The Connection Between OWS and Government Employee Union Busting

I was listening to a story on the radio today about the fight in Ohio over the Wisconsin-inspired anti-public union law that was passed by the legislature and led by Governor John Kasich, but which has been put on the ballot and may be repealed by voters.  It got me thinking about the connection between union-busting and income inequality.

Here's what I mean: unions protect the wages of working class and middle class people.  But unions have been on the decline for 30 years, and the only sector left in which they're truly strong is among public employees.  That's where you see working people (road crews, city bus drivers, firemen, police) and lower-pay professionals (teachers, protective service social workers, clerks in government offices) making reasonable wages, while their brethren in the private sector have been falling behind badly.

And what is the topic du jour today, in light of the Occupy Wall Street protest?  Income inequality.  We've all been hearing about the incredible pay increases among the "top 1%", but have thought less about the pay decreases (or more accurately, flat pay) of the middle class.  But this is an important issue too.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, middle class pay increased.  There were lots of good jobs in unionized industry, which probably pushed up pay in non-union shops too.  But with globalization and the departure of lots of textiles and manufacturing elsewhere, the downward pressure on blue collar labor has been intense.  Union shops just closed and the factories moved elsewhere where labor costs were cheaper.

But the result is that now the blue collar jobs that are left don't pay very well.  Our economy has moved to one domintated by the service sector, and retail and fast food industries have effectively blocked unions.  The pay at Walmart and Burger King is terrible compared to the pay at a factory 40 years ago, but that's where the jobs are now.

So Conservatives, in their bid to destroy their opponents in the union world, have turned their eyes to government sector unions.  The Ohio and Wisconsin laws don't just cut benefits, they outlaw union dues being collected from paychecks, effectively destroying the unions entirely.  Of course, there aren't enough Big Business conservatives to support such legislation, so they have to get votes from somewhere else, and they've hit upon a really smart strategy: splitting the middle class.

The voter who works at Walmart has crappy pay and crappier benefits.  He looks at the DPW worker, with similar skills, making a living wage for the government, and he's getting angry about it.  And he should be angry!!!  But the right wing machine has figured out how to get him angry at the DPW worker, instead of getting angry at Walmart.

If Liberals want to win this battle, we have to turn the anger of the middle class away from government workers and toward the elites who are leading these changes.  After all, government workers aren't getting paid any more than they ever were- the change is that private sector workers are getting paid less.  Maybe Occupy Wall Street can help lift that narrative.

Occupy Wall Street and Rolling Stone

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone is just about my favorite writer on the internet.  This piece is great:

And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

We cheer for people who hit their own home runs in this country– not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.
That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned.
All weekend I was thinking about this “jealousy” question, and I just kept coming back to all the different ways the game is rigged. People aren't jealous and they don’t want privileges. They just want a level playing field, and they want Wall Street to give up its cheat codes...

He goes on to describe the many ways in which the banks have been handed free money and bailed out in a myriad of ways from their stupid decisions, while regular Americans have no such advantages.

One thing about OWS that conservatives don't seem able to grasp is that it's a leaderless movement, completely unhierarchical.  It's incredibly diverse, so while there are really cool, smart people like this:

...there are also plenty of crazy Stalinists, heroin dealers, and apparently even a stray Nazi or two.  Right now the best thing the movement is doing is building momentum and getting the issue of inequality into the national conversation.  I'm not sure if anything else will come of it, but if not that's still a pretty good accomplishment.

The comparison to the Tea Party is interesting.  There are plenty of similarities.  But one key for me is that the Crazies in the Tea Party have completely taken over the larger conservative movement.  The Republican presidential candidates are completely unwilling to cross even the most extreme Tea Party talking point.

(I love that sign, from a Tea Party rally.  It's a cheap shot I know.  Stupid protesters are all over the place at both OWS and Tea Party rallies- I concede that readily.)

I don't think that any significant Democrats, on the other hand, are likely to propose forgiving all college loans or socialized medicine.  The kooks on the Left are on the fringe, while the kooks on the Right are in charge of the GOP.

Occupy Wall Street

OK, fans, I know you're all dying to read what I think about Occupy Wall Street, so here it is.

The rage that I share with the protesters can be summed up this way:

Once there was a healthy economy.  Then a few things happened, in this order:

1. The financial system was deregulated to a great degree, and what regulation there was was poorly enforced. 
2. Wall Street bankers used these rules to take enormous risks using irresponsible amounts of leverage, while everyone in the industry assured us they knew what they were doing.
3. The result was a huge real estate bubble that allowed the banks to make enormous profits, far greater than the industry had ever made before.
4. In spite of these profits, the general economy didn't benefit much at all.  There was virtually no wage or job growth for the middle class during the aughts.
5. When the bubble burst, the taxpayers were forced to step in and bail out the industry.  This was necessary to save us from another Great Depression, but was structured in a way that returned banks to profitability almost immediately.  They are already back to record profits, while the general economy continues to suffer.
6. The banking industry is now firmly opposed to any regulation of any kind, and has withdrawn support from the Democratic party for suggesting it.  The industry seems to have no particular plan to avoid a repeat of 2008, since they don't want anything to change.  This apparently means that their plan is to go back to the good old days, and when the next disaster happens, we get to bail them out again.  It's "heads I win, tails you lose".

So yeah, some of us are kind of angry with Bankers.  OWS is expressing that rage.  I'm hoping it builds into a movement that throws a scare into them and moves regulation of the banking industry along with progressive tax policy in the right (or left) direction.  It's easy enough to find nut cases in the crowd (as it certainly was with the Tea Party rallies), but here's hoping it develops into something constructive.