labor movement

Impressions of the DC Protest Supporting Wisconsin

Joseph M. Firestone — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 12:43:35 -0500

Last Saturday a protest expressing solidarity with the one in Madison, Wisconsin called “The Rally To Save the American Dream” occurred at DuPont Circle in Washington, DC. The protest was short, beginning at 12:00 Noon and ending at roughly 1:30 PM. It was organized by a coalition of progressive organizations including Move-on and Democracy for America. Union representation was also strong and included the DC Teachers Union, and the local Chapter of National Nurses United, a well as other local Unions. I've seen very little coverage of the protest in local newspapers here or on the national news and cable outlets, and unless I've missed something, this piece will probably be the most detailed report on the DC protest you will see. But, I'm afraid that it won't be a journalist's report; it will be a participant observer's.

My wife, daughter, and I arrived at DuPont Circle a few minutes before noon. The crowd was thin then, perhaps 500 or so. The atmosphere was very good-natured, and there was a palpable air of celebration. Saturday was a great day in Washington, a little cool at noon, but getting warmer, and there was a hint of Spring in the air. The rally started a bit late, but not outrageously so.

As the rally leaders started talking DuPont Circle began to fill up. Soon the numbers in the circle had more than doubled. People were packed in. I've seen estimates of crowd size at 1,000. But, this was the biggest 1,000 person crowd I've seen in my lifetime, and, in my view, it was at least twice as large as that. Here are some crowd photos taken by my daughter.

I've said the crowd was good-natured and celebratory, and so it was. When speakers and rally leaders exhorted people to chant about being united and not being afraid, or mentioned Scott Walker and then paused for jeers, or joined in the singing of “On Wisconsin,” or cheered Unions, or yelled for National Nurses United, or supported the DC Teachers Union, or booed the Wisconsin Republicans, and cheered the Democrats who had walked out, or booed some other villain, the protesters responded with joy and good feeling. The experience of being united and standing up for what they believed, outweighed any feelings of anger, and when these were expressed, the expressions themselves were more joyful than angry.

To borrow a phrase from the title of a 1960s book, DuPont Circle felt like “The Springtime of Freedom” last Saturday; like the early days of yet another hopeful movement for change: before such a movement meets serious, and perhaps violent resistance, and before its supporters get very, very angry at the outrages still to come. High points of the rally included a speech by a George Washington University student talking about the experiences of his family; protesters trying to sing the Wisconsin fight song without really knowing the words, telling stories about what was really going on in Wisconsin and about the distortions and lies the Republican decision makes and media were telling out there, and also a pretty good speech by Van Jones, the environmentalist President Obama threw under the bus, as soon as the right-wing talk show brigade began to tell lies about him. Here's a video of part of Van Jones speech from Sum of Change:

Sumofchange - Van Jones Lessons from the Tea Party - At Rally to Restore the American Dream

I was glad he pointed out that progressives are fighting for the Tea Party people too even if they don't know it, and also that he emphasized the lesson of no compromise and the theme of “Liberty and Justice for All,” and emphasized the “Justice for All” part, since that's certainly the boat that this Administration has missed. Sum of Change has more videos from the rallies including more of Van Jones talk and also some interviews.

I think that “The Save the American Dream Rally,” was quite successful in its own terms. The turnout was very good considering the short time frame of organization of several days. The enthusiasm was good, and the speeches, particularly Van Jones's, certainly got the protesters excited. Participants will remember their experiences at this one and will come to others. And I think there may be many others.

The Government austerity program favored by the national political class is magnified in its effects at the state and local level. These Governments are not sovereign in their own currency, as the Federal Government is. States also have institutions requiring annual balanced budgets, yet during recessions their tax revenues fall drastically, while their social safety net expenses increase.

Most States are in trouble. The President and the Democrats needed to have the Federal Government pick up anticipated State shortfalls to make it unnecessary for the 50 State Hoovers to apply Hooverism. But, in passing their extremely underfunded stimulus plan, the Democrats and the President made it necessary for the 50 State Hoovers to make “tough choices.” In some states this means shared sacrifice. But in many, if not a majority of States, it means cutting taxes for the rich and cutting spending that benefits the middle class and the poor. The enforced austerity intensifies the American class war.

When people voted last Fall, they voted for jobs and against the Democrats who failed to provide them. They didn't bargain for drastic cuts in Government spending at all levels, killing any chance of a recovery and lead to greater unemployment. Yet that is exactly what austerity will produce, and as it does so, we can expect other Wisconsins, and other protests in many places, including much, much larger ones in DC that demand Justice for All, including: justice for the banksters and the fraudsters, for the torturers, for the unemployed, and for all the hard working Americans who've gotten screwed by the years of outsourcing, the crash of 2008, and the ridiculous bailing out of Wall Street and the big banks at the expense of Main Street. That justice may be some time in coming. But one day when the rising gets large enough, it will come; and the voice of the people will be heard once more in this land.

(Cross-posted at All Life Is Problem Solving and Fiscal Sustainability).

Currency Imbalances: China’s Problem or Ours?

Susan Ozawa — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:10:01 -0500

Leading economists gathered at an EPI event today to discuss our trade deficit and labor problems caused by our imbalance with China. The conversation centered around how this imbalance can be solved by compelling China to appreciate its currency. Leo Gerard, the President of the United Steelworkers, did address domestic strategies to approach these problems, however, the central perspective of the panel appeared to view structural imbalances as a bilateral problem to be addressed through foreign policy.

I would broaden the conversation to consider this problem a historically multilateral problem of currency coordination, exacerbated by the neoliberal model of development. I would also highlight what our role could be in addressing these long-standing issues in both foreign and domestic policy. The dollar has fallen significantly since the recession began however, there are different domestic strategies we should pursue to address our structural trade deficit and lack of competitiveness. To address the international issues underlying these imbalances going forward, a new Bretton Woods, particularly the establishment of an International Clearing Union should be reconsidered alongside reconsideration of the neoliberal model of growth and development. View D’Arista’s proposal here.

Domestically, Treasury should change its mandate from defending a strong dollar policy by proxy through our international relations if we're concerned about the trade balance. It’s key to note that pushing for importing developing countries to appreciate their relative currencies serves several domestic dysfunctions; we can pursue expansionary monetary policy, run a trade deficit and do so without depreciating the value of our currency and eroding wealth. We don’t have a strong dollar policy domestically so we are pushing it internationally. That’s a problem because the development model we’ve pushed abroad incentivizes developing nations to undervalue their currencies. So, regarding the root causes of "currency manipulation" we have to dismantle the export-led growth development model (alongside the capital account liberalization model) which means admitting import substitution industrialization, industrial strategy, and other means to control capital and trade flows are appropriate strategies to pursue for all countries. We can't have our cake and eat it too. There are only a few policy options for open developing economies, and controlling their exchange rate is a last ditch effort when they are WTO compliant and compliant to a number of other liberalization conditions embodied in bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, IMF/World Bank loans, etc. China's a bruiser, and not like all developing countries but we're hardly a small developing economy either.

What we can do to help our trade balance besides continue to let the dollar fall is institute an almost prohibitive consumption tax on luxury foreign goods here which would also raise public revenue. We would have to condone other countries’ use of similar tools as well so as to avoid provoking our trade partners but again, this would be compatible with our disavowal of the neoliberal model of growth and development.

Since giving developing countries autonomy over their policies is important, the best we can do for our labor concerns in manufacturing in the US, is to develop an appropriate industrial strategy, like other industrialized nations. This should entail investing in high value-added sectors and phasing out production in sections in which we have lost any competitive advantage, including light manufacturing. This wouldn't be pretty but sufficient training, placement and competition management would smooth the creative destruction. Spending as much as the leading OECD nations on R&D (including primary education) would require cuts elsewhere, presumably from the most bloated line items in our budget; military in the short-run and health care in the long-run. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Main Science and Technology Indicators 2009 the US government expenditure on R&D as a percent of GDP is just over 0.4% while Japan’s is roughly 0.7% and Germany’s roughly double ours at 0.8%. As our private investment in R&D lags Japan’s, we have significant room for government support to catch up to our competitors in high-value added goods. However, we also have significant room to adjust this spending since we currently allocate 5.6% of GDP to the Defense Department.

This strategy runs in a different direction from labor’s stance on domestic spending priorities to benefit labor. Their push seems to seek as little creative destruction as possible and to my mind is shortsighted environmentally. A resource intensive industrial strategy promoting infrastructure spending is not the best primary route to growth and efficiency, especially for such a large country. Yes, we should be refitting our major cities to be more efficient and sustainable and reinforcing the major arteries of mass transit between them but this spending is unlikely to impact GDP in the long-run through anything but a temporary Keynesian multiplier effect (until we run up against a budget constraint and have to terminate the projects). The efficiency gains from improved internal transportation will help bring foreign goods to our internal markets and will keep the labor force employed but it’s unclear how it will promote domestic consumption of domestic goods without a comprehensive industrial strategy. Thus, environmental remediation and other service-oriented, labor intensive work would be better targets for automatic stabilizing job creation programs. See the Levy Institute’s work on this here. In the long-run, we must invest in education and research and development as well as develop a comprehensive industrial policy plan if we want to produce goods for either domestic or foreign consumption.

And then there's always the global workers' movement to set a floor on wages and labor standards. That's key. Still, I'm an underconsumptionist at heart and believe fighting for obsolete jobs is not a sustainable strategy in the long-run, unless we want to start destroying machines. Growth in credit markets with financial deregulation, historically low interest rates and a bubble in housing, creating home equity withdrawals, led to increased consumption but generally, production of consumption goods needs to contract not expand as these other conditions disappear. Thus, the labor movement should be focusing on promoting sustainable industrial policy paired with keeping structural unemployment on the radar of politicians regardless of the cycle since monetary policy and other supply-side solutions cannot always ensure full-employment. See Randall Wray’s proposal for a full-employment program here.

So, the answer, to the question what should the US do to address this imbalance, is to create a domestic strategy for growth with more equitable distribution. Since the 1970s we’ve shaped the global economy to benefit our multinational corporations and financial institutions. These gains haven’t been well distributed to labor, but we haven’t had a proper domestic industrial strategy to temper this de facto industrial strategy. This is key going forward. The questions remain, where will labor stand and how do we diffuse the control of multinational corporations and financial institutions from shaping US policy both foreign and domestic? Certainly fighting corporate determination over policy is a start. Follow this debate, sign this petition, and don’t be fooled with quick fix solutions. We need to make radical changes ourselves to get us out of the hole we are in.

New Officers to be Voted in at AFL-CIO Convention

Alex Hogan — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:58:41 -0400

The AFL-CIO -- the largest federation of union men and women in the United States -- is getting new leadership this week at its convention in Pittsburgh, including new Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Alex Hogan

Alex Hogan — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:39:46 -0400

Labor Movement Gets Tough and Threatens to Cut Off Cowardly Democrats

Mike Elk — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:52:33 -0400

For a long time, Corporate Democrats have taken advantage of organized labor to mobilize voters for them and fund their campaigns. However when big votes come up against powerful corporate interested, these Democrats continually abandon organized labor on key issues like the public option, Employee Free Choice Act, trade agreements, and other issues important for working people.

However ironically, they still go back to labor when they need them to get elected and in the past labor has often complied giving them funds and ground troops.

Speaking yesterday at the Center for American Progress, Richard Trumka , the incoming president of the AFL-CIO, said those days are over. He put a shoot across the bow of such cowardly Democrats saying that:

"Today, more than ever, we need to be a labor movement that stands by our friends, punishes its enemies, and challenges those who, well, can’t seem to decide which side they’re on. I’m talking about the politicians who always want us to turn out our members to vote for them, but who somehow, always seem to forget workers after the votes are counted."

In an effort to counter wavering Democrats, organized labor has asked Democrats a fundamental question - Which Side Are They On? Democrats are either with working people or against them.

This isn't just some rhetoric designed to be molded to some vague, yet to be defined compromise Labor is making very specific demands. In an interview today in Politico, incoming AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that the AFL-CIO will not support a bill that does not have a public option,an employer mandate for coverage, and no tax on employer-provided health benefits.

These are real serious demands that every Democrat will now be forced to listen to due to labor's threat to cut off support. The labor movement under the leadership of Richard Trumka intends to be much more aggressive in forcing Democrats to stand by their campaign promises to working people.

Speaking last month at the Sheet Metal Workers Convention, Richard Trumka said:

"Well, we need to send them a special message: it’s that you may have forgotten what the labor movement did to get you elected; but, by God, we never will! And if you stab us in the back on health care this year don’t you dare ask us for our support next year!"

The labor movement is saying no surrender, no defeat in our fight for health care, an economy for all, the Employee Free Choice Act, and a host of other issues. The days of labor movement laying down and accepting what Democrats offer to give them are over.

The message to Democrats is clear - "Which Side Are You On?". You are either with us or against us.