The Rights Revolution

Originally published in New Labor Forum in 2003. Maybe I'll make a digest, but for the time being I'm just posting this for reference...

By Nelson Lichtenstein

A GREAT PARADOX EMBODIES THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOR rights in the world today. Institutional trade unionism is not doing so well. This is most obvious in Anglo-America, where union density has declined dramatically during the last quarter century, and where unionism's influence, under both Labour and Democratic Party Administrations has been less than potent. With some notable exceptions-South Africa, South Korea, Brazil-one can say the same for union membership and power all over the world.

Conversation with an NYC Labor Activist

Gregory Butler is a blogger construction worker, labor activist, and author of Disunited Brotherhoods...race, racketeering and the fall of the New York construction unions.

Here is the text of an (incomplete) conversation we had on Facebook.

Sam Calvin via UnemployedWorkers.org
A disturbing chart...btw I don't know why they don't use the actual percentages...chart should read 67.5% on the left down to 57.5% on the right...

Daily Kos: Workers' share of national income fails to recover after 21st Century recessions
www.dailykos.com
But after the 2001 and 2007-2009 recessions officially ended, workers' share of national income did not recover but continued a downward spiral. It is now at the lowest level it has been since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping records 64 years ago.
June 19 at 1:58am · LikeUnlike · · Share

Sam Calvin one note- part of the decline is attributable to the fact that this measures "wages and salaries" as opposed to "total compensation"...ie healthcare costs squeeze take-home pay...
June 19 at 2:00am · LikeUnlike
o
Sam Calvin The really interesting question is why there is no ability on the part of progressive elites to provide real support to unions, the only institutions which have proven capable of reversing this trend...
June 19 at 2:02am · LikeUnlike
o
Gregory A. Butler
The Democratic Party represents the liberal wing of the capitalist class - they want to keep workers as impoverished and unorganized as much as the right wingers in the Republican Party do. The only difference is, they see America's weak, timid, incompetent, cowardly, racist, sexist and pro corporate union leaders as useful sources of funding and volunteers for the Democratic Party and they understand that those guys act as a barrier against the rise of an effective and militant working class movement. So, they tolerate unions as long as they are small, weak and divided (and solidly in the Democratic Party camp).
June 19 at 2:17am · LikeUnlike

EXCERPT: The Financialization of the Economy

EXCERPT FROM "Addressing the Problem of Stagnant Wages," Frank Levy and Tom Kochan http://www.employmentpolicy.org/sites/www.employmentpolicy.org/files/field-content-file/pdf/Mike%20Lillich/EPRN%20WagesMay%2020%20-%20FL%20Edits_0.pdf

Beyond changes in technology, product markets, and labor-market institutions, changes in financial institutions have helped to create wage stagnation and wage inequality.
Four parallel trends are notable:

• heightened focus on shareholder value,
  
• increased use of debt financing,
  
• deregulation of financial markets, and
  
• expansion of the financial-services sector.[1]

Shadow-boxing

Comments in response to: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/bloomberg-administration-is-criticized-on-wages/

1.
Larry Eisenberg
New York City
May 12th, 2011
5:05 pm
Developers, subsidized, are
So fragile, so easy to jar,
Four hundred a week
Such great havoc would wreak,
And lifestyles would grow so bizarre.
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2.
Paul '52
New York, NY
May 12th, 2011
5:07 pm
I'd like to propose a "win-win" for the Council:

Get the City Council in a room with the Kentucky State Legislature. The Council can "win" by convincing the Legislature that its powers don't encompass amendments to the laws of geology, physics and biology. The Legislature's "win" is convincing the Council that its powers don't include amending laws of economics.

Both sides can then come away happy.
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3.
Edward
New York
May 12th, 2011
8:44 pm
I believe there is a disconnect. The real estate developers are the owners of the mall or shopping center but they lease space to retailers. The wage bill is to be imposed on the retailers that lease space in the mall/shopping center. The retailers are not receiving any benefits that I am aware of, unless I am missing something in the overall transaction.

The retailers can be granted a sales tax credit for the increase in wages over the federal minimum wage so they are not at a competitive disadvantage to other retailers in other malls/shopping centers.

I do not appreciate the angry tone of the elected officials. Many residents in working class communities would welcome the jobs and new shopping opportunities in their neighborhood instead of traveling to Rockland, Nassau and Westchester counties to shop.
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4.
followingsylvis
New York City
@Edward I appreciate your sincerity on this issue, unlike some others (I'm looking at you, @Paul52) I believe you really are trying to find a just solution to this issue.

Even though the wage mandates will show up on the retailers' payroll, it is the owners of the mall property who will ultimately have to \"eat\" the difference.

Look at it this way - the goods and services provided in a mall have to correspond to local market prices. So total revenue is fixed within a fairly narrow range by the pricing structure of the retailer. After inventory is paid for, this money must be then divided up among employees, retailers, and the mall owners. Retailers, although they vary in the amount that they are able to lay claim to, operate within a relatively fixed margin, again depending on their business model.

Rent, on the other hand, is peculiar in that it has no costs associated with it (taxes being only an after-the-fact subdivision of profit in the case of commercial property) - it is pure ownership income. So when push comes to shove, it is the rentier who must lower his price.

To put it simply - the landlord will take as much of a retailer's profit as he can, but he doesn't want to kill the golden goose, except, occasionally, as a symbolic gesture to frighten goslings like our friend Paul52.

Wednesday Afternoon Orgdown

Been a while since my last orgdown, but this caught my eye:


Organizing Upgrade: Left Organizers Respond to the Changing Times
http://www.organizingupgrade.com/

From their "about us" page:

Organizing Upgrade is an attempt to engage left leaders and innovators in the field of community organizing in a strategic dialogue. We hope that this project can bring the kind of inspiration, vision and strategic clarity we need to strengthen our political impact, both in our immediate fight and in our longer-term efforts to build the social justice movement and to revitalize a movement-rooted left in the United States.

Also, this has become a regular source for me for international labor news:

LaborStart: Where trade unionists start their day on the net.
http://www.labourstart.org/
from their about page:

LabourStart is an online news service maintained by a global network of volunteers which aims to serve the international trade union movement by collecting and disseminating information -- and by assisting unions in campaigning and other ways.

Its features include daily labour news links in more than 20 languages and a news syndication service used by more than over 700 trade union websites. News is collected from mainstream, trade union, and alternative news sources by a network of over 500 volunteer correspondents based on every continent.

'Nuff said.

Conversation on Taxes

Full text of a conversation with some libertarians. Did I win? Did I score points? Or did I flatter them too much by using the term "pathological individualism"? You be the judge.
-----

Paul Nickels
This is class warfare, people! The rich are effing the poor at every turn. Money for tax breaks for the rich, no money for 99ers. Money for corporate bailouts, no money for the people. The poor pay taxes, the rich pay little or nothing. Is this the America our parents and grandparents fought for? Is this the America our founding fathers envisioned?

No. It is not.

Only Little People Pay Taxes | Mother Jones
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/taxes-richest-americans-charts-graph
How a janitor ends up with a higher tax rate than a millionaire, and seven more charts that show how the richest Americans beat the IRS.

April 18 at 11:12pm • UnlikeLike • • Share

You, Deborah L Purdom and Jacquard Guenon like this.
o
Denise Gerdes NO! This is not what it should be!
April 19 at 7:53am • LikeUnlike


o
Bruce Olson it's not; that's a bit of a misrepresentation... those "in the Helmsley building" are not necessarily representative of "average". It also makes a lot of hidden assumptions about the sources of income for the wealthy person... if that income were mainly salary/bonus, his actual taxes would be MUCH higher; His net taxes in this case imply revenue from mainly off-shore or other tax exempt sources.
April 19 at 11:41am • LikeUnlike
o
Sam Calvin ‎@Bruce I'm not seeing your point - the main thing here is that people who work for a living pay a high rate, while those lucky enough to live mostly off capital gains pay much less. The source of the wealth of all the truly wealthy is not work - that's why the tax rate falls as you get into the "upper stratosphere" of the top 1% despite a progressive income tax.
April 19 at 8:06pm • LikeUnlike • 1 personLoading...

New tools for communication: Whiteboard

Nice project going on over at RSAnimate ( http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/videos/ ), using whiteboard with entertaining cartooning to make a lecture listenable which might otherwise be boring.

Here's David Harvey getting animated: