Every DUer who is lucky enough to still be unionized should use this avatar: Union Yes!

[lindysalsagal]

The avatar is already on DU for the taking, Just click on it.

2015 U.S. Labor dept:

Job-provided health insurance: 79% if there's a union, 49% without the union

Paid sick leave: 76% union, 62% non-union

Guaranteed pension plans: 76% union, 16% non-union

Union worker's weekly median pay is $970 to non-union $763.


They're already gone from many states, and it's up to those of us remaining to keep ours and try to bring the others back.

Please consider using the Union Yes avatar.

[Iris]

1. k&r

[JackInGreen]

2. Would if I could

But k&r in solidarity.

[sorefeet]

3. Retired

Painter

[lindysalsagal]

4. Do you get a pension?

They might be in jeopardy. Have you read freidrichs vs california teachers? Threatening to call the agency law unconstitutional. (You pay dues even if you don't join.)

[Octafish]

5. That's why the rich ''invested'' in co-opting the Democratic Party.

[font size="6"][font color="green"]From 1999...[/font color][/font size]

The Third Way

The politics of betrayal

by Edward S. Herman
Z magazine, November 1999

One of the most notable features of New World Order politics has been the systematic abandonment of not only socialism but the rudiments of social democracy by purported socialists and social democrats. It is virtually uniform practice for politicians who have campaigned on a "people first" and egalitarian program to abandon such programs swiftly on taking office. Admittedly, the campaign programs and promises were sometimes vague and contradictory, and Britain's Tony Blair was almost up front on his intention to build on the Thatcher legacy, but any ambiguities or contradictions are invariably resolved in favor of capital, not "the people."

Problematic of Betrayal

The systematic character of this politics of betrayal suggests that it has structural roots and is not attributable to personal defects of the betrayers, although betrayal requires the advance of politicians who will meet the betrayal standard as well as the exclusion of those for whom social democratic principle and truthfulness weigh too heavily. The power of money in elections, the increased concentration and conservative bias of the media, the resurgent strength and aggressiveness of capital and finance in a globalizing economy, and the weakening of labor, provide the structural background. In this context genuinely progressive parties will fail to get financial or media support, will be discredited and smeared, and in the fluke case of attaining office would face capital flight.

But parties want to win, so the natural evolution in the process of raising money, getting media support, and avoiding capital flight is to put forward candidates and programs that will serve these ends. Tony Blair's pre-election trip to Australia in 1996 to placate the mogul reactionary Rupert Murdoch epitomizes the process, and Murdoch's support of "New Labor" reflects his recognition that New Labor was really "New Tory." This process leaves the former socialists and social democrats with a problem, however, as their voting constituencies are still dominantly social democratic-a major Blair-era social survey showed that 87 percent of the British public favored a downward redistribution of income and wealth-so that a dose of false promises and ambiguity are a must in party campaigning. Only after election victory can it be revealed that "realism" demands that any social democratic promises will not be met.

This systematic betrayal is devastating to any substantive democracy and is an important part of the explanation of growing public anger and cynicism and declining voter participation rates. The betrayal process means that the publics of the affected countries have no real choices, with only tweedledum -tweedledee options of openly business parties and business parties that are only nominally populist. The differences between the parties shrink further because the latter must lean over backwards to convince the business community that their populism is only rhetorical and that they are as reliable business agents as the openly business parties. This is why Blair's first act was to turn over control of monetary policy to the Bank of England, thus assuring the financial community that monetary and fiscal policy will not be used to serve any populist ends.

By the same token, the main enemy of the New Tories is the party's "left," which poses a double threat: on the one hand, it calls attention to the sell-out and presses for a return to populist values; and on the other hand, its very existence suggests to "the market" that the old menace of redistributional policies and regulation in the public interest may not yet be dead. This is why a Lafontaine, Benn, and Reich must be pushed aside in favor of "pragmatists" like Fischer, Cook, and Summers, and why a Jospin must be lectured to on the need to get in closer step with leaders like Blair, Clinton, and German Prime Minister Gerhard Schroder.

It is in this context that Blair and Clinton proclaimed themselves pioneers of a new Third Way that pursues a middle course between the nasty conservative right and unpragmatic old left, and they have been joined in this pursuit by Schroder and other social democrats. It is notable that Clinton is a charter member of this new set, as he is also a charter member of the Democratic Leadership Council, which is an openly right-wing faction of the not very social democratic Democratic Party. Blair and other European social democrats have frequently expressed admiration for the U.S. model, with its low wages, job insecurity, contingent labor, and relatively low unemployment levels. The convergence of thought and policy among Blair, Schroder, and Clinton indicates how far to the right European social democracy has traveled.

The most remarkable feature of Third Way leaders' thought is its virtual identity with neoliberal doctrine and with what market operatives believe in and strive for in policy-making. Blair and Clinton can't speak too highly of the efficacy of the market and the importance of bringing as much as possible within its orbit. Blair's speeches, his government's position papers, and his joint statement with Schroder in June 1999 are a litany of cliches dear to the hearts of the business community and right wing: no more "tax and spend," and although budgets have "reached the limits of acceptability" (Blair) we must lower taxes, but only to reward "hard work and enterprise" and to make business "globally competitive." Global competitiveness also calls for the containment of wages and pensions via "labor flexibility" and "hard decisions" to get welfare costs down and to make people more "responsible."

The cliches flow-modernization, hard work, reform, ending dependency, even encouraging morality. John Pilger reports that in his speech in Australia addressed to Rupert Murdoch, Blair used the words "moral" and "morality" 18 times, and we may be sure that he wasn't assailing Murdoch's union busting, Iying, or systematic exploitation of pornography in his media enterprises. Blair's (as well as Clinton's) market ideology and cliches could have come straight from the Cato or Adam Smith Institutes, and in fact the Adam Smith Institute quickly declared that Blair had made a "remarkably promising start" (Daily Mail, December 10, 1997).

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Political/Third_Way.html

PS: I am not in a Union, but several of my immediate neighbors are and were. The unions BUILT the middle class. And that is why I am so disappointed that since Ronald Reagan's adminstration the Democratic Party has done increasingly little to protect unions and union members.

[lindysalsagal]

6. This is capitalism that only loves money. The demise of all of us is intentional, deliberate, and sy

systematic. And I don't have any confidence in Hillary that she'll do squat differently.

[Octafish]

7. Walmart workers will be the envy of the economy.

Two Administrations were key in making Walmart what it is.

Here in Michigan, there aren't as many UAW members as there used to be.



It's not all bad, though. What were once-bankrupt car makers and car suppliers are doing great, hiring like crazy.

The problem for U.S. workers is that most of the hiring is for new plants overseas.

Consider the case of DELPHI Automotive, a parts maker spun-off when General Motors couldn't make it sufficiently profitable:

Talk about a turnaround. Delphi's epic 2005 bankruptcy exacted high costs on communities, unions and the pensions of salaried retirees. Yet the creative destruction of the four-year ordeal, shaped by management, private equity investors and the demands of the Obama auto task force, produced a global supplier that now offers 33 product lines from 141 manufacturing sites in 33 countries and employs 160,000 worldwide — only 5,000 of which work inside the United States.

-- Daniel Howes, Detroit News

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/columnists/daniel-howes/2015/02/18/howes-delphi-surges-quietly-one-regret/23655511/

The above is from a business columnist describing the good work of DELPHI's then-president in turning the company around. "Good work" is, of course, defined in maximizing shareholder value. "Shareholder," seems to be most often defined as "Owner." Odd that it happens to be the same people who consider workers as a human resource to be harvested when needed, exploited and culled when no longer profitable.

NOTE: The author of the above article is quite the conservative, using "which" instead of "whom" to describe the human "resources."

[pintobean]

8. Done. K&R