Jobs & Wages

Nurses to Obama: Heal America, Tax Wall Street!

Mary Bottari — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:24:23 -0400

Janesville, WI -- As President Obama gets ready for his big jobs speech Thursday, America's nurses have a message for him. "Heal America, Tax Wall Street!" the signs read as nurses rallied in front of 61 Congressional offices recently. The nurses are proposing a bold alternative to the "cut, cut, cut" rhetoric emanating from Washington, D.C and governors across the nation.

Their proposal? "It's time for the Wall Street financiers who created this crisis and continue to hold much of the nation's wealth to start contributing to rebuild this country and for the American people to regain their future," explained Rosanne DeMoro, Executive Director of National Nurses United, in a press release. The nurses are joining groups across the nation and around the world calling for a financial transaction tax on high-volume, high-speed Wall Street trades, to tamp down dangerous gambling and to raise revenue for heath care, jobs and other critical needs.

CEO Compensation Outstrips the Company's Tax Bill 

It hasn't escaped the notice of the nurses that while Main Street is suffering, Wall Street is booming. This week, the Institute for Policy Studies researched the top 100 U.S. corporations that shelled out the most last year in CEO compensation. They found that CEOs are hording their wealth; the gap between what workers are paid and what their CEOs are paid is rising fast. In 2009, it was 263-to-1. In 2010, it was 325-to-1.

Worse, at 25 of these firms, CEO compensation was greater than the company's entire federal corporate income tax bill. Corporate free-loader, Prudential CEO John Strangfeld, made $16.2 million in 2010, but his entire company got a $722 million refund from the federal government. Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robert Kelly took home $19.4 million in 2010. The bank, the same year, claimed a $670 million federal tax refund, despite $2.4 billion in U.S. pre-tax income.

"Where's the shared sacrifice?" asked the nurse who cited the study in front of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan's Janesville office.

Paul Ryan's Main Street

"Wall Street banks got bailed out, but Main Street towns are still suffering," said nurse Dena McEwen at the Janesville rally. McEwen discussed the hard times that have hit so many families. Her 40-year-old sister nearly died of gangrenous gall bladder infection because she was out of work and without health care. A neighbor tried to commit suicide when she could not afford medications.

Janesville, Wisconsin is a stark illustration of the problem the nurses were addressing. The 2008 Wall Street economic crisis killed the last big employer in Janesville, shuttering a General Motors plant for SUVs that employed 2,400 workers. Wages at the GM plant were in the range of $28 an hour.

Unemployment in the surrounding county is 9.5 percent and over 69,000 people in Ryan's district are uninsured. Hundreds of the stores on Janesville's Main Street stand empty, while the little mall where Ryan's office is located houses Manpower Inc., the temp work service that peddles low-wage, dead end jobs to former GM workers.

Ryan's plan to fix the economy? The chair of the House Budge Committee has proposed a radical "Roadmap for America" that cuts taxes for the wealthiest and corporations, privatizes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance plan, and repeals Wall Street reform to facilitate the next crash.

These policy prescriptions are sheer madness to the folks rallying in downtown Janesville. "What Ryan is doing will destroy Medicare and put people on the streets," said Janesville resident and firefighter Joe Conway. "It's time to stand up to the Paul Ryan's of the world."

Tax Wall Street Speculation

 The nurses were asking leading members of Congress and the White House to support a Wall Street financial transaction fee. A tiny levy on the sale of stocks, futures and options that has the potential to raise billions in revenue, while tamping down on large-volume noise trading and speculation. Such a bill is being planned by Oregon Congressman Pete DeFazio and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, who paired up two years ago to "put Wall Street to work for Main Street" and tax Wall Street to fund a jobs program.

Canary Warf, London's Wall Street, has been taxing these trades for decades and recently the European Union voted to support a transaction fee. France's Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel are both on board. Now its time for Obama to step up and give meaning to his talk of "shared sacrifice."

On September 8th, we will see if Obama really thinks we have a jobs crisis or if he hopes to coast to victory. If he continues to talk about the job creating potential of insane trade deals, like those proposed with Korea and Panama, we are doomed. If, however, he launches a campaign for a major new infrastructure bank funded by a Wall Street tax, then he is headed in the right direction, putting forward needed and popular proposals that make America stronger.

"This is a time for boldness. And this is a moment that working people will judge all our leaders. Will they propose solutions that are on the scale necessary to address the job crisis that America has right now?" Richard Trumka, president of the 12-million-member AFL-CIO, said recently.

 America's 30 million unemployed and underemployed will be watching.

Robert Borosage is quoted in The Hill: Liberals Dismayed by Dems Deficit-Friendly Jobs Agenda

Liz Rose — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 09:07:36 -0500

Liberals dismayed by Dems’ deficit-friendly job-creation agenda

“We’ll take job creation any way we can get it, but there are ways to create jobs without spending money that are more effective than what they’re talking about with the FAA extension,” said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future.

“Passing ‘Buy American’ provisions at every level of government would not only create demand for American-made goods but it would encourage foreign companies to make siting plans for manufacturing here,” he added.

The 2010 Elections: Bring ‘Em On!

Eric Lotke — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:10:17 -0500

I’m looking forward to the 2010 elections. We need them.

Many dread how badly the election is shaping up. Commentators predict double-digit Democratic losses in the House and further retreat from the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. We fear a progressive era strangled in its infancy.

But there’s a sunny side, too. The election can bring the fight out of us. We can turn complaints about how bad things are into complaints about how we got here and how long it will take us to dig out. Like in 2008, the elections in 2010 give us an opportunity to point out the failures of long conservative reign and dare conservatives to try to take us backward.

• Don’t like the deficit? Three times as much of it came from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (unpaid for) and the Bush tax cuts (without offsets) as from President Obama’s Economic Recovery Act.

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

• Don’t like the job situation? We lost 11,000 jobs in November. That’s bad. But we lost 533,000 jobs in November of last year, the crowning achievement of Bush’s presidency. It will take a long time to turn this around. But at least we’re turning.

Source: AFL-CIO

• Frustrated about health care reform? Me too. But don’t forget how bad it was. Health care spending rose from 13.8 percent of GDP when Bush took office to 16.6 percent last year — even as the number of uninsured grew by a million people every year. So we spent more every year but got less for it. In personal terms, the cost of a family premium more than doubled, from $5,791 in 1999 to $12,680 in 2008.

Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

A few years ago, guaranteed, affordable health care for all was an impossible dream. Now it’s just a few votes away. Let’s thank the progressive forces that got us this far rather than assailing them for compromise. Save the attacks for the forces that compelled the compromise.

Other changes haven’t even begun to take effect. We’re beginning efforts to regulate financial markets so Wall Street serves the real economy, not the other way around. We’re taking baby steps towards energy independence, and even starting to make sure that the components of our new energy economy are made in America — so we don’t replace a dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on foreign manufacturing. We’re starting to reign in private contractors who took over public functions but left the public interest behind, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We want those things to happen. All that and more. But we won’t get there if we start circling the firing squad over who’s to blame over health care reform. We know who’s to blame. Obstructionist senators, obsolete 60-vote filibuster rules, and giant corporations who buy their influence. Our deep hole comes compliments of conservative ideologues who valued private interest over the common good.

The President doesn't talk about that much. In a non-election year, the leader of our great democracy chose to govern, not to campaign. Senators who wanted change tried in good faith to work with senators who preferred failure to reform. They treated gridlock like bad weather, a chance misfortune, not a deliberate strategy by the opposition party.

An election year can be different. We can bring the fight back — for the ideas and ideals that will put the government on the side of working people and heal our broken economy. The people want these changes. An election is a chance to fight. Bring it on.

The Doldrums of Young America

Armand Biroonak — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:25:37 -0500

Recent data from the Department of Labor shows the national unemployment rate has climbed over 10 percent. But that number does not paint the whole picture when taking a closer look at jobless figures by age demographic. For young adults in their late teens and early twenties, unemployment figures indicate truly dismal times.

Compared to the national average, young adults face substantially higher levels of unemployment. Those 20-24 years old face unemployment at over 15 percent, for those between the ages of 18 to 19, even worse at over 25 percent.

But this just continues a trend that young adults have faced for nearly a decade.

And unemployment is taking a toll. Historically, a majority of students rely on at least part-time employment to help cover the costs of post-secondary education, but many of those jobs have dried up in the downturn.

Think having a bachelor’s degree in hand will be the ticket out? Think again. Earlier this year less than 20 percent of 2009 graduates reported finding a job by graduation. And for those lucky to land a job, average salaries are down compared to the past. In fact, the average income for college graduates has fallen since 2000 by 12 percent (adjusted for inflation). Not to leave out mentioning, as college graduates find less pay or remain unemployed, their student debt while in school rose sharply , now averaging $20,000 for graduates.

Source: Census 2000 and 2008.

This dynamic group either entering college or joining the workforce are the seeds for America’s future success, but their dream of prosperity has wilted in these extraordinary times. The lack of employment translates to fewer opportunities to gain an education, own a home and stand on secure financial footing down the line. Hopefully these numbers will wake-up Congress and the Obama administration for the need of a long-term industrial and jobs strategy to put Generation X back to work. Now is the time for action before America's brightest and energetic turn disillusioned and a permanent blue.

Productivity Rose, Workers Didn’t

Eric Lotke — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:53:26 -0400

Today’s “Productivity and Costs” data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics contain what looks like good news. “Labor productivity increased at a 6.6 percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2009.”

The Associated Press adds context to the data: “Worker productivity, the single biggest factor determining living standards, grew at the fastest pace in nearly six years in the spring while labor costs fell by the most in nine years.” That sounds like good news. “Increases in productivity can help boost living standards because companies can increase wages financed by rising output.”

So why aren't workers celebrating?

First, what the AP and the BLS call “labor costs,” most of us call a paycheck. The biggest decline in nine years isn’t good news. Real hourly compensation dropped 1.0 percent last quarter.

Then, we have the irony of productivity. Read the definition with care: “Labor productivity, or output per hour, is calculated by dividing an index of real output by an index of hours.” In other words, if you make more stuff in less time, you’ve increased your productivity. That’s intuitive.

But watch how it works in real life. In the manufacturing sector, productivity grew 4.9 percent. But that growth came because output fell 9.8 percent and hours worked decreased by an even bigger 14.0 percent. So if you do the math, it’s a 4.9 percent increase in productivity.

But if you work the line, it means your output is down and your hours dropped even lower. Yes, you’re more productive — making less stuff in even fewer hours.

Source: BLS

But that’s not the sound of a happy workplace. That’s the sound of an economy grinding to a halt. Who's listening?

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David Sirota

David Sirota — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:43:08 -0400

The Obstructionists on the Fair Pay Act

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:41:04 -0400

Here is the Senate roll call vote on HR 2831, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which is designed to allow employees adequate time to discover and file claims against employers who violate equal pay laws. The law would counter the effects of a Supreme Court ruling that bill proponents said put unreasonable time limits on the ability of workers to find out that an employer was paying them less than a colleague because of their gender.

Forty-two senators voted to filibuster the bill. Their votes effectively blocked the bill from further consideration. As in many other bills that have come before the Senate, a minority group of conservatives have exercised veto power over legislation favored by a majority of the Senate and a majority of the American people.

Sessions, Jeff (R-Alabama)	No
Shelby, Richard C. (R-Alabama)	No
Murkowski, Lisa (R-Alaska)	No
Stevens, Ted (R-Alaska)	No
Kyl, Jon (R-Arizona)	No
McCain, John (R-Arizona)	Not Voting
Lincoln, Blanche L. (D-Arkansas)	Yes
Pryor, Mark L. (D-Arkansas)	Yes
Boxer, Barbara (D-California)	Yes
Feinstein, Dianne (D-California)	Yes
Allard, Wayne (R-Colorado)	No
Salazar, Ken (D-Colorado)	Yes
Dodd, Christopher J. (D-Connecticut)	Yes
Lieberman, Joseph I. (I-Connecticut)	Yes
Biden, Joseph R. (D-Delaware)	Yes
Carper, Thomas R. (D-Delaware)	Yes
Martinez, Mel (R-Florida)	No
Nelson, Bill (D-Florida)	Yes
Chambliss, Saxby (R-Georgia)	No
Isakson, Johnny (R-Georgia)	No
Akaka, Daniel (D-Hawaii)	Yes
Inouye, Daniel K. (D-Hawaii)	Yes
Craig, Larry E. (R-Idaho)	No
Crapo, Mike (R-Idaho)	No
Durbin, Richard (D-Illinois)	Yes
Obama, Barack (D-Illinois)	Yes
Bayh, Evan (D-Indiana)	Yes
Lugar, Richard G. (R-Indiana)	No
Grassley, Chuck (R-Iowa)	No
Harkin, Tom (D-Iowa)	Yes
Brownback, Sam (R-Kansas)	No
Roberts, Pat (R-Kansas)	No
Bunning, Jim (R-Kentucky)	No
McConnell, Mitch (R-Kentucky)	No
Landrieu, Mary L. (D-Louisiana)	Yes
Vitter, David (R-Louisiana)	No
Collins, Susan M. (R-Maine)	Yes
Snowe, Olympia (R-Maine)	Yes
Mikulski, Barbara A. (D-Maryland)	Yes
Cardin, Ben (D-Maryland)	Yes
Kennedy, Edward M. (D-Massachusetts)	Yes
Kerry, John F. (D-Massachusetts)	Yes
Levin, Carl (D-Michigan)	Yes
Stabenow, Debbie (D-Michigan)	Yes
Coleman, Norm (R-Minnesota)	Yes
Klobuchar, Amy (D-Minnesota)	Yes
Cochran, Thad (R-Mississippi)	No
Wicker, Roger F. (R-Mississippi)	No
Bond, Christopher S. (R-Missouri)	No
McCaskill, Claire (D-Missouri)	Yes
Baucus, Max (D-Montana)	Yes
Tester, Jon (D-Montana)	Yes
Hagel, Chuck (R-Nebraska)	Not Voting
Nelson, E. Benjamin (D-Nebraska)	Yes
Ensign, John (R-Nevada)	No
Reid, Harry (D-Nevada)	No
Gregg, Judd (R-New Hampshire)	No
Sununu, John E. (R-New Hampshire)	Yes
Lautenberg, Frank R. (D-New Jersey)	Yes
Menendez, Robert (D-New Jersey)	Yes
Bingaman, Jeff (D-New Mexico)	Yes
Domenici, Pete V. (R-New Mexico)	No
Clinton, Hillary R. (D-New York)	Yes
Schumer, Charles E. (D-New York)	Yes
Dole, Elizabeth (R-North Carolina)	No
Burr, Richard (R-North Carolina)	No
Conrad, Kent (D-North Dakota)	Yes
Dorgan, Byron L. (D-North Dakota)	Yes
Brown, Sherrod (D-Ohio)	Yes
Voinovich, George V. (R-Ohio)	No
Coburn, Tom (R-Oklahoma)	No
Inhofe, James M. (R-Oklahoma)	No
Smith, Gordon H. (R-Oregon)	Yes
Wyden, Ron (D-Oregon)	Yes
Casey, Bob (D-Pennsylvania)	Yes
Specter, Arlen (R-Pennsylvania)	Yes
Whitehouse, Sheldon (D-Rhode Island)	Yes
Reed, Jack (D-Rhode Island)	Yes
DeMint, James W. (R-South Carolina)	No
Graham, Lindsey (R-South Carolina)	No
Johnson, Tim (D-South Dakota)	Yes
Thune, John (R-South Dakota)	No
Alexander, Lamar (R-Tennessee)	No
Corker, Bob (R-Tennessee)	No
Cornyn, John (R-Texas)	No
Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R-Texas)	No
Bennett, Robert F. (R-Utah)	No
Hatch, Orrin G. (R-Utah)	No
Sanders, Bernie (I-Vermont)	Yes
Leahy, Patrick J. (D-Vermont)	Yes
Webb, James (D-Virginia)	Yes
Warner, John (R-Virginia)	No
Cantwell, Maria (D-Washington)	Yes
Murray, Patty (D-Washington)	Yes
Byrd, Robert C. (D-West Virginia)	Yes
Rockefeller, John D. (D-West Virginia)	Yes
Feingold, Russell D. (D-Wisconsin)	Yes
Kohl, Herb (D-Wisconsin)	Yes
Enzi, Michael B. (R-Wyoming)	No
Barrasso, John (R-Wyoming)	No

Cancerous Conservatism Debilitates Workers

Isaiah J. Poole — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:25:40 -0400

Perhaps the ultimate workplace expression of conservative "you're-on-your-own" ideology is FedEx Ground, where all of the workers who deliver packages are not FedEx employees but are independent contractors.

FedEx sells that as "the ability to grow your own business." But for Jean Capobianco, a FedEx contractor who was the subject of a profile in Sunday's New Work Times, it meant that FedEx could fire her for, in effect, having cancer.

FedEx is among the most aggressive users of independent contracting as a way to get out from under the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the bane of conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, which derisively calls it a burdensome "Depression-era labor law," and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which touts independent contractors as a way to "avoid some of the legal and financial drawbacks of being an employer."

Drawbacks such as paying Social Security and payroll taxes, compliance with wage and hour rules, providing health and other benefits and allowing workers to choose union affiliation should they want to do so.

FedEx, as The Times reports, exercises almost total control over worker schedules, what they wear—even, Capobianco was quoted as saying, how workers wear their hair. Federal law says that workers can only be considered independent contractors if they have a degree of actual independence in setting the terms of their employment. But the Labor Department has been notably acquiescent in what labor activists, and legislators in a number of states, say is rampant abuse of the rules governing classification of independent contractors. In the absence of federal action, states have had to fill the void with court suits and legislation.

There is a bill in the Senate (S 2044, sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.) that would require the Labor Department to more aggressively police abuses of independent contractor classifications so that employees will in fact have all of the rights of employees. The legislation has not moved very far in the Senate. There were roughly 10 million workers classified as independent contractors in 2005, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Their rights deserve the attention both on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail.

♦ ♦ ♦

Another conservative outrage against workers—a Supreme Court ruling that makes it practically impossible for workers to file claims against employers for equal pay violations—is expected to get some favorable attention in the Senate this week.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (HR 2831) would undo the damage done by the court's conservative majority, which ruled that Ledbetter, an employee with Goodyear Tire and Rubber, could not recover damages for being paid less than men doing the same job because she did not discover the pay disparity quickly enough. (Because individual workers' pay is usually confidential, pay disparities could be undetected by workers for years, as it was in Ledbetter's case.)

The House has already passed this bill, and the Senate is expected to act on it Wednesday.

How serious is this issue? Women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. In other words, the average woman had to work from January 2007 until today to match what the average man had made by December 31.

Teachers Won't Stay in the Profession

Alex Carter — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:11:52 -0400

Nearly half of all teachers leave the profession during their first five years.