I know it is piddling but... Associations are "professionals", unions
are "societally" lower and indicate those who work "physical" and
usually mindless jobs over "mental" jobs. I too belonged to
"associations" decades ago. And they made certain I too was paid more
than the work was worth but that was a "professional" actor's
association and some of the profession made egregious sums while others
struggled day-to-day. Not really the same as a union.
It is the bottom of the pyramid that is being eroded. The middle has yet
to notice the cracks forming around it.
D.
On 13/12/2012 6:22 AM, Ray Harrell wrote:
Wow! And all of this while they screwed the indigenous and kept the
artists in poverty. Sounds like a stereotype Keith.
REH
*From:*[email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Keith Hudson
*Sent:* Thursday, December 13, 2012 4:12 AM
*To:* RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION; Ed Weick
*Subject:* Re: [Futurework] Driving out the unions
At 22:21 12/12/2012, EW wrote:
Well, yes. I spent thirty years in the Canadian public service and
was a member of a professional union which was always there in the
background helping to ensure that I was getting paid more than I was
worth.
Well, that's refreshing to hear! If Canada is like the UK then
there'll be a senior civil service union (to which Ed would certainly
have belonged) above a much larger public service union (the PCS). In
the UK there's an even more senior group of no more than 150 or so,
consisting of the administrative heads of the 15 or so departments
("Permanent Secretaries") plus one or two levels below it, but no
more. This group has been able to give itself extraordinary perks
(that is, it doesn't ask the government or parliament for them but
quietly goes ahead on its own). This has included foreign trips,
membership of exclusive London clubs, use of credit cards, lavish
golden handshakes,etc. When these perks are discovered by the media
and public anger arises they're quickly and quietly retracted (as
though they never existed!). The latest dodge to be exposed is for a
senior civil servant to retire early (picking up his inflation-linked
pension, of course), set up a private business and then apply for (and
get, of course!) sub-contract work from his ex-department -- his own
old job, in fact. Corporation tax being much lower than his income tax
(from his pension and his new sub-contract earnings) -- not to speak
of other fiddles his firm's accountant can arrange -- he'll be
immensely better off than previously. All this came to light about a
fortnight ago but has now stopped. (My guess is that in most cases
this would have the effect of doubling his income for a number of
years before his full retirement age.)
Keith
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]>
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION
<mailto:[email protected]> ; Ed Weick
<mailto:[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 12:08 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Driving out the unions
At 14:59 12/12/2012, EW wrote:
Unions used to be a very important part of the economy. Increasingly,
they no longer are.
Industrial unions, yes, but some unions are still important! At least
they are in the UK, and those that have become closed shops by
acquiring special privileges from the government and controlling their
numbers can obtain high incomes for their members. Barristers'
Chambers, solicitors' Law Society, doctors' British Medical
Association are examples of such. Also there are groups which are
self-selecting for the purpose of boosting their incomes but which
don't have formal membership. One good example of this (which applies
in America, too) is the amorphous group of senior banking executives
which gladly serve on the remuneration advisory committees of
competitive banks. This has enabled them to artificially ratchet one
another's salaries upwards to astronomical levels in recent years and,
when, criticized, can falsely claim "market rates".
Keith
Ed
The Lansing-Beijing connection
By Harold Meyerson
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/harold-meyerson/2011/02/24/ABvsvmP_page.html>,
Dec 12, 2012 01:35 AM EST
The Washington Post
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-unions-still-matter-in-michigan-just-as-in-china/2012/12/11/d77d9948-43c9-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions#license-d77d9948-43c9-11e2-8061-253bccfc7532>Published:
December 11
China has a problem: rising inequality. The gap between profits and
wages is soaring. Although elements of the government have sought to
boost workers' incomes, they have been thwarted by major companies and
banks "that don't want to give more profit to the country and let the
government distribute it
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324640104578161493858722884.html>,"
Qi Jingmei, a research fellow for a government think tank, told the
Wall Street Journal.
Of course, if China permitted the establishment of unions, wages would
rise. But for fundamentally political reasons --- independent unions
would undermine the Communist Party's authority --- unions are out of
the question.
Meanwhile, the United States also has a problem of a rising gap
between profits and wages. The stagnation of wages has become an
accepted fact across the political spectrum; conservative columnists
such as Michael Gerson
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-making-economic-advancement-realistic/2012/11/19/ab926fae-3283-11e2-bfd5-e202b6d7b501_story.html>
and David Brooks have acknowledged that workers' incomes seem to be stuck.
What conservatives haven't acknowledged, and what even most liberal
commentators fail to appreciate, is how central the collapse of
collective bargaining is to American workers' inability to win
themselves a raise. Yes, globalizing and mechanizing jobs has cut into
the livelihoods of millions of U.S. workers, but that is far from the
whole story. Roughly 100 million
<http://prospect.org/article/if-labor-dies-whats-next> of the nation's
143 million employed workers
<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm> have jobs that can't
be shipped abroad
<http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eblinder/papers/07ceps142.pdf>, that
aren't in competition with steel workers in Sao Paolo or iPod
assemblers in Shenzhen. Sales clerks, waiters, librarians and
carpenters all utilize technology in their jobs, but not to the point
that they've become dispensable.
Yet while they can't be dispensed with, neither can they bargain for a
raise. Today fewer than 7 percent
<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm> of private-sector
workers are union members. That figure may shrink a little more with
new "right to work" laws in Michigan
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/job-creation-debate-illustrates-volley-of-claims-over-right-to-work-as-michigan-decision-nears/2012/12/10/9f780f72-4330-11e2-8c8f-fbebf7ccab4e_story.html>---
the propagandistic term for statutes that allow workers to benefit
from union contracts without having to pay union dues.
Defenders of right-to-work laws argue that they improve a state's
economy by creating more jobs. But an exhaustive study
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1027987> by
economist Lonnie K. Stevans of Hofstra University found that states
that have enacted such laws reported no increase in business start-ups
or rates of employment. Wages and personal income are lower in those
states than in those without such laws, Stevans concluded, though
proprietors' incomes are higher. In short, right-to-work laws simply
redistribute income from workers to owners.
Why, then, are such laws being enacted? The gap between U.S. capital
income and labor income hasn't been this great
<http://www.businessinsider.com/corporate-profits-just-hit-an-all-time-high-wages-just-hit-an-all-time-low-2012-6>
since before the New Deal; why widen it still more? The answer, in
Lansing no less than in Beijing, is political. The Republicans who
took control of the Michigan statehouse in 2010 understand that
Democrats' foot soldiers come disproportionately from labor. GOP
efforts to reduce labor's clout help Republicans politically far more
than they help any Michigan-based businesses or local governments.
(The legislation, which Gov. Rick Snyder (R) signed into law Tuesday
evening, establishes right-to-work requirements for the public sector,
too.)
Those who doubt that the intent of Michigan's laws is more political
than economic should consider the two kinds of unions exempted from
its reach: police and firefighter unions
<http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20121208/NEWS04/312080019/Right-work-bill-exempts-police-fire-unions>.
Their contracts are among the costliest that local governments
confront: Police and firefighters generally (and rightly) retire
earlier than do other public employees, with relatively generous
pension benefits. But in Michigan, police and firefighter unions often
endorse Republicans. Shrinking their treasuries and political power by
subjecting them to right-to-work strictures would only damage
Republicans' electoral prospects (and may well play poorly to voters).
With Snyder's signature, Michigan becomes the second state in the
once-heavily unionized, industrial Midwest
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/12/11/michigan-would-be-first-blue-right-to-work-state/?hpid=z1>
to adopt such a statute; hitherto, such laws had largely been confined
to states in the South, the Plains and the Mountain West. The United
Auto Workers (UAW) was once the colossus of Michigan politics, but the
union's membership has shrunk to 381,000
<http://www.autoblog.com/2012/04/02/uaw-membership-climbs-1-1-thanks-to-automakers-adding-jobs/>
--- roughly one-quarter of its size 35 years ago
<http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/uawm-a01.shtml> --- a
casualty of globalization and the legal and cultural obstacles the UAW
has encountered to organizing new members.
Michigan Republicans have seen a chance to weaken the UAW and labor's
power at election time. Doing so further diminishes the number of
workers who can bargain for a raise. It's nice that conservatives are
finally acknowledging that workers' incomes are stagnating. But
workers don't get raises if they can't bargain collectively, and all
the hand-wringing about our rising rates of inequality will be so much
empty rhetoric unless we insist --- in Lansing and Beijing --- on
workers' right to form powerful unions.
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