Despite the bleak outlook, this is not a moment to despair. There are an incredibly large number of “green offshoots” that indicate that we can turn things around, but you have to know where to look for them. I’m not talking about the numbers and statistics President Obama and the Administration are using; I’m talking about real flesh & blood people working to turn things around.
It is not just the economy out of whack. The business practices that brought us here — overextraction, overextension, overleveraging, overconsumption — have also whacked the planet’s resources…they are going to get things back “on track” by applying more of the same “solutions” that got us to where we are today.
I agree. This to me makes an interesting point clear – economic recovery means Main Street MAKING HARD CHANGES to how business operates. Anything short of this is just more of the same.
This week activists across the country are picketing and bringing attention to one of the country’s largest organizations whose mission is “To advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.”
Who are these activists, what is the organization being protested, and why would anyone spend time taking on such a noble-sounding organization? Like always, the devil is in the details.
The activists are part of Jobs with Justice, a national organization that advocates for workers’ rights, better working conditions, and the right to bargain collectively through union representation. Their target is the Chamber of Commerce, whose purpose is “to fight for free enterprise”.
Over the past few months a piece of legislation called the “Employee Free Choice Act” has been making its way through Congress. The Bill would do several things to put more power in the hands of workers, and dramatically shift the conditions for workers who chose to organize unions by making it harder for employers to illegally engage in anti-union activities. It doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, until you learn the shocking rates at which American companies violate these laws.
This week the fight picked up in intensity when the Chamber declared they’d turned Sen. Feinstein’s (D-CA) vote against the Bill, a statement they soon retracted and which the Senator’s office responded to by saying they were “engaging in wishful thinking”, and that the Senator was still looking for a compromise that was beneficial to workers and business interests.
The Jobs with Justice group decided to remind members of the Chamber’s anti-worker history. They point to the chambers stances against: The eight-hour workday for women, child labor laws, the Family and Medical Leave Act, The Voting Rights Act, raising Americans with Disability Act access standards, overtime payments for millions of workers through reforms of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and increases in the minimum wage as indicators that the Chamber is only interested in preserving a system in which working people get the short-end of the stick.
Jobs with Justice asked members to contact their Senators to ask them to ignore the Chamber’s lies and to support the Employee Free Choice Act. They’ve also begun mobilizing activists to turn out to local Chamber offices and educate community members about the Chamber’s true nature and agenda, which they see as anti-worker and part of the failed “free market” ideology which led us to the current financial and economic disasters.
On Tuesday JwJ held demonstrations in Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, and several other cities. Jobs with Justice pledges to continue to “be there” against the chamber and will be holding demonstrations this week and next. You can read the updates here.
To make matters worse for the Chamber, this week a national group of employers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders named “Business Leaders for a Fair Economy” came out in support the Employee Free Choice Act.
One thing is for sure, the stakes are getting higher and higher on this piece of legislation. If you haven’t added your voice to the millions already supporting this Bill, you might want to take some time to figure out if the wages and benefits of union job is something you care about. There are more than 60 million workers out there who would form one if they had the chance. We’ve even heard claims that it might be good for your health.
From everything one reads in the paper, on the web, or sees on TV, you’d think it’s the end of the world. Let’s take a moment to breath and relax, because as scary as this all seems, the truth is that this economic crisis is nothing new. As you can see in the chart below, economic crises have happened before (and before, before that, and even before that), and each time working people have had to play a role in restoring order and moving the nation in a better direction that was more sustainable.
Remember the abolishment of slavery, or “The New Deal”? Someone pushed for that to happen, and if you’re reading this blog chances are it was someone like you.
(This is a chart called the Kondratieff Wave, which stated that capitalist economies held recurring periods of booms and busts. See also here. A more controversial graph which looks at the role of war and economic recovery can be seen here.)
I wouldn’t be the first to admit that the solutions weren’t perfect and had flaws, but what’s made America a beacon of hope has been our uncanny ability as a people to turn a crisis into an opportunity for advancement.
The financial crisis, if seen in this context, is our challenge and opportunity to lead the U.S. and global economy in a better direction. We have an opportunity to turn record levels of food production into a solution to the global food crisis. We have an opportunity to address inequalities like American workers making less money today than their grandparents did 30 years ago, even though the U.S. workforce is more productive today than in times past.
Over the coming weeks I hope to join my fellow editors in a conversation about how to move beyond the economic crisis, and what workers can do to ensure that they are part of finding solutions that everyday people will feel and see. Solutions like passing universal health care, leveling the playing field for workers by passing the Employee Free Choice Act, or passing comprehensive immigration reform that does not criminalize workers looking for a better life.
In that spirit, I submit that the first part of economic recovery is to figure out where you stand in relation to the economic crisis. That is to say, how did we contribute to it, what are the impacts we are feeling, and what are 2-3 things I can do to help restore the economy? Need a hand figuring out what you can do? Check out this awesome poster/tool that the folks over at Yes! Magazine put out on 31 ways to jump start the local economy (PDF).
Last week the Wall Street Journal published a piece examining the impacts of the economic slowdown on young workers, and found that young workers were at higher risk of becoming unemployed.
Employees in their 20s and 30s are finding themselves more at risk of a layoff, according to labor lawyers, as employers look to avoid age-discrimination lawsuits by adopting a “last one in, first one out” policy and turn to tenure as a means of conducting layoffs.
Fear not my friends; the WSJ ended this great piece with some friendly advice:
You might also try to align yourself with someone in senior management… Should it come to layoff decisions, “It doesn’t hurt to have someone in the executive conference room on your side”…
There you have it folks, we should be sucking up to management and owners across America… what do you say?
Well there is another way, one the WSJ doesn’t even bother telling you, it’s called the union way. That’s right, you can either give sucking up a try, or decide you and your co-workers should have a say about how things go down at work.
What can I get as a young worker in a union? The folks over at CEPR did some research and found that it’s actually quite a bit (PDF). Among their findings:
unionization raised wages 12.4 percent – or about $1.75 per hour relative to young workers with similar characteristics who were not in unions
About 17 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health
About 24 percentage points more likely to have a pension.
Today I literally jumped up with joy when I read about workers in Manhattan who chose the union way. Last Friday workers at H&M ratified their first contract — maybe they forgot to read the paper last week?
More than 1,000 employees at nine H&M stores in Manhattan will receive wage increases and other benefits in their first-ever union contract… The three-year contract provides a 3 percent wage increase in the first year, with wage re-openers in the second and third years. An additional merit-based increase is included in each year of the contract.
What’s so new or exciting about this? Well not sure when the last time you all went to H&M was, but a large part of those workers belong to a demographic which currently only makes up a small percent of the labor movement, young workers. What’s of particular interest to me is that this is definitely not an isolated event, in fact globally there is a growing activity by unions to reach out to young workers and organize them to improve working conditions. (Examples here and here).
I know we often hear about how we keep losing jobs to overseas competitors as a result of “free trade” policies like NAFTA (and I think that’s true), but what we can’t forget is that there IS an increasing job market out there in the service-oriented economy. Imagine what the country would look like if the current batch of mostly low-wage, part-time, and non-union service jobs were turned into high-paying, people-friendly, sustainable jobs that allowed folks to live a good life in their communities. Is this too much to ask for? The H&M workers certainly didn’t think so, and they are right. We can’t give up on the jobs we have. Let’s turn them into good jobs.
For that to happen we will need some basic things to change, first among them bringing an end to the corrupt system workers have to face when trying to organize unions. We can do that with the Employee Free Choice Act, check out the video to learn more about it and get involved.
