It ain't easy. No use jokin'. Everything's broken."
-Bob Dylan
We can't go back to the old economy. That economy -- marked by booms and busts, Gilded Age inequality, declining wages, growing household debts, and unsustainable trade deficits -- didn't work very well for most Americans. President Obama is faced with the difficult task of creating the structure for the new economy even as he works to lift us out of the collapse of the old.
That's why his stunning budget calls for health care reform, ending our addiction to oil and investing in education as both a way out of the mess and a down payment on the future. His pace is as unrelenting as the crisis. Next up: reviving America's middle class, insuring that once growth returns, its blessings are widely shared. And the centerpiece of that is the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
EFCA helps revive the right of workers to organize in this country. Over the last decades, that basic right has been shredded, as companies waged open warfare on union organizing, and administrations often failed to enforce the laws protecting that right. The tactics were bare knuckle: fire the organizers; hold closed door meetings to threaten the workers. And if workers did vote for a union, one-third of employers simply refused to negotiate a contract with them.
The campaigns have been brutally successful. Today, over a majority of workers say that they would join a union if given a choice, but only about 7.5% of the private workforce is organized.
EFCA gives workers the right to choose a union, either in a closed election or with a majority signing pledge cards. It forces employers to negotiate in good faith, requiring arbitration if no agreement is reached. It stiffens penalties on employers for violating workers' rights.
But EFCA isn't just about worker rights. It's about whether we can return to an economy with a broad middle class. When unions represented 30% of the private economy, they won family wages, health care, pensions, paid vacations -- the basics of middle class existence. Rising union wages and benefits helped lift the wages of non-union workers as well. America has never done much redistribution through taxes. We built a middle class because workers were able to win a decent share of the profits and productivity that they helped to generate. Unions were central to that.
Naturally, as the unions have lost ground, so has America's middle class. Over the eight years of the Bush recovery, we witnessed the extreme: an economy in which profits were up, CEO salaries soared, productivity was up, but workers lost ground. As a recent EPI statement notes, the median working household lost $2000 in annual income over that period. That reality contributed directly to the inequality, speculation, and household indebtedness that provided the kindling for the economic conflagration we now experience.
That's why Obama was an early sponsor of EFCA as a Senator. Earlier this month, he noted that he saw unions as part of the solution, not part of the problem.
"We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests, because we know that you cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement. .."The American economy is not and has never been a zero-sum game. "When workers are prospering, they buy products that make businesses prosper. "We can be competitive and lean and mean and still create a situation where workers are thriving in this country.'
In her first appearance as Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, the daughter of union workers, journeyed to Miami on Monday to speak at a union rally on the eve of the AFL-CIO Executive Council meetings and to listen to workers telling their stories. Hector Capoda, an AT&T worker and member of the Communications Workers of America, told how he'd been part of organizing a union with majority sign-up. His father, he said, had never had a union, never earned more than $13 an hour and didn't have health care. But as he grew older and weaker, the family could survive because his brother, "a policeman and union," his sister, "a nurse and union," and he had the resources to keep the family together. Clearly moved, Solis confirmed that the president's support for EFCA, and pledged to enforce the law, announcing that "there is a new sheriff in town."
EFCA will be introduced into the House in the next couple weeks, where passage is guaranteed. The real donnybrook will be in the Senate where it has strong majority support but must overcome efforts by a conservative minority to block the vote with a filibuster. The Chamber of Commerce and various business lobbies have threatened to spend $200 million or more to stop EFCA, which Home Depot's founder, Bernie Marcus, charges will lead to "the demise of civilization." Unions are gearing up a major grassroots effort to pass the bill.
But this isn't just a union fight. As the president suggests, this is a central fight for an economy that works. If workers are paid decently, families needn't take on massive debts to educate their children or afford their home. Social Security remains secure if workers once more capture a fair share of the profits they produce. CEOs and speculators have a more difficult time cooking the books if they must negotiate with strong unions. To build an economy that works, strong unions aren't the only answer, but they are central part of the answer.
The campaign on EFCA will be fierce. Gaining 60 votes won't be easy. The business community will go all out, claiming that strong unions will ruin America, trample workers' freedoms, drive jobs abroad. But we've tried an economy with weak unions -- and that didn't work out so well.
Obama is right to tee this up early even as he struggles to get the economy moving, to get the financial system reorganized, to move on health care and new energy. This is a fight that citizens across the country should join. It will be a critical building block of the new economy that we must construct from the ashes of the old.
Don't forget in the Education Reform Movement, the primary rallying cry is deunionize and rid the world of the older teacher who has a salary 3 times the younger and more modernly educated and who will be more successful because of their new and politically correct educational backgrounds.
But, then again don't forget the many numbers of teachers actively recruited from foreign states who had no educational background except for a desire to make money and a second and desirable language.
Unionize some places but get rid of the unions where we don't want them!
Just had a shock and awe commercial on --- Junk to Go
at huge discounts Furniture from ASIA
Bus / Cheney gave huge breaks to Co's that shipped jobs over seas. Bush & CO has ' bleeped' the country every which way ! I'm giving Obama a chance to do right by the people !
The carbon taxes that we will all pay in our utility bills, as well as the increased cost of goods and services is a way of taxing everyone, while out of the other side of his mouth he gives a little rebate so he can say he cut taxes.
The poor sheep don't get it! There are still people posting here who are fine with his plan because they think it won't affect them Only the "rich".
They have surprises coming!
It's imperative that Obama ignore their rantings & smears. The GOP agenda is : Getting power and control back- any way they can.
Their is a problem and it is not union or union worker. It's greed. It's happening with union leaders, wall street, CEO's, average Americans, and politicians. The need to receive is out weighing the ability to give.
Borosage - Turf wars are the wrong fight at the wrong time -- this will not help revitalize the economy , will not create new jobs, and will not build a healthy middle class. Unions in their current form are just as extinct as many of the industries they supplied. So which is the priority - EFCA or UPSE?
Right now in this economic crisis which is more important - the right to form a union or creating new paying jobs? Ask someone looking for work that question. Should people to have the right to form a union? Absolutely, but now is not the time to wage this battle. Anyting that takes political capital and effort away from fixing the economy by creating jobs is misdirection and a terrible mistake of focus and effort.
The only union with growing numbers is going to be the Union of People Seeking Employment! The only way to avoid UPSE is to modify the tax code to focus on creating jobs. Want to create 5 million jobs and get $1 Trillion into the economy with a budget neutral plan that does not requre $1.00 of direct government funding? Then, build a new economy, don't try to reconstruct a failed one.
Truly want to build a strong, expanding, and virbrant middle class? Then, Go to:
http://www.theprosperitymandate.org
Stop borrowing money and only spend what you have earned! Do this and your personal economy will not be in "crisis." This whole "crisis" is a self-fulfilling lie, perpetrated on the majority of people who don't understand simple math. If a person can't run their own financial house, why should they be placed in charge of the country's? You have elected a government that has, in less than 60 days, spent/borrowed over 1.5 TRILLION dollars!! It's laughable that you all can point your finger at the evil corporate CEO's for their shenanigans, but can't see that your own recently elected government is raping & pillaging you financially every day!
Unions won't save you. Common sense at the individual level is the only thing that will.
You're absolutely right, people should live within their means and not go so crazy after things that they destory themselves. That's why we need a new economy--one that isn't built on an unsustainable drive to grow and consume at all costs.
But this GOVT financial crisis we now have began with REagan's policies of deregulation of banks, Wall St and so much more. SO that made it possible for fat cat bankers and Wall St to do as they pleased, and they did. Bush kept the 'party 'going- adding huge tax cuts to huge CO's even big oil ! REagan passed the biggest tax cut in our lfietime to the top 2-3 % GET THIS- he lowered the top tax rate FROM 80 % DOWN TO 30 %. There's your
' redistribution of wealth ! Then W decided to give them ANOTHER HUGE CUT - this while fighting 2 wars ! No one with 1/2 a BRAIN DOES THAT. Now the GOP is ' worried ' about spending ! Big Phonies. Obama has been forced to spend this money to try and save us from a depression. the GOP made. .lets give him that chance.
As a union member, I should set the record straight in other areas as well.UTLA is not merely concerend with teachers' salaries either -UTLA sponsors teachers' seminars. They support workers' rights and universal health care. They also combat wasteful spending.
In addition, when we get our history straight, we'll understand that Ronald Reagan did NOT cause the fall of the Evil Empire. It was labor unions. I have visited Poznan and Budapest where the first worker rebellions against Communism took place. I also went to Gdansk, and visited the former Lenin Ship yards, where Solidarity was born. There I struck up a conversation with an old man. Communicating in a mixture of bootleg Polish and German, he pointed out where he and his fellow workers stood, facing the Red Army. His voice trembled as he told me that in that confrontation many of his fellow workers were killed. Workers like this old man risked their lives to get independent labor unions, and Ronald Reagan had no right to take credit for what working class people fought and died for - Independent democratically-elected unions paving the way for democratically elected governments.
We need to understand that labor unions are a way to restore the Middle Class but a way establish democracy through out the world.
We should go back to identifying the classes as Working Class, Middle Class(small business owner, store owner and professionals) and Capitalists.