Not sure of where we're headed. We see a growing gap between the income of the
rich and the poor. It's conventional to think of this in terms of the
capitalists screwing labour and it may be partly that, but we also have to
recognize that some huge economic shifts are taking place. The financial
sector is growing rapidly and a lot of money is being made by manipulating
securities behind closed doors; some people have become very rich in places
like Silicon Valley by inventing things we now take for granted and that help
some people to manipulate securities behind closed doors; ships and planes can
carry goods produced cheaply elsewhere to domestic markets; assembly lines
consist as much or more of machines than people. Unions were very important
when a lot of people were making things here and now and the bosses were
clearly identifiable, but given the dynamics of the present global economy,
just who are the bosses they should be taking on and because of what?
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: D & N
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2012 11:40 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Driving out the unions
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
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION ; Ed Weick
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,
Dec 12, 2012 01:35 AM EST
The Washington Post 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," 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 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 of the
nation's 143 million employed workers have jobs that can't be shipped abroad,
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 of private-sector workers are union members.
That figure may shrink a little more with new "right to work" laws in Michigan
- 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 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 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. 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 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 - roughly
one-quarter of its size 35 years ago - 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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