Obama: "cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor union"
That was Obama statement repealing a number of Bush-era anti-union executive orders and creating a White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families, chaired by VP Joe Biden and no doubt staffed by former-TPMCafer Jared Bernstein.
I'll skip the substance of the exec order actions and emphasize that Obama statement as far more significant. We have not had a President that so forthrightly identified the health of the nation with the health of the labor movement in many decades. I'm sure Clinton and Carter never did and I'd be curious if anyone has quotes from LBJ or JFK said so strongly.
Remembering that much of the upsurge in labor organizing in the 1930s came BEFORE the Wagner Act was allowed to go into effect by the Supreme Court in 1937, in many ways the most significant tools of the labor movement that decade was FDR's statement early on that, President Roosevelt declared publicly, "If I were a worker I would join a union." Union leaders used that statement to rally workers across the country. Whether Obama's statement will have the same galvanizing effect is unclear, but it may help significantly -- and may help undercut the anti-union stance of Congressional opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act and other labor bills pending.
Well you can't have a strong labor union or a strong middle class unless you actually produce something that people want to buy. Not just here in this country, but the rest of the world. American hasn't really done this for decades.
We need to stop exporting jobs and importing everything else.
C
January 30, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
And you need to produce it at competitive prices.
You know, we can't have it all: Free trade, high wages, generous benefits, competitive prices, high demand for our goods, mediocre quality, strong unions, huge bonuses for executives, large bailouts when they get in trouble, low taxes, substantial social safety net.
January 30, 2009 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
The real trickle down economics can begin anew! Surely we all know how we came to have 40 hour weeks, paid vacations, sick leave, holidays, overtime pay, etc? The majority of us did nothing to achieve those benefits, so that was the true trickle down effect. May trickle down economics live forever!!
January 30, 2009 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems like a very long time since we had the occupant of the WH proclaim such outright support for the vast majority of citizens of this country.
President Obama has made a very inclusive statement here. I hope the idea of that inclusion registers with all the republican working class people who voted for McCain. They may not realize it but Obama is the best they could have hoped for.
January 30, 2009 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because unionized businesses like autos and steel have done so much better than nonunion sectors in recent years...
Obama is probably happy to say it to make his constituents in Chicago (and this blog) happy, but he surely realizes that unions haven't declined because of Executive Orders; they've declined due to changes in the way people work and do business.
American workers aren't 50% more productive than foreign workers anymore. More like 5%. That's a lot less productivity to go around when you're competing in world markets that grow ever smaller with advances in communications and transportation technology.
There just isn't a huge surplus of productivity for unions to siphon off anymore.
January 30, 2009 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Steel faced huge challenges from imports, so we could as well blame the lack of tariffs. In fact, I do place the main blame there, since the majority of Americans do not benefit from the export business. The line worker at an American Ford plant does not earn a salary bonus after a good year in the Brazilian market. Skilled workers at US Steel did not receive extra shares in return for sales to Saudi Arabia.
As to productivity, how about this vignette from GM, which grew fat and complacent after owning the market here----the front brake section engineer never communicates with the rear-brake equivalent. (As told to a GE factory manager that is my neighbor.)
When corporations had to hold salaries fixed during WWII they offered health insurance as incentives to lure skilled workers. But they were so slow to see design needs changing it is no surprise they were slow to see they had to get out from under the insurance load. Of course, since they were run by free-market fundamentalists, mostly, they would never have considered lobbying Congress for national health.
I thought those large CEO compensations were earned because of the tremendous responsibility of managing a business. Now I see they amount to a red herring, to distract the world from the real masters of the auto industry, the shlubs wielding a wrench. Who knew?
January 30, 2009 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm fascinated by the latest Republican outcry applied to any attempt by labor or representatives of the middle or below middle classes in general as the apparently onerous rise of "class warfare."
Curbing of CEO etal pay and bonuses is "class warfare." Allowing labor a meaningful seat at the negotiating table is "class warfare..."
I say huzzah, it's about time we had some class warfare.
January 31, 2009 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
And Vice President Biden pointed out in his remarks during the Task Force announcement, "there would be no middle class were there not an organized labor movement that started 150 years ago."
It is instructive to recall that the strategy adopted by organized labor in its founding years to raise living standards was to limit the standard working day to eight-hours. The Sandwichman has posted a Draft Submission to the Task Force on EconoSpeak featuring the argument that it is time to reconsider and rehabilitate the "surprisingly apposite" founding philosophy of the American labor movement. "Sharing the work and sparing the planet" comprehensively addresses the issues of green jobs, labor standards, work and family balance and fairness in the distribution of the benefits of economic growth.
http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2009/01/task-force.html
January 30, 2009 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
T. Wright: Line workers don't benefit from a "good year in the brazilian market", but they benefit from the lower prices for everything they buy that result from foreign competition. In fact, since America tends to import down-market consumer goods, the poor and working class disproportionally benefit. Tariffs are just like unions: they benefit the people who make something specific at the expense of everyone else in the population.
Sandwichman: That's the rallying cry of course, it just doesn't happen to be true. There's been a middle class since well before the labor movement, indeed before the industrial age. The rise of the middle class was one of the major changes that doomed -feudalism-. Certainly urban industrial workers saw their wages rise relative to the general population "during the union movement", although that likely would have happened anyway as a result of the rapidly rising productivity of those workers.
That productivity has now been transferred to the rest of the world, and the ability of foreigners to compete with Americans has made America less "special", and American workers less well compensated. The attempts of persons like Mr. Biden, and union brass themselves, to "roll back the clock" have been a major factor in the failure of the Unite States heavy industrial sector in the past thirty years.
Factory labor isn't what wealthy people do; America is a wealthy country. Wanting to do more of that is silly. We should be looking for new ways to dominate world economics, not trying to recapture 1960 (when we were, in fact, much poorer than we now admit or remember).
January 31, 2009 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
EP---Factory labor may not be what wealthy people do, but it generates wealth for the nation. Switzerland is not only a nation of banks, but of agriculture and precision machining. And they did not become wealthy by banking, but by earning money as mercenaries first.
What nation was wealthier than the US in 1960? In 1960 we were not poorer, we just had less stuff.
As to better pay vs. cheaper clothes, that's such a tired example, because one can choose to defer purchase of new trousers, but without enough money in the first place one can't buy even the cheap jeans.
February 1, 2009 12:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
TW:
You'll get no argument from me on the idea that manufacturing can generate wealth for the nation. And still does. But that isn't an argument for strong unions; quite the opposite. If anything it is an argument for freer immigration policies to drive down labor costs.
I accept your point about 1960; I agree that relatively speaking we weren't poorer. However, in absolute terms we are much better off, and I treat becoming better off as, basically "The Point".
February 2, 2009 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a good point you make there, that workers "benefit from the lower prices for everything they buy that result from foreign competition".
Of course, there's no reason to limit this competition to manufacturing. Increased foreign competition in health care, financial management, engineering, etc has the potential to generate huge savings for expensive services that average Americans consume. This would necessitate loosening immigration standards, and pursuing treaties to set universal standards for these service industries, but it would probably be worth it.
I guess my point is that you're concluding international competition-->better prices for goods-->less benefit for americans in the jobs so they should move to something else. But this will eventually be true for all industries, not just manufacturing. If manufacturing doesn't deserve some thought to how we rebalance American competition with foreign workers, where will we do it?
February 1, 2009 6:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
SCR:
Well, the competition isn't limited to manufacturing! It's just that in certain industries, geographic barriers prevent effective competition (it's hard to outsource flu shots to Mumbai without outsourcing flu sufferers; likewise lawyering is to a large extent a local profession), or the United States still has a serious comparative advantage (Financial Services, Biotechnology).
The reason manufacturing is singled out is that isn't something we're good at relative to the rest of the world.
February 2, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is totally absurd to ignore the many ways in which the corporations have manipulated our trade policies to work in their short-term interests and in opposition to the interests of everyone else.
I have previously written numerous essays addressing the specifics. But the one point I will offer here is the fact that going offshore to gain cheap labor to make consumer goods for sale within the U.S. is unsustainable.
Ultimately, to insist that the American worker must compete with the lowest common denominator in the world market is insulting and, quite frankly, stupid. To set the benefits to be gained from this economy for labor at the "wages" and "benefits" paid to prison labor and/or sweatshop workers is to insist that labor is simply a commodity to be exploited by the ruling class. If you follow that line to its logical conclusion, you should not be surprised when visited by labor unrest of the most violent kind as people begin rightly asking "Hey, what's in it for me?"
We've been there and done that. No need to remake the mistakes simply because Reagan and his "trickle down" followers have repackaged the same old exploitation of workers in a short-sighted attempt to gain more for themselves.
February 1, 2009 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
If our corporations want to export American jobs, they should be honor bound to export our American labor, safety, and environmental standards with them.
Anything less is anti-American, and deplorable.
February 1, 2009 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Absolute agreement. I would in fact take it maybe a step further: If the corporations wants to create production facilities in another country/economy, then that enterprise should contribute to the resident economy to strengthen it.
If you are going to build cars in Mexico, for example, then sell those cars to the Mexicans - don't bring them back into the U.S. for our consumption. In this way, the Mexican workers will necessarily gain wage rates sufficient to purchase the goods they produce, and they are then on the way to creating a sustainable economy instead of being enslaved in a colonial exploitation of labor.
Henry Ford and others made it work for us, and quite famously I might add! Let these corporations become a force for development in the underdeveloped countries rather than a greedy "black hole" that sucks all resources and profits unto itself. Let them shine light rather than absorb it all, leaving nothing but darkness for the rest of us.
February 1, 2009 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
SleepinJeezus,
It's a pleasure to read a comment by someone who actually represents real progressive values, as opposed to the typical children of the Reaganite era indifference that we seem to see more and more here and elsewhere. It doesn't help that the far leftists are tag teaming with the neo-cons. Every time I check TPM's front page, I see space wasted, like today regarding Michael Steele, yet none on the fact that Obama's appointees are revealing that the new admin doesn't reflect any change at all. At Davos, they assure Canada, Mexico, India, China and Europe that NAFTA and MFN status with China will not be changed, there was no intent to do so. The British press is revealing that Obama has agreed to strip Buy American from the stimulus.
Without long term jobs being created, there will be no recovery. The economic policies we see promoted rationalize oppressive, third world status quos, they don't lift anyone, whether here or in poorer countries, out of poverty, they only serve to impose those status quos here. Anyone who allows the administration and dem majority in the congress to get away with this is enabling slavery and oppression.
Instead of the stimulus creating jobs, adequate stimulus funding for the same, the vast majority is going to go for tax cuts, mostly to the same banks and investment companies that have already been bailed out. They get to double dip, up to four years back of taxes. Deliberate loopholes in the stimulus will allow the Spanish company that has been buying up the rights to our interstate highway system will now not have to pay for the modernization/maintenance that was the sole reason we were told that states like NJ, Indiana and elsewhere were selling those contracts to them. The Spanish company will now make clear profit for 75 or more years, without the expenditure they were required to make. Curiously enough, the tax cut provisions also now protects the same Spanish company, and other foreign interests like them, from having to pay any tax on their profits.
Only 17% of the stimulus is directed for infrastructure. The few jobs created (most of the profits will go to contractors, and overseas as Obama will strip out Buy American) will be very short lived. This isn't going to provide any WPA CCC type jobs, where the money will focus on as many jobs as possible. There is nothing to stimulate/incentivize new job creation in American manufacturing, that was stripped out as Pelosi and Reid said the 3 thousand per job tax cut was "discredited". There is no reporting that part of the tax rebates for the working poor and what remains of the middle class is being taken from the social security trust fund, a drain on what is needed for current expenditures for that crucial program. There's something dirty going on here, and it shouldn't be surprising because those who wrote the stimulus bill have questionable loyalties. It will fail, and plunge us into freefall.
Buy American does not violate trade laws, but is based on laws already on the books regarding government funded infrastructure spending, etc.. that have come into disuse because Bush and Clinton (not surprising) refused to enforce the laws. It's laughable to hear China, France, Germany, the UK, India, Latin American countries, Japan and other country crying "protectionism", when each and every one of them act in ways that can definately be called protectionist. Their very actions in this are the height of protectionist arrogance.
The bailout funds pushed through last fall, have been diverted out of the US. AIG (majority Indian owned), Citibank (majority UAE owned), Bank of America (who knows?), Deutsche Bank, Santanyer Central Hispano, and others all took billions, and given the lack of oversight, it was diverted out of the country.
February 1, 2009 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bang on. I don't think that we are obligated to hurt our own interests in favor of foreign ones.
It's beyond laughable, it's tragic.
February 1, 2009 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Man, you sure know how to ruin a good brunch!
And you do so by highlighting just how challenging things are for the working stiffs in today's political realm, wherein the arena is bought and paid for by the corporate rulers in opposition to the "great unwashed" who must work for a living.
For all his exciting rhetoric about labor issues, I have held back on judgment of Obama until determining how he would treat NAFTA, CAFTA, and the rest of the abominable trade policies (most passed under Clinton, fer chrissakes!) So far, as you point out, it ain't looking good.
And as for Congress? I guess I gave up on them some time ago. There is no justification at all for approving most of the tax cuts promoted by the Republican Caucus. All along, I thought I was hearing Brer Rabbit asking these GOP Members to "not throw me into the briarpatch of tax cuts" so they could appease their labor constituency while carrying water for the real players from K Street who pay the bills.
It is depressing to think that perhaps Obama is about as far left as the owners of this government will allow any one leader or party to be. He speaks the language. You know he understands the issues, especially as a former community organizer. He's incredibly gifted with leadership skills and intellect. I believe he's sincere in trying to limit corruption in government. And yet, it appears he will ultimately have to lay prostrate at the altar of the corporate gods if he hopes to have any influence at all on the business of governing in Washington.
And I hope I'm wrong.
If you appreciated the comment, I humbly suggest you might wish to check out the blogs I've previously written. I am all over the map on liberal issues, but labor issues are my particular passion.
Thanks for your comments and your reasoned concerns. Keep the faith!
February 1, 2009 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry for my bad timing, SleepinJeezus. :) I'll be sure to check your blogs here.
I do not believe in the members of congress either, but don't let that stop you from holding their feet to the fire. They need to hear from their constituencies irregardless. Speaking of holding feet to the fire, a former "progressive" hero of mine, David Sirota, published a piece on sfgate.com where he claimed that Pelosi and Reid held Obama's feet to the fire, and forced him to end Bush's tax cuts to the wealthy, and use the funds to fund the stimulus plan for infrastructure. Thing of it is, Obama hasn't ended Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, and he doesn't plan to at present.
I don't know what Sirota's game is, but it was insulting. Pelosi and Reid are profiteers, as are too many other dems in congress.
February 1, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink