Fact-esque

Wishful Thinking on Our Labor Climate: Tulane v. US Auto Rebound

OK, so when teh shite hit teh fan (supposedly) and the auto companies were facing bankruptcy (supposedly) and the Obama Admin was putting a lot of pressure on the UAW to cut management some slack in order to save their members' jobs (supposedly), fear ran like a little rodent through the union and once again Labor sacrificed so executives could keep their McMansions and their Beamers.

OK, so now that the auto market is strengthening (supposedly) and profits are up again (quite definitely), the unions want management to remember the last their of umpteen sacrifices and give back some of the give-backs the car companies extorted under the guise of "financial difficulties" they had largely brought on themselves, assuming of course that such difficulties actually existed which isn't at all clear when you look at the offshore books.

Massey and Wellpoint: BAU and FU, Too (Updated)

Wall Street lobbyists - or "pond scum" as we know them around here - may be scrambling to feed the leeches in Congress enough blood to make sure the banksters squeeze past the febrile attempts at banking "reform" that are all the Dems are interested in ("We gotta have 60 votes!" says Harry Reid again today, just like teh Olden Times). Poor Blanche has been told that her amendment won't be part of the Dodd bill and will have to sink or swim on its own, and poor Brad Sherman has yet to realize that Dodd accepted his tweaking because even if it's included, it doesn't mean anything. It only looks like it does, and that's the n of the g in DC.

To see how this is all likely to play out doesn't require a stinger of Owlsley and a crystal ball. All you have to do is look at some recent beneficiaries of the very same process and see how they're doing. Having been slapped down in public by the Congress and the media, are they chastened and correcting their previously appallingly greedy and inhumane behavior? Um, based on two recent stories, not exactly. (Both links via the indefatigable Mark G.)

Unemployment Rising Again, Unemployed Form Union

Now that Jim Bunning's quixotic assault on the unemployed has been stopped due to shame (unusual for a GOoPer, that), it might be time to look at what that unemployment situation is currently. The Obama Labor Dept has been saying it's been going down in the wake of their rescue of Wall Street from its own incompetence and greed to the tune of $$$Trillions$$$ of taxpayer bucks, thus allowing conservaDems like, well, Obama, to claim that his and Wall Street Timmy's trickle-down strategy (otherwise known as TARP and "the stimulus") is working.

Meanwhile, people like me have been insisting that without a sizable component aimed at directly creating jobs rather than saving banks in the hope that they'll loosen credit (which they didn't), thus encouraging Corporate America to expand (which they didn't) by hiring more employees (which they damn well didn't), the best you could say is that the trickle-down strategy bought us a little time. That time may be running out even as we speak.

What "Democratic Party"? It's the Old GOP vs the Rogue GOP

Got a few stories today that need dot-connecting. They may not seem to have much to do with each other at first but we're going to try to make the relationships visible. It's about how the healthcare "reform" package is showing one of the most important sectors of our society to be not exactly what it seems to be. And not in a good way.

Let's start with the "reform" package itself. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is, as we've been saying all along, a dawg. FDL's Jon Walker counts the ways by contrasting all the plans directly and ranking them from the "perfect" down through the "decent" and" acceptable" to the really really bad". Guess where the Ben Nelson/Joe Lieberman/Blue Dog Senate Plan winds up?

No fair. You guessed.

Ford Workers Buck Gettelfinger's Sweetheart Contract

Ron Gettelfinger, UAW's Pres, talked tough last year, banging his fist on the podium at the annual meeting and shouting "No More Concessions!" Almost as soon at that conference was over, Gettelfinger negotiated a series of sweeping concessions at Chrysler and GM which did not prevent the threat of bankruptcy mostly because the amount of workers' wages had nothing whatever to do with the long series of bad management decisions that killed sales along with the worsening economy.

Ford was the only car company that rejected govt help, and it did so in the expectation that it would be able to get major concessions from Gettelfinger. Which it did. That's not the problem. The problem is that Ford is bragging about its sales on the one hand while demanding Gettelfinger's major givebacks on the other, and the union members have had enough bullshit thrown at them from both "sides". They look like they might just turn down Gettelfinger's management-friendly contract.

Union Backtalk at Delphi

Well well well. It seems that after 30 years of abuse it's finally paying off to be the member of a union, and the "I spit on unions - pah! pah! - what have unions ever done except take dues money?" crowd ain't at'all happy about it. To quote chief NYT whiner Bruce Gump, "I’m being thrown out with yesterday’s trash." Mr Gump's complaint? Union members at his company are having their pensions fully paid out while Mr Gump and his fellow non-union members might have theirs cut. Too bad.

White Collar Unions

Writing a couple of years ago in The Democratic Strategist, ex-labor organizer and current union PR consultant Jim Grossfeld summarizes the results of a survey he and his partners conducted into modern attitudes about unions at the request of the Center for American Progress. The results aren’t so much surprising as they are cohesive. It’s not that, as David Kusnet points out in his reply in the same magazine, any of what Grossfeld says is all that new; but it’s knowledge that’s been scattered all over the place. Joining it all together helps bring the problems of labor organizing in the new millenium into sharper focus.

Norwood Nurses Join SEIU: Michelle Malkin Falls Down Backwards and Foams at the Mouth

Well, not yet. Maybe tomorrow when she finally hears about it.

Nearly 600 workers at Norwood Hospital, ranging from respiratory therapists to housekeepers, will join the Service Employees International Union as the result of an election yesterday.

***

Norwood became the third hospital in the Caritas Christi Health Care system, based in Boston, to unionize this year. More than 800 employees at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, the flagship of the six-hospital Catholic chain, in April affiliated with the same labor union, Local 1199 of the SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.

Malkin hates that. In fact, she hates unions, apparently because they promise better working conditions and pay to workers. Well, that's what she said. Calling SEIU's organization of home health care workers a "home invasion" - a term which used to be applied to criminals who broke into your house and robbed you with AK-47s or whatever but which Malkin now feels free to apply to people who ask you to let them help you live better - here's what she thought was so terrible:

Over the last month, home-based providers started have been receiving unexpected visits from out-of-state union lackeys trying to recruit them with the promise of health care benefits and more money.

(emphasis added)

Monstrous! Oh, and she doesn't like any of that voting business, either.

AFL-CIO's Trumka v Rahm on the Public Option

For once, Rahm Emanuel lost an arm-twisting session. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, browbeaten into agreeing to a meeting with President COS Emanuel, refused to climb down off his white horse. He flat-out told The Enforcer that the public option was the best and most viable of the current (sad) crop of healthcare reform measures. FDL's Jane Hamsher spoke directly with AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale.

 I asked if Trumka considered "triggers" to be a public option. He responded:

Trumka is sticking to what he said on triggers all along - which is that we haven't seen any plans that would be as effective as the public option, and he told that to Rahm Emanuel today.

They discussed the Baucus/Pelosi plan to pay for reform by putting an unfair burden on the benefits of many AFL-CIO members.  (No doubt it's just a happy coincidence that the one big liberal institution which has pledged to withhold support from any Democrats who won't vote for a public plan is getting specifically hammered.)    Trumka reiterated that "working families shouldn't be taxed on their health care benefits, which often have been gotten by foregoing wage increases and other benefits." 

It's a good point and one that's often forgotten, even by raging progs like me. The management class used to offer benefit packages, particularly health care, in lieu of wage increases because such packages used to cost less than the pay increases being asked for. They thought it was a good deal for them, and it was until Reagan's deregulation cut the health insurance companies loose and premiums started to rise like Apollo rockets off a launching pad. Even then they could get cheaper coverage for a group (their employees) than any one of those employees could possibly get for him/herself and used the difference to wangle wage concessions and other benefit givebacks. (They used pensions and 401K payments in much the same way.)

Norma Rae Is Dead

You probably think I meant the title figuratively. I could have but I didn't.

This is one of the most famous scenes in movie history: Norma Rae (Sally Field, of course) standing on a table in the middle of the factory just before she gets thrown out for union organizing.

It's a scene that few who saw it could get out of their heads for days or weeks, a powerful moment when a lone figure stands against the rich and powerful and her co-workers shut down their machines in recognition that there are some things that are just plain wrong and no matter dangerous it may be, we have to stand against those things or lose our humanity.