Thursday, March 10, 2022

Union "Momentum" Or Mirage?

SHORT TAKES: Monopoly Power Hammers Wages BUT Oh, Boy, Forgot Something; Gas Prices Soaring: The Culprit Isn't The Kremlin; Yeah, Tax The Working Class; Leftovers--The State of the Union Speech

Jonathan Tasini

Mar 9

LONG TAKE

These days, the bar is often set so low in life for progress that it’s perhaps human nature to revel in *anything* that appears to move the ball if only a centimeter (see below my thoughts on the recent State of the Union speech). I get that—people want hope, they want to believe that a better life is possible, and a more sane society is on the horizon.

Hope is fine. Cheering on victories is divine.

But, it doesn’t do us any good when there is a Pollyanish sheen to the celebrations—and I will argue, it make things worse because not being honest muddies the waters about what still needs to be done.

Which brings me, today, to the topic of union organizing, and, specifically, a spate of union organizing victories you’all have been reading about, no doubt.

I’ll say right up front: workers coming together to win union representation by a union anywhere is amazing—especially given the obstacles. And the unions engaged in that work should be embraced and encouraged.

Here’s your quick summary of some recent developments.

Starbucks: workers in more than 100 stores in half the states have filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board to have union elections. Here’s one recent Starbucks victory:

On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board announced that workers at a Starbucks in Mesa, Ariz., had voted 25 to 3 to unionize, with three challenged votes. The result brought the number of company-owned stores with a union to three, out of roughly 9,000 nationwide. [Emphasis added]

REI:

Workers at the SoHo outdoor gear and apparel store REI voted Wednesday night to form the company’s first union in the country, organizers announced on Twitter.
Eighty-eight of the store’s 102 employees voted to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, an REI spokesperson confirmed. Fourteen employees voted not to join the union.
“We know we will be able to harness our collective strength to advocate for a more equitable, safe, and enriching work environment,” said Claire Chang, a retail sales specialist and union organizer at the store. “We're hopeful that REI meets us in good faith during negotiations for our first contract, while keeping our co-op values in mind and applying them to workers, so we can all demonstrate that we really do go further.”

The New York Times Tech Guild:

Tech workers at The New York Times on Thursday voted in favor of certifying their union in a National Labor Relations Board election, making it one of the biggest tech unions in America.
The workers voted in favor, 404 to 88, easily reaching the needed majority of the ballots that were cast. A win means the union, the Times Tech Guild, can begin negotiations for a contract with management.
“We’re just elated and really soaking in what this means, not only for us as tech workers at The Times and for The New York Times but also for the tech industry as a whole,” said Nozlee Samadzadeh, a senior software engineer. “I think this is going to be the start of a wave of organizing in the tech industry.” [emphasis added]

A few similar companies—meaning, non-manufacturing, small units—have witnessed successful unionization efforts.

So, here is where reality needs to set it:

The unionization rate in the private sector right now is just above six percent. By contrast, that rate stood at the mid-30 percent level in the 1950s and 1960s, after which it began it slow, inexorable decline.
That makes unions IRRELEVANT in virtually every corner of the private sector economy. Think of the exceptions to make the point: yes, airlines can’t fly planes when pilots strike but can you name many other industries where that is true?
What that means is a bad, bad reality for all workers because union wages lift the wages of everyone including non-union workers. Looking at it another way: lower unionization has decreased wages by almost 8 percent over the past 40 years.
Organizing a Starbucks here, or an REI there, will do ZIPPO to even be noticed in that above trend as a blip. It would be akin to a blade of grass blowing in a large field—okay, unfair…20 blades of grass.
It’s even worse—keep in mind that the workforce in 2022 is substantially larger than it was in the 1960s so trying to even gain a fraction of one percent is monumentally harder.

Most of the cheerleaders for the Starbucks-type organizing are people who have never, ever, worked in a union organizing campaign, never had to do the time-consuming work of getting people to show support for a union that leads to a government-sponsored election. And never had to endure the relentless assault by employers who go after workers who try to unionize.

Here is another trap you should not all into. When chatter about some perceived “momentum” in union organizing takes place, it usually comes with the polling argument about support for unions. Example from Gallup:

I think we can accept the above has a fair reflection of what people think about unions.

But, polling is not the same as winning union elections. It’s the same argument I have with Bernie Sanders when he cites polls showing how popular many progressive ideas are among voters—like Medicare for All, cancelling student debt.

Polling is not the same as ACTION. It is quite easy for someone sitting at home, answering a phone, to say, “yes, I support unions”—especially if the question is framed in a positive way. But, it’s often quite a different thing for that same person to actually vote for a union in the heat of a brutal assault by company propaganda and threats. Indeed, I wonder if the above graph would show the same results if the question was framed using the real-life illegal behavior of companies in virtually all union organizing campaigns: “Do you support a union in your workplace even if your employer threatened to fire you or you thought you’d lose your job?”

Here is another political reality: the landscape isn’t changing anytime soon. I’m sorry to report but the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (the PRO Act) which would in fact make it a bit easier to win union representation elections, is DEAD ON ARRIVAL in the Senate. It will not pass and it’s unlikely to pass, in any similar form in the next decade or more, as long as the filibuster lives (it needs 60 votes to even get to a vote and… yup… you got it).

Again, the above, to be clear, is not, in any way, shape or form, trying to do anything but celebrate those who have done the hard work of union organizing. Bravo.

It is, however, aimed at trying to have an honest conversation about the truth out there:

There is no momentum in union organizing in a broad way—meaning, a way that will result in unions having real leverage again in the economy.

We need a fresh approach and to consider much more drastic upheavals including general strikes and shutting down big companies—which can only be done with broad community support. It’s a huge challenge.

SHORT TAKES

Monopoly Power Hammers Wages BUT Oh, Boy, Forgot Something

So, I read this long wonky stuff so you are spared the pain. Yesterday, the Treasury Department put out a dense but important report called “THE STATE OF
LABOR MARKET COMPETITION”

It will tell you something not surprising: through a whole lot of manipulations, scams and threats, CEOs and their underlings screw every worker by holding down wages. Here is your summary:

The report details the range of practices that firms use to restrain competition for workers, most clearly to lower wages and benefits, but also potentially to negatively impact job characteristics beyond just compensation. Firms can engage in tacit collusion by sharing wage information for different occupations, conspiring to fix wages, adopting no-poach agreements where firms agree not to hire other firms’ workers, or forcing workers to sign non-compete agreements that limit their ability to switch jobs. Non-disclosure agreements can be so broad as to effectively operate as non-compete agreements. Mandatory arbitration agreements prevent workers from legal recourse to rectify violations of labor laws, antitrust laws, or employment terms. Lack of pay transparency, from firms’ use of salary history, pay secrecy, and punitive practices against workers sharing pay information, also restrains competition.

And the government’s ability to defend workers by going after law-breakers is being chopped down every single day. This is the upshot of the elites embrace of “de-regulation”, which is a fancy word for a decades-long strangulation of government—a process, by the way, that has a great hold on both parties (I’ve written a lot in the past that Bill Clinton and Al Gore, with their “Reinventing Government” and “The era of big government is over” mantras, were quite relentless about attacking government)

And because of that, as an aside to wages, it’s also unsafe to go to work because there is very little oversight of how CEOs can poison you or endanger you on the job—something I’ve brought up over the years. The report:

In recent years, the probability of a firm being inspected has decreased sharply. Numerous agencies are responsible for inspections and enforcement actions. However, as an example of how enforcement and inspections have declined, OSHA commenced the largest number of workplace inspections in 1984, at 140,000 inspections. The COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced the number of inspections conducted in 2020. Even before the pandemic, the number of inspections was much lower than in the 1980s. In 2019, OSHA inspected about 81,000 workplaces, or 40 percent less than it conducted in 1984. From 2013 to 2021, OSHA experienced a 13 percent reduction in Federal enforcement personnel due to reduced budget availability. The workforce is now larger than it was in the mid-1980s, and the nature of workplaces has changed during this time period. With fewer enforcement personnel and a larger workforce, it is increasingly difficult for enforcement actions to reach the same portion of workplaces [emphasis added]

But, my main addition here is the glaring hole in this report. It’s impossible to give the picture of monopoly power corporations have over people in the U.S. without sketching a picture BEYOND THE BORDERS OF THE COUNTRY. Yet, this report only digs into “domestic” monopoly power, as if there is not relationship to globalization.

Every decision a CEO makes is taken without regard to borders. The vaunted “supply chains”, which I wrote extensively about last Fall, and which every no-nothing talking head on cable likes to refer to as if he or she is on to some great secret sauce case for inflation, is a direct part of how every company exerts monopoly power domestically, and exercise corrosive power over peoples’ wages.

Either through threats that if you don’t get with the program—and certainly if you even think to form a union—your jobs will be gone, whisked abroad across mystical supply chain, or simply by a much more insidious, less dramatic imposition of handcuffs through tactics like secrecy over pay.

Gas Prices Soaring: The Culprit Isn’t The Kremlin

I am very sympathetic to people who are feeling pinched with higher gasoline prices driven, in the short term, by the war in Ukraine—though, in truth, a little less sympathetic to people who, long ago, bought big gas guzzlers and now are whining about the cost.

Yes, gas is pricier: as of this past Monday, the states with the ten highest prices for gas:

California: $5.34
Hawaii: $4.69
Nevada: $4.59
Oregon: $4.51
Washington: $4.44
Alaska: $4.39
Illinois: $4.30
Connecticut: $4.28
New York: $4.26
Pennsylvania: $4.23

BUT: wait a minute. The Ukraine war is only the symptom of higher gasoline prices.

The real culprits are the bloodsuckers at the big oil companies. If the CEOs of those companies—whose compensation is tied far more to higher stock prices than a regular paycheck—weren’t so deeply greedy, gasoline prices could be CUT.

Evidence you ask?

Here is a good summary:

Breaking it down another way:

Fact: in 2021 oil company profits were $174 BILLION.

Fact: Exxon & Chevron earned a combined $38.6 BILLION

Putin is a despicable human being. But, the CEOs of oil companies have been robbing us—and destroying the planet—years before Putin ever rose to power.

We don’t just need a windfall profits tax. We have to have a broader conversation about nationalizing certain industries that are crucial to peoples’ survival—including energy, communications and food.

The vaunted “free market” is the culprit here.

Yeah, Tax The Working Class

I am still trying to figure out whether Rick Scott, head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, is dumb and/or a plant for the Democrats and/or tone-deaf. How else do you explain his politically goofy idea that would force everyone to pay taxes—an idea that would increase taxes by more than $1,000 on average for the poorest 40 percent of Americans, per the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy.

A reminder: the poorest of the poor don’t pay taxes and, in fact, many get refundable tax credits via the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Child Tax Credit—think of those credits as a small pittance to make up for the despicable poverty-level wages workers are forced to endure thanks to employers…like Rick Scott.

Maybe Scott understands that the Democratic Party is so inept that it has no idea how to cleverly capitalize on this messaging gift. But, my lord… this is truly a Marie Antoinette idea.

Check this out. As ITEP points out:

The states most affected, where more than 40 percent of residents would face tax increases, are located mostly in the south: Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Georgia, New Mexico, South Carolina and Sen. Scott’s home state of Florida.

That would be a big swath of devoted MAGA land. LOL! Well, not so funny for those people who Scott would totally hammer with this class warfare idea—it’s so bizarre that even the Grim Reaper himself (aka, Mitch McConnell) has tried to put a stake in it.

An ITEP graph tells a better story:

Don’t get me wrong: Scott is a cretin. He’s a stupendously rich cretin at that, worth tens of millions of dollars (he spent $65 million of his fortune on his Senate campaign in 2018) which he made, surprise, in the sleazy for-profit health care industry as a co-founder of Columbia Hospital Corporation—from which he had to resign after the company was charged with defrauding Medicare and Medicaid. You know how those things work for the very wealthy—they cut a deal, in which they never admit guilt and skate and leave the shareholders holding the bill to pay the massive fines for illegal behavior; in this case, that was a hefty $1.7 billion.

It’s especially galling and immoral for this fool to conjure up this idea at a time when billionaires have amassed extraordinary wealth, especially during the pandemic, and basically pay nothing in taxes on their overall wealth, and very little on their income, because they know how to game a tax system that benefits the wealthiest, bought and paid for by buying off politicians in both parties who created that system.

The SOTU Speech

Just because I was off-cycle when the State of the Union speech happened, here are a few impressions with the caveat: The bar is set so low that simply because the president doesn’t soil himself or make a fool of himself people consider it a smashing success.

Biden just doesn’t know how to give a speech. I don't simply mean that he mangles sentences (e.g., saying “America” when he meant “Delaware”, or mixing up “vaccine” and “virus”) and grapples with his life-long challenge with stuttering which is not to be criticized at all.

The first rule of speech-making is: don’t step all over a crowd’s reaction. He repeatedly started talking over the applause/ovations—aside from some of the words getting lost and not being clear, applause/ovations trigger the emotions of the millions of people watching and signals how they should feel about the words they’ve just heard. Think about how you feel. So…as I kept yelling at the TV, shut the f-up and let that applause/ovation wash over the audience as long as possible, let it die down, take a pause and, then, go on. Clinton and Obama were masters at that. The whole point of this SOTU theatrics is political messaging to viewers not actually thinking you are persuading the McConnell pond scum of your righteous ways.

Ukraine: part of it was good, especially his very specific non-wonky language to say what he did to take away Putin's access to money, steps against the oligarchs etc, and focusing on the bravery of the Ukrainians fighting that POS. Beyond a quick reference to even people in Russian demonstrating, he should have made more of the idea that the economic war being fought against Putin is not about the Russian people. Missed opportunity.

And the Ukraine portions had so many subtle ironies and exposed historical and current double standards, not the least of which was the lack of U.S. moral standing to lecture anyone in the world given this country’s history of invasions. Here was a favorite on double-standards: “The U.S. Department of Justice is assembling a dedicated task force to go after the crimes of Russian oligarchs. We are joining with our European allies to find and seize your yachts your luxury apartments your private jets. We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.” I thought: “okay, can you do that with OUR oligarchs????”

Solid stuff on unionization—advocating for a bill…that is dead on arrival in Congress, as I pointed out earlier. Good stuff on raising minimum wage to $15-an-hour—which will also never happen anytime soon.

I’ve written about this before here—Biden’s pledge, made way back when he was a candidate, not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000-a-year is BAD POLITICS AND BAD ECONOMICS.

I give him credit for being consistent but this is madness: why would 99 percent of the workers in America feel any sympathy or solidarity with a person making, say, $300,000-a-year. We should tax people more who are making incomes that put them in the top 1-2 percent. It’s bad, bad, bad tax policy and, even worse, it’s a Republican-lite talking point that just continues to undermine any chance to have a semi-rationale tax system.

Way back, I said to most of my progressive friends that “Defund the Police” was a very bad slogan. You want to get police to stop killing people of color and get rid of the racists and stop arming them to the teeth like military assault units—but communities of color don’t want the police to go away. But, that whole “fund the police” part of the speech felt creepy, almost “law and order” Nixonian, and, IMHO, was some pollster-driven passage to appeal to suburban white people.

Why the hell didn’t he make more of the historic nature of his Supreme Court nominee? He mentioned KBJ briefly and then without even a hair’s breadth in between started talking about the border. IT’S A SUPREME COURT NOMINATION. Revel in it. He made more of a fuss over Breyer so the left-over impression from the SOTU of the Supreme Court was Breyer’s very cute modesty which became a GIF within minutes (“aw, shucks, I’m not worthy” vibe)—the white old guy, not the younger Black Justice-to-be. Terrible optics and lost opportunity.

Personally, I have always been against the slogan “Buy American”. It’s an aspect of American Exceptionalism and jingoism and ignores the very basic tenets of capitalism. What we should want is to make sure everyone gets paid decently, has a union and isn’t a slave to the boss no matter where a person works, and, to use an economic concept, take wages out of competition. But, hey, he’s a happy capitalist so...

Oh, and Lauren Boebert really needs professional help.