CLASS WARFARE IS TOO ONE-SIDED IN THIS COUNTRY
Paul Krugman - "It's a brutal strategy. Once upon a time a company that treated its workers this badly would have made itself a prime target for union organizers. But Wal-Mart doesn't have to worry about that, because it knows that these days the people who are supposed to enforce labor laws are on the side of the employers, not the workers.
Since 1935, U.S. workers considering whether to join a union have been protected by the National Labor Relations Act, which bars employers from firing workers for engaging in union activities. For a long time the law was effective: workers were reasonably well protected against employer intimidation, and the union movement flourished.
In the 1970's, however, employers began a successful campaign to roll back unions. This campaign depended on routine violation of labor law: experts estimate that by 1980 employers were illegally firing at least one out of every 20 workers who voted for a union. But employers rarely faced serious consequences for their lawbreaking, thanks to America's political shift to the right. And now that the shift to the right has gone even further, political appointees are seeking to remove whatever protection for workers' rights that the labor relations law still provides.
The Republican majority on the National Labor Relations Board, which is responsible for enforcing the law, has just declared that millions of workers who thought they had the right to join unions don't. You see, the act grants that right only to workers who aren't supervisors. And the board, ruling on a case involving nurses, has declared that millions of workers who occasionally give other workers instructions can now be considered supervisors.
As the dissent from the Democrats on the board makes clear, the majority bent over backward, violating the spirit of the law, to reduce workers' bargaining power.
So what's keeping paychecks down? Major employers like Wal-Mart have decided that their interests are best served by treating workers as a disposable commodity, paid as little as possible and encouraged to leave after a year or two. And these employers don't worry that angry workers will respond to their war on wages by forming unions, because they know that government officials, who are supposed to protect workers' rights, will do everything they can to come down on the side of the wage-cutters. " http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/opinion/06krugman.html?pagewanted=print
KRUGMAN : "The debate over the state of the middle class, for the most part, is about whether these numbers understate or overstate the true progress achieved by typical families. The optimists point to technological advances that, they argue, don't get reflected in official estimates of the standard of living. In 1973, you couldn't chat on a cellphone, watch a video or surf the Internet; many medical conditions that are now easily managed with drugs were untreatable; and so on.
The pessimists point to ways in which life has deteriorated, things that also aren't counted by the official statistics. Traffic has gotten far worse, and commutes have gotten longer. The economic riskiness of life has increased: year-to-year fluctuations in family income have grown much larger. The rat race has intensified, as families, no longer confident in the quality of public education, stretch to buy houses in good school districts -- and often go bankrupt when misfortune strikes in the form of a layoff for either spouse or high medical bills.
Does the good outweigh the bad? Never mind. As I said, the ambiguity is the message.
Consider this: The United States economy is far richer and more productive than it was a generation ago. Statistics on economic growth aside, think of all the technological advances that have made workers more productive over the past generation. In 1973, there were no personal computers, let alone the Internet. Even fax machines were rare, expensive items, and there were no bar-code scanners at checkout counters. Freight containerization was still uncommon.
The list goes on and on.
Yet in spite of all this technological progress, which has allowed the average American worker to produce much more, we're not sure whether there was any rise in the typical worker's pay. Only those at the upper end of the income distribution saw clear gains -- gains that were enormous for the lucky few at the very top.
That's why the debate over whether the middle class is a bit better off or a bit worse off now than a generation ago misses the point. What we should be debating is why technological and economic progress has done so little for most Americans, and what changes in government policies would spread the benefits of progress more widely. An effort to shore up middle-class health insurance, paid for by a rollback of recent tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans -- something like the plan proposed by John Kerry two years ago, but more ambitious -- would be a good place to start.
Instead, the people running our government are fixated on cutting tax rates for the wealthy even further. And their solution to Americans' justified economic anxiety is a public relations campaign, an effort to convince middle-class families that their problems are a figment of their imagination." http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F50C1EF939550C768DDDA00894DE404482
INDEED : "The Republican-dominated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) voted along party lines to slash long-time federal labor laws protecting workers' freedom to form unions and opened the door for employers to classify millions of workers as supervisors. Under federal labor law, supervisors are prohibited from forming unions.
The NLRB ruled on three cases, collectively known as "Kentucky River," but it's the lead case Oakwood Healthcare Inc. that creates a new definition of supervisor. Dozens of cases involving the definition of supervisor now before the NLRB will be sent back, with employers having the option to craft arguments that will meet the new definition of supervisor and limit the number of workers who can join a union.
Although the Oakwood decision covers only nurses, the expanded definition of superviors means up to 8 million workers, including nurses, building trades workers, newspaper and television employees and others may be barred from joining unions. In Oakwood, the board agreed with the employer that charge nurses are supervisors. But the ruling also sets broad definitions for determining who is a supervisor that invites employers to classify nurses and many low-level employees with minor authority as supervisors. The decision was issued Sept. 29 but not released until today.
The board's new definition essentially enables employers to make a supervisor out of any worker who has the authority to assign or direct another and uses independent judgment. Amazingly, the board also ruled that a worker can be classified as a supervisor if he or she spends as little as 10 percent to 15 percent of his or her time overseeing the work of others.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney calls the decisions "outrageous and unjustified."
It's the latest example of how the Bush-appointed NLRB is prepared to use legal maneuvering to deny as many workers as possible their basic right to have a voice on the job through their union. The NLRB should protect workers' rights, not eliminate them. If the administration expects us to take this quietly, they're mistaken.
This week, working people are coming together in the streets in cities across the nation to make sure everyone knows that the Bush administration is slashing workers' right to have a voice on the job.
In their dissent, NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh say the decision "threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law-workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees." Liebman and Walsh wrote that most professionals and other workers could fall under the new definition of supervisor, "who by 2012 could number almost 34 million, accounting for 23.3 percent of the workforce." They go on to say that the Republican majority did not follow what Congress intended in applying the National Labor Relations Act: [. . .]
Vanessa Quinn, a member of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1133 and an emergency room nurse in Kenmore, N.Y., near Buffalo, says expanding the definition of supervisor will be disastrous for nurses:
In Buffalo, recruiting is already a problem. If we can't get young people into nursing, we're in trouble. They need to know they can go into this profession and take care of a family. Without union protection, pay will not be competitive.
AFT and AFT Healthcare in a statement also say the decisions will jeopardize health care:
If nurses and other skilled workers are considered supervisors and lose union protection, they would be extremely reluctant to speak out about patient care problems out of fear of being fired or disciplined.
The ramifications of this case are extremely serious; the decision could have a significant impact on the quality of patient care and workers' rights.
Michael Verbil, a member of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 412 in Sarasota, Fla., and master electrician, says the decisions are an attempt to weaken unions: Since I've joined the union we've been able to get all of our contracts to include pension and health benefits, which didn't exist before the union. I see this as another push from the government to whittle away at the union's base. It just doesn't make sense. This could destroy the working conditions we've fought so hard to achieve. We're talking about millions of people who could lose their ability to negotiate with their employer, and that is just wrong.
A group of 13 religious leaders wrote the NLRB last month expressing deep concern over the impending decisions. The letter read in part:
Our religious traditions support workers' right to organize and bargain collectively. We support proposals that expand coverage and access to collective bargaining rather than limit it. We believe that all persons are created in the image of God and as such their work unites them with others and should be endowed with dignity, equality and justice. In the workplace, collective bargaining is the most effective process for workers to express this dimension of their humanity.
Speaking at a Sept. 22 conference on the possible impact of the Kentucky River cases, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) condemned the NLRB's refusal to conduct oral arguments in these cases:
These decisions could very well change the basic rights of American workers.
Given the stakes, the NLRB needs to be as thorough as possible in hearing testimony. The fact that the NLRB has not held hearings shows that the board is not taking this case as seriously as it should. At the heart of the issue is the right of workers to organize, to bargain collectively and to share in decisions.
CWA member Quinn agrees: We were just asking to be heard, I don't know how you get a fair deal when you can't be heard.
These decisions are just the latest in a string of anti-worker rulings by an agency charged with protecting workers' rights.
The Republican-controlled NLRB already has taken away the rights of university graduate assistants, workers with disabilities and temporary workers to join a union. And the board, which is supposed to protect workers' rights has made a series of consistent rulings backing employers' rights, while ignoring workers' concerns." http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/10/03/labor-board-ruling-may-bar-millions-of-workers-from-forming-unions/
KRUGMAN : "I've written about the V.A. before; it was the subject of a recent informative article in Time. Some still think of the V.A. as a decrepit institution, which it was in the Reagan and Bush I years. But thanks to reforms begun under Bill Clinton, it's now providing remarkably high-quality health care at remarkably low cost.
The key to the V.A.'s success is its long-term relationship with its clients: veterans, once in the V.A. system, normally stay in it for life.
This means that the V.A. can easily keep track of a patient's medical history, allowing it to make much better use of information technology than other health care providers. Unlike all but a few doctors in the private sector, V.A. doctors have instant access to patients' medical records via a systemwide network, which reduces both costs and medical errors.
The long-term relationship with patients also lets the V.A. save money by investing heavily in preventive medicine, an area in which the private sector -- which makes money by treating the sick, not by keeping people healthy -- has shown little interest.
The result is a system that achieves higher customer satisfaction than the private sector, higher quality of care by a number of measures and lower mortality rates -- at much lower cost per patient. Not surprisingly, hundreds of thousands of veterans have switched from private physicians to the V.A. The commander of the American Legion has proposed letting elderly vets spend their Medicare benefits at V.A. facilities, which would lead to better medical care and large government savings.
Instead, the Bush administration has restricted access to the V.A. system, limiting it to poor vets or those with service-related injuries. And as for allowing elderly vets to get better, cheaper health care: ''Conservatives,'' writes Time, ''fear such an arrangement would be a Trojan horse, setting up an even larger national health-care program and taking more business from the private sector.''
Think about that: they won't let vets on Medicare buy into the V.A. system, not because they believe this policy initiative would fail, but because they're afraid it would succeed.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration is pursuing a failed idea from the 1990's: channeling Medicare recipients into private H.M.O.'s. The theory was that H.M.O.'s, by bringing private-sector efficiency and the magic of the marketplace to health care, would be able to do what the V.A. has achieved in practice: provide better care at lower cost.
But the theory was wrong. Years of experience show that H.M.O.'s actually have substantially higher costs per patient than conventional Medicare, because they add an expensive extra layer of bureaucracy and also spend heavily on marketing. H.M.O.'s for Medicare recipients prospered for a while by selectively covering relatively healthy older Americans, but when the government began paying less for those likely to have low medical costs, many H.M.O.'s dropped out of the Medicare market." http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00C13F6345A0C778CDDA00894DE404482
MORE KRUGMAN : "Between 2000 and 2005, the number of Americans with private health insurance coverage fell by 1 percent. But over the same period, employment at health insurance companies rose a remarkable 32 percent. What are all those extra employees doing?
Now we know at least part of the answer: they're working harder than ever at identifying people who really need medical care, and ensuring that they don't get it. In the past, they mainly concentrated on screening out applicants likely to get sick. Now, it seems, they're also devoting a lot of effort to finding pretexts for revoking insurance after they've already granted it. They typically do this by claiming that they weren't notified about some pre-existing condition, even if the insured wasn't aware of that condition when he or she bought the policy.
Welcome to the ugly world of American health care economics." http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article res=F10B17F73A550C718EDDA00894DE404482
CHILD CARE : "What kind of society have we become? Before members of Congress departed for recess, they gave President George W. Bush-hardly known for his wisdom or compassion-the right to define what constitutes torture and to suspend the constitutional right of habeas corpus. But our elected representatives couldn't find time to pass the Labor, Health and Human Service appropriations bill which, among things, funds child care.
The "Care Crisis"-the absence of anyone to care for America's children, elderly and disabled-has turned into the new millennium's version of the "Problem That Has No Name," Child care is part of that larger Care Crisis. It is the 800-pound elephant that sits in Congress, our homes and offices-gigantic, but ignored.
And, it keeps getting worse. According to a new 50-state report on child care policies just released by the National Women's Law Center, the Bush administration has successfully dismantled government services for children. State funds for child care assistance have fallen for the fifth year in a row. The problem will soon become catastrophic when large numbers of single mothers bump up against their five-year life limit on welfare.
The report portrays a bleak picture of our national child care deficit. Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of NWLC, says that: "The new federal welfare work requirement [passed this year] creates more demand for child care assistance without providing enough funding to meet that demand." No big surprise here.
Many of us always knew that the elimination of guaranteed welfare-replaced by Temporary Assistance to Need Families -was designed to reduce the number of women on the welfare rolls, not to reduce poverty.
The report also finds that states are failing to adequately compensate providers. Helen Blank, NWLC director of leadership and public policy, describes the consequences of paying child care workers such poor wages:
Low-income children are denied critical early learning experiences. Parents find it difficult to access the child care they need to work. And providers, who are often low-income women themselves, face earning less or going out of business.
Poor working mothers face other barriers as well. Two-thirds of the states have raised the income eligibility and copayments for child care and 18 states have long waiting lists. All of these barriers to adequate childcare make it extremely difficult for women to work, feel confident that their children are safe and to get off welfare.
But do either Democrats or Republicans think this constitutes a threat to the national security of our society? No. In fact, more than three decades after Congress passed-and President Richard Nixon vetoed-the 1971 comprehensive child care legislation, child care has all but dropped off the national political agenda. And, with each passing year, the child care crisis only grows larger, burdening the lives of working mothers. But it never reaches our nation's political agenda." http://coffeehouse.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/oct/04/the_care_crisis
