Biden Joins Strikers - Now Should Attack Corporate Power

The following post is by Robert Reich:

Dear Mr. President:

Kudos for joining the UAW picket line tomorrow. You’re the first president to ever join a picket line. 

But please don’t stop there.

 

Go on to criticize the CEOs of America’s big corporations who are now raking in more than 350 times what the average American worker is earning (in the 1950s, they took in 20 times). 

Blast corporations that are monopolizing their industries. 

Condemn firms that are using their profits to buy back shares of stock, polluting the planet with carbon emissions and polluting our democracy with big money.

You won’t be the first Democratic president to do this.

On the eve of the 1936 election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned America that business and financial monopolies and war profiteers considered the U.S. government

“as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. … Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

America is again in a populist age, when a vast army of Americans have been shafted by big corporations, Wall Street, and the monied interests.

The biggest change over the last three decades — the change lurking behind the insecurities and resentments of the working middle class — has nothing to do with identity politics, “woke”ism, immigration, critical race theory, transgender kids, or any other current Republican bogeymen.

It has directly to do with a huge upward shift in the distribution of income and wealth.

Although total wealth is much greater now than it was four decades ago, the distribution of that wealth is far more unequal. The bottom 50 percent hasn’t budged. Wealth at the top has exploded.

Meanwhile, a declining share of the nation’s wealth has been going to workers, and an exponentially rising share to CEOs and big investors.

This change didn’t happen because of so-called “neutral market forces.” It happened because of policy decisions made over the last four decades. For example: 

To open the American economy wide to imports from China. To deregulate Wall Street and allow it to make bets with other people’s money.

To dramatically cut taxes on big corporations and the rich. To let corporations bash unions and fire workers who try to organize.

To encourage activist investors and private equity companies to take over “underperforming” companies and then promptly fire workers and sell off assets. To allow big corporations to become far larger, monopolizing entire industries.

To allow pharmaceutical companies to extend their patents and jack up the prices of critical drugs. To allow oil companies access to federal lands and to special tax write-offs.

 

To bail out the biggest banks but not homeowners who get caught in the downdrafts. To privatize higher education and force students to take out massive loans. To encourage corporations to buy back their shares of stock rather than reinvest profits.

These policy decisions didn’t just happen, either. They were pushed by wealthy elites on Wall Street and in C-suites who made mammoth donations to politicians on both sides of the aisle — mostly but not exclusively Republican — to ensure that their wishes would be honored.

To your credit, you and most Democratic lawmakers in Congress have pushed for policies that will make the nation more equitable, such as child care and elder care subsidies, student loan forgiveness, and negotiated drug prices. Kudos. 

But you’re reluctant to blame CEOs, Wall Street moguls, and the super-rich for what’s happened.

Yet they are to blame, as are their lackeys in Washington. 

They have turned their growing wealth into increasing political power to change the rules of the game in ways that further enlarge their wealth and power, while shafting the bottom half.

Condemn them, as did FDR. Name the CEOs, leaders of finance, heads of pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, internet moguls, and “activist” investors who have profited at the expense of the rest of America.

Be unambiguously on the side of workers in their struggle for better pay and working conditions.

Attack corporate welfare — the special tax loopholes, bank bailouts, unconditional subsidies, loan guarantees, and no-bid contracts that have lined the pockets of the wealthy, paid for by the rest of us.

Let Republicans criticize corporate “wokeness.” You should campaign against corporate greed.

Let Republicans obsess about critical race theory, immigration, and sex. You should campaign against how obscenely unfair and unequal America has become.

It’s good you’re joining the UAW picket line. But if you and other Democrats don’t tell the economic truth about what’s happened and place the blame squarely where it’s deserved, the lies of Republicans will fill the void.

Most Americans Support The United Auto Workers Strike

The chart above is from the Morning Consult Poll -- done September 9th - 11th and September 16th and 17th of about 2,200 adults each time, with a 2 point margin of error.
 

The Labor Strikes Are Good For The United States

Robert Reich explains why labor activism is good for the country: 

America is in the midst of the biggest surge in labor activity in a quarter century. 

The United Auto Workers, the Writers Guild of America, the actors’ union known as SAG-AFTRA, Starbucks workers, Amazon workers, the Teamsters and UPS, flight attendants. The list goes on.

Over 4 million workdays were lost to stoppages last month, according to the Labor Department. That’s the most since 2000. And this was before the UAW struck the Big Three.

Some worry about the effect of all this on the U.S. economy, and view organized labor as a “special interest” demanding more than it deserves.

Rubbish.

 

Labor activism has proven good for the economy in the long run. And organized labor isn’t a special interest. It’s the leading edge of the American workforce.

What accounts for this extraordinary moment of labor activity?

Not that workers enjoy striking. Even where unions have funds to help striking workers offset lost wages, they rarely make up even half of what’s forgone. Large corporations whose operations are hobbled by strikes often lay off other workers, as the Big Three and their suppliers are now threatening to do.

The reason workers go on strike is their expectation that the longer-term gains will be worth the sacrifices.

Today’s labor market continues to be tight, despite efforts by the Fed to slow the economy and make it harder for workers to get raises. So employers (like UPS) are more inclined to give ground to avoid a prolonged strike.

But something far more basic is going on here. As I travel around the country, I hear from average working people an anger and bitterness I haven't heard for decades. It centers on several things.

The first is that wages have barely increased while corporate profits are in the stratosphere.

 

Average weekly nonsupervisory wages, a measure of blue-collar earnings, were higher in 1969 (adjusted for inflation) than they are now.

The American dream of upward mobility has turned into a nightmare of falling behind. Whereas 90 percent of American adults born in the early 1940s were earning more than their parents by the time they reached their prime earning years, this proportion has steadily declined. Only half of adults born in the mid-1980s are now earning more than their parents by their prime earning years.

Nearly one out of every five American workers is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck.

Meanwhile, executive compensation has gone through the roof. In 1965, CEOs of America’s largest corporations were paid, on average, 20 times the pay of average workers. Today, the ratio is over 398 to 1.

Not only has CEO pay exploded. So has the pay of top executives just below them. The share of corporate income devoted to compensating the five highest-paid executives of large corporations ballooned from an average of 5 percent in 1993 to more than 15 percent today.

Corporate apologists claim CEOs and other top executives are worth these staggering sums because their corporations have performed so well. They compare star CEOs to star baseball players and movie stars.

But most CEOs have simply ridden the stock market wave. Even if a company’s CEO had done nothing but play online solitaire, the company’s stock price would have soared.

Stock buybacks have also skyrocketed — a huge subsidy to investors that further tips the scales against working people. The richest 1 percent of Americans own about half the value of all shares of stock. The richest 10 percent, over 90 percent.

Why don’t corporations devote more of their income to research and development, or to higher wages and benefits for average workers? In a word, greed. 

Small wonder that unions are more popular than they’ve been in a generation. A Gallup poll published in August found that 67 percent of Americans approve of unions, the fifth straight year such support has exceeded the long-term polling average of 62 percent.

President Biden has pitched himself as the most pro-union president in recent history. More surprisingly, Republican politicians are trying to curry favor with union workers as well. Both parties know that much of the working class is up for grabs in 2024.

American workers still have little to no countervailing power relative to large American corporations. Unionized workers now comprise only 6 percent of private-sector workforce — down from over a third in the 1960s.

Which is why the activism of the UAW, the Writers Guild, SAG-AFTRA, the Teamsters, flight attendants, Amazon warehouse workers, and Starbucks workers is so important.

In a very real sense, these workers are representing all American workers. If they win, they’ll energize other workers, even those who are not unionized. They’ll mobilize some to form or join unions.

 

They’ll push non-union employers to raise wages and benefits out of a fear of becoming unionized if they don’t. They’ll galvanize other workers to stage wildcat strikes for better pay and working conditions.

For far too long, America’s top executives, Wall Street traders, and biggest investors have siphoned off almost all the economic gains. This is unsustainable, economically and politically.

It’s economically unsustainable because the only way businesses can sell the goods and services American workers produce is if workers have enough money to buy them. If most gains continue to go to the top, the economy will become ever more fragile, susceptible to downdrafts and crashes. 

Today’s mainstream media emphasizes the feared negative effects of the current wave of strikes on the U.S. economy, forgetting that the wave of strikes in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s helped create the largest middle class the world had ever seen — the key to America’s postwar prosperity.

Stagnant wages and widening inequality are politically unsustainable because they foster anger and bitterness easily channeled by demagogic politicians (re: Donald Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party) into bigotry, paranoia, xenophobia, and authoritarianism.

The current wave of strikes isn’t bad for America. It’s good for America.

Labor is not a “special interest.” It is, in a real sense, all of us. 

Most Americans Support Striking Writers And Actors

The chart above is from a survey done by the Economist / YouGov Poll between July 22nd and 25th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.

Who Needs Any Actors Or Writers? (A Satire)

The writers and actors have gone on strike, shutting down movie and most television production. Alexandra Petri (The Washington Post) gives us the corporate side of the strike in this beautiful bit of SATIRE: 

My dear shareholders! Do not worry about the fact that all the screen actors and screenwriters are on strike.

If there is one thing I have figured out about the meaning of life and the meaning of art, it is that art is something that should be entirely the product of machines and robots while people march around with picket signs and complain that they cannot afford food and housing. Also, no one should ever be paid a residual, whatever that is. I just don’t like the sound of it.

Art, as we know, represents the fundamental human striving to wring profit for a large corporation from a concept that already exists in the culture. It might involve human beings coming together to tell stories with their minds, bodies and faces, but it doesn’t need to. In fact, I think it would be more efficient if it didn’t.

I do not doubt that we, the studios, are on the right side of this standoff. Yes, human beings have been coming together to tell stories for thousands of years, but just because you’ve been doing something for thousands of years, that doesn’t mean you enjoy it or need to keep doing it. You know what else we’ve had for thousands of years? Tooth decay!

When our ancestors sat around the cave fires at night, sure, they told stories. Certainly, they scrawled on the walls of their caves, but as an executive, I know for a fact that they hated that part of being alive so much. They said to themselves, “Someday, when we have indoor plumbing and can live as we choose, we will be able to delegate this tiresome dreaming and telling of stories entirely to robots and billionaires. The only good part of drawing mammoths on the walls of caves is the fact that I, the illustrator, am not being compensated monetarily in any way for doing so.” (This primal yearning for people to not be compensated for their creative efforts except in exposure is something that has driven artists for a long time and we hope will continue to drive them, in case our AI idea backfires.)

We will be fine without these humans with their so-called faces and voices and acting. If Marvel films thus far have not been populated entirely by CGI characters, it is only for want of sufficient motivation, and I’m sure we can fix that.

Let me tell you about the business of dreams. When people go to the movies, or to the televisions, do you know what they say to themselves? Certainly not “I want to be transported to another place, to meet people who will make me laugh and cry and be moved and experience catharsis.” Nobody ever uses the word “catharsis.” They say, “Give me my movie about a Keurig cup written by an AI! But be warned, if this movie contains even a single original thought, I am going to throw my Keurig cup at the screen and then scream until the ushers remove me."

Besides, when you think about movies you have loved, remember how many of their best parts were machines. I have always felt that C-3PO was the best part of “Star Wars” — what do you mean a human played him? There was a human man inside the suit? R2-D2 at least — wait, that was also a human man? Well, the Terminator — Gov. Schwarzenegger? I suppose you are going to tell me that every robot I ever saw on screen was a human being in disguise. Data? No, there is no way that was a human man. I am sure Data will help.

Look, if there is one thing we can agree on, it’s that we don’t need people to tell stories. Stories are a commodity. Human faces? I can take them or leave them! Uncanny valley? Sounds like a place where we’ve finally solved the problem of people having pores. Listen, human actors are problematic — they say things, and they have faces and bodies that exist in multiple dimensions, and people on the internet get mad about all of that! Especially when those actors are women! The worst! Less of all this, please.

When I think about the power of film, I don’t think about words said by a person on a screen. I think about the most important quotes: those sweet box office dollars. I know that’s what everyone thinks about. When I remember “Casablanca,” that classic scene, that perfect quote really sums it all up: “Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” That’s so true. People are so small, and their problems matter so little. But beans! We all love beans: counting them, making hills of them. Love, love, love it! I will have an AI write a movie about that.

Fran Drescher Explains Why The Actors Had To Strike

In her press conference for SAG-AFTRA (the actors union), Fran Drescher explains why the actors had to strike:

Thank you. Thank you, Duncan, and thank you everybody for coming to this press conference today. It’s really important that this negotiation be covered, because the eyes of the world and particularly the eyes of labor are upon us. What happens here is important because what’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labor by means of when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority, and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run. 

We have a problem, and we are experiencing that right at this moment. This is a very seminal hour for us. I went in in earnest, thinking that we would be able to avert a strike. The gravity of this move is not lost on me, or our negotiating committee, or our board members who have voted unanimously to proceed with a strike. It’s a very serious thing that impacts thousands, if not millions of people, all across this country and around the world. Not only members of this union, but people who work in other industries that service the people that work in this industry. And so it came with great sadness that we came to this crossroads, but we had no choice. 

We are the victims here. We are being victimized by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us. I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right, when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment. 

We stand in solidarity, in unprecedented unity. Our union and our sister unions and the unions around the world are standing by us, as well as other labor unions, because at some point the jig is up. You cannot keep being dwindled and marginalized and disrespected and dishonored. The entire business model has been changed by streaming, digital, AI. This is a moment of history that is a moment of truth. If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble. 

We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business, who cares more about Wall Street than you and your family. Most of Americans don’t have more than $500 in an emergency. This is a very big deal and it weighed heavy on us. But at some point, you have to say, “No, we’re not going to take this anymore. You people are crazy. What are you doing? Why are you doing this?” Privately they all say we’re the center of the wheel. Everybody else tinkers around our artistry, but actions speak louder than words and there was nothing there. It was insulting. So we came together in strength and solidarity and unity with the largest strike authorization vote in our union’s history. And we made the hard decision that we tell you as we stand before you today. 

This is major. It’s really serious, and it’s going to impact every single person that is in labor. We are fortunate enough to be in a country right now that happens to be labor friendly. And yet, we were facing opposition that was so labor unfriendly, so tone-deaf to what we are saying. You cannot change the business model as much as it has changed and not expect the contract to change too. We’re not going to keep doing incremental changes on a contract that no longer honors what is happening right now with this business model that was foisted upon us. What are we doing—moving around furniture on the Titanic? It’s crazy. 

So the jig is up, AMPTP. We stand tall. You have to wake up and smell the coffee. We are labor and we stand tall. We demand respect and to be honored for our contribution. You share the wealth because you cannot exist without us. Thank you.

Tx Democratic Party Backs Janitor Strike

I may have misjudged the new chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. I had thought he would continue the same old moderate to conservative policies of the last leadership. In the past, the state party leadership avoided any issue that might seem progressive and cost them conservative votes (votes they weren't going to get anyway). A good example of that would be the union janitor strike in Houston (where the janitors are trying to get a livable wage).

But the new party chairman, Gilberto Hinojosa, has come down squarely on the side of the striking janitors, and he has done so publicly. This is a progressive stand, and one that I wholeheartedly support. I hope this is indicative of future actions Mr. Hinojosa will take. If so, the Texas Democratic Party might once again give Texas voters a real choice (instead of a parade of Republican-lite conservatives that have marked candidates in the recent past).

Here is the press release sent out by the Texas Democratic Party:

The Texas Democratic Party will not stand idle while our fellow Americans of the Service Employee International Union are shamed into working for wages at half the poverty level.   In this country, a hard day’s work should mean a fair wage, yet Houston janitors are being to ask to work for sub-poverty earnings. 

Houston janitors of the SEIU went on strike earlier this month.  These working men and women clean the offices of some of the largest corporations in America yet are paid less than $9,000 a year. Political and religious leaders are standing on the side of the janitors in their quest for a rightful piece of the American dream. The Texas Democratic Party joins them in supporting the Houston SEIU janitors who are striking for a living wage. 

“If corporations want to be considered people, then they need to accept the belief that we are our brother’s keepers,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, the newly elected chairman of the Texas Democratic Party.  “Hard working people in America should not be shamed.  Honest work should receive honest pay, but Republicans want to repeal the minimum wage to make people work for $2 an hour.  Then Republicans want to whine about paying for heath care for children of American parents who have jobs.  It is shameful.” 

“Grotesquely overpaid CEOs and upper management expect the men and women who work hard and play by the rules to be forced to beg for public assistance just to support themselves, much less a family.  That is a disgrace not only to the America we love, but also to God,” Hinojosa stressed.  “These striking workers are seeking a living wage for their work in cleaning the offices of Texas millionaires and one percenters, who not only refuse to pay a decent wage for honest work but are also enlisting Republican support to protect them from paying their fair share of taxes.” 

“Democrats, along with labor unions, have been cleaning up corporate messes, both literally and figuratively, for far too long.   Corporations are attempting to maximize profits at the expense of the taxpayers who must provide medical care and food assistance for workers’ families, even though the breadwinners are working full time.  That is not the America we love,” Hinojosa continued, “and the workers and taxpayers in this country should be enraged about it.” 

Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa and The Texas Democratic Party calls upon Texas Democrats and all Texans who support the right to a living wage to make a meaningful stand by helping on the picket line, signing the petition athttp://1.seiu.org/page/s/houston-needs-a-raise.