My Union Solution

Here's my extended post on unions in general, spurred by the doings in Wisconsin:

Public employee unions are most of what the union movement has left.  Currently the US workforce is about 12% union, down from 20% in 1983.  Reliable statistics aren't available to me from earlier than that, but in the 1940s and 1950s union membership was certainly much higher even than it was in 1983- it's been declining since at least the 1970s.

And traditionally unions were formed by blue collar workers in the manufacturing or farm sectors, workers with little control over their work, few skills, and (at the outset of the movement) absolutely horrible working conditions.  Today these unions are gasping for air, their jobs shifted to low-wage third world countries, while public employees make up a higher percentage of the movement.

I've been talking to people who belong to unions, or have family members in unions, over the past few days, and it brings out a real dilemma.  It's tough to mount a full-throated defense of unions when one hears about all the abuses in public sector union rules.  Conservative complaints that it's nearly impossible to fire bad teachers have plenty of basis in fact.  We all drive past road work crews in the Summer and witness more standing around than working.  I read about firefighters retiring at age 50 with massive pensions to be paid in perpetuity.  Certainly union workers have more job security than I've ever had, and they're practically the only workers left who have defined pensions for which taxpayers are on the hook, rather than 401K retirement plans in which the worker has to take on all the risk.

But a little history is instructive here.  America before the union movement was not just miserable for workers.  It was really dangerous to be a factory worker.  Pay was bad, safety rules were nonexistent, child labor use was common, pensions were of course unheard of (and there was no social security to fall back on), and workers who complained were just fired.  If you were maimed on a machine, you were out of luck and out of a job.  Big Business held all the cards.  A powerful and easy read on this is Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, an expose of the meat-packing industry around 1900.  There was virtually no way out for an unskilled worker before the advent of unions.

So unions grew, and supported the Democratic party for obvious reasons- the Democrats supported workers' rights to a humane environment and a living wage, while Republicans were the party of Big Business, which wanted to keep the gravy train rolling.  Workers trying to organize unions were slowed by a myriad of dirty tactics by industrialists, but over time laws were passed allowing workers to organize as they wished (the US is a free country, after all, and if people want to join together to negotiate that's certainly in concert with the American ethos).

But eventually, unions started into decline.  The center of their power was manufacturing, and with globalization manufacturing jobs moved to China, Mexico, and elsewhere where labor costs are much cheaper.  That's nobody's fault- it would have happened whether those sectors were unionized or not, because US workers certainly are not going to compete with Cambodians making five cents an hour no matter how far to the bottom we go.

The new frontier for union organizing here should be and is the service sector of the economy.  That sector is growing faster than others in the US, and retail workers don't control their conditions much more than factory workers did back in the day.  But thus far it's been quite a slog- Walmart, the biggest private employer in the US now, is notorious for its union busting tactics, including the time it illegally shut down its entire meat-cutting division rather than allow seven butchers to organize.  And it's not like you could argue that Walmart workers are better off without a union- they pay is bad, benefits worse, and management ruthless enough to make any of the Gilded Age titans proud.

But unions haven't caught on in the service sector, so the major remnants of the labor movement are left in the public sector.  And they seem to be fighting for the wrong things: teachers don't get paid very well, but it's often very difficult to fire them even when their work is awful.  Police don't have outrageous hourly rates considering the dangers they face, but make enormous sums on overtime details of questionable necessity to the public. 

And of course government workers are practically the only ones left getting pensions, even if their salaries aren't as high as are seen in the private sector, especially for more educated professionals.  But keep in mind that there's nothing outrageous about pensions per se- millions of workers had them in the US for much of the last century, and it went fine for a long time.  The problem isn't that public workers get pensions, it's that private ones don't anymore.  That's great for Wall Street, which gets a steady stream of suckers trying to invest their 401K's, but not so great for workers.

I think that the reason government workers get paid a bit less while getting better benefits is because state and local governments have been willing to make workplace concessions in order to save money or delay payments.  It's cheaper in the short run to pay less in salary in exchange for more job security, even if it's not in the interest of quality.  And in tough budget times, pension funds can always be shorted by creative government budget makers and put off until the good times.  All this is understandable, and not the fault of the unions.

So now we come down to the present day.  It's pretty clear that the Wisconsin budget problems have nothing to do with unions (as noted in my last post), but are the result of a recession and a recent tax cut.  The governor has manufactured a crisis to enact his agenda, which is to destroy the unions in his state, even if those unions are willing to make concessions. 

So what I'd like to see is for governments at all levels in the US negotiate with unions, and push to reform contracts that don't make sense.  If teachers are too hard to fire, change the rules in the next contract, and if the Teacher's Union refuses, then deal with strike threats and the like.  If we can't afford to pay firefighters the salaries we're paying, then tell them at the next contract negotiation and work to get the public on the side of the cities and towns.  Yes it's ugly, and it's going to lead to strikes, but compared to Governor Walker's solution, it still leaves workers with the power to organize themselves; in short, it allows them the freedom to associate that shouldn't be denied anyone in the United States.

Union Busting in the Modern Age

Very troubling doings in Wisconsin.  The all-GOP government there has decided to destroy public sector unions, manufacturing a budget crisis as an excuse.  In fact, the state had no budget problems at all before the recession, and recently passed a series of tax cuts on business that depressed revenue and make budget projections look much worse.  See Ezra Klein for more details

So what we have here is a budget crisis caused by a Wall Street-driven recession and exacerbated by recent tax cuts, which Republicans propose to solve by destroying public sector unions.  How do they plan to destroy the unions?  Proposed legislation would:

• Not allow unions to negotiate benefits or work rules
• Not allow them to negotiate wages beyond a certain point
• Forbid union dues deductions from paychecks
• Mandate new union votes annually

So we're not talking about weakening the unions, or about givebacks- we're talking about union-busting, pure and simple, except instead of a corporation sending in thugs to do it, now we have the government doing it by law.

And that's not even the whole thing- there's more!  The Wisconsin law exempts police and fire departments and other public safety unions.  Why might that be?  Turns out, those unions supported the governor in the election campaign.  So much for principles.  Are we trying to claim that state child protective service workers and teachers are more corrupt than cops and firemen?  Cops and firefighters had better understand that they're next.

Lots of people are really mad that unionized government workers still get defined pensions, generous health care benefits, and guarantees of safe workplaces.  There was a time when workers got that stuff in the private sector too.  But the solution isn't to screw public employees- it's to fight to get those kind of working conditions back for private sector blue collar and service workers.  I understand why Big Business doesn't want that, but for the rest of us it ought to be pretty clear.

Budget Problems

Jon Stewart had a good line last night about the budget debate raging now.  He said something like:

It's good to see that everyone in Washington can get together to cut services for people who vote for Democrats.

This seems like the pattern we're stuck in now. Obama proposes something moderate, and the Republicans just move the finish line back further. 

Inequality

I came across this graph in my web-surfing today:

(from http://lanekenworthy.net/2010/07/20/the-best-inequality-graph-updated/)

Since 1979 the really wealthy have seen their income soar like never before.  Meanwhile, the rest of us have been stuck in the mud.  Another way to put this is to say that virtually all of the income growth since the Reagan years has accrued to the wealthy.
Doesn't that bother anyone else? 

Health Care Guest Post

An interesting thought from a relative of mine regarding health care reform and how we're all talking around each other:

often both the left and the right are "right". The problem is they're right about different things. So when the right is attacking health care it's because we can't afford it and it doesn't do anything to fix "the problem". The left says we'll find a way to afford it and it's a step toward fixing the problem of having thousands of people uninsured. If the left sees the #1 problem of health care as the uninsured and the right sees the #1 problem as the rising costs and the model of distribution then you can see how they both might be right. So what gets me is that the left and the right sometimes act like they're talking about the same thing when really they're not.

Well said.  Looking at things this way, I stand proudly on the left of course- the #1 problem is the fact that 30 million plus Americans don't have health insurance.  And of course the Affordable Care Act also addresses rising costs, though not as much as it needs to.

Egypt

Great stuff going on in Egypt.  That doesn't mean it's going to end great, mind you, but it's exciting right now, that's for sure.

Lots of fear coming from some quarters (particularly on the Right and among some pro-Israel groups) that the Muslim Brotherhood is going to take over and lead Egypt right out of the Sadat-Begin peace treaty and into war with Israel.  Now this fear is legitimate, but it sounds like (from what I'm reading) there are plenty of secular and liberal forces likely to take power. 

Here's the thing: dictators don't last forever.  They always die eventually, and their heirs usually don't carry on for too many generations before a revolution or at least a coup bubbles up.  This Egypt regime was going down pretty soon (Mubarek is in his 80s, after all), and there were so many possible ways it could have gone down- this way seems as good an outcome as many.

In the end, this isn't about us.  The United States has nothing to do with this uprising.  Any meddling (except behind the scenes, but we'll never know about that) would have just empowered the bad guys in this, and I think Obama's passivity in the face of the Tahir Square protests was proven to be the right course.  Sometimes our best option is to get out of the way and let nature take its course.  How fascinating that the neocons' vision of a democratic Middle East might come to pass after all, due to internal Arab protest rather than overwhelming US military force.  Who would've thunk it?

Health Care Repeal

Well, it looks like the Republicans are determined to push for full repeal of "ObamaCare" and have no intention of doing any sort of negotiation to improve the law and insert some of their own priorities.  This is no surprise of course- their base would destroy anyone who tried to compromise in any way. 

I could imagine an alternate universe in which Republicans proposed getting rid of the individual mandate or inserting tort reform in return for dropping plans for repeal and/or dropping attempted lawsuits.  In this world, however, they can't do it.

So what's going to happen?  Republicans are clearly going to fight like hell, with every weapon they can think of at their disposal, to destroy health care.  They'll use the courts, they'll use the filibuster, they'll use the budgetary process, and of course they'll continue to lie and demogogue it.  We know all this.

What we don't know is what Democrats will do.  Will they fight back?  Will they huddle in the corner sucking their thumbs?  Will they whine about how Republicans are abusing the filibuster?  Or will they stand up for what they supposedly believe in?

I wish I were more optimistic.  This fight isn't over yet.  The other side is bringing it- are the Democrats ready to keep fighting?

As an addendum, I'll just note that the Democrats are apparently making no changes in filibuster rules, so I fully expect Republicans to stall court nominations among other things.  Then I fully expect Democrats to express lots of predictable outrage while doing nothing about it.  Then, when Republicans are in charge of the Senate and the presidency, I fully expect them to eliminate the filibuster themselves without a second thought when Democrats start to use it, in the face of more Democrat outrage.  Republicans play hardball, and good for them- at least they believe in what they want enough to actually fight dirty for it.  If only their policies weren't so moronic....

Climate Change and (in)action

It's tough for me to put out a wonky discussion of Climate Change, since it involves the hard sciences, which is a lot harder for laymen to understand than economics or other social sciences. It's easy enough for Climate Change deniers to dig up some wacko academic who disputes the common wisdom of the field and has a PhD, but I think one has to look at what the consensus is among scientists in that field, and it's pretty clear.
But I come back to this line of reasoning: there's a good possibility that Al Gore is right, and that Climate Change will keep accelerating, that we'll continue to see year after year set new records as hottest on record, that polar ice caps will melt putting Bangladesh under water, that deserts will grow and more of the planet will become uninhabitable, etc etc. If the worst of the predictions are correct, we're going to be REALLY sorry we didn't act, because every year we wait the problem gets harder to solve.

Now of course it's possible that the scientific consensus is wrong- after all, there was once agreement that the world was flat, and that diseases were caused by witchcraft. If that turns out to be the case, we'll have lowered carbon emissions for no good reason. Well, even that isn't right, because I think everyone agrees that carbon emissions leads to unhealthy air to breathe, smog, etc so there's some benefit even if Climate Change scientists are wrong.

So think about the relative downside of going the wrong way on either side: either we do nothing and confront a catastrophe, or we do too much unnecessarily and waste resources we could have used for other economic growth. Which one is worse? Seems pretty obvious to me. And to top it all off, the odds of Climate Change being real seem much better than the odds that it's not, seeing as nearly all climate scientists agree that it's real.