Another View of Labor's Decline ...

Doug Henwood posted this revealing graphic recently; it traces the pacific state of American unions over the past half century or so.

T&A at American Apparel

Photo by www.americanapparel.net

What is wrong with this advert from American Apparel? First, the obvious titillation factor, inflected, of course, by the exoticism afforded by the model's brown skin.. That is something the company is notorious for. It is unacceptable when moralists like PETA do it. It is even less acceptable when done for profit. Second, the unsubtle Islam-bashing that inflects the company's rationalization of the image:

Third, the fact that Dov Charney CEO of American Apparel (whose name appears as signature at the lover left of the advert) could give a crap about sweat shop workers in Bangladesh. He is on his high horse here because, well, he thinks he can make money by mouthing off.  Like other "progressive" capitalists - like, say, the management of Starbucks, Charney is anti-union. So his concern for American workers stops just short of allowing them to actually decide whether they should rely on their own organizing or his beneficence regarding matters of pay, benefits, working conditions and so forth.

Contingent Faculty & Unions

 

This graphic comes from AAUP and displays the trend in faculty composition for all American institutions of higher learning.  And today the WaPo ran this report on the trends in unionization among contingent faculty. Disturbing problem meets appropriate remedy.

This raises the obvious question regarding common complaints about the "spiraling costs" of College education. Once we determine the relative increase in administrative salaries (Deans and Dean-lets, Student Affairs Staff, etc.) relative to faculty salaries, we must then ask about the composition of faculty salaries. Not only are full-time, tenure/tenure track faculty not getting significant salary increases, but they are being replaced by very low wage, typically benefit-less contingent faculty. Where do those pesky cost increases originate?

Digest ~ Political Economy

The Guardian has run a couple of pieces on discontent with shortcomings of standard economics and movements for 'alternative' approaches lately - see here and here. I can understand some of the frustration, but think the conclusion of rejecting standard technologies is misplaced. Exhibit #1 - The Guardian also just ran this piece by Saez and Piketty arguing for very progressive policies but relying for its analysis on very standard mathematical techniques.

According to this story in The New York Times, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has signed a new lease giving the museum the prerogative to set admissions fees. Admission currently is governed by 'recommended' fees that leave actual amounts paid by visitors up to the visitors themselves. While the institution claims it has no plans to alter the admissions policy, any move to increased fees would fall hardest on those least able to pay.

And here at Creative Time you can find this brief interview with Rebecca Solnit focusing on art and the political economy of American cities.

Finally, this pointed essay from Jacobin on the ironic amnesia that afflicted Barack Obama when he asked whether people who wanted a raise could simply shut down the company if the boss refused.

Solidarity

I don't know the original source. Thanks Beth!

Reading Around

There is a long report in The Detroit Free Press here on the political-economic vicissitudes of the Detroit Institute of the Arts. More generally, The Free Press also ran this extended, eye-opening report on the course of Detroit's political and economic disaster.

Benjamin Sachs (Harvard Law) sketched a new model for union organizing here in The New York Times last week.

In this OpEd at The Los Angeles Times Rebecca Solnit urges us to take the long view on Occupy and its legacy. (A longer version of the essay is here.) And at The Nation Allison Kilkenny offers this lament on where the dissipated movement currently stands.

Economist Dani Rodrik here on the troubles religion poses to Turkish democracy.

Political Scientist Ian Lustick in The New York Times here yesterday on the impossibility of a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Added a bit later:  I meant to include a link to this report from The Brooking Institution - "The Algebra Imperative" - that underscores the work of Bob Moses and his Algebra Project in preparing students for math literacy and, thereby full political and economic citizenship.

Talking to Labor Unions

You can find transcripts of these remarks by economist Joseph Stiglitz here and Senator Elizabeth Warren here.

Unions and Socialists: The Folks who Brought you ... the 1963 March On Washington

Where did all those people come from? As part of my ongoing effort here to resist sanitized depictions of American political history, let's recall that the March on Washington, yeah the event where MLK gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, was brought to you by trade unions and socialists.

Labor & New Deal Art exhibit @ Cleveland Public Library

There is an announcement here at The Cleveland Plain Dealer of an  exhibit of prints - Labor & New Deal Art - that is showing through March 24 at the main Cleveland Public Library, This might be worth a road trip down Route 90. Here are a couple of examples:

“Death of a Striker” Paul Meltsner

"Untitled" Hugo Gellert

Teachers

As many readers know, I have a son, August, who is six and a half; he is in first grade, like the boys and girls who were massacred in CT last Friday. When I think of those twenty children, I think of my boy. And when I think of this teacher, Kaitlin Roig, and of the teachers who died trying to protect their students last week, I think of Shannon Wolff and the other teachers and staff at John Muir where August goes.

So, while I posted this on my FB page, I think it belongs here too:

In the states that are pressing to deprive teachers and other public sector workers of their right to organize, "first responders" are exempted from the legislation for strategic reasons. Well - here is a first responder. Here is a hero. And this is one of the teachers who survived. The next time you hear someone running his or her mouth about public employees and their unions and how privileged they are, and how overpaid, or how they don't work hard or teach well enough or whatever freak'n thing people like to complain about ... remember this clip. And tell the complainer to kiss your butt. You owe that much to the teachers of the country.

An Interview with Nelson Lichtenstein . . .

. . . here on "right to work" laws as lethal to solidarity. Lichtenstein is a labor historian at UCSB and all around smart fellow.

The "Right to Work for Less Money"

In this clip Obama is correct on the impetus behind "right to work" legislation. And he is correct about the importance of the right to organize. Then he sort of squanders all that toward the end with the 'let's all come together' to make things better. After all, if that were the recipe workers wouldn't need unions! The point of unions is to protect workers from the predations of capitalists out to maximize profit regardless of the costs to others. And, by the way, Paul Krugman hits the nail on the head today with his remarks here at The New York Times regarding the class conflict that underlies increasing inequality in the U.S. ...

Strategy for Unions, the Best Defense is a Good Offense

The year started with the Indiana legislature passing so called 'right-to-work legislation (source). And it is ending with the right-to-work campaign now occurring in Michigan (source). This is the law undermining the ability to organize and bargain collectively. The right will no doubt (indeed it does) frame this as an issue of free choice or some such nonsense. That is a post for another day. The point today is to look at the consequences. This is not a strategy for forming well-paying jobs. Quite the contrary.

"A recent study by the International Labor Organization concluded that low-wage work was rare where unionization rates were high. In countries where more than half of workers belong to a union, only 12 percent of jobs pay less than two-thirds of the middle wage, on average.

Still, there is little reason to believe that American labor unions can do much to lift the floor on wages in the future. Fewer than 7 percent of workers in the private sector are in a union. We have the largest share of low-paid jobs in the industrial world, amounting to almost one in four full-time workers, according to the International Labor Organization. And our rates of unionization continue to fall."

That is just one key observation in this story in The New York Times about incipient attempts to organize workers in low-wage industries in the U.S.; a second key observation is this:

"Union leaders know they are fighting long odds — hemmed in by legal decisions limiting how they can organize and protest, while trying to organize workers in industries of low skill and high turnover like fast food. But they hope to have come upon a winning strategy, applying some of the tactics that workers used before the Wagner Act created the federal legal right to unionize in 1935.

“We must go back to the strategies of nonviolent disruption of the 1930s,” suggests Stephen Lerner, a veteran organizer and strategist formerly at the Service Employees International Union, one of the unions behind the fast-food strike. “You can’t successfully organize without large-scale civil disobedience. The law will change when employers say there’s too much disruption. We need another system.”

Just so.

UR - SEIU Impasse Update

According to this story in The Campus Times the negotiations between the University of Rochester and a sub-set of its employees represented by SEIU continue to be troubled. I've posted on this here and here before. It is nice to see that a group of students - among them one of my really smart advisees - is supporting the union.

Fashion Models & Unions?

Yesterday, The Guardian ran this story on the exploitation - there really is no other term for it - of young fashion models. The story revolves around Kate Moss and a particular shoot - some of which I've lifted above - from 1990 when she was sixteen years old. The photographer was Corinne Day, now deceased. It seems that this story underscores the need for unions or their equivalent - like the Model Alliance (U.S.) and Equity's Models' Committee (U.K.), both mentioned in The Guardian piece - to watch out for the interests of models. Note that in the Vanity Fair interview that instigated the discussion, Moss herself never suggests the possibility. She looks back, suggests she knew she was being exploited, but offers no remedy beyond the kindness of friends.

UR - SEIU Impasse (again)

I posted a couple of days ago on the current impasse between the University of Rochester where I teach - which, by the way, is the largest employer in a city beset of economic hardship - and employees represented by SEIU. Here is a page from Metro Justice with a link to various documents providing background on the conflict as well as a link to a petition you can sign on to. Which side are you on?
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Update: (18 October 2012) Here is a report on subsequent actions, taken by the union on alumni weekend.

UofR and SEIU Standoff

For the last month there have been workers posted at the entrance to the University of Rochester with a large banner decrying unfair labor practices . . . here from The Campus Times, is why:

UR, Labor Unions Resume Contract Negotiations Today
By Leah Buletti · Published on October 08, 2012 11:24 AM

Negotiators on behalf of UR and the Service Employees International Union will meet today to discuss terms of a new labor agreement after talks stalled on Sept. 28. A federal mediator called for discussions to resume Monday.

Discussions for a new contract for 1,800 UR service workers at the UR Medical Center (URMC) and the River Campus began in August. The current contract, which expired on Sept. 22, has been extended twice while talks continue.

Union members say that most “non-economic issues” have been resolved, but issues including wages, education benefits, child care support and health insurance are still being contested. In particular, union members say they are aggrieved with a proposal to eliminate the current health benefits fund and replace it with an inferior and more costly health plan.

The news that talks would resume Monday comes as the service workers said last week that they would begin to picket URMC and various other campus locations beginning Oct. 12.

For expanded coverage and developments on this story look to our print edition, which will resume publication on Oct. 18.

I tend not to comment too much here on happenings on-campus, but the administration has recently pushed back on a set of employee benefits for non-unionized employees. The union deserves support.

Rahm Emanuel ~ From the Obama Campaign to the Campaign Against Teachers Unions

Rahm Emanuel has, as Susan reminded me at dinner this evening, been in the news twice recently. Currently, of course, he is taking the point position in criticizing striking public school teachers in Chicago.* Never mind, that most of the "reforms" Rahm (in the shadow of Obama Secretary of Education Arne Duncan) wants to implement are at best ill considered [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].** Never mind that Rahm is trying hard to paint the teachers as unconcerned with the welfare of students (might it not be the case that the teachers are resisting reforms that are not good for students?).  The bottom line is that Emanuel has been spoiling for this fight since he first became mayor. So when he claims that this is a "strike of choice" undertaken by craven union members at the expense of students he is, as usual, full of it. No surprise that the Romney-Ryan ticket has fallen over itself siding with Emanuel! They are all anti-union.

What is interesting is that a week ago Rahm was in the news for another reason. He departed his post as co-chair of the Obama re-election campaign. The press has generally painted this as the Democrats playing hard ball on raising money since Rahm now will be directing a "Super PAC." But might it not have been more of an anticipation of how the s#!t will surely hit the fan as the Democratic party lines up against the teachers union? This way Obama can try to distance himself from the Emanuel assault without actually siding with the union.
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* In doing so Emmanuel is in cahoots with Chicago Schools Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard who was until recently the Superintendent here in Rochester. Like Duncan, Emanuel and Obama, he is an opportunistic peddler of suspect reform proposals.
** For those convinced that teachers and their unions are the source of problems with American public schools a good place to start is this recent pair of essays [1] [2] by Diane Ravitch in the NYRB. The bottom line? There is no actual evidence for your views.

Labor Day - My Three Cents Worth

This stamp was issued the year after I was born. It seems appropriate to call to mind simultaneously two besieged  institutions - Unions and the Post Office - both of which have been crucially important to the social, economic and political well-being of Americans.

The Difference a Union Makes

This is a data graphic from a UNITE HERE campaign. You might think unions stink, but you also might reconsider that view next time you stay in a room "cleaned" by non-union workers. They may be diligent and responsible, but they have half the time. Sleep on that.