This day in history - July 31, 1981: A 42-day Major League Baseball strike ends

By Richard K. Barry

Now that the football lockout is over, I was just thinking about other memorable labor issues, past and present, in professional sports.

In fact, the 1981 baseball strike was the fifth work stoppage in Major League Baseball (MLB) since the 1972 baseball strike. The 1981 strike forced the cancellation of 713 games, which accounted for 38 percent of the MLB schedule.

And who could forget the 1994-95 baseball strike, which was the eighth stoppage in MLB history. This one was a 232-day strike, which lasted from August 12, 1994 to April 2, 1995, and led to the cancellation of between 931 and 948 games, including the entire 1994 postseason and World Series.

I was going to list all strikes and lockouts for MLB, the National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL), but I counted 17 and just don't have the patience. If you're interested, you can find the info here.

And if you follow round ball you know that the NBA is currently in a lockout situation, which is now going into Day 28, and guess what else? The Collective Bargaining Agreements for MLB and the NHL expire on Dec. 11, 2011 and Sept. 15, 2012, respectively.

As I have said elsewhere, I don't begrudge players fighting for better deals, but, as a fan, I hate to see the games get damaged.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

IKEA sucks

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I used to shop there, I admit, back in my grad school days. But at some point you come to realize that it's all crap. And that's hardly the worst of it, at least in Danville, Virginia:

[T]hree years after the massive facility opened here, excitement has waned. Ikea is the target of racial discrimination complaints, a heated union-organizing battle and turnover from disgruntled employees.

Workers complain of eliminated raises, a frenzied pace and mandatory overtime. Several said it's common to find out on Friday evening that they'll have to pull a weekend shift, with disciplinary action for those who can't or don't show up.

Lovely.

On a related note, I saw Made in Dagenham the other night, the true story (with the characters fictionalized for the sake of the movie) of women machinists at Ford's Dagenham plant in England going on strike in 1968 over being reclassified as "unskilled" and being paid significantly less than men. It wasn't just about their appallingly poor treatment at Ford, though, it was about the fight for equal pay generally, and it was a remarkable milestone in the history of labour.

The movie itself is rather trite and formulaic, both plot and characters, but it's really enjoyable, with a fantastic performance by Sally Hawkins as the shy, unassuming heroine who leads her sisters not just against Ford but against the male-dominated union establishment. (I hated Black Swan and Natalie Portman's showy, largely one-note performance. Either the wonderful Hawkins (see Happy-Go-Lucky for more wonder) or Winter's Bone's Jennifer Lawrence should have won the Best Actress Oscar.)

In many ways, we have come a long way since 1968. Equal pay across the board is still an unrealized ideal, but at least there is less discrimination in the workforce, against women or otherwise. But what's going on at IKEA, not to mention at Wal-Mart and other companies big and small, shows that there's still an awfully long way to go.

Some things are still worth fighting for.

Elephant Dung #25: Maine Republicans slam Republican Gov. Paul LePage

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

I wrote last year about "Mainesanity," the takeover of Maine's state GOP by Tea Party wackos. And by that I don't mean your run-of-the-mill small-government Teabaggers, the sort who are extreme but not utterly insane, or not necessarily so, but rather... well, wackos. As Maine Politics explained at the time:

The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.

The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of "collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth," suggests the adoption of "Austrian Economics," declares that "'Freedom of Religion' does not mean 'freedom from religion'" (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that "healthcare is not a right," calls for the abrogation of the "UN Treaty on Rights of the Child" and the "Law Of The Sea Treaty" and declares that we must resist "efforts to create a one world government." 

This was extreme even by Republican standards.

November 2010 witnessed yet more "Mainesanity" with the election of Tea Party Republican Paul LePage as governor. (It was a narrow win. LePage squeaked by an independent candidate and won with just 38 percent of the vote.) He proved to be a pretty nasty character during the campaign and has done nothing since then to indicate that he's anything but a right-wing extremist who rode the Tea Party wave, got lucky with a split vote, and somehow got himself elected in a state where leading state-wide Republicans typically resemble Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, not, well, Paul LePage.

And like certain other Republican governors -- Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio come to mind -- he's made labor unions (and working people generally) one of his primary targets. But that isn't going over all that well in Maine, including among Maine Republicans, some of whom (presumably not the ones who wrote that platform) are pushing back:

Eight Republican state senators have issued a rare public rebuke of Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), writing an op-ed expressing "discomfort and dismay" with some of his recent comments directed at labor backers.

The controversy centers around LePage's recent decision to order a mural depicting the state's workers' history removed from the Department of Labor, arguing that it was biased against businesses and employers. When asked how he would react if protesters carried out their plan to form a human chain around the mural, LePage replied, "I'd laugh at them, the idiots. That's what I would do. Come on! Get over yourselves!"

"But for him to announce that he would 'laugh at the idiots' should they choose to engage in our honored tradition of civil disobedience is another personal attack that only serves to further lower the bar of our public discourse," write the senators in the op-ed, which ran in The Portland Press Herald and the Kennebec Journal. "We may disagree with civil disobedience in this particular instance, but it is a fundamental right each and every one of us might engage in if we found the issue important enough. 

Now...

These are "proud Republicans" who "want Gov. LePage and his administration to succeed." They want to see his right-wing policy agenda (lower taxes, less government, etc.) enacted. And their criticism of LePage isn't directed at his opposition to organized labor but at "the tone and spirit of some of the remarks he has made." What they seek to uphold is civil disobedience, the right to dissent, a political culture of dignity and respect, a spirit of civility. While they claim that they "are not the enemy of labor and labor is certainly not an enemy to [them]," it is clear that the rights of workers, and particularly organized workers who bargain collectively, not only isn't their priority but may actually be antithetical to their pro-business ideology.

So is this really dung at all? These Republicans like LePage. They just want him to tone it down and respect their common opponents.

Fair enough, but this is a case of a prominent Tea Party Republican going too far and members of his own party publicly chastising him. And even if these Republicans aren't necessarily pro-labor, and even if they support much of the Tea Party agenda, their call for greater dignity and respect, including towards labor, is very much a rebuke to the politics of extremism and absolutism that characterizes so much of the right these days. 

It's good to see that at least some Republicans have had enough.

In "defense" of the Koch Brothers

By Carl

What's really interesting about this piece by United Steelworkers President Jon Geenen is how it's being spun by the low-normals of the right wing as a defense of the Koch brothers. It's not. It's a devastating attack on them tempered only by the warning that a boycott against them would shoot union members in the foot.

In Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder's popularity plummets as he attacks labor unions

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In Michigan, Governor (and would-be autocrat) Rick Snyder is deeply unpopular, not least because he has pulled a Scott Walker and attacked labor unions (and working people generally):

Last November, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) won a decisive 18 point victory in his race for the governor's mansion. Yet after less than three months of draconian budget proposals and unconstitutional assaults on collective bargaining, Snyder is hurting. A new poll finds that Snyder would lose his election if it were held today, and that a strong plurality of the state would support amending the state constitution to prevent Snyder from continuing his anti-union agenda:

Snyder's also earned the ire of the voters because of the perception that he's targeting collective bargaining rights. 59% of folks in Michigan think that public employees should have the right to collective bargaining while only 32% are opposed, and 49% of voters even favor a state constitutional amendment to guarantee collective bargaining rights while 37% are opposed to such a measure. While union households are obviously the most supportive of collective bargaining, nonunion households support it by a 53/39 margin as well so the voters Snyder is antagonizing on this issue go beyond who you might expect.

It's hard to see how anti-labor politics would ever go over well in Michigan of all places, but Snyder's clear overreach, against an overwhelming majority of the electorate (an electorate that has a long and distinguished union history and that has suffered some of the worst consequences of the Great Recession), shows just how extremist and out of touch Republicans are these days, both in that state and elsewhere. 

And now the people of Michigan, assaulted by their Republican governor (whom far too many trusted to be not this extreme, evidence of widespread delusion), may go so far as to try to amend the state constitution to safeguard their rights. They should have known better at the ballot box when they voted Republican, but this may be the only way to ensure that right-wing efforts to dismantle democracy, which won't end with Snyder, are blocked for good.

Well, another way is to vote Snyder and his Republican allies out of office at the first opportunity. Let's hope Michigan doesn't repeat its recent electoral errors.

Beware those who don't heed history's lessons: A review of HBO's Triangle: Remembering the Fire

By Edward Copeland

"People forget the Triangle fire at their peril... If people want to know what deregulated industry would look like, look at the bodies on the sidewalk outside the Triangle building."
Leigh Benin, Adelphi University labor historian

With big corporations seeking to gain more and more power by using bought-and-paid-for politicians to strip away regulations and weaken workers' rights, there couldn't be a better time to look back at the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, which killed 146 people 100 years ago March 25 and brought about the reforms and labor movements billionaires and the historically ignorant seek to dismantle today. A well-done and brief primer on the fire and the events leading up to it and its aftermath premieres on HBO tonight. Triangle: Remembering the Fire debuts at 9 p.m. EDT and PDT / 8 p.m. CDT.

For those unfamiliar with the story of the Triangle fire, this 45-minute documentary gives you almost all you need to know about the 100-year-old tragedy and offers lessons needed for today as it seems we risk the rise of a new Gilded Age where tycoons value profits over the safety of their workers and the government at both the state and national level seems to be more-than-willing co-conspirators with its push to deregulate anything and everything. If one wants to look for modern examples of this, they need looks no further than the lack of safety enforcement at various coal mines that have cost many miners their lives, the BP Gulf disaster which killed their own workers and destroyed an ecosystem and the "fracking" techniques used in the search for natural gas that has been linked to poisoned water sources, cancer deaths and possibly even earthquakes, all of which exploration companies were exempted from environmental laws under the Bush Administration. This doesn't even take into account how the blind eye of regulators allowed financial speculators to cause the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and a housing bubble that sparked a foreclosure debacle. Just last week, both parties in Congress, led by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., all still doing the bidding of the big banks, sought to delay the huge fees the banks collect on debit card transactions for another two years, weakening already toothless financial reform legislation. Obama's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner also is rumored to further water down the reform by exempting currency derivatives from transparency requirements in the legislation. Yes, government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations shall not perish from the United States it seems.

In 1911, out of the ashes of the tragedy of the Triangle fire came reforms for workers, first in the state of New York, that laid the groundwork for FDR's New Deal when he became president 22 years later, reforms that politicians backed by rich businessmen seek to dismantle today as we've seen in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio with more on the way.

Tovah Feldshuh narrates Triangle: Remembering the Fire and her calm voice serves perfectly as an invisible teacher. The Triangle Waistshirt Company was one of many businesses associated with the garment industry in the early part of the 20th century in New York. Co-owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris had hit upon a new trend in ladies' fashion: basically, the blouse. For the first time, women were wearing separate tops just as men did. It made them rich and their company occupied the top three floors of one of downtown Manhattan's newest skyscrapers, the 10-story Asch Building at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street. The building, now known as the Brown Building and part of the NYU campus, still stands and has been registered a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark.

With the huge demand for their product, the Triangle company workers tended to be on the job seven days a week for long hours and little pay and the people willing to be exploited this way did so because they had no other choice. They tended to be newly arrived European immigrants who had been fleeing famine and persecution. Not only did they not find the American dream in their work situation, most could only find living arrangements in tenements on the lower eastside. In the case of the garment industry, most of these virtual slaves were women, especially young women, some not even teenagers yet. To get as much production going as possible, the ninth floor of the Asch Building had been stacked to capacity with 300 sewing machines, leaving barely any elbow room for the workers inside. About a year and a half before the Triangle fire in November 1909, The International Ladies Garment Union Workers Union staged a massive strike demanding better working conditions for women. The 20,000 female strikers who took to the streets was unprecedented — and this was taking place more than a decade before women had the right to vote in the United States. It really was the first head-on clash between the tycoons of The Gilded Age and their corrupt political minions ensconced in Tammany Hall and the growing progressive movement. The strikers may have been women, but it didn't prevent Tammany from sending out police and hired thugs to arrest them and get rough. By the time the strike ended, the workers at Triangle returned to their sewing machines without any union recognition.

As we see today when the gap between what company CEOs make and the wages given to their average workers have reached startling disparities, similar differences existed at the time between company owners and the average Americans. For example, Triangle co-owner Max Blanck surrounded himself with servants and spent more than $100,000 to renovate his home, quite a contrast when the average American in 1911 only made $300 to $600 a year. Yet Blanck and other company heads didn't want to spring for the readily available sprinkler systems for new buildings or follow the recommendation of New York Fire Chief Ed Croker who, after a similarly tragic fire at a Newark, N.J., factory a mere four months before the Triangle fire had killed 25 workers, again mostly women, had suggested that buildings routinely practice fire drills. Company owners, always focusing on the bottom line, felt drills would affect work productivity and since no government regulations existed to enforce the sprinklers or the drills, they had no one twisting their arms to do the right thing.

What's so compelling about Triangle: Remembering the Fire is not just recounting all that missteps that led to the tragedy and can anger you a century later even when the event occurred long before you were born, but also the interviews with people related to both survivors and victims of the blaze. The filmmakers interview Suzanne Pred Bass who had two great-aunts who were in the fire, one who survived, one who didn't, presumably because they lost sight of each other in the smoke that quickly enveloped the ninth floor.

The cause of the fire has never been clear, but most believe a still-burning cigarette tossed into a trash can on the eighth floor quickly consumed the three floors. The switchboard operator on eight notified the 10th floor and the fire department immediately but in her haste, forgot to tell the ninth floor. Though the documentary doesn't confirm it as fact or legend, the story goes that of the two fire escapes on the ninth floor, they kept one locked so that when workers left for the day, they could be searched to make certain that they weren't stealing anything. Those who did survive from the ninth did so thanks to the heroics of elevator operator Joseph Zito who kept overloading his vehicle to get as many out as he could until it finally collapsed under the weight of the panicked who leaped down the elevator shaft to escape the flames. Most of the people on 10 were able to flee thanks to people in a neighboring building who got ladders across the space between the two buildings. Even though the fire department arrived two minutes after receiving the call, once they got to the Asch Building, the ladder trucks only reached to the sixth floor. Many of those who died were killed jumping to their deaths. At first, some bystanders thought they were tossing bundles of clothes out the windows to save them until they spotted the legs, arms and faces beneath them. Some hit the pavement so hard they crashed through glass plates on the sidewalk. In all, 146 died, 129 women and girls and 17 men. The blaze consumed all three floors in just 18 minutes from the time the blaze started and that 18 minute mark was when the last body hit the ground. Of the 146 deaths, 90 leaped to escape the flames.

The horror of what happened led Al Smith, a Democrat thick in Tammany Hall politics who would later lose the presidency to Herbert Hoover, to shake off the cronyism and lead the fight for reforms. New York led the way for proper workweeks and pay and, most importantly, safety conditions for its citizens. It even began to set up a pension system for those too old to work any longer, all ideas that Franklin Roosevelt would bring nationwide in the New Deal. The tragedy showed the need for strong unions and for the government to be for the people, not the corporations, and it is frightening to see the backpedaling that is happening today. Blanck and Harris eventually did face criminal charges for the deaths of their workers, but they were acquitted by an all-male jury and since they had lots of insurance, the fire didn't do much damage to them at all. Because many of the bodies were charred so badly, six couldn't be positively identified but in a separate feature, Triangle: The Unidentified, available only on HBO OnDemand, co-producer and historian Michael Hirsch uses research and genealogical techniques unavailable 100 years ago to give names for the first time to those resting in a mass grave in the Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn so now when the names of the dead are ready every year, those unidentified six can now join the other 140.

Triangle: Remembering the Fire premieres tonight at 9 p.m. EDT and PDT / 8 p.m CDT. You owe it to yourself to watch.

Judge blocks Wisconsin's anti-union law... for now

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, we knew there was something quite possibly illegal about how Republicans rammed through their anti-union legislation in Wisconsin, and a judge agrees that, at the very least, there needs to be a full hearing on what happened:

CHICAGO — A judge issued a temporary restraining order on Friday that prevents Wisconsin's new law cutting collective bargaining rights for public workers from taking effect, at least for now.

The decision, issued by Judge Maryann Sumi of the Dane County Circuit Court, temporarily bars Wisconsin's secretary of state from publishing the controversial law, one of the procedural requirements for it to come into effect in the state. Publication had been expected late next week, but Judge Sumi’s ruling delays that until at least March 29, when she plans to hold a full hearing on a lawsuit that questions the validity of the collective bargaining law based on the speedy manner in which it was carried out earlier this month. 

I'm hardly an expert on such matters, but I suspect that the law, or rather the process by which the law came into being (or almost came into being, as it's not a law yet), will be upheld. Republicans certainly engaged in any number of shenanigans, including ripping out the money elements of the bill so that, as a non-budgetary matter, it didn't require the necessary quorum of senators for passage, but I'm just not sure there's enough to reject the legislation altogether.

No, while "[o]pponents of the measure said they hoped the decision was but the first of many that would ultimately undo legislation that has split the state and drawn tens of thousands of demonstrators to the state capital over a matter of many weeks," the place to fight this legislation is not in the courts but in the court of public opinion and then at the polls. And that means not just voting out Gov. Walker and Senate Republicans but, where possible, recalling them even before they're up for re-election.

Don't get me wrong, it may very well be worthwhile to keep fighting this in the courts, I'm just not sure that's where Democrats and other opponents of the legislation are most likely to be successful.

In Madison, the voice of Main Street speaks for America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Conservatives will continue to spread their dishonest nonsense that the "voice" of the Tea Party is the voice of "real" America, but, on Saturday, a newer movement, rising up in response to the right-wing assault on labor in Wisconsin (and on working people everywhere), spoke loud and clear, giving voice to the forces of justice and fairness against the plutocratic Republican effort to keep them down:

Police estimated up to 100,000 people turned out in Madison, WI [on Saturday] to protest Gov. Scott Walker's (R) assault on unions, making it bigger than any protests the city has witnessed, even those during the Vietnam War. The Madison rally is part of a much larger Main Street Movement of average Americans demanding fairness in labor laws, social spending, and taxation that has emerged in Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, Michigan, and elsewhere. But [Saturday]'s rally in Madison is noteworthy because at 85,000-100,000, it was bigger than the biggest tea party protest, the September 12, 2009 rally in Washington, D.C., which turned out only an estimated 60,000-70,000. A photo of the Madison rally [on Saturday]:


For two years, tea party activists and their allies in the GOP have claimed that the hard-right movement represents the true beliefs of the American people. But the crowd in Madison and numerous polls tell a different story.

And, of course, the media establishment -- whether suckered by or sympathetic to conservative objectives -- will continue to hype up the Tea Party into far more than it really is. Yes, to be fair, the protests in Wisconsin have garnered a great deal of attention, but we know what narrative the media will push.

All the more reason why the Main Street Movement must not let up. It must demand to be heard -- and must demand real change the American people, and not just Tea Party fanatics, can believe in.

Remember that slogan, Mr. President? It used to mean something. Maybe 100,000 people in Madison, along with the voices of the middle class, not to mention the poor, who are usually dismissed entirely, throughout the country, will make it mean something again.

The good from Wisconsin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Republican assault on Wisconsin's public-sector unions is by no means a good thing, but there is actually some very positive news to report:

First, Republicans may very well have committed political suicide.

Second, the public is strongly behind the unions (and organized labor generally), and supportive of the right to bargain collectively, and against Gov. Walker and the Republicans.

Third, with a recall effort underway, a new poll shows solid majorities of voters against two Republican state senators, and the results of the poll, conducted before last night's vote, may actually understate the opposition.

Fourth, liberal-progressive groups are reporting huge fundraising boosts, particularly since last night's vote.

Fifth, according to Politico, "AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is anointing [Gov. Walker] the 'Mobilizer of the Year' for galvanizing union members and supporters into action," a development that bodes well for the elections next year, both for Obama and for Democrats across the country, including in labor-heavy rust belt states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, West Virginia, and, of course, Wisconsin.

Sixth, Republicans may have broken the law in passing the bill, meaning legal challenges and more trouble for those troubled Republicans.

Remember what I said about political suicide?

Why we need labor unions

By R.K. Barry

I have supported labour unions for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a union household. My father was a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. I put myself through school in the late '70s and early '80s by working in unionized grocery store chains as a member of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

I remember at the time having discussions with people who didn't like unions. They either didn't think they were necessary or didn't think they were a positive force in the country. I could never understand this kind of logic, especially as it frequently came from working-class people.

Generally, I assumed that they didn't understand the history of the labour movement and how they benefitted even if they were not themselves a member of a union, how working conditions and compensation improved for everyone because of unions and how easy it would be for gains to be lost.

The bottom line for me has always been that unions are about respect for the employee, the ability to negotiate fair compensation certainly, but also a modicum of protection should relations with an employer sour for whatever reason. And to be clear, a problem could be, for example, the fact that you've been around too long and make too much money and they want to replace you with someone younger and cheaper.

Anyone who has ever had a job knows that things can go awry with one's supervisor or the organization with which one is employed. It's human nature in general terms, but it's also human nature in a highly competitive market economy. If you have ever worked in a union shop and a conflict arises with management -- and conflicts always arise -- you know that there are mechanisms to deal with the problem and that you have some protection from summary dismissal or other kinds of action contrary to your interests.

What I recall vividly about working in a unionized shop is that the workers feel better about themselves, have more self-respect and pride because they know that they are backed by a collective agreement that puts in place mechanisms to mediate problems and negotiate on their behalf.

It's not even that I think employers necessarily want to be bastards, but that our economic system is based on competition. The exigencies of competition can mean that employees are chewed up if they stand alone. Too many things can go wrong in a workplace for an employee -- too many things that are patently unfair -- to fail to see the need for collective bargaining.

It's been that simple for me for a long time. That the employer may not see it that way is pretty clear. But so what? Fair is fair, and if the only way to guarantee a degree of justice on the job is to level the playing field somewhat, what could be more American?

So it is not surprising to me that a strong majority of Americans, according to a recent poll, oppose depriving public sector employees of collective bargaining rights. Specifically, a New York Times/CBS poll indicated that 60 percent of Americans oppose taking away even "some" of public employees' collective bargaining rights.

Anyone who has ever had a job understands that securing a decent living frequently requires having the political and economic power to fight for your rights. Perhaps people are developing a new understanding, especially in lean economic times where fairness is one of the first things to go, that we hang together or we hang separately (metaphorically speaking).

James Gray Pope, who teaches constitutional and labor law at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, recently wrote: 

The idea that anybody who works hard should enjoy the American Dream harks back to the 1950s and 1960s, when unions were strong enough not only to win decent wages and benefits for their own members (who made up more than 30 percent of the private workforce, as opposed to 7 percent today), but also to induce many non-union employers to pay similar wages to avoid unionization. 

Those were the days of what economists call "The Great Convergence," when the incomes of rich and poor were relatively close, and all Americans shared to some extent in our country’s prosperity. 

As we know, those days ended and union membership declined precipitously, as did the gap between the very rich and the rest of us. As Professor Pope puts it: 

Unfortunately for American workers, corporate employers launched a relentless campaign against unions and union standards. In 1981, when President Ronald Reagan fired hundreds of air traffic controllers for refusing to accept his terms and going on strike, employers took it as a green light to break unions. They discovered that they could instill fear and discourage organizing by firing workers for joining unions and threatening to close facilities if workers voted union. 

Public-sector unions are one of the last strongholds of the union movement in America so, clearly, we should not be surprised that conservatives everywhere, who seem hell-bent on doing the bidding of corporate power, either want to weaken them dramatically or destroy them outright. 

Our economic system, for better or worse, is a competitive system. At the end of the day, it's better for the system taken as a whole if both management and labour have enough power to make the relationship fair. 

As I have written elsewhere, the concentration of wealth and power in America is now such that it should be inconceivable that we would want to dismantle one of the few oppositional forces that has in our history been able to provide a counterweight to that wealth and power. 

It seems that a lot more Americans are now understanding this. Perhaps when this current skirmish is over, we will have Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to thank for helping more people understand. 

The high numbers in support of collective bargaining for public-sector unions suggests to me that a lot of people understand that confronting the power of an employer as an individual is difficult at best and usually impossible. 

Sure, a lot of people may look at public-sector contracts and resent the fact that they themselves are not in such a strong position and side with conservatives. It seems that a lot more of us look at those public-sector contracts and ask why more of us can't have access to greater security in our working life and a better standard of living.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Will Republicans actually listen to the American people and scrap their right-wing agenda?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

John Boehner, Sunday, February 13: "[I]t's not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people."

The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, March 2:

Less than a quarter of Americans support making significant cuts to Social Security or Medicare to tackle the country's mounting deficit, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll...

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, March 2:

Americans strongly oppose efforts to strip unionized government workers of their rights to collectively bargain, even as they want public employees to contribute more money to their retirement and health-care benefits, the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows.

Eliminating collective bargaining rights for public-sector workers over health care, pensions or other benefits would be either "mostly unacceptable" or "totally unacceptable," 62% of those surveyed said. Only 33% support such limits.

It's not my job to tell you what to make of these two polls, nor what to make of Republican efforts to cut entitlement programs and eliminate collective bargaining rights, nor what to make of the Republicans' claim that, coming out of the 2010 midterm elections, they have a mandate to implement their right-wing agenda.

You can draw your own conclusions.

I'm just sayin'.

Union-busting and the Koch brothers' plans for our future

By R.K. Barry

As we consider attempts by Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin to bust public sector unions, not to mention New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's constant rants against these unions in his own state, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that there is a plan afoot – a concerted effort by Republican politicians to do something that they always wanted to do but may not have previously seen a clear path to accomplish.

And, although former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been widely credited with saying that one should never let a good crisis go to waste, it seems his best students have been Republican governors.

Yes, the economy went to rat shit because of the malfeasance of Wall Street types, leaving everyone feeling vulnerable to personal economic collapse, which, in turn, has given Republican politicians the excuse they have longed for to get rid of public sector unions.

It's pretty simple. Point to people who have bargained their salaries and working conditions in good faith, have come to agreement with their employers as part of a legitimate negotiating process, and make them a target for others who are in precarious employment situations, or perhaps unemployed.

Feed on the worst aspects of human nature, which is to say that if some people are not doing well, others, with whom they may generally occupy the same economic class, should not be doing well either. Make it sound like everyone in a public sector union is driving a luxury car and vacationing in the Riviera. Divide working people so they cannot be a threat to the power of wealth and privilege in American. Make then forget who got us into this mess in the first place and stop them from asking annoying questions. Brilliant.

What is not being talked about enough, I believe, is that the assault on public sector unions is an assault on the idea that government is an effective force for good in our society. But, in this case, it's a two-for-one sale. Attacking public sector unions is an attack on the idea of an expanded role of government but also on the idea of unions: two forces that have always been a major impediment to massive private wealth in the United States doing whatever it chooses to do (while admittedly playing that role imperfectly).

Two things that wealth and privilege hate in America: government regulating their activities and working people having their own independent base of power. Take away collective bargaining for public sector unions and you clear the way for making government smaller and destroy yet another potential oppositional force. 

The rhetoric of someone like Governor Christie is priceless. In his world, gold-plated public sector contracts are paid for by working people who don't happen to be on the gravy train. This creates the potential of working people at each other’s throats with the goal of reducing the size of government and its ability to regulate the economy while destroying unions all at the same time. Who would have thought that an economic crisis could be so useful for the power elite?

How any working people can believe that smaller government and fewer effective unions will mean that they will have more freedom and autonomy to do the things they want to do is beyond me.

Whether one wants to go back and look at John Kenneth Gailbraith's theory of countervailing power or some variant of Robert Dahl's theory of pluralism, whatever else their defects, it's pretty obvious that there is real and concentrated economic power in America and those who hope to have real freedom and autonomy had better consider how they will come together, and organize, to challenge that power. Government at times can be helpful, unions as well, as can many different kinds of social movements.

Working people who fail to organize in their own interests or fail to support others who do will wonder how it is that their piece of the pie got so small.

Reduce the size and effectiveness of government, destroy the right of people to bargain collectively, to organize politically, and you will have ceded the entire playing field to the same Wall Street hacks and their cheerleaders in the Republican Party who have grown pretty comfortable with the growing inequalities of wealth in America.

The genius of the right is that they have always been able to find ways to get working people to fight amongst themselves.

Tea Partiers may think that reducing the size of government and the power of public sector unions will lead to a utopia where everyone, even the least among us, is free to realize his or her own version of the American Dream.

The Koch brothers sincerely thank you for being so naive.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Republicans, organized labor, and political suicide

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Go ahead, Republicans, in Ohio and elsewhere, keep on attacking public-sector unions and proposing/passing legislation to weaken collective bargaining and workers' rights generally.

We'll win.

Especially when your anti-union efforts go after police officers and firefighters. They're organized, too, you know.

Bring. It. On.

Are Wisconsin Republicans conspiring to kidnap?

Guest post by Publius 

Publius has lived in and spent most of his life thinking about Washington, D.C. He is an attorney, an avid sports fan, and the editor of The Fourth Branch.

(Ed. note: This is Publius's third guest post for us. You can find his first, on George Will and "engaged justices," here, and his second, on conservative support for nullification, here. -- MJWS)

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(Ed. note 2: Pro-union rallies were held around the country yesterday in a wonderful and much-needed show of support for Wisconsin's public-sector unions. We all need to stick together on this to counter not just what Gov. Walker and legislative Republicans are trying to do in Wisconsin but the broader threat to unions, and labour generally, both in that state and elsewhere, with conservatives seeking to undo the right to collective bargaining and more generally to hand more and more power back to the corporate overlords who run the Republican Party and who are so dominant within American conservatism. -- MJWS)

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By now, most everyone is familiar with the high political drama in the State of Wisconsin, where Democrats and labor continue to fend off attacks by Republicans to severely reduce the ability of workers to collectively bargain.

Only one parliamentary hurdle stands in the way of a Republican victory on collective bargaining: the Senate quorum requirement. Republicans need 3/5 of all state senators to be present during a legislative day to establish a quorum. There are currently 19 Republican senators and 14 Democratic senators, meaning they are one person shy of establishing a quorum to pass the bill reducing collective bargaining rights.

Under Rule 84 of the Wisconsin Senate rules:

The chief clerk shall immediately call the roll of the members, and note the absentees, whose names shall be read, and entered upon the journal in such manner as to show who are absent with leave and who are absent without leave. The chief clerk shall furnish the sergeant at arms with a list of those who are absent without leave, and the sergeant at arms shall forthwith proceed to find and bring in such absentees.

To avoid the strong arm of the sergeant at arms, Democrats fled from the State Capitol. Not to be deterred, the State Senate majority leader then sent the state police to the homes of the Wisconsin Democratic senators with instructions to compel such individuals to return to the Capitol. The police failed to locate a single Democratic senator, as all had reportedly left the state by the time the police arrived.

The Wisconsin Constitution expressly permits the Houses of Congress to pass rules to compel attendance by absentee legislators. Accordingly, the Wisconsin Senate rules do grant power to the sergeant at arms to compel Senate attendance of wayward senators. No other person or group, including the state police, has authority under the Senate rules to compel attendance.

The jurisdiction of the sergeant at arms is debatable. There is a strong argument that his power is limited to the confines of the Capitol grounds. Outside of the Capitol grounds, the sergeant at arms may be powerless to compel any action.

The debate is moot, however, because Senate Republicans did not use Capitol police under the direction of the sergeant at arms to compel attendance. Instead, they attempted to use the Wisconsin State Police. Unfortunately for Senate Republicans, there is no law or rule which would permit the state police to compel a Democratic senator to return to the Capitol Building. Actually, the analysis is even more concrete: The Wisconsin Constitution prohibits the arrest of any member of the Wisconsin Senate while the legislature is in session. As provided in Article 12, Section 15: 

Members of the legislature shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest; nor shall they be subject to any civil process, during the session of the legislature, nor for fifteen days next before the commencement and after the termination of each session.

The Democratic senators are not committing treason, a felony, or a breach of the peace by avoiding the Senate. There may be political ramifications (including a recall election, for example), but that's a far cry from asserting criminal ramifications.

Without the power to compel Democratic senators to return to the Capitol, the state police could find themselves in violation of Wisconsin criminal laws -- possibly including kidnapping. Under Section 940.31 of the Wisconsin Criminal Code, kidnapping occurs when a person:

By force or threat of imminent force carries another from one place to another without his or her consent and with intent to cause him or her to be... held to service against his or her will.

Each of those elements would seem satisfied if the state police were to force a Democratic senator to return to the Capitol to participate in a quorum call (i.e., service against his or her will).

If not kidnapping, perhaps false imprisonment, which is defined in Section 940.30, as an act which occurs when a person "intentionally confines or restrains another without the person's consent and with knowledge that he or she has no lawful authority to do so..."

Of course, if the police were to be found guilty of a crime, the State Senate Republicans would by extension be guilty of conspiracy in connection with that crime (see, e.g., Sections 939.05 and 939.31).

No, I don't expect any actual criminal charges to be filed, nor do I expect that a state police officer would actually arrest and transport a Democrat to the Capitol even if he found a Democratic Senator within Wisconsin (though I didn't expect the police to go looking, either).

That said, it's fairly ironic that the Democrats are often being cast as lawbreakers in this drama and are being forced to take political refuge in a neighboring state. People may disagree with what Democrats are doing. Some may even consider the Democrats' actions to be cowardly, petty, childish, abusive, dilatory, or, alternatively, brave, valiant, significant, dutiful, or a host of other adjectives. But unquestionably their acts are lawful -- and Republican efforts to compel Senate attendance by using the Wisconsin State Police are not.

(Cross-posted at The Fourth Branch.)

Fox hates the facts

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The right-wing anti-union thugs in Wisconsin are losing, with public opinion solidly against Gov. Scott Walker's efforts, but that isn't stopping Fox News from pressing its ideological case with reckless abandon -- indeed, it's only encouraging the network of Beck and Hannity and O'Reilly to distort the facts in a way that makes "fair and balanced" even more of a bullshit slogan. Actually, this isn't just distortion, it's out-and-out disregard, turning the facts on their head so as to advance the network's cause:

[On Tuesday], USA Today and Gallup released a new poll that found that a whopping 61 percent of Americans oppose efforts like those of Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) to strip public sector unions of collective bargaining rights. The poll also found that only a third of Americans support such a policy, indicating that Walker is pandering to the far-right of the American electorate and is hardly representative of mainstream political thought in this country.

This morning, during a debate about the situation in Wisconsin and collective bargaining rights in general, the Fox News show Fox & Friends referenced the USA Today/Gallup poll. With incredible brazenness, the Fox hosts actually reversed the results of the poll in order to claim that two-thirds of Americans supported Wisconsin-style laws rather than opposed them.

A simple mistake, one that anyone could make? More like wishful thinking, but certainly much worse than that, because what we have here is Fox making a "mistake" that oh-so-conveniently backs up its partisan, ideological agenda. It may not have been the dimwitted hosts of that dimwitted show, but it was someone there, and it makes you wonder just how things work at this unabashed organ of Republican propaganda.

As Colbert noted last night, Brian Kilmeade, one of the dimwitted hosts, corrected himself, which was the responsible thing to do, but the damage had been done, embarrassment was at hand, and Fox News had proven once again that its priorities lie not with reporting the facts, or reporting and commenting on the news in any genuinely fair and balanced way, but in lying to advance its own political agenda.

The Daddy State

By Carl 

The latest news out of Wisconsin is pretty good for progressives and unions, although it could certainly reverse at any point.

Governor Scott Walker's attempt to bully unions and public sector workers into falling on the sword of fiscal responsibility for the mishaps of the rich and powerful has drawn some very intense scrutiny and to be frank, Gov. Walker has done a pretty horrendous job of justifying things. To claim that government sector pensions are out of proportion to the budget, then to exempt the largest pensions in the basket (the police and firefighter unions, many of whom can collect after only 20 years on the job... imagine retiring at full benefits at the age of 41), is one of the single most transparently ludicrous claims ever made by a public official.

See? The Teabaggers are just like any other politicians, only stupider and louder! This is good news for America. 

George Lakoff has it about right when he says, "Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life."

Fascinating article, and I suggest you read it. Go on. I'll wait.

*Examining nails. Making fresh pot of coffee. Whistling "Wind Beneath My--*

Oh? You're back? Good. Let me go on...

The slow erosion, which is happening faster and faster as it gathers momentum, of what President Obama has called an ethic of excellence has been the underlying goal of Republicans since at least the days of Lee Atwater (who later renounced his assault on liberals and the liberal principles that created the greatest nation on earth) and likely since Ronald Reagan's inauguration as I highlighted yesterday.

Lakoff's suggestion that the conservative national image, of a patriarchy, is pretty valid and obviously wrong-headed, as any parent of any teen or anyone who studies the newspaper on a regular basis can tell you. You cannot change behaviour by diktat. You can enforce laws, true, but that's not a change in behaviour and if any behaviour does get changed, it's the behaviour that allowed the person to get caught in the first place (i.e. being too trusting of friends who rat one out).

Issue an edict (e.g., "You cannot smoke in here") and someone will start to probe it for loopholes if they want to smoke in there. Maybe they'll do it after hours, or use a can of Lysol to cover the scent. If they get caught, they'll just find other, more subtle ways to justify continuing the behavior you find offensive.

In other words, the claim that by some miracle, personal responsibility is enforceable is childish and fantastical. It simply will not happen. If we could trust people to act in the best interests of themselves while somehow not harming their neighbors flies in the face of millions of years of theft, greed, jealousy, anger, rage, fear, aggression, and passion.

All of which lie at the very heart of humanity. The evidence is inescapable: conservatives who believe this tripe have no business running a kindergarten class, much less a state or a nation. The very act of having to hide their original intent, to destroy the progressive "nanny state" by masking it with budget deficits and subsequent cuts... the Norquist Model, let's call it... ALONE speaks to the childishness and naivete of the whole venture.

As Governor Walker is, at great pain, finding out.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

In union, there is strength

By Carl 

I don't think I have to tell you where I stand on the issues unraveling in Wisconsin.

I am a union man. My father was union, blue-collar, working class. I'm union, in fact, three unions. "You don't get me, I'm part of the union," as the song goes.

There's a logic here that goes beyond greed (I'll get back to that in a minute). In early American history, companies were small. Certainly, none were of the size of the conglomeratic multinational corporations that control this nation today.

In early American history, it was likely that a line worker in a factory knew his boss. He may even have socialized with him on occasion, in church or some community function. Owners were in touch with their workers. They saw first hand the abject poverty many of them lived in. Many, if not most, acted appropriately.

Some did not, of course, else how would Dickens have made a career, British or not?

As corporations agglomerated and grew disproportionately to their communities, there really was nothing to stand in their way. The "company store" of song was very real: a corporation would hire entire towns, situate them in the company's thralls, pay them next to nothing, provide next to zero benefits, and then overcharge them for buying food.

Enter unions. As unions gathered strength in numbers, they were able to force companies to deal with the plight of their workers. In union, in unity, came strength. If the union advised its members to strike, they did. Usually, they'd win concessions that genuinely improved the lot, not just of their members, but of workers across the land.

You see, when you're the 800 lb gorilla in the room, people notice what you're up to. And when the 800 lb gorilla has to share more bananas to the troops of chimps who gather those bananas, other smaller gorillas realize they'll have to pony up or lose workers and therefore efficiencies and revenues.

Even if those gorillas aren't unionized.

A curious event happened in the 1980s, one that was a long time coming, but still surprising.

PATCO, the air traffic controllers union, went out on strike.

They struck the single biggest silverback in the world: the U.S. government. Of course, they broke a law doing it (most unions give up the right to strike with regards to public service employees.)

Ironically, they did this because they felt they would have the support of the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, a) whom they endorsed and b) who was himself a former union president (the Screen Actors Guild).

Not so lucky: he promptly decertified them, effectively disbanding the union and firing the strikers.

That was the death knell for unions in America. Nevermind that our manufacturing base had been eroding steadily if slowly (and was about to accelerate rapidly ni the wake of the mergers and acquisition bubble of the 80s). Never mind that unions themselves had become pockets of corruption in many cases, greedy criminals running them, like Jimmy Hoffa.

The ill-advised PATCO strike probably was the single body blow that brought unions to their knees. If the government could fire them, then anyone would give it a try. And they did. And they succeeded, if only by filing bankruptcy (which is where the merger craze comes in) and dissolving the collective bargaining agreements as contracts null and void in the bankruptcy. Workers became mere creditors of the company, in effect.

But today, this week, this month, this year, we're starting to see the backlash of unions and union-minded people. The budget cuts that municipalities and states have been placing in effect has caused workers to shout "Basta!" and take to the streets. In Wisconsin, even the unions exempt from Governor Walker's edicts have stood shoulder to shoulder with their union peers.

In union comes strength. The firefighters remember the words of Pastor Reinhold Niebuhr: "Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love." 

Or to put it more prosaic terms, if they can screw with you, they can screw with me, so I stand with you now. 

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)