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| Most of this money hasn't been repaid |
"This is a watershed moment, make no mistake" says Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. The bankers should be very pleased. The "landmark deal" means that 14,500 city employees will double their contributions to retirement benefits from 6% to 11%. They will also forgo planned salary increases and overtime pay, the WSJ says.
The concessionary deal also includes "long-term" structural changes to the contract including requiring workers to contribute to their retirement healthcare. Bob, Schoonover, president of SEIU local 721 that represents many of the workers was quite exhausted handing over his members pay and benefits, "It was a very difficult thing" he says, "...at times we felt like we were getting nowhere."
The big business media drags out an academic to confirm the importance and inevitability of the agreement and to give intellectual legitimacy, after all, professors know best otherwise they wouldn't be professors. "Unions are beginning to see which way the winds are blowing and its not really in their favor when it comes to these bargaining points" says Jessica Levinson, a Los Angeles law professor. "As the economic crisis continues there's only so long that anyone can hold out without layoffs or significant concessions" she adds.
The professor is a little off base on this one I think. Firstly, "Unions" implies the members as well as leaders and they are two different groups. It is not likely the leaders that negotiate these concessionary deals on behalf of their members live and work under the same contracts. Secondly, winds don't necessarily have to blow in the same direction all the time. The Union officials start from a position of concessions, they don't "hold out" against anything. They see themselves as Labor brokers, as CEO's of employment agencies whose job it is to contract Labor power to the capitalists or their state at the best possible price.
And what economic crisis are we talking about? Money is everywhere. The 178 Tomahawk missiles the US fired on Libya as of yesterday would fill some gaps. then there's the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The CEO's of the major corporations are sitting on more than $2 trillion in cash that they refuse to invest int he economy---not enough profit to be made. The US taxpayer dragged capitalism from the edge of the abyss bailing it out to the tune of trillions of dollars. And its not just TARP money, much of which has been returned, mostly because it came with restrictions like on the amount of bonus pay CEO's could receive.
The website Banksterusa gives some examples of our money that capitalist politicians in Washington have given to the bankers and speculators. It points out:
"Research shows that the U.S. Treasury Department's ten TARP programs represent less than seven percent of the $4.7 trillion disbursed by the U.S. government in an effort to aid the financial services industry. Far more money has been disbursed by the Federal Reserve to prop up the financial system than by the U.S. Treasury and those loans are still outstanding."
A similar situation occurred in the Savings and Loan scandal. **Thieves stole billions of dollars of, mostly older people's savings, almost 800 S&L's collapsed and the taxpayer, the very people whose money it was, paid the bill, plus interest. The whole scheme was made possible by Democrats and Republicans in Congress who made the laws that allowed the crisis to occur. One man went to jail. They also formed the Resolution Trust Corporation which threw out the worst S&L's and sold the survivors back to the same crooks at bargain basement prices.
So the economic wind is only blowing against us because they are blowing it in our faces. In physics they say that for every reaction there is an opposite reaction or something like that, but physics doesn't account for a cooperative Union hierarchy.
There are some facts workers like us have to get clear in our minds. We did not cause this economic crisis. High wages, pensions, benefits, are not the cause of this crisis. There is no shortage of money, as the Wall Street Journal has said on many occasions, "The world is awash with cash.". We also have to get over the idea in our own consciousness propagated by the capitalist class through their media and echoed by the worker's leaders, that we are powerless and we can't win.
Instead of a strategy designed to help out capitalism and save it form itself there is an alternative. We can fight
We have to accept in our own minds first and foremost that we can win and that we can make the rich pay for their own crisis. We must also recognize that this means a struggle, against the bosses who want to make us pay, and internally against the policies of the Union hierarchy who agree with them because they see no alternative to capitalism and worship the laws of the market. We only have to read US Labor history to see that the bosses have always made the same phony arguments.
By capitulating as the heads of organized Labor are doing (and genuine leaders and activists of smaller Union locals that refuse to fight against their concessionary strategy) from Wisconsin to Los Angeles they are digging a deeper hole for us to get out of and emboldening the employers who will become more aggressive with each victory. The minor concession the LA deal has won from the bosses is they will end furloughs and prevent the layoff of 600 workers, for now. What does this say to the millions of workers and young people who would join a Union if they could? Unions, they say, just look out for their own members.
Readers will find more detailed examples of what this blog puts forward as an alternative to the disastrous concessionary policies of the Union hierarchy here and under the "public sector" or "Unions" Labels
** "Who Robbed America" has some interesting and useful facts about the S&L scandal
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