- Outside the beltway, ground zero is Wisconsin, but worker
rights are threatened across America, including by the Obama administration's
spurning them since taking office in January 2009. While giving at least
$12.4 trillion to Wall Street crooks and hundreds of billions more to other
corporate favorites, he stiff-armed budget-strapped states and local governments,
especially in the current fiscal year, leaving them on their own sink or
swim..
-
- He also did little for distressed households. Promising
millions of new jobs, he created few, leaving real unemployment over 22%
more than three years after economic crisis began.
-
- Moreover, he provided little popular aid overall, and
facilitated Wall Street's home foreclosure racket, involving fabricated
documents, forgery, perjury, lost paperwork, and "rocket docket"
eviction speed throughs lasting 20 seconds on average. He also froze federal
worker wages and plans sweeping austerity for working households, while
showering business and America's aristocracy with generous tax breaks and
other handouts.
-
- The way reactionary governors and mayors hammer their
residents, Obama is doing to America. He's no friend of labor. In mid-February,
he cynically told Milwaukee's WTMJ television that:
-
- "Everybody's got to make some adjustments to new
fiscal realities," claiming worker sacrifices are necessary to "save
jobs" when, in fact, they're killing them and driving millions into
poverty from wage and benefit cuts. At the same time, corporate profits
are better than ever, achieved on the backs of hammered workers, swindled
by a Washington-business cabal, sacrificing people for marketplace sovereignty
- a government-sponsored racket.
-
- Overall, Obama pretends to support workers. In fact,
he spurns them, his vague, tepid rhetoric a dead giveaway for supporting
class warfare, including harsh measures to quell dissent.
-
- Extremist Think Tanks and Media Assault Worker Rights
-
- Numerous right-wing think tanks infest America's landscape,
generously funded by conservative foundations, including Koch Family Foundations
(established by David, Charles and Claude R. Lambe), several Scaife ones,
John M. Olin Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Smith Richardson
Foundation, various others, and George Soros' Open Society Foundations,
pretending to be liberal, when, in fact, he supports everything smelling
money.
-
- Their agenda includes marketplace sovereignty, deregulation,
privatization of government services, ending popular entitlements, social
spending, and affirmative action, prioritizing business friendly policies,
waging class war, controlling electoral politics and supportive media backing
everything on their wish list.
-
- Among many others, their beneficiaries include the American
Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Club for Growth, Federalist Society,
Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and Hoover
Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover,
best known for inaction while America sank into depression while he was
president.
-
- Its notorious members include Condoleezza Rice, George
Shultz, Edwin Meese, Margaret Thatcher, William Perry, Thomas Sowell, Shelby
Steele, Michael Boskin, James Woolsey, Christopher Hitchens, Milton Friedman
until he died, and Robert Barro - his Wall Street Journal op-ed attacking
collective bargaining discussed below, typical of what Hoover members advocate.
-
- Its mission statement endorses representative government,
private enterprise, its definition of peace and personal freedom, and safeguarding
America's system, benefitting wealth and power, not popular, interests.
-
- Herbert Hoover's 1959 statement guides policy, saying:
-
- America's "social and economic systems are based
on private enterprise from which springs initiative and ingenuity....Ours
is a system where the Federal Government should undertake no governmental,
social or economic action, except where local government, or the people,
cannot undertake it for themselves. (Safeguarding) the American system,
(based on) individual, economic, and political freedom; private enterprise;
and representative government" is fundamental to bedrock Hoover principles,
ones very much anti-labor.
-
- So were Milton Friedman's. He said markets work best
unfettered by rules, regulations, onerous taxes, trade barriers, "entrenched
interests" and human interference, and the best government is practically
none at all as anything it can do private business does better. Democracy
and government of, by and for the people? Heresy for Friedman, an ideology
he taught and endorsed.
-
- He felt public wealth should be in private hands, accumulation
of profits unrestrained, corporate taxes abolished, and social services
curtailed or ended. He believed "economic freedom is an end to itself....and
an indispensable means toward (achieving) political freedom." He opposed
foreign aid, subsidies, import quotas, and tariffs, as well as drug laws
he called a subsidy to organized crime. It's also one for money laundering
banks, especially major Wall Street ones, profiting hugely by doing it.
-
- He favored a constitutional amendment requiring Congress
balance the budget because deficits "encourage political irresponsibility."
He claimed taxes were onerous and "favor(ed)...cutting (them) under
any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever possible...."
He wanted corporations exempted from them. He opposed the minimum wage,
supported a flat tax for the rich, and believed everyone should have to
buy his or her own medical insurance like any other product or service.
-
- He opposed public education, supported school vouchers
for private ones, and believed marketplace competition improves performance
even though voucher amounts are inadequate and go mostly to religious schools,
breaching America's inviolable church-state separation.
-
- He also wanted Social Security and Medicare privatized
and vocally opposed unions, saying "high" wages and benefits
harm everyone, including workers. Extremist economists like him endorse
the same policies, wanting America returned to 19th century harshness.
Acolyte Robert Barro is one.
-
- On February 28, his Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined,
"Unions vs. the Right to Work," saying:
-
- "Labor unions like to portray collective bargaining
as a basic civil liberty, akin to the freedoms of speech, press, assembly
and religion," mocking the most fundamental labor right without which
no others exist.
-
- As enacted in the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, it lets unions
bargain collectively with management on even terms, a goal never achieved
and now gravely weakened after decades of major erosion.
-
- Ideally, however, collective bargaining provides a level
playing field to resolve worker-management conflicts, and, as such, represents
an equitable industrial jurisprudence system, by including civil rights
issues and establishing them in workplaces.
-
- It thus counters one-sided management authority, limits
its arbitrary decision making, strengthens worker rights, increases their
self-respect, morale and productivity, enhances unionism, promotes fairness,
and facilitates equitable labor-management resolutions, benefiting both
sides by establishing open communications to achieve workplace harmony
and peace.
-
- Not according to Barrow who calls it "more similar
to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty," an astonishing
mischaracterization by a Harvard economist, playing politics, not sound
economics left out of his assessment.
-
- Pre-1935 when labor had no rights, they were subject
to (1890) Sherman Antitrust Act guidelines, removed by the 1914 Clayton
Antitrust Act and Wagner Act (the 1935 National Labor Relations Act).
-
- Barro endorses (1947) Taft Hartley Act legislation, letting
states pass right-to-work laws. Twenty-two mostly Southern and Western
ones now have them, prohibiting union-management agreements making membership
or union dues an employment condition, before or after hiring.
-
- Barro's convoluted reasoning claims the right to work
trumps worker rights, and besides: it "has a much more pleasant, liberal
sound than 'collective bargaining.' "
-
- So does neoliberal, an extremist ideology Barro endorses,
advocating marketplace sovereignty, profits over people, a large reserve
army of labor to restrain wages and benefits, privatizing state resources,
deregulation, slashing social services, and militant enforcement when necessary.
-
- Current legislation in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states,
says Barro, "stems from the collision between overly generous benefits
for public employees - notably for pensions and health care - and the fiscal
crises of state and local governments," omitting that years of Wall
Street shenanigans created them.
-
- "Teachers and other public-employee unions went
too far," said Barrow, another astonishing misstatement, contrary
to facts he ignores. Public workers, in fact, are under, not over-compensated
compared to their private sector counterparts.
-
- Using Census Bureau data, a National Institute on Retirement
Security (NIRS) study titled, "Out of Balance? Comparing Public and
Private Sector Compensation Over 20 Years" concludes:
-
- "Wages and salaries of state and local employees
are lower than those for private sector employees with comparable earnings
determinants, such as education and work experience. State workers typically
earn 11 percent less and local workers 12 percent less."
-
- "During the last 15 years, the pay gap" widened.
The pattern holds for most large states. "Benefits make up a slightly
larger share of compensation for the state and local sector." Nonetheless,
based on total compensation, state workers earn 6.8% less, and for local
ones it's 7.4%.
-
- University of Wisconsin-Madison Economics Professors
Keith Bender and John Heywood co-authored the study, saying:
-
- "These public sector employees earn less than they
would earn if they took their skills to the private sector."
-
- Maybe Barro should enroll in one of their classes to
learn real economics he doesn't know or teach, his students losing out
from a man endorsing union-busting extremism, calling Wisconsin's bill
"fiscal reality." In fact, it's fiscal fascism, substituting
right-to-work zealotry for collective bargaining fairness.
-
- No matter. Barro concludes saying, "Hopefully embattled
politicians like Gov. Walker will maintain their resolve and achieve a
more sensible long-term structure for the taxpayers in their states."
-
- Many of them, in fact, are public employees, the same
ones making the state work. Like all working Americans, they deserve fair
pay and benefits for it, not Barro's "fiscal reality," heading
them for neoserfdom if enacted.
-
- NIRS's entire study can be accessed through the following
link:
-
- http://www.slge.org/vertical/Sites/{A260E1DF-5AEE-459D-84C4-
876EFE1E4032}/uploads/{03E820E8-F0F9-4
72F-98E2-F0AE1166D116}.PDF
-
- A Final Comment
-
- Countering Walker's intransigence, Wisconsin public workers
are considering a general strike to shut down the entire state. He threatened
firings and layoffs. Challenging him is crucial, standing firm, holding
the line, and beating him at his own game, as well as discrediting him
and fellow Republicans endorsing his scheme.
-
- Walker also slapped $100 a day fines on absent Democrat
senators and ordered them arrested for walking out, charged with "contempt
of the Senate." In fact, Walker wreaks of it, defiling public workers
for big money backers demanding it. So do fellow Republicans and Democrats.
Despite walking out, they caved on making workers pay more and weakly supporting
collective bargaining rights because their constituents demand them.
-
- Notably, the Madison-based Cullen Weston Pines &
Bach law firm explains that "the Wisconsin Constitution absolutely
prohibits members of the (state) Senate from being arrested for non-criminal
offenses. The Wisconsin Senate action today (is invalid by) the law of
this state." Moreover, if arrests are made, Republican legislators
and Gov. Walker may be subject to contempt charges for violating state
law, including a statute protecting public officials from this type chicanery,
including fining absent senators $100 a day.
-
- Battle lines remain drawn. Thursday night, Dane County
Circuit Judge John Albert ordered protesters out of the Capitol. Most remained
at first because his ruling said the state violated the public's free speech
and assembly rights by restricting access to the building. Later they left.
No arrests were made. Resolution remains nowhere in sight, but sustained
protester courage demands universal support for their rights. Their struggle
is ours..
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the
Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays
at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs
are archived for easy listening.
-
- http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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