Union Congress, after a prescient article my dad had written denouncing the way strikes were ruining the British economy.
Experiences since have not changed those first impressions. In New York, a union city, I have witnessed how they rule the docks, Broadway, the construction industry and the hotel trade. Woe betide any naive overseas investors who want to risk their capital there. Classic American pragmatism is replaced by total closed shops, institutionalised entitlements and costs that are several times what they would be if a free market pertained.
If you contrast trade unions with entrepreneurs, the comparison is not flattering. Unions never create jobs or generate wealth – they simply attempt to redistribute it – usually by the threat of strikes. They see the world as a zero-sum contest. But business founders build companies, innovate and increase output through their ingenuity. More often than not, start-ups avoid unions altogether because they tend to act as an obstacle to change and progress. Frequently, new companies succeed because they are not burdened with out-of-date working practices that render the established players inefficient. Silicon Valley is not exactly renowned as a hotbed of union activism – its enterprising workers are too busy inventing the future.
Unions are usually engaged in trying to preserve the past, entrench privilege and resist technological advance. Britain’s Royal Mail underperforms desperately because its vast unionised workforce will not accept reforms and mechanisation. It will continue to decline if it fails to adapt, and will never attract the investment it needs to improve, until its unions adopt a more enlightened attitude towards modernisation.
Increasingly, unions rely for their power base on the public sector. They are also the principal paymasters of political parties such as the Democrats in the US and the Labour party in Britain. When in office, those politicians in turn bribe the unions with the taxpayer’s money.
The idea that public service was a calling for which citizens made sacrifices has been turned on its head. Now those in the public sector tend to enjoy higher salaries, better job security, work shorter hours and get far better pensions, and take more time off sick than their private sector counterparts.
In the global 21st century economy, industry is simply too competitive for the destructive and unrealistic behaviour of the union dinosaurs. Those elements of the private sector where US unions have called the shots, such as the Detroit auto industry, have been a disaster. Non-union plants have been far more productive and successful.
Ultimately, the British government might have to study what President Ronald Reagan did in 1981, when early in his tenure the US air traffic controllers insisted on huge new salary increases. Their demands were rejected, so 13,000 of the 17,500 union members walked out. Because they had signed an oath never to strike “against the public safety”, the government felt able to sack most of them. Meanwhile, non-striking controllers, their bosses and military personnel kept the skies open and more than half of all airports operated normally.
Within weeks, thousands of new recruits had joined the service to train as controllers at the old salaries. The fresh applicants provided undeniable evidence that unions exist partly to force up the cost of labour beyond a market rate. Remarkably, there were no accidents, and aircraft movements fairly rapidly recovered to levels prior to the strike. The old controllers never got their jobs back and their union was disbanded.
Militant, confrontational unions are a throwback that the west can no longer afford. They pretend to fight for causes such as equality, health and safety and skills. In reality their leaders are obsessed about two things only: money and power. I hope the public and our political classes remember that if there is conflict in the coming months.
Here, is my response to Johnson, which ran on the FT's "Letters" page on Sept. 24:
Unions played key role in developing U.S. middle class
From Mr. Marc McDonald.
Sir, In his column “Unions are an obstacle to progress” (Business Life, September 22), Luke Johnson unfairly blames unions for many of the woes currently afflicting U.S. businesses.
Mr. Johnson's arguments make little sense. For example, he claims that unions "called the shots" that led to the disaster that befell Detroit's carmakers.
But it was Detroit's chief executives, not the unions, that led the carmakers to ruin. It was the CEOs who consistently made short-sighted, disastrous decisions, such as betting the farm on clunky, gas-guzzling vehicles that eventually fell out of favour with consumers.
Mr. Johnson also completely ignores the experience of heavily unionised nations such as Germany, where carmakers continue to thrive. Unions are vastly more powerful in Germany than they are in the U.S. and they are backed up by strong, pro-labour laws that most U.S. workers could only dream of.
What Mr. Johnson, and other anti-union commentators, consistently ignore is the fact that unions in America played a key role in the creation of the great American middle class that made the U.S. the envy of the world for decades after the second world war.
It was only after Ronald Reagan crushed the union movement in the 1980s that the middle class began to shrink. The U.S. today has the biggest gulf between rich and poor of any first world nation. This economic polarisation has continued to grow, as unions have declined in power.
Marc McDonald,
Fort Worth, TX, U.S.A.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Chicago Factory Sit-In: The Dawn of a New Era For Unions in America?
By MANIFESTO JOE
This is an example of why a bailout, any bailout, is fundamentally a no-win situation for the taxpayer.
You may have heard news that workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago occupied the building and began a sit-in after the factory shut down Friday on three days' notice. Last time I checked, they're still there.
The workers say the factory was closed in violation of a law that requires a 60-day notice for a shutdown. They say they won't leave without assurances that they'll get severance and vacation pay.
What you may not have heard is the reason for the abrupt shutdown. The company's creditor, Bank of America, canceled Republic's line of credit. Republic's sales have tumbled in the sour economy, and with no line of credit, CEO Rich Gillman said the company had "no choice but to shut our doors," The Associated Press reported.
This is the same Bank of America that got $25 billion of the federal government's $700 billion financial bailout. That's over 3.5% of the total package. And they can't afford to extend a line of credit so that 250 mostly Hispanic wage earners in Chicago can keep their jobs?
SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH, "FREE" MARKET BUGGERY OF THE POOR
The Associated Press also reported that Bank of America, in a statement Saturday, said that it isn't responsible for Republic's financial obligations to its employees.
Exactly for whom, and to whom, is Bank of America, sucking at the federal tit to the tune of $25 billion, responsible and accountable?
It's in the public interest that people can get and hold jobs. These people can't pay taxes when they're in the unemployment line. Since this largess is coming from the taxpayers, we've got a perverse situation of collectivist capitalism for the bankers, and the icy sidewalk for the faceless mass of suckers who put up money for the bailout.
WHITHER THE BAILOUTS?
Along with many other people, I held my nose and voiced support for the bailout as a necessary evil. But this case illustrates why taxpayer-funded bailouts end up being no-win situations. It's a sort of blackmail -- the national economy would fall into a downward spiral of Depression proportions if financial institutions the size of Bank of America were allowed to go under. They seem to know this, and their behavior is commensurately unaccountable.
Chicago will easily survive a loss of 250 jobs at Republic. But multiply that scenario across the country, with many hundreds of struggling companies and overextended creditors, and you get a mental picture of what the U.S. economy is facing.
This is an example of why bailouts need to have many strings attached to them, and very sturdy ones. In exchange for that $25 billion, the federal government ought to have pretty much leverage over what Bank of America uses it for. Republic operates at the level of a few million dollars per month, not in the billions like BOA. This is a microcosm of the kind of abuse that the many have endured, at the hands of the few, for decades.
A UNION SUNRISE?
A bright spot is that this incident may become a rallying point for the revival of a union movement in America. Here's more from the AP report:
"Across cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame," said Richard Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country."
Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs that said, "You got bailed out, we got sold out."
Leah Fried, an organizer with United Electrical Workers, obliquely compared the sit-in to the landmark 1936-37 General Motors sit-down strike in Flint, Mich., which helped unionize the auto industry. (Yeah, I know, there's the automakers bailout. That's another post.)
"We're doing something we haven't done since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," AP quoted Fried as saying. She pointed out that the occupying workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building during the sit-in.
Realistically, the financial bailout is a bitter concoction we're going to have to gulp down. But that doesn't mean we have to like it. And, for a dramatic change from '80s and '90s stupor, a lot of Americans seem to be waking up from virtual date-rape drugs and realizing who's been carrying out the assault on working people for many years.
I hope the 53-46% mandate for Barack Obama was only the beginning. Republic should trigger a reborn union movement in this country. Against the kinds of monolithic entities we now face, like Bank of America, lots of people getting together again is the only chance we have.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.
This is an example of why a bailout, any bailout, is fundamentally a no-win situation for the taxpayer.
You may have heard news that workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago occupied the building and began a sit-in after the factory shut down Friday on three days' notice. Last time I checked, they're still there.
The workers say the factory was closed in violation of a law that requires a 60-day notice for a shutdown. They say they won't leave without assurances that they'll get severance and vacation pay.
What you may not have heard is the reason for the abrupt shutdown. The company's creditor, Bank of America, canceled Republic's line of credit. Republic's sales have tumbled in the sour economy, and with no line of credit, CEO Rich Gillman said the company had "no choice but to shut our doors," The Associated Press reported.
This is the same Bank of America that got $25 billion of the federal government's $700 billion financial bailout. That's over 3.5% of the total package. And they can't afford to extend a line of credit so that 250 mostly Hispanic wage earners in Chicago can keep their jobs?
SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH, "FREE" MARKET BUGGERY OF THE POOR
The Associated Press also reported that Bank of America, in a statement Saturday, said that it isn't responsible for Republic's financial obligations to its employees.
Exactly for whom, and to whom, is Bank of America, sucking at the federal tit to the tune of $25 billion, responsible and accountable?
It's in the public interest that people can get and hold jobs. These people can't pay taxes when they're in the unemployment line. Since this largess is coming from the taxpayers, we've got a perverse situation of collectivist capitalism for the bankers, and the icy sidewalk for the faceless mass of suckers who put up money for the bailout.
WHITHER THE BAILOUTS?
Along with many other people, I held my nose and voiced support for the bailout as a necessary evil. But this case illustrates why taxpayer-funded bailouts end up being no-win situations. It's a sort of blackmail -- the national economy would fall into a downward spiral of Depression proportions if financial institutions the size of Bank of America were allowed to go under. They seem to know this, and their behavior is commensurately unaccountable.
Chicago will easily survive a loss of 250 jobs at Republic. But multiply that scenario across the country, with many hundreds of struggling companies and overextended creditors, and you get a mental picture of what the U.S. economy is facing.
This is an example of why bailouts need to have many strings attached to them, and very sturdy ones. In exchange for that $25 billion, the federal government ought to have pretty much leverage over what Bank of America uses it for. Republic operates at the level of a few million dollars per month, not in the billions like BOA. This is a microcosm of the kind of abuse that the many have endured, at the hands of the few, for decades.
A UNION SUNRISE?
A bright spot is that this incident may become a rallying point for the revival of a union movement in America. Here's more from the AP report:
"Across cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame," said Richard Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country."
Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs that said, "You got bailed out, we got sold out."
Leah Fried, an organizer with United Electrical Workers, obliquely compared the sit-in to the landmark 1936-37 General Motors sit-down strike in Flint, Mich., which helped unionize the auto industry. (Yeah, I know, there's the automakers bailout. That's another post.)
"We're doing something we haven't done since the 1930s, so we're trying to make it work," AP quoted Fried as saying. She pointed out that the occupying workers have been shoveling snow and cleaning the building during the sit-in.
Realistically, the financial bailout is a bitter concoction we're going to have to gulp down. But that doesn't mean we have to like it. And, for a dramatic change from '80s and '90s stupor, a lot of Americans seem to be waking up from virtual date-rape drugs and realizing who's been carrying out the assault on working people for many years.
I hope the 53-46% mandate for Barack Obama was only the beginning. Republic should trigger a reborn union movement in this country. Against the kinds of monolithic entities we now face, like Bank of America, lots of people getting together again is the only chance we have.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.
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