Airlines Want More Taxpayer Money to Pay Wages, Safeguard Profits.

Striking Airline Workers last year. We're all in this together now?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

"Brethren we conjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable.  Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves.  It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich."  *

Back in March, US airlines received $25 billion from the US taxpayer under the $2.2 trillion stimulus deal known as the “Cares Act”. This money was intended to keep the Airlines afloat for the summer by covering their labor costs. They also received, $25 billion in loans and loan guarantees. One of the conditions for the hand out was that the Airlines were barred from laying off, or to use the media’s euphemistic terminology, furloughing employees. This ban ends October 1^st 2020.

Well, the airline bosses and their investors are coming back for more money and are disappointed in the Republican proposal for the next coronavirus aid package there’s that there’s no money in it for them. Hence the resort to a dose of economic terrorism. If they don’t get it they will be laying off thousands more workers. American Airlines says it will have to lay off 25,000 workers and United Airlines some 36,000 if the taxpayer won’t pay their wages. United Airlines told its pilots that until a vaccine is available things will not improve much and the airline’s original plan to layoff about one third of its pilot workforce in 2020 and 2021 won’t do the job without taxpayer money.  Alaska has threatened to layoff 35% of its workforce.

American allocated around $11.9 billion toward buying back its stock over the past five years and paid out more than $1 billion in dividends during this same time period. Meanwhile, American’s chairman made over $11 million in salary in 2019 and other executives another $20 million. Investors in the airline industry, what amounts to a form of mass transportation on a continent, claim that it will be 2024 before the global air traffic returns to anything like they were before the coronavirus hit.

It’s always interesting to look at the language the unknown figures behind the scenes in this particular field use when making public statements.  All the talk from the airline investors through those that manage the business, never mentions profits. They need help to “prevent” thousands of job losses. They are desperate to “avoid cuts” “We hate taking this step, as we know the impact it has on our hardworking team members.”, says one executive. Some team the workers are on where they never control the ball.

The airlines are hoping that workers will leave through early retirements or as they put it “on their own”. Thousands of workers have left “on their own” at Southwest Airlines for example but one has to laugh at the language again as it implies there was no external pressure, nothing happening in the outside world or the economy that would cause thousands of workers to just leave their jobs “on their own.”

One can only imagine the uncertainty and fear that many workers must be experiencing in this crisis. Beyond this, the huge stimulus will have to be repaid and the future is one of further concessions and attacks on US workers. All the talk of essential workers and heroes is pretty nauseating as these very same workers have been abused and denigrated for ever. Nurses and other professionals in the health field aside, these heroes are in positions we are all encouraged to avoid. They are reserved for the poor, the immigrants and so on.

Airline bosses are hoping that the union leadership will agree to concessions to try to save jobs and there is no indication that they will not. When capitalism goes in to crisis, the labor hierarchy’s immediate response is to bail it out.

Aviation unions representing pilots, flight attendants and mechanics are all supporting an extension of the aid for another six months. In a letter from the unions to Congress in June they called for another $32 million for “passenger airlines cargo carriers and aviation contractors.” “This is the simplest and fastest way to maintain Congress’ historic commitment to keep aviation workers on payroll.”, the letter said.

Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) made an appeal on social media in March:   "We have told Congress that any stimulus funds for the aviation industry must come with strict rules that includes requiring employers across aviation to maintain pay and benefits for every worker," Nelson said in the video. "No taxpayer money for CEO bonuses, stock buybacks, or dividends; no breaking contracts through bankruptcy; and no federal funds for airlines that are fighting their workers' efforts to join a union."

Nelson is regarded as a left winger in organized labor but, like all of them is wedded to the Team Concept stressing workers and bosses have the same interests. “We’re all in this together, there is no difference” she says in the video as she appeals to national pride and how important this industry is to all of us carrying our troops and so on. Congress must protect our paychecks she says.

Airline-catering providers, security companies, ground handlers and cleaning services got $3 billion of the Cares Act to cover pay and benefits for workers through the end of September with the same conditions----no layoffs. But numerous contractors that laid off or furloughed some 9,000 people since the Cares Act was passed received some $728 million in funding. https://www.wsj.com/articles/stimulus-money-for-airline-contractors-comes-under-scrutiny-11596044969

Yes we’re all in this together.

And Sara Nelson is placing our salvation and economic interests in the hands of the billionaires and millionaires in the US Congress. Even if we take the name of the legislation, the “Cares Act”. It has two different meanings. Workers care about wages, jobs, security etc., and investors that own the airline industry care about profits. There have been other top labor officials that liberals and sections of the left in the unions have gone gaga over, Amy Dean was one as was SEIU’s Andy Stern.  Always looking for a savior except the organized power of the working class.

Joining with airline executives and the investors behind them under the “all in this together” canopy is a guarantee that union members and the working class and taxpayers as a whole will suffer. After workers saved US capitalism from itself in 2008 bailing out the auto industry being one example, the end result was that Ultimately, the government lost about $11.8 billion on its investment in the auto makers.

I have done a fair bit of flying and have nothing but respect and admiration for the flight attendants. They work non-stop taking care of their customers and working through various time zones that can be very stressful. I remember when the airline industry forced concessions of them and attendants, (mostly women) found themselves in some areas, having to apply for welfare. Others who had planned to retire had those dreams dashed.

Not much of an “all together” attitude there. Sarah Nelson who has gained some respect for her outspoken views and sounding quite militant, is in danger of ending up as they all do, participating in the attacks on their own members, by relying on the Democratic Party and Congress, a direct result of the Team Concept and the view that there are no differences.

It is absurd that the taxpayer, the working class which is most of us, are borrowing billions of dollars that we will hand over to a ruthless bunch of wasters so that they can keep the business and pay our wages. After the Great Recession the hatred and anger at the super rich and the government was very strong. Here we are bailing the system out again and the heads of organized labor are reminding us that there are no differences among us; bankers and hedge fund managers, are no different to waiters and welders.

This is the time for any labor leader that claims to be heading in a new direction to call for the nationalization of the airline industry. If we are paying the wages why don’t we collectively own the company?  In the UK, workers have shown that they want the re-nationalization of the major important industries, mail, rail, water and do on. In the US we never hear any alternative views only pro-market propaganda from representatives of the two big business parties and their candidates. In the debates we only hear carefully scripted questions and answers from the two big business parties, I recall Jill Stein getting arrested trying to get in to the debates some years ago.

Our postal service is a public agency and an extremely efficient one if we are talking about serving the majority of the population rather than providing profits for a minority that don’t work. Many fire departments, the TVA, are public so are social services despite being savaged by privatization to a great extent. Public services like public jobs are overwhelmingly positive.

Nationalizing a major industry within the framework of a capitalist economy is not the be all and end all of it, only a small step but an important one as it undermines the propaganda that the market and the private sector is the only means of organizing society. Relying on our own collective strength and applying it through a direct action fight to win strategy, and building our own independent political party is the path the US working class must open up ahead.

*1840's appeal from New England laborers to their fellows to abandon the idea that the employers/capitalists would solve working people's problems.  Philip Foner History of the Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192

Britain: Austerity, the hardworking and the feckless

by Michael Roberts

About two years ago, the current UK finance minister George Osborne commented that ‘hard-working people’ left for work every morning while ‘behind the blinds’ of the house opposite people on benefits were sleeping in. The ‘hard-working’ person was paying for the feckless “to stay at home and not work”.

At the time, I wrote a post that attempted to analyse just how many of these feckless layabouts there were that we ‘hard-working’ people were paying for (http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/who-are-behind-the-blinds-george/). Apart from the official unemployed, nearly all of those not working were disabled, lone parents without childcare, retired or students. Indeed, after excluding students, there were only about 250,000 adults out of a potential workforce of 41m who were ‘refusing’ to work for ‘no good reason’, or just 0.6% of the workforce.

Well, the latest work survey has been released (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lmac/working-and-workless-households/2014/stb-working-and-workless-households-2014.html). In June this year, there were 3.3 million UK households with at least one member aged 16 to 64 where no-one was currently working. This represented 15.9% of households and was a fall of 1.4 percentage points, or 271,000 households on a year earlier. This ratio is down to its lowest rate since 1996. In 2014, there were only 226,000 households (excluding students) in which no adult has ever worked, or less than 1% of all households.

That is the extent of the feckless hiding behind their blinds each morning.

The number of workless households has fallen as employment has increased since the Great Recession. But we now know that most of these new jobs are either part-time, temporary (zero hours contracts) or created by people themselves through self-employment. And these jobs pay much less that full-time employment. Indeed, in 2014, for the first time, of the 13 million Britons officially living in poverty, there are more working households than non-working ones – according to the Joseph Rowntree Trust.

While the government boasts that it is getting people back to work at record levels, it fails to mention that this work is badly paid, precarious and often created by people themselves trying to scramble together a ‘business’.

As a result, tax revenues are just not rising anywhere near enough to enable to this ‘austerity’ government to meet its targets for reducing the annual government deficit and the overall debt burden.

In March, the government predicted that the budget deficit would shrink by about £12bn in the current fiscal year. Instead, it’s widening. Government spending exceeded revenue by £10bn in September. This leaves the shortfall in the first six months of the current fiscal year at £55bn, 5% more than in the same period of 2013.

The reason is much weaker tax revenue than expected because the extra employment is in low-paying jobs, part-time work replacing some full-time jobs and above all in self-employment.
Self-employment accounts for one-third of the 1.75 million jobs created since early 2010 as people hit by the recession turned to working for themselves in jobs from taxi driving to carpentry. And the proportion of self-employed workers reporting incomes below the tax-free threshold has jumped to 35% from 21% before the financial crisis.

The benefits bill is staying stubbornly high because, while people may be coming off unemployment benefits if they go into low wage work, they are likely to continue claiming some form of welfare (tax credits, child benefit, housing benefit, etc).

As nominal wages are barely growing, fewer people are moving into higher-rate tax bands. In March, the independent OBR forecast average incomes would grow 2.4% this year. Instead they rose just 0.7% in the latest quarter. Together, taxes on income and social security contributions account for almost half of government revenue. Osborne had been predicting about 7% more income tax this year. Between April and August, it fell 0.8%!

The coalition government is way short of its target to ‘balance the books’ by the end of 2018, a target that has been slipping back anyway. Meanwhile, the gross government debt ratio inexorably rises towards 100% of GDP, a level not seen since the war debt levels of 1945.

What this means that the government’s drive to reduce welfare spending on the ‘feckless’ is not even achieving the government’s own professed aim of reducing the public sector deficit – although it is reducing real wages and the cost of labour for business to make more profit.  The House of Commons briefing on social security expenditure forecasts a rise in benefit costs in real terms through the whole period of the next parliament 2015-20.

And it’s only going to get worse, whoever wins the UK general election next May, as all three main parties are pledged to ‘balance the books’ of the government as a priority.  And yet the Conservatives have announced more tax cuts for the rich if they win the election next year. But they cannot square the circle of cutting taxes and maintaining public services, even if they reduce welfare spending to zero! Austerity is not working, except to lower real wages and keep the poor even poorer. But then that is part of the reason for austerity.

My Brother's Keeper, Obama's plan to pacify the rich do nothing for the poor.

Capitalism can't solve this, it's the cause of it

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

During the presidency of the imbecile that was in the White House before Barack Obama I remember a picture in the mass media of Bush down on his ranch.  It was a good photo op.  There he was, sleeves rolled up, a cowboy hat on his head and a chain saw in his hands. The intent of the photo op was to show that Bush was just a regular working class guy. Put a cowboy hat on a billionaire’s head and a chain saw in his hands and he’s one of us.  Some workers fall for this unfortunately.

Barack Obama, a much slicker character than Bush and a more preferred representative of the 1% as a whole was also doing his bit this week to con working class people in to believing he has our interests at heart as he rolled out his new program to help young men of color, My Brother's Keeper is its title. We know who Obama's real brother's are of course, they're the execs and CEO's of the giant corporations and players on Wall Street, pretty much the same folks as Bush with a few exceptions. The other element with Obama of course is the race/color question.  He can appeal to the black population, especially the black middle class in a way that Bush couldn’t.

The president was on TV last night as he launched the program. I watched him as he shook the hands of young black men giving them a delicate bump from shoulder to shoulder just to confirm his credentials; he knows what to do, “I’m just like you” is his message. Most importantly, he wants to help young men of color become successful entrepreneurs which is only to be expected as he is a representative of this class.

It’s as sickening to watch as Bush with his chain saw.

Obama’s program to alleviate the crisis young men of color face in a racist system that throws unprecedented numbers of them in prisons is a sham.  It will offer some opportunity, like the privatization of the nation’s highways does, for his business pals to make some money through public/private partnerships.  And it is popular with conservatives, some of Obama’s most ardent foes, because these partnerships cost the 1% nothing while it gives the impression something is being done.

Obama has gotten support from a lot of business people who are committed to hire the “long-term” unemployed.  He’s even got more than 100 college presidents in on the game; they will devise new ways to make college affordable. Isn’t life grand!

Obama says philanthropists he has spoken to have committed $200 million for the project. Wow! That will solve a crisis formed through a few centuries of racial exclusion and the lack of opportunity to accumulate capital. Who might these philanthropists be I wonder? Well, there’s Michael Bloomberg, the owner of Business Week Magazine and former mayor of New York City. Bloomberg is only worth $31 billion according to Forbes, all “self made”. WTF does that mean, “Self Made”? He’s a coupon clipper, the type Jesus was supposed to have thrown out of the temple. Must have worked a lot of OT I guess.  Then there’s Magic Johnson, he’s relatively poor, worth about $500 million.  George Soros is there for the young men of color too, he’s worth about $4 billion. 

Also supportive is Thomas Donahue the CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce and president of Center for International Private Enterprise.  He’ll do a lot for the young men of color I’m sure, but public money for private ventures has the right ring for all these guys.  Colin Powell, Bill O’reilly, the moron on Fox and, get this, Rahm Emanuel, the former Israeli Defense Force member and mayor of Chicago is supportive.  I suppose we are to forget about Rahm closing 150 or so of Chicago’s public schools, most of these schools are home to young people of color.

The Wall Street Journal points out that conservatives are drawn to a program like this because it relies on, “resources outside the federal government.”  It will offer, as football stadiums, public housing and other public/private ventures do, a nice little business venture for the business community, almost guaranteed profits with very little if any risk.

Talk about the sheep in wolves clothing.

North Carolina governor wages war on the unemployed

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

One year ago a terrorist offensive began in North Carolina.  At the urging of that state’s capitalist class whose economic interests he represents, the governor, Pat McCrory, a Republican, signed a bill that cut the amount and the length of time, North Carolina’s unemployed could receive unemployment benefits. He did this even though North Carolina had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

McCrory’s defense was that the state’s unemployment trust fund was spent and the state had to borrow money from the federal government to pay the unemployed----those that the market discards----the pittance that puts some food in their mouths at least. The trust fund was financed through business taxes. “We’re going to pay down that debt, make the system solvent and provide an economic climate that allows businesses, large and small to put people back to work.” McCrory announced to the media at the time.

The new law took effect six months later and the effect was immediate. The maximum weekly benefit was cut from $535 to $350 and the length of time the unemployed could receive benefits was cut from 26 weeks to between 12 and 20.

But as Business Week pointed out last week, “That was only half the blow”.

According to the magazine, reducing state benefits “Violated the terms of the federal program—which is intended, not replace state aid---so workers in North Carolina were also disqualified from receiving federal benefits”.

His actions, McCrory told the local media last week, were intended to send people “back to where they came from.” Workers were migrating to North Carolina he claims to get the generous unemployment benefits the state offers he said. Or, which is the often cited reason why unemployed numbers are too high, workers were living too high on the hog and wouldn’t get off their lazy asses and get a job.

McCrory points to the unemployment rate that dropped from 8.4% to 7.4% between July and November last year as evidence that his plan worked.

Numerous sources have disputed that argument as in North Carolina, like most other states, a recipient has to work a certain amount of time before being eligible for unemployment benefits. “Although there are exceptions, the easiest way to think about this is someone would have had to work in the state for around six of the last 15 months in order to be eligible for benefits.”, writes Mark Blinker for WRAL.com

Rather than poachers coming to NC for the benefits or lazy workers sitting at home watching TV, the drop in unemployment numbers is better explained by noting that the long-term unemployed have simply stopped looking for work and have dropped out of the labor force altogether. North Carolina’s labor force participation was at its lowest in 37 years last October according to BusinessWeek. 

The right wing anti-worker Republican Rand Paul, like all rich people, has to justify his  wealth and success as a product of his own hard work which means workers and the poor are poor (er) by choice.  It’s the same logic they use when they say that a Bangladeshi garment worker or Cambodian electronics workers are “willing” to work for less.  All these characters have nothing but contempt for workers. If we were smarter, worked harder, we’d be businesspeople or tech entrepreneurs or doctors running their sickness industrial complex. Paul relies predominantly on poor and backward white’s for votes so he tells Fox news he supports 26 weeks of benefits but “Beyond that you do a disservice to these workers” because it encourages them to be part of the “perpetual unemployed group”.  Life is all about ones’ perspective for sure. I always thought warren Buffet, the Queen of England or Donald Trump were the “perpetual unemployed”.

If the rest of the country follows North Carolina’s lead, “The.3 million people losing their benefits are going to be in the same position as the 170,000 people here who have lost theirs” Aaron Chatterji, an economist at Duke University tells BW.

The federal government wants to avoid that and is talking about extending the benefits nationally and there is some chatter going on among Senators.  Obama and others are arguing for extensions as it will hurt the economy having a million or more workers without any assistance.  That opens up some dangerous doors when it comes to social unrest when we add the millions more that have dropped out of the labor force and are not counted in the official statistics.  There are also many more millions of working poor.  The more astute politicians of the 1% like Obama recognizes that a lot of anger still percolates beneath the surface of society and that needs to be contained.

McCrory worked for Duke energy for 28 years in management positions. His bio is a bit laughable when it says:

“A management-training program put Pat through a rotation of digging ditches and climbing electric poles as well as stints in various management jobs from human resources to economic development.”  He’s a ditch digger now. It reminds me of that picture of his friend, the imbecile George W Bush on his ranch in Texas.  Put a cowboy hat on his head and a chain saw in his hand and he’s just a regular blue-collar guy. Unfortunately, some workers fall for it.

McCrory and the rest of them, Republicans and Democrats, (look at Brown here in California) are economic terrorists. Of course, in relation to many workers throughout the world they wage a more direct and violent terrorism against whole populations; they have to cloak their activities behind all sorts of lies and falsifications domestically.

The 1% is sitting on a few trillion dollars that they refuse to invest in the economy because profits are not sufficiently guaranteed.  They are stashing another $26 trillion or so in offshore accounts avoiding taxes.  The banks are making record profits as they spend billions more of our money on legal defense to keep their officers out of jail for their role in bringing the economy to the edge of collapse.

Their rotten system cannot put 25 to 30 million people to work in jobs that pay the rent, or the moneylender the mortgage, and there are millions more on minimum wage or less.

No worries, they say to themselves, they still have jails.

But history shows that the US working class does not lay dormant forever. Even today, there are hundreds and thousands of independent and isolated protests and campaigns around all sorts of social issues. Then there is the tremendous success of the socialist Kshama Sawant winning a seat on Seattle City Council and her comrade (both are members of Socialist Alternative) Ty Moore coming close in Minneapolis. This is a reflection of the desire for political changes that exists in US society.  In Lorraine County Illinois as well, a group of independent trade unionists were elected to the council. It is a somewhat different development to the Seattle situation but worth paying attention to and encouraging nevertheless.

What is lacking here is a national movement, a broad national direct action movement that can draw all the forces together that are actually fighting against the austerity agenda of the 1%, fighting for increased social services, jobs, a living minimum wage, health care, education transportation, against racism and sexism etc. In other words, what we need, what is important for workers to live secure productive lives, not what is acceptable to the two parties of the 1%.

CA: State's homeless policy bad for homeless, hurts workers too.

by Mike Benca*

I've been an employee of the State of California for the past year.  Starting July 1st of this year I've been working out of an Oakland maintenance yard.  Over these past six months I have been periodically working with my co-workers to remove homeless encampments located on state property that is solely owned by Caltrans.  Prior to transferring to the Oakland yard I had no previous experience dealing with California's homeless population and I quickly became quite shocked at the severity of the social problem.  

My yard conducts homeless "clean-ups" sometimes up to three times per month.  The policy of the state is to provide a minimum of 72 hours of notice prior to state workers removing belongings.  Per California penal code the occupants of the property are to be notified that they are trespassing and they will be subject to removal and arrest if they don't comply.  The California Highway Patrol (CHP) has jurisdiction and are frequently requested by us Caltrans workers to provide protection to us while we remove the homeless encampments.  

Sometimes, Caltrans workers are assisted by a contractor to remove and clean "sites". The contractor (Adopt a Highway) pays the workers working alongside us Caltrans workers around $10.00 an hour. When adding in fringe benefits, these contract workers are making far less than the state employees.  I find it almost always difficult to get through "homeless" work-days.  Being a part of the perpetual cycle of homelessness takes a mental toll on one's self.

Many of the homeless people are pushed from one side of the freeway to another.  We are simply cleaning up their living area and then it's on to the next site only to return within a month to clean up the same spot.  Every worker there knows that this is a perpetual chronic problem and that the state is not solving the crisis of homelessness and displaced people.  Almost every time we remove a person and their encampment, they return with a few days.  The process always repeats itself.  

An alarming consequence of doing this work is the desensitizing effect it can have on workers. Often times, throughout the day homeless people’s belongings are not treated with respect, nor is the living area they established.  Occasionally people can be chastised, laughed at and ridiculed.  On several occasions I’ve had to remind some of the contract workers in particular to have respect for the people we are interacting with.  It's ironic because a lot of the workers removing the homeless people are likely not that far removed from being "out in the street themselves".  One of the contracted workers I am told is living out of his car currently.  

The state (Caltrans) is spending money to remove large quantities of debris from these homeless sites numerous times a month.  This, in my eyes is not a rational way of dealing with the crisis of poverty, mental illness, substance abuse, and displaced and homeless people.  The entire process is an unfortunate look at the inside of homelessness in our communities and the perspective of a working class person who has a first hand account of the situation.

*Mike Benca is a Cal-Trans worker in the East Bay living in San Leandro. He sent this commentary for our readers. He can be contacted at: we_know_whats_up@yahoo.com

Unemployment, inequality, social unrest has the Pope worried

Source: Business Insider

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

Total youth unemployment in the EU stands at 24% according to figures out today. Youth unemployment in Spain and Greece is almost at 60% and in Italy it's 41%.  These are staggering statistics when you think about it and most likely a conservative assessment. The present world situation is such that the pope of Rome is forced to comment: “Today we are living in an unjust international system in which ‘King Money’ is at the center,” he has said recently adding that “A people that cares neither for its youth nor for its older people has no future.......Young people take society into the future, while the older generation gives society its memory, its wisdom.” 

It is these conditions and the dangers they represent that forces the head of capitalism's leading religious institution to speak out and he has done so with considerable venom. The fascist New Dawn in Greece has been gaining traction as have right wing forces in other parts of Europe and having a few million young people walking the streets without jobs threatens social stability. But more than the rise of the right, the Catholic Church is not blind to the mass resistance around the world to the capitalist offensive.  The ongoing class struggle in Bangladesh in response to the horrific conditions in the factories there as well as the emergence of left governments in Latin America and the struggles of indigenous communities all hold potential dangers.  There are still mass protests in Spain and other parts of the EU against austerity.  In the US there is evidence of increased resistance to austerity developing as youth and low waged workers lift their heads and an open socialist is elected to Seattle City Council.   What if this cannot be contained?

"As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems," the Pope said.

The Pope's statements certainly put him to the left of the heads of organized Labor in the US, unfortunately his solution is questionable, "I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor.", he said.  Why the "Lord" sent us politicians that didn't care in the first place is anyone's guess, a computer glitch perhaps.

But better look to the Lord than take matters in to our own hands.  Anything is preferable to that and his words are a warning to the capitalist class who he calls upon to share more of their wealth, that better share it than lose it.  The future of the market is at stake.

Public sector cuts leave women with low waged jobs

Source: NWLC

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

In August, the 6.3% jobless rate for women 20 years or older was the lowest since December 2008 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  We know that these figures are conservative, as is the 7.1 figure for men, but they do count for something. 

The problem is that the vast majority of new jobs for women are low waged.  Waiting tables, home health care, retail and other low paid work traditionally held for women is where the work is.  Business Week this week* points out that recent women university graduates cannot find work and are being forced to take whatever they c an. The recovery, when it comes to jobs for both men and women, is a weak one.

According to the NationalWomen’s Law Center, (NWLC) 60% of the increase in women’s employment is in jobs earning less than $10 an hour.  The corresponding figure for men is 20%. All that burning the midnight oil studying is paying off. 

“The quality of jobs is an increasing concern for policy makers and economists because it affects income and wage disparities” Business Week points out.  But if it were a genuine concern, why would these policy makers, which means the politicians in the two Wall Street Parties, preside over the loss of hundreds of thousands of well paying jobs?  The savaging of public education by Democrats and Republicans; Obama’s friend Rahm Immanuel plan to close 150 schools for example, is not only devastating for workers and our children, particularly for people of color, it eliminates relatively decent paying jobs that often go to women.

According to the BLS, women have lost 444,000 public sector jobs in the last four years and men have lost 290,000. It’s no surprise then that food services and bars have added 354,000 jobs this year alone.  “The place jobs have grown the most has been in these parts of the economy that women have traditionally filled more easily.” Joan Entmacher, of the NWLC tells Business Week.

Women still earn 77% of what men earn.  The crisis of capitalism is always felt more acutely among those groups that have been discriminated in the past, not simply by the bosses but also in the traditional workers’ organizations.  But, make no bones about it, the Great Recession has dealt a blow to a huge section of the US working and middle class including males and white workers.

Living standards are deteriorating as corporations hold huge cash piles that they refuse to invest in production and US billionaires and coupon clippers on Wall Street rake in the cash. No one can deny that US society has what BW once called, The Third Deficit, a crumbling infrastructure but public expenditure is not an attractive option to investors as it is money out and also crowds out private capital and opportunities for profit making. The private owners of capital, what is actually a collective product, will not throw it in to socially useful production if the chances for profit making are not there and the risks too great.  Capital likes stability and hates obstacles.

US capitalism is in an economic and political crisis also reflected in its reduced influence on the world stage despite spending billions of taxpayer money on predatory wars and the building of installations throughout the world necessary to maintain its dominance.

The Wall Street Journal once headlined a piece “Why No Outrage”.  The reasons are many, not least the violent nature of the US state apparatus, the imprisoning of more than two million workers, the power of the 1%’s mass media and the refusal of the leaders of organized labor to mobilize and offensive of our own. The radical tradition of US workers and exploited has been driven deep in to the conscious of the US working class. But this history will be reborn as workers are forced by the 1%’s austerity agenda to fight back.

If we think about it, the most powerful economy and capitalist class that the world has known to date cannot feed or house its citizens. Not only can it not eliminate poverty, it cannot curb it. It cannot eliminate sexism, racism or inequality.  It cannot provide millions of people with basic education, health care or productive work.

The outrage is there though; it simply hasn’t yet taken organizational form.

* A Girl Can be Anything She Wants as Long as She Wants to be a Waitress

US society: the calm before the storm?

Occupy Oakland shuts down the docks

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, wrote on the eve of the second world war that The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.  He explained that the objective conditions and the prerequisites for a workers’ revolution were not only ripe for a transformation of society but were “somewhat rotten.”

He used an often quoted phrase that humanity was faced with Socialism or Barbarism. The Barbarism came on the scene soon after his statements as 50 million or so people died in the war that that followed, as many as 12 million in death camps. Communists, labor leaders, the physically and mentally disabled, gays and lesbians, Romany and as many as 6 million Jews all perished in places like Treblinka, Aushwitz, and Bergen Belsen.

Today, we are not simply faced with socialism or some form of barbarism, as barbarism exists aplenty in the capitalist horror that encompasses most people of the world.  From the factories of Bangladesh to the plantations of Indonesia, sweat shops of Cambodia, and mountains of Afghanistan barbarism is the norm, the legacy of capitalism in its slow and agonizing demise.  The difference is that what faces us now is socialism or annihilation. While nuclear war cannot be ruled out it is the environmental degradation, the plundering of the world’s natural resources in capitalism’s rapacious quest for profits that threatens to end life on this planet as we know it. The environmental catastrophe, overwhelmingly market driven like starvation and conflict is real and capitalism is incapable of solving it.

In the US, the richest and most powerful economy on the planet, inequality and poverty are on the increase and despair and a sense of foreboding exists.  The Great Recession is dragging on longer than the so-called experts expected and the insecurity and fear of falling through the cracks, so useful in keeping folks in check, hovers around unacceptable levels, a point where a spark can ignite a conflagration.

Objective conditions are worsening for American workers and the middle class.  Once powerful unions like the UAW have been tamed through a powerful combination of the employers and the top leadership of the worker’s organizations who see no alternative to capitalism and try time and again to help it to its feet at the expense of workers and the middle class.

Results of a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released today give us a glimpse in to the mood in US society when it comes to the economy and the two capitalist parties.

As expected, the love affair with Barack Obama is not what it was as he has turned out to be quite the war president and a fine representative of the 1%.  83% of Americans disapprove of Congress which is the highest number in the history of WSJ polling and 29% of Americans say the country is headed in the right direction.

When it comes to their own representatives in Congress, a mere 32% of Americans say their representative deserved re-election with 57% of Americans saying they would like to defeat and “..replace every member of Congress if they could” the WSJ adds. There’s “..a strong, deep disconnect between the public and the government that purports to serve them” Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster tells the Journal.  It is not the mood for change that is missing.

The criminal acquittal of George Zimmerman has dealt a significant blow to how the black population sees this country and 54% of them polled said they “strongly disagreed” with the idea that America is a country that judges people on their character and not the color of their skin, 30% of them felt that way after Obama’s election. When those who “somewhat disagreed” are included, that figure jumps to 79%. 

Further on the effects of the trial, the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 33% of Americans had lost confidence in the US justice system because of it, 24% of them whites and 71% of blacks. This figure is far more reflective of a racist justice system than the details and ins and outs of the legality of an individual case like Trayvon Martin’s murder. Whites are treated differently in this that system. Obviously, those with money are treated the best of all and can get away with murder quite frequently---Zimmerman is the son of a judge and we are supposed to think that this doesn’t matter in America. But with more than two million people incarcerated, close to 50% of them black folks, there are only two explanations for this incarceration rate. 

One is to argue that people with darker skin are more prone to criminal activity which is the racist argument which many whites believe but refuse to acknowledge openly. The other is that the justice system, indeed, the entire system is racist---the latter is the only correct answer, the only answer that offers all workers a future.

The Wall Street Journal is the main publication of US finance capital and the capitalist class as a whole and bases the health of society and economic improvement on the level of profits. The discontent revealed by this survey perplexes them a bit as it arises “..despite and uptick in other barometers of American well-being, including a surging stock market and continued signs of strengthening on the employment front.”  It’s all very simple for them, numbers up, numbers down.

But even their employment numbers are skewed. A Household Survey last month put the number of job increases since January at 753,000. But as Mortimer Zuckerman commented in the WSJ last week,  “there are jobs and then there are "jobs." No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time.”  “The survey also reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000, while part-time jobs soared by 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000.” Zuckerman adds. The capitalists don’t create jobs because people need them, they buy labor power if they can profit from it; they can’t profit, you won’t work.

Source

Whether the objective pre-requisites in the US are ripe, semi ripe, or rotten enough for a workers’ revolution that could transform the economic and political structure of society is a matter for debate, but there is no doubt that the objective situation is very favorable for activists and a movement for social change, more favorable than it has been for a long time.  That close to 138 million people opted out of the electoral process in the last election is not due to apathy or reaction as some argue.

The Occupy movement had tremendous popular support for a whole period and at the huge gathering in Oakland that shut down three shifts at the port we had as many as 30 to 40 thousand people present, workers and their families, the disabled, students, single mothers with their children and the elderly.  Union workers, the unorganized, white collar and blue collar all came out. The great strength of the Occupy Movement was its audacity, courage and willingness to defy the law but refusing to wage a political struggle and build anything permanent as well as resisting making any concrete demands was an obstacle to its continued success although it is not dead yet.

What is clear is that Trotsky’s statement about a crisis of leadership, not necessarily a revolutionary one at this point, holds true today.  It’s clear that there is intense anger beneath the surface of US society. There is anger at the rich, the bankers, the coupon clippers who flaunt their stolen wealth ever more aggressively.  Anger at the racism, sexism, inequality and lack of basic services in the richest most powerful country in the world. US capitalism’s wars and the cost of them are not popular and are a major cause of the war on living standards and the 1%’s austerity agenda.

The heads of organized Labor could change this situation if they would offer an alternative to capitalism rather than appeasing it, but they will not, trapped as they are by their own view of the world which is the same as the bosses’. Every little step forward, every victory on the part of the working class threatens the relationship they have built with the bosses and capitalism based on cooperation and labor peace and has the potential to lead to chaos.

The figures here are a small example of what actually exists in US society; a restless, angry and insecure population insecure and wary of what the future holds. I will say with some confidence, it is not going to get any better.  It is remarkable in a way that there haven’t been mass riots in the cities at the failure of the US justice system to protect a huge section of the population from racial violence or women from sexual discrimination and rape and all workers from the threat of joblessness, homelessness and security.  Capitalist courts cannot protect workers; as institutions of a racist society they inevitably abandon the victims that society in general.  Millions have lost homes, jobs, have no health care and can’t afford to get it, as the Wall Street Journal asked a couple years ago, “Why No Outrage?”.

US society is a tinderbox, an overconfident capitalist class will make some serious mistakes. Congress still needs to cut more social spending and at some point there will be further explosions in the streets much like the Occupy Movement. It could be over any number of issues as people are pushed beyond their limits.  There are increasing protests against environmental degradation for example. Strengthening and broadening this movement as it develops is an important aspect of any activists activity and revolutionary socialists must be seen as the most ardent supports of and defenders of the movement as it develops.  And by avoiding the traditional mistakes of sectarianism, ultra leftism (making demands of the movement that do not correspond with the mood) and opportunism, building a revolutionary socialist current within this movement as it develops, a crucial element of it if we art to make permanent gains as opposed to partial victories, will be successful.   

Capitalist crisis savages Tampa, no work, no home.

Tampa Florida has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.  The person in this video says all that is wanted is to get people, "honest working people" some money in their pockets. But this means work.  There are maybe 30 to 40 million people that capitalism refuses to put to work.  Why is this? It is a question of profitability.  The owners of capital (yes, capitalists) do not lay it out, do not invest in production if there is no profit in it, it doesn't matter how "needed" the commodity is in society whether it be food or cars. Food is a commodity and if you don't have the money to buy it you can starve.

In the capitalist mode of production the object of the activity for the owner of capital is not the commodity produced and its use, but surplus value, the capital laid out plus added value that is created in the production process specifically from the use of human Labor power, or the hiring of workers as Labor produces more value than is returned to it in the form of wages. If the profit is not there, or the risk too great, then production won't take place. 

Think of the insanity of it, people homeless, without shelter, as millions of living quarters stand . empty.  People that will work, but capital won't employ them. People starve among plenty. This is not civilization

British TUC plans strikes and direct action against cuts

We have to do more and demand more than this

I have been active in the workers’ and trade Union movement for the last 25 to 30 years and I think I am not wrong in saying that we are in the most favorable objective climate in decades.  I always used to tell my co-workers who said that there will never be a fightback, that “people don’t care” that we have an ally in that sense in the boss.  The boss will not let up; they will continue to drive us backwards and that has reached a rapid pace in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

As folks know I am visiting Britain and trying to keep up with developments.  Britain’s national Union body, the Trade Unions Congress (TUC) met this week and the leadership has called a series of strikes against the attacks on public sector workers and their pensions that are similar to the onslaught that public workers in the US are experiencing. 

As we pointed out in an earlier blog, a majority of organized Labor’s members are in the public sector both in Britain, about 60% and 35% or so of public workers are organized in the US compared to less than 7% in the private sector.  This poses a problem for the heads of organized Labor because even though they view the world through the same glasses as the employers and their lifestyles are very similar, their social base is the organized section of the working class, the Unions.  In the US, as we all know, a right wing section of the capitalist class is attempting to eliminate the right to bargain altogether and in Britain and the US, the public sector is being decimated through layoffs and cuts in public services. Official unemployment in Britain increased by 80,000 over the last three months as a result of what one paper called a “public sector jobs cull”.

The Union leaders are talking tough which is nothing new but exactly how this will play out  is impossible for a visitor with limited knowledge of the situation to tell.  Knowing the thinking of the present leadership of the Unions both here and back in the US, unless we hear them sing a different tune with some real substance to it, I am not optimistic.  The problem is that as of yet, neither the AFL-CIO leadership of their TUC counterparts have said anything that indicates they have a real plan other than letting off steam and they are in general agreement with the bosses that cuts have to be made.

The leader of Unison, one of the major public sector Unions, announced that the Unions are in the “fight of their lives” which is true.  But the bosses’ response to this after a similar propaganda campaign comparing public sector workers’ pay and benefits, especially pensions, to the rest of the population and blaming them for the cause of the economic crisis, is that strikes at this time of “shared sacrifice” will be a “self inflicted wound”.  

As a visitor here for a short time, and on other business at that, it is hard to gauge the mood.  I have spoken to very few trade Union workers so I am not clear on how they feel generally.  I have been following the issue in the press but I have read no comments from trade Union officials that indicate in any way that their strategy is designed to avoid the self inflicted wound scenario.

After all, given the unemployment situation it seems that the jobs issue is crucial and strikes by organized workers should include clear demands for jobs and an expansion of pensions to all workers. An immediate reduction in the workweek with no loss in pay and a mass infrastructure program both here and the US would be a first step in creating more jobs.  In the last quarter for instance, unemployment in Britain rose by 78,000 to 973,000 among 16 to 24 year olds.  The papers pointed pout today that the number of 16 to 24 year olds out of work is higher than at any point during the Great recession and the economic horizon is not bright. As is the case in the US, the capitalists are on strike and their political representatives are attempting to coax them to invest.  Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister has a “plan A plus” designed to do just that as well as entice foreign investors.  At the same time, he will not back down from “cutting the deficit” on the workers’ backs in order to ensure a “fiscal framework to ensure stability.”.

It’s the same story as in the US.  Could we imagine during a strike of Labor, as opposed to capital and the politicians attempting to coax us back to work in this manner?  Of course not. We would be facing troops. It has come out today that judges were told by government officials to come down hard on the youth after the uprising last month.  Prices are going up for parking, using the subway and other necessities.  I read also that in the US poverty is on the rise and one in six Americans are in it. The number of Americans without health care has also risen. The time must be seized.

On the news today some politician that I didn’t recognize talked of the severe crisis the world economy, in this case, Europe is in as an excuse for the austerity measures all governments are implementing.  Like the “self inflicted wound” tactic, he said that a poll had been conducted in Austria and 92% of Austrians voted to kick Greece out of the EU. The media repeats this propaganda that workers in other European workers will have to pay for “profligate” Greeks.  But the question is: what was the question? We can bet it was just that.  Are you willing to pay for the Greek crisis or should we kick them out.  It would have been expressed in some way around that premise in order to get the 92%. Making the rich pay would not have been an option.

As I said in the beginning, the conditions are ripe for an offensive of our own, from the US to Britain, Greece and elsewhere.  Linking up with the events in the Middle East would be easy.  But I never read any indication of a genuine offensive from the British Labor officials closely connected to the strikes.  “While we will never walk away from talks, neither will we sit on our hands” says Gail Cartmail of Unite.  The government’s plans are a “crude smash and grab” which leaves “little alternative” Matt Wrack of the Firefighters Union is quoted as saying.  Now perhaps a lot more has been said and the capitalist press is being selective but the experience has been of late that the bosses are serious about their intentions.

So while there is the discontent it might not be winter yet. We’ll have to see.