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Why the Republican War on Workers’ Rights Undermines the American Economy
The battle has resumed in Wisconsin. The state supreme court has allowed Governor Scott Walker to strip bargaining rights from state workers.
Meanwhile, governors and legislators in New Hampshire and Missouri are attacking private unions, seeking to make the states so-called “open shop” where workers can get all the benefits of being union members without paying union dues. Needless to say this ploy undermines the capacity of unions to do much of anything. Other Republican governors and legislatures are following suit.
Republicans in Congress are taking aim at the National Labor Relations Board, which issued a relatively minor rule change allowing workers to vote on whether to unionize soon after a union has been proposed, rather than allowing employers to delay the vote for years. Many employers have used the delaying tactics to retaliate against workers who try to organize, and intimidate others into rejecting a union.
This war on workers’ rights is an assault on the middle class, and it is undermining the American economy.
The American economy can’t get out of neutral until American workers have more money in their pockets to buy what they produce. And unions are the best way to give them the bargaining power to get better pay.
For three decades after World War II – I call it the “Great Prosperity” – wages rose in tandem with productivity. Americans shared the gains of growth, and had enough money to buy what they produced.
That’s largely due to the role of labor unions. In 1955, over a third of American workers in the private sector were unionized. Today, fewer than 7 percent are.
With the decline of unions came the stagnation of American wages. More and more of the total income and wealth of America has gone to the very top. Middle-class purchasing power depended on mothers going into paid work, everyone working longer hours, and, finally, the middle class going deep into debt, using their homes as collateral.
But now all these coping mechanisms are exhausted — and we’re living with the consequence.
Some say the Great Prosperity was an anomaly. America’s major competitors lay in ruins. We had the world to ourselves. According to this view, there’s no going back.
But this view is wrong. If you want to see the same basic bargain we had then, take a look at Germany now.
Germany is growing much faster than the United States. Its unemployment rate is now only 6.1 percent (we’re now at 9.1 percent).
What’s Germany’s secret? In sharp contrast to the decades of stagnant wages in America, real average hourly pay has risen almost 30 percent there since 1985. Germany has been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.
How did German workers do it? A big part of the story is German labor unions are still powerful enough to insist that German workers get their fair share of the economy’s gains.
That’s why pay at the top in Germany hasn’t risen any faster than pay in the middle. As David Leonhardt reported in the New York Times recently, the top 1 percent of German households earns about 11 percent of all income – a percent that hasn’t changed in four decades.
Contrast this with the United States, where the top 1 percent went from getting 9 percent of total income in the late 1970s to more than 20 percent today.
The only way back toward sustained growth and prosperity in the United States is to remake the basic bargain linking pay to productivity. This would give the American middle class the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going.
Part of the answer is, as in Germany, stronger labor unions — unions strong enough to demand a fair share of the gains from productivity growth.
The current Republican assault on workers’ rights continues a thirty-year war on American workers’ wages. That long-term war has finally taken its toll on the American economy.
It’s time to fight back.
Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future; The Work of Nations; Locked in the Cabinet; Supercapitalism; and his newest, Beyond Outrage. His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
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35 Comments so far
Show AllProfessor Reich,
Workers haven't done so well with Democrats of late, either.
Your friends from the DLC had their opportunity to reverse the assault begun under Reagan and Bush 41, and instead, what did they do? NAFTA, GATT, WTO
The current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania has proven to be yet another iteration of the Democratic administration with which you served. Rubin's Neo-Liberal economics continue to prevail. Party affiliation makes little difference these days--both are bought and paid for by the same Wall Street money.
This will take presidential leadership to redress. President Obama has to use the bully pulpit to make workers' lives, wages, pensions and working conditions a priority for corporate America. And I agree: he does appear to be too close to Wall Street.
Maybe it is time for the makers to join the class war. Lets not mince words. Things will not change until we start using second ammendment solutions.
Who do you plan to shoot? Count "me" out of your "we."
"They" can, do, and will shoot back and they have way more weapons than even the Palinoids could dream hoarding and possessing and protecting. You want to go up against, for one thing, depleted uranium?
True enough!
But they seem to be blindly going down this road, Already they can't seem to understand why home sales have tanked! Nor will they understand how people with no income or $10 an hour slave jobs are not buying their pretty toys, not to mention a slowdown in food and resturant sales!
They won't understand why the plebs are shooting at them either, they'll simply send out their Ze dogs to clear off the lawn of the noise-makers >^^<
Unions have become irrevelant over the last 30yrs! All they want to do is crawl in bed with the fatcats, and the dimocratics!
All that has happened, and the only (small) uprising was in Wisconson! and that had nothing to do with the unions! they only showed up after the cameras were in place!
Face it the unions, the law, common decency are irrevelent! the only thing to do is hold on with all your might, till that's gone, who are you gonna fight, the fatcats in their well-guarded towers, Their so high they won't even hear the guns their dogs use to clean you off the street with! >^^<
The rich bought our legislatures through bribery, which the legislators legalized. The numerous crimes of the current and past administrations have been ignored by our justice (?) department, which has instead focused on medical marijuana users (?). What can we the people do to fight the class war that we didn't start? We are no longer a nation of laws, no matter what the liars say. We have never been a christian nation, and through our actions, we look more like the anti-christ nation with every passing day. I am not in favor of letting the fascists win, but I still feel obligated to obey traffic laws. How can we ever return to being a nation of laws when we have bragging war criminals giving speeches and signing autographs on book tours?
Thomas A: Well-said! For me, the key issue is the breakdown of law... by using the false flag event of 911, added to an incessant media drumbeat for and about war, fear is daily infused into the nation's virtual blood-stream. When people are afraid, they let a lot of liberties lapse. And when both political parties act in complicity to SLAY the law of the land, each reinforcing the other's right to do so (sometimes through good cop, bad cop routines taken to a high art thanks to PR choreographers), what most perceive as norms are laws bent so far off their intended rockers, as to constitute little short of moral chaos.
I remarked on this the other day, that Madison Avenue plays a role in shaping attitudes through fashion. When I opened Yahoo about 2 weeks ago (on a Sunday, I believe it was) to see the headline articles posted, one made it HIP and CHIC to make $ reporting on (which is to say snitching on) your neighbors! It was taken from The Wall Street Journal!
Few people today possess the imagination to understand life centuries ago. In their attempts to do so, they project much that is known and taken for granted today. How, forum posters, do you think it was possible for the Germans to round up all the Jews? And for the witch-hunters of centuries ago to know precisely which of the purported million-plus arrested (then tortured and slain under the allegation of witch-craft. these, the liberated women of their day, who were no doubt, impatient with church patriarchal doctrine and the rules that turned their lives into virtual prisons)were guilty as charged? It took some help from spying neighbors, citizens with agendas of their own to satisfy.Accusation was tantamount to proof in most instances. Those not willing to go along with "the program" were done away with, an entire orthodoxy created to justify the indefensible. It reminds me of the WOT today, and what's being done in its name. One could make the quite rational estimate that already 1.5 million are dead...
So as our society moves increasingly to the influence of right wing Christian Theocrats, how will neighbors regard the long-hair, the person who doesn't attend their churches, the one who attends a peace march, or advocates for a labor union, or lives low on the consumer totem pole? Those who are different can now be targeted. We already know the FBI can enter our homes. We already know that a gigantic network of domestic spies are in place checking our phone records, emails, and buying habits. We already see that the protections granted by Habeas Corpus, The Bill of Rights, and The Constitution are no longer firm. It is a VERY slippery slope when a publication makes it seem cool to make $ from telling on your neighbor.
A McCarthy period is taking place, even if those not yet touched by it don't believe it. As a few sensitive souls in this forum have previously pointed out, to the darker hued individual, the realization that justice is a myth has been his for some time. Now many of us will learn what that means... remember Bush's press secretary warning that we'd best GUARD what we say? Or one of the henchmen's allegations that reality is no longer what is understood by and through mass consensus; rather it's what the elites indicate it to be.
Orwell meets Kafka meets Bernays meets Goebbels meets Madison Ave... and what a dark weave they make!
Siouxrose, good post. And let's not forget that fear is the basis of hatred. With so little terrorist activity evident to prop up the fear, the hatred has taken over, and the fascist theocrats are masters at fanning that vile sentiment. As MLK said over and over, if you hate, you can't think straight.
They've been using false flags since the USS Maine blew itself up! one after the next, how their gonna stage mowing down thousands in the comeing food riots I don't know really I hope I don't have to see it. But on the course were on it's just as sure as the titanic going under!
>^^<
"Part of the answer is, as in Germany, stronger labor unions — unions strong enough to demand a fair share of the gains from productivity growth"
And Obama made a promise to stand behind labor. In this case, he stood so far behind, nobody could see him. Give it up Reich.
the democrats havent fought back but it is the republicans pushing the agenda
"the democrats havent fought back" is untrue. Not only have they not fought back; they've been pushing international "free trade agreements" on us with a singlemindedness the Rethugs can only match.
Let's just say that if I was standing near the edge of a precipice, Obama is the last person I'd want "standing behind me".
Nothing about the Democratic war on workers' rights. Pity.
It's not just the Republicans. "A 1997 study by the American Academy of Sciences found that the cheap labor of illegal immigrants and poor immigrants caused a 44% decrease in wages among the poorest Americans from 1980 to 1994." (Center for Immigration Studies). Democrats have encouraged illegal aliens and the poorest are fighting the poorest for jobs. The US has failed to protect its workers from foreign cheap labor and are using Illegal and VISA workers to bust unions here. Our standard of living has dropped and it has sent workers rights backwards 50 years. We have no one to champion us. I'm looking at that 2nd Amendment thing myself.
I went to the Center for Immigration Studies website. They openly state their wish for lower immigration levels. Their search engine produced nothing about a 1997 study by the American Academy of Sciences, but did show a 1997 study by another outfit that I did not bother to check. Also, I found nothing on the 1980 to 1994 thing, but did find a newspaper report that stated that from 1980 to 1997 the poverty rate doubled in Los Angeles county. With a fairly large influx of poor Hispanics into that area, that seemed likely. However, the idea that poor immigrants are 'stealing' jobs that you or the vast majority of Americans wish you could have is simply not true. Of course I could be wrong. You may wish you could bus tables or spend idylic days hoeing in the fields or picking fruit. Anyway, spending your cash on guns may help give somebody a job, but remember eating your gun is generally not considered ideal.
Having grown up on a farm, field labor is not new to me and I did work my way through college waiting tables, washing dishes, and bussing tables.
I lost my concrete job to "day laborers". So did the 30 other people working with me, who were paying taxes buying houses, sending our kids to college and buying cars. We could not win a bid because we had to include taxes, Workmens Comp, health insurance, unemployment comp, SS. So now 30 illegals have our jobs, paying no taxes, buying no cars and no houses.
Do you have a cush cush White collar job? Blue Collar workers fought and died to get rid of child labor, to have arbitration, minimum wage, job safety, retirement, 40 hour week with time and 1/2 for overtime. Everyone enjoys these rights, it but was blue Collar Workers that put their lives on the line for them. I hate to see all that gone. $7 hour is not cheap because taxpayers get to pay for their health care, and all social services and instead of paying taxes they will get tax credits.For the first time U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
The total population of Mexico is 107,000,000. 55,000,000 live here. That's 1/3 of their own countries' population. Shouldn't we allow the rest of the immigrants from other countries a chance to catch up? Uncontrolled immigration is not the largest economic problem we have but it certainly contributes to unemployment and a lower standard of living for American workers. I can only conclude that you employ illegals. You think depressing labor is cool.
Obama is not going to help us. The only ones that are going to change things are ourselves. It is time for a movement to begin, preferably with labor and with a new party, perhaps the People's Party, in place. Hope is not lost, there is plenty to do and plenty to change in this country, its up to the American people.
Give it up. It's over. You just haven't any credibility at this point. You and your party (along with republicans) have killed-off and shipped-off the middle/blue collar and its jobs. Do we really have to keep saying this? Except for the gullible, most people are past it. Go somewhere and retire. All of you.
Note: Speaking of retiring, a news clip showed Obama campaigning in Puerto Rico a few days ago...the posters his 'supporters' we're waving were adorned with images of JFK and himself. It was beyond sickening to see.
That's what I don't get, yes the jobs are gonne, the factories are shuttered. Where do you think these jabs are coming from?
I suppose we could just somehow collectively take over the old mt factories, woops I forgot the tools were also shipped to china, india, whatall! so we need to build new tools to but in the MT buildings and start to make things, ok.
What can we make that won't be undercut by the overseas people making $1 a day! I don't know! IDEAS?? >^^<
Although Reich is right within the parameters he composes, he leaves out two very significant items:
1. Germany learned, from itself having been ravaged during WW I & WWII, that it does not pay to invest in militarism to the point where it is the be all, end of all of the economy itself.
2. Germany has a very enlightened commitment to Green Energy and experimental technologies. I've always admired German engineering (in my view, every race and probably every nationality has a specific gift, and frequently, a related failure... likely signifying that designed for collective learning and evolution), and see in Germany, the model of the enlightened warrior. Now instead of conquering others, they put their inventive strategies to use to save the earth while sustaining a prosperous society.
Instead of Germany putting its precious dollars to waste in the decimation of other citizens, its leaders have learned to invest in their own people. That is HARDLY what is taking place in Amerika, with its "winner" take all system, a system that just had its joints greased by the idiot-decision of the Supreme Court in privileging those with money, to buy yet more legislation in their favor.
It's Ouija, genius. Astrology has nothing to do with that.
Try and discredit every one of these sources, God forbid the same ones who have for centuries tried to murder or muzzle the mystics learn a thing from them! Even when their Mars-rules, earth-bound, uber: materialist, entirely left brain logic got us where we are... even so, aim at those who have a vision higher than what you can imagine! As if Einstein himself did not let it be known that the ONLY way to solve a problem, was to move to a level of reasoning that transcends the one that brought the problem about!
Yogananda
Mary Summer Rain
Edgar Cayce
Ian Stevenson
Carlos Casteneda
Alberto Villoldo
Ruth Montgomery
Sun Bear
Gordon Michael Scallion
The I ching
Numerology
Astrology
Rudolph Steiner
Nigel Ravencroft
Susan Faludi
Buddhist Doctrine
Visions of the Hopi
Visions of South America's Shamans
Louise Hay
The Course in Miracles
Etc.
References to films like: The Seven Beauties, Brazil, Little Murders, My Dinner With Andre, etc. to lend color to the discourse.
References to literature: Shakespeare, Arthur Miller (The Crucible), Shirley Jackson (The Lottery), several Twilight Zone episodes of political relevance to our times, and works by esteemed feminists: Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone, etc.
I also include the wisdom of OUR times, as related through such voices as:
Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine), Jared Diamond (Collapse), David Korten (When Corporations Rule the World), Michael Parenti (Contrary Notions), John Dean (Conservatives Without Conscience), Chris Hedges (American Facists), James W. Douglass (JFK & The Unspeakable), John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man), and others.
What scholarship exactly is it that you bring to this forum?
Instead of compromised politicians making the decisions, let the People decide contentious issues by direct democratic plebiscite.
Petition to The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate and President Barack Obama, which says:
"America does not have a government "by the people"
The United States of America is not, in fact, a true democracy. In a democracy, the people are the government. Today, we elect people to run the government for us. The people we elect do not, for the most part, run the country in the interest of the people; they run it in the interest of themselves. We are led to believe that we must put our trust in these people. We, the People, do not have the power to create laws in our interest. This causes an imbalance of power in the government.
The powerful elites who control our government will self-servingly argue that the People are not qualified or do not know enough to be trusted to make laws. To counter those opposed to empowering the People, one needs only look to the record of the last 100 years in the 24 states where the People make laws by initiative. In those states, the People have legislated responsibly, and many times more so than their elected represen tatives. Civil service, campaign finance reform, and women's right to vote are but a few examples of the progressive legislation initiated by the People.
The experience of Switzerland is even more instructive. Switzerland, a poor, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, hardscrabble country without natural resources decided, 140 years ago, to adopt a constitution that brought the People into the operation of government as lawmakers. Even Alexis de Tocqueville had serious doubts that this Swiss experiment in direct democracy would work. The result is without precedent in human history; Switzerland has evolved into the most successfully governed nation in the world."
Click here to add your name:
http://signon.org/sign/let-the-people-decide?source=c.fwd&r_by=72355
If American workers had continued to organize in increasingly larger numbers instead of buying into the non-existent American dream the GOP would have found a powerful opponent on the battlefield if the classes. I am getting a bit tired of the Jeremiahs
The fatal disease America has is called: “laissez-faire economics”, “free market economics”, “supply-side economics”.
It was re-introduced and institutionalized by that famous knucklehead “Ronnie” Reagan in 1980. (Remember the 1981 Professional Air Traffic Controllers slaughter when Ronnie harked: “They are in violation of the law and if they do not report for work within 48 hours they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_(1968)
That lit the match and the American middle class started its 30-year meltdown.
This shift to the “supply-side” also has a rabid addiction to a lethal economic drug called “deregulation”. And that addiction has led the way to the 2008 global economic crisis and that cancer has not been arrested, yet. (Note: “laissez-faire economics” was underway leading into the 1929 Great Depression that ultimately led to WWII.)
Meanwhile, “… the United States … top 1 percent went from getting 9 percent of total income in the late 1970s to more than 20 percent today.” Looks like some people are happy with “laissez-faire economics”, “free market economics”, “supply-side economics”.
To Siouxrose's list I would add Mutual Aid by Kropotkin. Anything by Charlene Spretnak. She has a great new book out, "Relational Reality" that focuses on real needs as opposed to the wants generated by advertising agencies.
But to Professor Reich...sustainable growth is a red herring, and the basic idea is one of our problems. Brian Czech has done some really interesting work on Steady State economics, there is a wonderful little book titled "Merrie England" by Robert Blachford that decries the effects of capitalism and was printed in 1894, and there is a world of information on Gift Economies. Before anyone has a cow over that, please be reminded that recognizably human beings lived on this planet for 50-60,000 years before either money or capitalism were imagined.
And...I have to laugh whenever someone writes Nanny state, because it seems to me to be a confession that they do not want a strong woman around acting as the adult, and demanding that the kids share the cookies.
"it's time to fight back"
does that also include a time to tell the truth mr. reich? the day you tell the truth about obama will the day you begin to be credible.
until then you come up short....tres petite!
German labor unions have one or two seats on the board directors of many German corporations (if not all) and thus can effect corporate decisions. How about that, a co-operative model between labor and management.
The institutional desire and ability to take advantage of a group of people has been endemic in American history. Against blacks, native peoples, and now the poor. Americans have never followed their laws supporting the rights of people, unless they were the right people. Class (race, socio-economic, nationality, religion) warfare IS American politics today.
Fundamental change is required in American politics. Liberal views can make these changes.
FWIW, a mildly ironic twist:
According to yesteday's article about the "electronic picket line" imposed upon the Huffington Post-- "Labor-Funded Progressive Leaders Cross Huffington Post Picket Line" by Mike Elk*:
"While support for the picket line has been strong, some progressives [sic] leaders who have worked on projects heavily funded by organized labor—such as Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, American Prospect Editor Robert Kuttner, Robert Creamer of Americans United for Change, and bloggers at the labor funded Campaign for America’s Future—have continued to blog at Huffington despite calls from union leaders to not blog there. [...]
Reich has told labor leaders that he believes in Creative Commons copyright usage and provides his articles free of charge to any publications that wants [sic] to run them and would not be willing to participate in the boycott for that reason. However, Reich’s belief in Creative Commons copyright does not extend to his books. Indeed, Reich retains copyrights to his book [sic], whose sales are greatly aided by being purchased in bulk by labor unions."
*http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/14-2
R Reich is a SCAB
he "works" for the Huff Post, which is being "picketed" by writers
Reich talks big, but is only in it to boost his own ego
Reich's analysis can't be right because it implies that the rich and powerful in this country, the ones who control its politics are not always right. If they are not right then how did they become rich and powerful? If giving some power to their inferiors, mere working men and women made this country more prosperous, as Reich alleges is the case in Germany, than this would mean that these elites do not have the best interests of this country at heart. How could this be possible? They are rich. I too will follow their prescriptions and respect their authority, (and not Mr. Reich's) because--need I repeat it--they are rich and I want to be rich like them. This is how Mitt Romney will win the next election--he must be right when he says he can create jobs for people like me because--you guessed it-- he is rich.
"seeking to make the states so-called “open shop” where workers can get all the benefits of being union members without paying union dues."
"Open shop" is good for workers.
That's the deal we have in Australia, and it's a damn good thing. If you force employers to pay everyone the same, then there's no immediate benefit for them in hiring nonunion labour. It's much like how outlawing slavery, or minimum-wage laws, are actually good for everyone. The effect of it is that an employer cannot gain a competitive edge by screwing over their workers.
Beats me what the objection is.
Stronger Labor Unions? You need jobs for that Prof. or did u forget that? Or maybe the Unemployed millions can org. and go on strike? America is rapidly turning into a theater of the absurd.
If only the Republicans are responsible, why did the Democratic president leave in place or appoint Goldman Sachs representatives to all the important financial decision making posts? You were not appointed. Mr. Reich, and you will never be. So you should stop making nice to the current administration. I believe you mean well, but you gotta change yer paradigm, yo.