SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Pushed to the margins of the U.S. economy, labor unions are engaged in an epic struggle to preserve their members’ wages and benefits.
For the most part, they’re losing.
Union members across America still enjoy higher pay on average than their nonunion counterparts, but the gap is shrinking. Organized labor is under persistent pressure to make concessions. Diminishing membership also has eroded union power.
The United Auto Workers gave ailing Detroit automakers $1 billion in cuts. Pilots at American Airlines learned last month their pay and benefits could get reduced substantially. Even California’s powerful public employee unions have given ground in recent years.
And in the biggest labor battle the Sacramento region has seen in years, Northern California’s three union supermarket chains – Raley’s, Safeway and Save Mart – are pushing for concessions on health care and other issues, arguing they need to cut labor costs to compete against Wal-Mart and other nonunion stores.
The situation hit the boiling point this week with Raley’s. The West Sacramento grocer ended negotiations and vowed to submit its “last, best and final contract offer” to the United Food and Commercial Workers, or UFCW.
Raley’s offered to meet under federal mediation. But on Friday, Jacques Loveall of the United Food and Commercial Workers said he’ll be scheduling a strike vote in response to Raley’s “erratic bargaining position.” Loveall also issued a statement through a spokeswoman suggesting the union wouldn’t resume negotiations until Raley’s agrees to extend the workers’ current contract, a step Raley’s has balked at taking.

In reality, both sides are vulnerable, and both have reason to fear a confrontation, said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California-Berkeley. Read full story.

Nothing like this has happened since the collapse of Enron and Worldcom in 2002. And Walmart is, of course, a more important company than either Enron or Worldcom. Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States.

Walmart workers know that Walmart is indifferent to the law, Trumka says. “That is the lesson of a trail of employee harassment and fired union activists in the U.S. and Canada. And in Mexico, employees work under protection contracts with company controlled ‘unions’ that ensure the company will maintain low wages and prevent workers from organizing a legitimate union.”

But this Walmart story provides other lessons we all need to understand.

First, says Trumka, it shows “the utter futility of expecting large corporations, their boards and their law firms to police themselves.” Second, it reveals the “tragic folly” of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Third, the biggest losers in “Walmart’s Mexican business-as-bribery strategy” are Mexicans, “Mexican retailers who could not outbid Walmart, Mexican citizens who saw their environmental laws ignored.”

The inevitable next question is: Are we going to be losers too, in that the rule of law will be undermined in the United States when we decide Walmart is too big, too powerful, too influential to have to obey the law?

Read the full post here.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority, on whose board I sit, has approved a revised 2012 Business Plan that embodies the true essence of that title: It is good for business, and it is a sound plan.

Over the past half-year, I have spent incalculable hours analyzing, refining, questioning and scrubbing the analytical model that is the basis for determining whether or not the high-speed rail project is a wise investment for California. If the foundation were not strong enough to make a business decision to invest, I would say so. However, I am convinced that the Business Plan we have put before the people this month does represent a strategy that will be in the best long-term economic interests of the state and its residents.

In all the scenarios calculated, including a 30 percent reduction in revenues and a 30 percent increase in expenses, high-speed rail will require no operating subsidy. Using three different levels of credible and realistic ridership assumptions, at different points in time, this project will surpass a break-even point on even the worst-case scenario.
I have spent my whole career in finance: analyzing, reviewing and approving risk transactions. As a result of this experience, I can say this plan represents a credible, reasonable and transparent approach forward.
Read more.

The main argument for San Jose’s Measure B is that retirement benefits earned by San Jose employees are unsustainable, and so Measure B would cut those benefits.  One of the provisions of Measure B would reduce the cap on the annual cost of living increase from 3 percent to 1.5 percent, even though the current 3% increase is less than the average annual inflation over the last century.  Leaving aside for the moment all the other cuts Measure B would make, let’s take a look at how the new cap on cost of living increases would impact retirees from the City of San Jose.

The average retirement for San Jose employees other than police officers and firefighters is about $39,000.  These employees make up the majority of the City’s workforce.  Over ten years, they would experience a 14% decline in the value of their pensions under Measure B relative to the current plan.  If a retiree lives 20 years after retirement at age 65, she will experience a 26% decline in the value of her pension under Measure B relative to the current plan.  Since inflation has averaged about 3.25% over the last century, the actual decline in the value of her pension is likely to be even greater.

Anyone who lives in the Bay Area knows that it would be difficult for two people – especially two older people with medical bills — to make it on $39,000 a year.  It is important to remember that San Jose employees do not get Social Security when they retire.  Their City pensions are all they have.

What does this all mean?  Under Measure B, someone who takes a job with the City San Jose would be signing up for a retirement of near poverty.  Who is going to take that job when there are better ones around?  Pension reform is essential, but Measure B’s cost of living cap would be a policy mistake with far reaching consequences for City employees and the people they serve.

Proponents of Measure B argue that San Jose’s public employee pensions need to be reformed. About that, no one disagrees. The real issue is how to reform San Jose’s pension plans, and the basic problem with Measure B is that one legal expert after another has concluded it is against the law.

Measure B would violate the City’s contract with its workers to provide agreed upon pension benefits. For that reason, the California Attorney General’s office, the Legislative Counsel, former City Attorney Joan Gallo, and other independent legal experts have concluded that the ballot measure violates the U.S. and California constitutions.

From the California Attorney General:
“the unilateral impairment of any contract – whether the contract relates to employment or business transactions —causes us deep concern. Financial problems faced by government must be resolved lawfully. To do otherwise would be irresponsible.”

From California’s Legislative Counsel:
“… that law (Measure B) would constitute a substantial impairment of the City’s contractual obligations to those employees and retirees, which would violate the contract clauses of the United States and California Constitutions.”

From former San Jose City Attorney Joan Gallo:
“As a retired San Jose City Attorney familiar with the issue, I am bewildered as to why the City would undertake an action which so clearly violates the contract clause of the California and United States Constitutions.”

The City Manager’s own memo on the subject concedes that “no California cases have upheld an impairment of a government entity’s own contract.”

City leaders are gambling on a legal argument with no precedent. And if the City loses, the consequences could be catastrophic. The legal damages the City might have to pay would decimate services San Jose residents depend on. City workers have been trying to negotiate legal pension reform that changes benefits going forward instead of changing them retroactively, but the Mayor and his council allies have refused to give up their illegal strategy.

Instead of starting cost-saving pension reform now, we are headed toward an election and litigation that could last years, costing the City millions. The better way to address the pension problem starts with negotiations. Unfortunately, it may take an election and a lawsuit before the City gets back to the bargaining table.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported on a disturbing trend, an increasing number of police are being killed on the job. According to the FBI, the number of officers killed by perpetrators increased 25 percent in from 2010 to 2011 and 75 percent from 2008 to 2011. But while it becomes more dangerous to serve as a police officer, the City of San Jose is turning its back on cops who are injured on the job. It’s a disgrace.

The Mayor’s ballot measure, Measure B, would deny disability retirement to employees unless they are incapable of “any gainful employment” within the city “regardless of whether there are other positions available.” In other words, a police officer who is shot and becomes a paraplegic would not receive disability retirement if he or she could answer the telephones at police headquarters, even if no such job opening existed.

For many voters, the blatant unfairness of Measure B will be lost in the fine print, but it is not lost on city employees. Last year over a fifth of them quit, and the trend is accelerating. cities surrounding San Jose treat their employees better. Why would anyone stay in San Jose if they could leave for a better job nearby?

If Measure B passes it will cause a fundamental restructuring of the city’s approach to delivering services. Historically, San Jose has had a very low ratio of workers to residents, but the workers were highly competent, career civil servants. Now the number of workers will remain low, but they will only stay long enough to gain the experience necessary to land a better job elsewhere. The quality of city services is bound to suffer. In other words, Measure B is not only unfair to workers, it’s unfair to city residents as well.

Boot camp is about to begin.
On Monday and extending throughout this week, a coalition of progressive organizations from across the country will be hosting more than 900 training sessions with the goal of educating 100,000 participants in old-fashioned, in-your-face, direct-action protest techniques. The week of teach-ins are part of what the coalition is calling the 99 Percent Spring. Roughly 50,000 people will be taught in person, and plans call for another 50,000 to be trained online.

If that sounds like a familiar meme, it’s not an accident. Pressured by Occupy Wall Street, the coalition’s members — including MoveOn, the United Auto Workers, Greenpeace and Rebuild the Dream — are looking to move from more passive actions like online petitions, calls to Congress and town-square rallies to more aggressive Occupy-style targets and tactics.

It’s a reflection of how the Occupy movement has forced some institutional liberal groups to radicalize — or at least appear to — to meet the new fervent climate, as stubborn unemployment and yawning inequality push activism outside the confines of traditional electoral politics. MoveOn-type activists who may have previously been content with a potluck and a petition campaign are now taking a look at more radical tactics with an open mind: Maybe Greenpeace, which long favored confrontational tactics years before Occupy, is on to something, they say.

And despite the Occupy movement’s reputation for a steadfast refusal to work in alliance with any other organized group, lest it be “co-opted,” Occupy activists will be leading some of the trainings. That hasn’t prevented self-appointed defenders of Occupy purity from objecting to the 99 Percent Spring as a takeover by a Democratic front group.

Tim Franzen, an organizer with Occupy Atlanta, is leading three training sessions for the coalition. The coalition might train as many as 1,000 people in Atlanta, he estimated. He doesn’t see MoveOn as co-opting Occupy. It’s the other way around, he said. “The movement has co-opted them,” he observed. “That’s the sign of the times.” Occupy has pushed all these organizations to be tougher, according to Franzen.
Read more.

“Our nation, so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied men and women, a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937

Millions of people in the US work and are still poor. Here are eight points that show why the US needs to dedicate itself to making work pay.

One. How many people work and are still poor?

In 2011, the US Department of Labor reported at least 10 million people worked and were still below the unrealistic official US poverty line, an increase of 1.5 million more than the last time they checked. The US poverty line is $18,530 for a mom and two kids. Since 2007 the numbers of working poor have been increasing. About 7 percent of all workers and 4 percent of all full-time workers earn wages that leave them below the poverty line.
Read more.

How can anyone in their right minds say the unions are not part of the solution? The United States is the great country it is because of the hard-working union members. Let’s keep this country great by respecting unions for what they are.

Unions have always been and still are part of the solution. Starting with the auto plants in the 1930s when workers chose to “sit down” and stay on the jobs to show the world how “corporate greed” was keeping their rights to a living wage in check by the corporations’ dominance over it’s workers. It was FDR who recognized the injustice and sent in the troops, not to protect the company but to protect the workers.
He got it, but some people here and now still don’t!

Every benefit that all workers, union and non-union, are enjoying today were brought about by the unions and collective bargaining. The constant fight to keep our jobs here in the United States is led by the unions and collective bargaining. The labor laws, the anti-discrimination laws and worker safety laws on the job were all brought about by unions, so don’t imply that the unions have out-lived their importance and don’t imply that they are the problem, not the solution.

Take an honest look at who controls the wealth in this country. It certainly isn’t honest working people. It’s your Wall Street millionaires who would like nothing more than to see unions go away so they can do more damage to this country than they already have.

They would love to get their hands on Social Security and sell out more companies and ship the jobs overseas. The unions are fighting the good fight and the younger people are recognizing this, as is evident in the Occupy Movement.
The anti-union effort in this country is supported by those who would like to privatize Social Security, privatize our public schools, but of course, sill rely on tax dollars and privatize our military.

It was union members who rushed into the buildings on 9/11. It is union members who rush into fires and police our cities and work in our hospitals and schools.
How can anyone in their right minds say the unions are not part of the solution? The United States is the great country it is because of the hard-working union members. Let’s keep this country great by respecting unions for what they are.
“God bless the unions.”

Some political leaders want to see unions disappear. They believe unions no longer are needed. Some union members complain about paying union dues.

“We pay dues, and the unions doesn’t do anything for us,” they say. “Our health insurance premiums still went up.” Imagine how much more you would have to pay without a union.

Anti-union advocates don’t point out the poor treatment that can occur — even to good workers — without unions. And that is the scariest, most overlooked part of the debate.

I was harassed at a former job. Unfortunately for me, my tormentor was the
only one who could do the maintenance in the shop in a timely manner. When I asked for help, I was told I had to put up with it.

The exact words were, “If you want to keep your job you have to take the higher road.”

At-will status can mean being subject to poor treatment. With all the political upheaval and the poor economy pushing against unions, I’m frightened for the American worker. My fear is once the unions are busted, poor treatment at the workplace will become more prevalent.

“At will,” (which most non-union shops are) means, “The employer has the right to fire you at any time for any reason.” When you are hired, you sign a paper that says just that.

I must make it clear that I know many businesses can flourish and treat their workers properly without the intervention of unions. I know this from listening to others.

I have to write this, however, because there are bad guys out there who necessitate the need for unions. Not until you work at a non-union shop that treats you badly will you ever realize how terrible an “at-will”
shop can treat you under the threat they can “fire you at anytime, for any reason.”

I urge you to help save America’s unions or
our workers’ rights will vanish just as
quickly as our jobs have been
disappearing to China.

Kristie Lynch lives in Clyde Township, Michigan.