One of the best ways of killing unions is to make sure there aren't any employees to unionize. Without new employees or new industries, unions are left to fight amongst themselves for a shrinking membership. The Bush Economy was designed to make money for the rich at everybody else's expense, most especially the expense of workers, and it has been enormously successful. A few privileged financial institutions like Morgan Stanley and, of course, Goldman Sachs, have benefited from a stimulus package that was supposed to, originally, be aimed at creating jobs but somehow ended up creating bigger bonuses for Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Funny how that happened.
All of which I take to mean that yet another jobless recovery was part of the plan, not some incidental by-product.
[L]ast winter the economy was in acute crisis, with a replay of the Great Depression seeming all too possible. And there was a fairly strong policy response in the form of the Obama stimulus plan, even if that plan wasn’t as strong as some of us thought it should have been.
At this point, however, the acute crisis has given way to a much more insidious threat. Most economic forecasters now expect gross domestic product to start growing soon, if it hasn’t already. But all the signs point to a “jobless recovery”: on average, forecasters surveyed by The Wall Street Journal believe that the unemployment rate will keep rising into next year, and that it will be as high at the end of 2010 as it is now.
Now, it’s bad enough to be jobless for a few weeks; it’s much worse being unemployed for months or years. Yet that’s exactly what will happen to millions of Americans if the average forecast is right — which means that many of the unemployed will lose their savings, their homes and more.
The Bush Recession has been jobless, the so-called recovery is jobless, too, primarily because it hasn't been aimed at the people who make the economy run. Us.
In a recession this deep, recovery doesn't depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.
Problem is, consumers won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don't have the money, and it's hard to see where it will come from. They can't borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of 10 homeowners is underwater -- owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and the number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can't are hunkering down, as they must.
Eventually consumers will replace cars and appliances and other stuff that wears out, but a recovery can't be built on replacements. Don't expect businesses to invest much more without lots of consumers hankering after lots of new stuff. And don't rely on exports. The global economy is contracting.
In short, there isn't much we can rely on and Obama's Pay-the-Bankers strategy isn't working and can't work. It's trickle-down by another name and trickle-down is nothing but a scam and never has been (cf David Stockman). The Democratic party is so far in the tank to corporate interests that they're adopting Republican policies. Workers and consumers can clearly expect little to come from Washington that's in their interests and addresses their concerns. So why isn't Labor out in the streets? Consumers aren't organized but unions are nothing if not organizations. Why aren't they representing their members' interests? Why are they kowtowing to the conservaDems and Obstructionists who are protecting bankers at their expense?
Part of it has to do with the relief that George W Bush is no longer prez and the fear that if we don't support Obama, the country might be stoopid enough to elect McCain or Jeb or even Jimmy "The Scab" Inhofe and we'll go through it all again. Even progressives are cowed by the thought that a split Dem party could give the WH to a wingnut whacko who'd make W look sane and rational by comparison. So it makes some sense that unions prefer a party that might give them some little something for their membership as opposed to a party that's out to destroy them.
But the pittance of bone-throwing the conservaDems are willing to allow (EFCA might not pass, can you imagine?) simply isn't enough, and I've been waiting for the rank-and-file to start demanding that their leaders get off their asses and do more than talk tough. The UAW's Gettelfinger has been talking tough for over a year, yet every time he is faced with concessions demanded by corporate executives who cry Wolf ("We'll have to shut our doors if you don't take a pay cut and benefit cut and work more hours! Do you want to put us out of business? Then none of you will have jobs!"), Gettelfinger, who swore to fight, folds like an old cardtable.
He's not the only one. Union leadership in the US, while trade union leaders elsewhere are fighting - and winning - seem to be trembling in fear of The Bosses. As Charles Rachlis and Organian at Slouching Toward Organia explain, some public employee unionists in California, under the gun of a Republican governor and Republican budget shortfalls, have had it with their chickenshit leadership. They want strikes and they want 'em NOW.
It’s time that we look at our organizations to see why they are incapable of building a fighting leadership. The hand wringing we are seeing on the part of the staffers, executive boards and activists who have stood by, watched, and allowed our unions to disintegrate over the years is the conscious expression of the destruction wrought upon organized labor by 50 years of business unionism. Few and far between are members who remember or have learned the story of what it took to win the unions in the first place. For decades, labor has been told by its leaders to build support for Democratic politicians who, despite posing as “friends of labor,” invariably legislate, execute, and administer policies written by and for their true friends in the financial and corporate sectors. Rather than building a fighting workers’ party, preparing rank and file action committees, organizing the unorganized, and building solidarity among different locals and unions, our union “leaders” have told us that their Democratic “friends” would look out for us. So we kept sending them our contributions, worked their phone banks, and supported their candidacies.
What have we gotten in return? The real deal is being exposed now, when we are faced with a world wide collapse of capitalism, and all the Democrats and all the Republicans can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The very same politicians who were elected to office with the support of organized labor are telling us that there is no money and that we all have to “share the pain.” Big time liberals in the California Legislature like Mark Leno and Tom Aminano, both of who, climbed the Democratic ladder from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to the State Assembly, can be heard on the radio pushing the anti-worker, anti-union solutions that their caucus put together with uber-worker-hater Governor Schwarzenegger to be presented to the voters on the May 19th ballot, and soundly rejected.
No wonder the workers have lost faith in their unions. All that is left of the fighting spirit of state workers is to bluster boldly by the water cooler....
You could say the same about the biggest unions in the country. They seem to have forgotten how to fight, or lost their taste for it, just when it is more needed than it has been since the 30's, and "But...but...but we've got a Democratic Congress and president now. We don't want to screw that up!" is a lousy reason to duck their heads and tug their forelocks every time Rahm Emanuel farts in their direction.
But it's not just unions. It's us, too. We need to stop expecting politicians to act like statesmen when they're just puppets on a corporate string. We need to hassle them and rassle with them and take them down when they give us the finger and funnel money to their banker buddies after promising passionately to take care of our needs first.
In short, we have to stop acting like the naive, pencil-necked geeks and braindead losers they think we are and start fighting for what we want, shut off American Idol and hit the streets. As my friend Mark wrote recently, the Wall Street/Washington Axis ain't gonna do nothing for us until they're afraid bricks may come flying through their windows any second. They don't respect what they don't fear. That's the way cowards are, and we've already established that Wall Street is full of terrified bunny rabbits, and conservaDems sweat bullets whenever a corporate lobbyist snaps his fingers. It shouldn't be hard to make them afraid of us.
Very afraid.
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