Playing Catch Up At The Local Level

(Click on image to enlarge.)

We have been assured by lots of sources that the Great Depression is over.  Wall Street points to the welcome rise in the Dow Jones.  The White House points to the improving job numbers.  Multinational corporations point to increased productivity.  And yet ...

State and local governments aren't quite so sure that the crunch has finally over.  Infrastructure (roads, power grids, sidewalks, sewer and water lines) are deteriorating faster than budgets can cover.  Taxable incomes still haven't returned and sales taxes are still down because consumers still aren't and can't buy as they once did.

On top of all that, state and local governments are facing public employee pension shortages in the years to come if more funds aren't poured into them:

From an AP report in the Pasadena Star News:

California’s government will increase the amount it contributes to state employees’ pensions starting this summer, and cities and other government agencies will follow suit in two years, to help cover the cost of benefits for retirees who are living longer.

The board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System approved new assumptions for the pension system Tuesday that effectively increase contribution rates.

Projections show workers are expected to live an average of as much as two years longer, driving up the cost of paying benefits to people until they die. Women retiring at age 55 in 2028 are expected to live to 87.

 Contributing more to CalPERS’ $282.5 billion pension fund means local governments will have less money to pay for services such as police, roads and parks. But delaying payments to the pension system would cost more in the long run. ...

Most county and city governments surveyed by associations agreed with CalPERS’ approach to phase in the increase over five years and spread the total cost over 20. But the new rate increases are on top of additional rate increases coming next year.

“Together, they are going to cause serious service reductions,” said Chris McKenzie, executive director of the League of California Cities.  [Emphasis added]

Many short-sighted citizens are screaming about funding public employee pensions on several bases.  In the private sector, employer paid retirements are a benefit of the past.  The very most workers in the private sector can hope for is continued contributions to their 401(k) accounts, however minimal those contributions might be.  Those who don't have even that are scrambling to add to their IRAs and are reduced to hoping that Social Security will be enough to live on.  They find the notion that their tax dollars are going to fund someone else's retirement repugnant.

Understandable? Certainly, but like I said, short-sighted in all sorts of ways.  First of all, most public employees who are either retired at this point or nearing retirement accepted jobs at lower rates of pay than their private sector counterparts because a pension was guaranteed.  Second of all, as more and more private sector employees rejected unions over the past decades, public employee unions such as SEIU swooped into play and negotiated better benefits across the board.  Private sector employees didn't have that bargaining power, but they shouldn't blame their counterparts for that.

Now, however, because of the disastrous ten to twelve years, state and local governments have a lot of catching up to do to meet the obligations.  With any luck and some kept-promises, that catch up will be eased somewhat by increased revenues.  If not, a lot of people are going to think wistfully of that "sandal in Florida."

Labor Day

So, Happy Labor Day! Hopefully those of you who are still employed have the day off and are celebrating with your loved ones.

This Labor Day is a good one to look at the diminished role organized labor is now playing in this country. Both political parties set their national conventions in "right to work" states. States with Republican majorities have steadily eroded the reach of public employee unions, but Democratic leaders haven't been shy about doing that either (I'm looking at you, Rahm Emmanuel, and the shabby way you've dealt with the Chicago teachers' union).

What is so sad about this is that it has been the unions and their efforts which got us the 40-hour work week, child labor laws, workplace safety, and living wages. They contributed mightily to the rise of the middle class and to a better, safer life for us all. Yet now they've fallen out of favor.

Michael Hiltzig has a wonderful column up which confronts this problem by way of describing one program that a union has put together to keep things moving. The program is from a couple of Southern California locals of the Ironworkers union and works to move apprentices to journeymen status with ongoing training in safety, techniques, and recent developments.

Every six months the program graduates 50 to 80 workers from apprenticeship to journeyman status. The upgrade roughly doubles their hourly wage to about $33 (plus about $22 an hour in retirement and health benefits) and certifies that they've had four years of training in the latest techniques of bridge and building construction, welding, and safety. That's four years of classroom instruction and physically taxing hands-on training on the program's model work site out back, doled out at the rate of one full week every three months, with the rest of the time devoted to on-the-job experience. ...

The La Palma program is a rebuke to the all-too-popular stereotype that a union exists only to provide featherbedding for workers and fat salaries for officers. This is one of the ways a union demonstrates its importance: by bringing the next generation along and doing its part to uphold standards of construction technique and workplace safety that save lives, including those of the people who live and work in and drive on the projects they built.

And the man currently running the training program summarizes quite nicely why unions have been and should continue to be successful:

"People don't remember what the union is all about," Martinez told me as we toured the classrooms and training field of his center, laid out like an obstacle course of girders and beams. "It's about people who choose to negotiate to make their lives better." [Emphasis added]

Amen.

Go read the whole column. I think you'll be glad you did.

A Bleak Prognostication

David Lazarus had some interesting thoughts on the current state of unions and their probably future. Interesting, yes. Depressing, very.

American Airlines has spent the week trying to persuade a bankruptcy judge to allow it to chuck all its labor contracts and put the squeeze on thousands of union employees.

If things go as expected — that is, a victory for management and not for rank-and-file workers — it will be the latest blow to organized labor and yet another indication that, in the workplace of the future, most of us will be fending for ourselves. ...

"It's not the unions' fault we're in bankruptcy," [AMR lawyer, Jack Gallagher] acknowledged. "But it's not about whose fault it is. It's about the facts of our business."

You could say the demise of organized labor is about the facts of all businesses, as well as a changed political climate that, since the Reagan administration in the 1980s, has emboldened employers in standing up to unions. [Emphasis added]

I would have placed the onset of the decline a little earlier than Reagan, but his move on the Air Traffic Controllers Union was certainly an important line of demarcation in this country's labor movement.

As Lazarus points out, to some extent unions themselves share in the blame: they became complacent, lazy, and in some cases corrupt. They stopped organizing and started lobbying for power, both with Congress and within the ranks. Also, employers began wising up and extending some benefits to their workers (health care) before the unions could get a toe hold. Why pay union dues if the bosses were going to give most of what you wanted anyway? And then, of course, the economy went into the toilet so that right now most employed workers are more concerned with just keeping a paycheck coming in than in decent pay and working conditions.

With all this, Lazarus opines that unions, both public and private sector, will be gone within a generation. I'm not quite that pessimistic, but I can see his point. As part of his conclusion, Lazarus quotes one of the godfathers of the union movement:

"What can labor do for itself?" union leader Eugene V. Debs asked more than a half-century ago. "The answer is not difficult. Labor can organize, it can unify; it can consolidate its forces. This done, it can demand and command."

Yes, but it will take more than twitter and social media flash mobs. It will take the hard work of educating and organizing and mobilizing. Given the state of workers, whether employed, unemployed, and under-employed, there's no time like the present to restart the movement.

May it be so.

A Sigh Of Relief

It's official: grocery workers have approved the negotiated contract with the big three market chains in Southern California. There will be no strike, no store closings. That's a relief for me personally and for the economy in this region. I won't have to rely on friends or public transportation to do my shopping at those stores unaffected by a strike. More than 50,000 workers will not be out of work for a potentially extended period of time (the last strike lasted 141 days), and in a state with an unemployment rate of 12%, that's a big deal. This weekend the union voted and the results were celebrated immediately.

The Los Angeles Times still hasn't posted the terms of the contract, but it does indicate the main sticking point:

A sticking point dealt with healthcare funding: how much each side would have to pay to ensure that a healthcare trust fund covering workers would be economically viable for the long term.

Under the complicated deal, according to people familiar with the negotiations, workers will pay $7 a week for individual coverage and $15 a week for a family starting next April. The grocers had said these premiums were necessary to help offset rising medical costs.

Yes, the workers got a modest raise, but the healthcare coverage was the problem. The figures quoted above (and I am assuming they are accurate) probably appear modest to most people, but it's a big deal in an industry where most workers don't work 40 hour weeks. And that's just the "insurance premium" part. There will no doubt still be copays and deductibles. At least access to healthcare is there.

A lot of drama could have been avoided if this country had a viable public health plan, but, hey, that would be too socialistic.

So we are left with the uncertainties with every contract renewal. Fortunately, the grocery workers had a union which pushed to protect them on this issue and the issues of pay and pensions, workplace safety, and fair treatment. For that the grocery workers at unionized stores should be grateful, and so should we.

On The Money

Tonight President Obama unveils his jobs plan before Congress. He expects the Hill to join him on a "pivot" from the economy in general to creating jobs in particular. Both are woefully late to the program. Creating jobs and getting Americans back to work should have been at the top of the list of priorities, not the bottom, but our elected officials felt that the banks and Wall Street were much more important than the rest of us. Apparently they've discovered that there ain't any such animal as a jobless recovery in the planet's book of species. Finally.

The shift, coming as it does the week of Labor Day is somewhat fortuitous, but mostly just coincidental, I fear. Labor just isn't as interesting to our owners as it should be. And that certainly is not a new phenomenon, as an excellent column written by Tom Eblen for the Lexington Herald-Leader and featured at McClatchy DC points out. That attitude has resulted in the downward slippage of those of us who work (as opposed to those who own). Mr. Eblen points out that paralleling the decline of the Middle Class has been the decline of unions and the increase in union bashing.

Economic and political forces have hammered working people. Real income for the bottom 80 percent of Americans has been stagnant or falling since the late 1970s. Few paid much attention until the 2008 financial crisis, because the trends were masked by rising personal and government debt.

During these years of middle-class decline, it has been fashionable to bash labor unions. Perhaps that is because people take for granted the things unions fought to make part of the American workplace — the eight-hour work day, overtime pay, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance and safe working conditions. Unions led the fight to end child labor and discrimination against minorities and women. They played a big role in creating Social Security and other government safety-net programs. ...

Unions have plenty of flaws; all institutions do. But they serve an important role in balancing the power of business. Power without balance becomes abusive. We have seen that with business, labor, government and even churches. It is no coincidence that the decline of middle-class income and security over the past three decades has followed the declining influence of organized labor. [Emphasis added]

And the union bashing has picked up steam even as the unemployment figures continue to be dismal. Newly elected governors in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan have explicitly targeted public sector unions, aiming to remove even the most minimal of protections fought for in contracts. And no one in government at any level has cried out against the abuses that have ensued. Eblen addresses that factor as well:

The deep economic hole that politicians are debating how to fill was caused mostly by financial speculation, unfunded wars of choice and irresponsible tax cuts. But you hear little talk in Washington about a crackdown on Wall Street, real tax reform or scaling back military adventurism.

That is because wealthy interests have largely taken over both political parties. Democrats still give lip service to the middle class and poor, but the GOP has become a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.

Amen.

Until working people figure out the scam, we're doomed to nothing more than the crumbs from our owners' table, and then only if we show we're suitably grateful. What has worked in the past, banding together so that our power is magnified, will work again, but only if we actually band together. We need to reach that point again, and soon.

Very soon.

Back To Work

On President Obama's schedule for today is a visit to a Detroit AFL-CIO rally. I wonder just how welcome his presence is going to be. Unemployment still hovers over 8% (12% here in California). After more than two years of bailing out the banks and Wall Street, the president is finally getting around to propose a program to get people back to work. That's nice. What would have been nicer is if he would have worked on getting people back to work before this. He certainly had the opportunity and the means, as economists such as Paul Krugman has been pointing out for the past two-plus years.

What also would have been nice is if the White House had shown some sensitivity to the plight of public sector union members who were getting smashed by the new governors in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio and had spoken out against the actions to bust the unions. Instead, the president was silent.

Unions, and the laborers they represent, have been virtually locked out of the administration. A key portion of the Democratic Party base has been ignored, even actively derided. Now, as the 2012 election season officially kicks off, the president is going to drop by a union event.

Big whoop.

I wonder if President Obama realizes just how important unions and labor are to the party. While huge portions of the nation went red in the November, 2010 elections, California remained blue and decisively so. Key to the victories in this state were the unions who hit the streets long before Labor Day 2010 to register and rally voters against the big business candidates for governor and senator. Barbara Boxer campaigned hard, but Jerry Brown, perhaps wisely because he is not the most exciting of speakers and vote hustlers, stayed silent until Labor Day. By that time, the unions had done much of his work for him. The Democrats ran the table on the Republicans and even picked up a seat in the state legislature, thanks to the union efforts.

Can Obama expect that kind of support and effort from the unions? I don't think so. Several large unions have suggested they might not show up for the national convention, much less help pay for it. That is unheard of in my life time at least. Unions are currently conferring on what they can do to keep their heads above water during the attacks from the right. They know they can't count on the White House, one which is more concerned on giving tax breaks to businesses in the hopes they will hire a few more workers than it is in actually putting a stimulus into place which will actually require higher employment.

So, in just a little over two years the current administration has lost the support of the liberal wing of his party and labor: both key to the energy and funding required to get out the vote and win elections.

This isn't eleven-dimensional chess. It's willful and determined stupidity.

Have a nice Labor Day, Mr. President. And watch out for flying shoes.

Eye Those Wheaties Carefully, Governor Walker ...

...the New York Times just peed in your cereal bowl.



OK. I admit it. I was stunned by this from the New York Times. It's the poll which the Grey Lady conducted on the issue of public employees and their unions. (The poll results are located here.) I guess most Americans do care about unions and about their public employees.

Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of nearly two to one: 60 percent to 33 percent. While a slim majority of Republicans favored taking away some bargaining rights, they were outnumbered by large majorities of Democrats and independents who said they opposed weakening them.

Those surveyed said they opposed, 56 percent to 37 percent, cutting the pay or benefits of public employees to reduce deficits, breaking down along similar party lines. A majority of respondents who have no union members living in their households opposed both cuts in pay or benefits and taking away the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Governors in both parties have been making the case that public workers are either overpaid or have overly generous health and pension benefits. But 61 percent of those polled — including just over half of Republicans — said they thought the salaries and benefits of most public employees were either “about right” or “too low” for the work they do. ...

The poll found that an overwhelming 71 percent of Democrats opposed weakening collective bargaining rights. But there was also strong opposition from independents: 62 percent of them said they opposed taking bargaining rights away from public employee unions.

What this means is that it isn't just the dirty fucking hippies and the Islamofascist commies who care about workers, their rights, and their benefits. It also means that a huge chunk of the country does recall what unions have meant to this country and to the world.

But wait. There's more:

Tax increases were not as unpopular among those surveyed as they are among many governors, who have vowed to avoid them. Asked how they would choose to reduce their state’s deficits, those polled preferred tax increases over benefit cuts for state workers by nearly two to one. Given a list of options to reduce the deficit, 40 percent said they would increase taxes, 22 percent chose decreasing the benefits of public employees, 20 percent said they would cut financing for roads and 3 percent said they would cut financing for education.

Now, if there were just a way to channel those opinions into action ...

Steve Gets It

Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez understands the importance of unions, especially in his life. Because his father was a union man, Steve was able to go college. His father earned a decent living and could put away the money so that his child could get the education he never had. Steve Lopez considered his personal history after being offered an honorary doctorate by the public university he attended, and concluded that his life was enriched because his father always earned a fair wage by being a union member.

Now this might come as a shock to some of Steve's readers because he's had some harsh things to say about the Los Angeles Teachers Union (UTLA). He feels justified in doing so because he feels some of their contracts have been outrageous, especially when it comes pension benefits which become available to teachers at age 59. But, he asserts, he most assuredly is not anti-union. In fact, he implies that the only thing standing between workers and complete disaster is the union model, especially in these times.

I think we need to bring public employee unions and pensions into line with economic reality, as I've written many times. But we don't have to make them extinct. Shouldn't there be one last place to make a middle-class living with decent benefits and none of the risks posed by 401(k)s that are tied to shaky markets?

As my colleague George Skelton brilliantly pointed out last week (he's a San Jose State alum, naturally), inflation-adjusted incomes for the top 10% of Californians have gone up 43% in the last 20 years and 81% for the wealthiest 1%.

Income for the lower 60%, meanwhile, dropped by 12%.

Unions aren't responsible for that consolidation of wealth. If anything, the fact that the rich are getting richer is an argument to organize against the disparity. And to quit dismantling institutions like the state university system that has balanced the playing field for low-income and middle-class students by the millions over the decades.

And as to that honorary doctorate from San Jose State?

I think I'm going to accept.

And in my speech, I'm going to say that I grew up at a time when upward mobility was a realistic objective in California rather than a wild dream.

With no college education of their own, my parents were able, through hard work -- and fair pay for that work -- to take me to the doctor when I was sick, to enroll me in public schools that were adequately funded instead of at the bottom of the national rankings, and to send me to a proud state university system that has prepared great battalions of students for what was once a thriving economy. [Emphasis added]

Well said, Steve. I wish I could be there to hear you deliver that speech.

Organizing An Organization

Although I found the right article at Watching America, I could just as easily have got directly to the UK's Guardian, which I frequently do. Still, this article from the "Comment Is Free" column popped right up, and the timing was perfect.

David Karpf wrote the column before yesterday's amazing nationwide rallies, including the big one in Madison (75,000 people at least). I don't think that after seeing the tremendous outpouring of support for the Wisconsin struggle against that state's governor and his union busting drive Mr. Karpf would have changed his essay in the least, nor should he have. His point is even more well-taken.

Like the protests in Cairo, the protests in Madison have depended to a large extent on the internet for messaging, logistics, and overall news. It's worked so far: as many people showed up in Madison as generally attend a football game, which in this country is a very big deal. But in the long run, that probably won't be enough.

But, just as the Egyptian protests were aided by social media, rather than caused by social media, the roots of this fight are really quite different.

Labour unions offer a bedrock structure for large-scale collective action. Governor Walker is attempting to remove that structure. If he succeeds, internet-mediated organisations won't be able to fill in the gap. Groups like MoveOn.org can be tremendously effective, particularly in the new media environment. But they can't organise workers in a specific industry or city to improve wages, working conditions and benefits. MoveOn is never going to sit across from management at the negotiating table.

That's where "organising without organisations" reaches its limits: you need to build institutions of power if you're going to confront institutions of power. When the going gets phenomenally difficult, you need courage and commitment to succeed, not just a wifi hotspot.

And that is why this struggle on behalf of the unions is so crucial. That institution has to be protected especially at a time when those who have 99% of the wealth of this country are buying politicians so that they can get that last 1%.

The current outpouring of people power is just the first step. Now unions have to tap that people power for the next battle, whether it is at the voting booth or the streets. More effort needs to be expended in educating the public about unions and why they are so important. More effort needs to be expended in increasing union membership. Less effort needs to be expended on wining and dining the politicians who have allowed the inequities and iniquities to increase.

Move On will turn the people out for you, but only if there is a good reason to do so.

When Is It Their Turn?

Tim Rutten has a pretty decent column up at the Los Angeles Times, one that I have a pretty hard time faulting, at least in most respects. His thesis is that because of the budget shortfalls most states are facing (and California's is staggering -- over $10 billion) public employee unions would be well advised to be "statesmanlike" and accept cuts in benefits, particularly in pensions, to shore up the declining support of unions as well as to help out their states.

He cites a recent Pew Poll which certainly supports this thesis:

The study also finds that public regard for organized labor generally is at a historic low and that discontent with public sector pensions and benefits is rising. In fact, when Pew asked respondents to rank their budget reduction preferences, the "pension plans of government employees" topped the list by 16 percentage points, ahead of cutting funding for colleges and universities and road and transportation expenditures, which tied for second, 10 percentage points ahead of cuts in healthcare.

Still, like Wisconsin, California is a state in which organized labor continues to enjoy a strong presence and broad support. But, if something like the current meltdown in Madison is to be avoided here, our public employee unions will have to accept rollbacks or find themselves increasingly marginalized. ...

Even so, Pew found, "most Americans think unions have helped to increase unionized employees' salary (53%) and to improve working conditions for all Americans (51%)." The sticking point, however, is that Americans think that unions are just plain awful for business

As the survey concludes: "Those results correlate to a stunning plunge in Americans' attitudes toward unions in just the last three years as the economy plummeted into recession. In 2007, Pew pegged support for unions at 58%. Three years later, it had fallen an astounding 17 points." [Emphasis added]

You can click on the link to see the Pew numbers Mr. Rutten cites (and I wish the column had included a link to the poll itself), but they do demonstrate that public opinion is that public employee unions have over-reached.

Perhaps that is so, but Rutten also acknowledges indirectly that public employee unions are not the only guilty parties, but it is the unions, the workers, who are being called upon to do the right thing.

Public employee unions can't be faulted for negotiating the best deals possible for their members. Union officers, however, need to recognize that their members' defined pensions stand out in an era when most private workers have been pushed into the equities markets to fund their retirements, as one employer after another has replaced traditional pension plans with risky individual 401(k) plans.

This flight from social responsibility on the part of employers is a national disgrace and, most assuredly, not organized labor's fault. But that won't induce hard-pressed and unorganized working people, whatever the color of their collar, to support benefits for organized public employees they no longer can obtain for themselves.

While I cannot fault Mr. Rutten's call for the public sector unions to be open to re-negotiate benefit packages during this difficult time for state and local governments, I do find fault that business is not being asked to do the same. Labor is only one part of the equation. It is hard to ask working people, whether in the public or the private sector, to make sacrifices when bankers and Wall Street thirty-somethings are celebrating huge bonuses after their businesses have been bailed out by taxpayers, unionized or not.

Why is the fiscal health of the business community more important than the fiscal health of the labor community? Why should one element sacrifice and not the other? And why is the public, which is all of us, more concerned about the business half than their own half?

Those are questions which are now being addressed in Madison, Wisconsin. And the answers are going to have an impact on this nation for a very long time.

The Right To Assemble

I was tempted to post something on the Glenn Beck Extravaganza at the Lincoln Memorial today. There was certainly enough material to glean for a post, whether in the traditional media or on the not-so-traditional media (the blogosphere). I decided that I probably wouldn't add much to the discourse, so I'm giving the whole matter a pass, at least for today.

What I will say today, however, is that Mr. Beck and his cohort have every right to hold that festival to "Restore Honor," today and every other day of the year, just as the other demonstration, the more traditional one commemorating Martin Luther King's transcendent speech on the same spot Mr. Beck will be occupying, have a right to assemble nearby. It's guaranteed by our Constitution, and it's one right that gets stronger each time it is exercised.

That said, I want to comment on another assembly, one that has been taking place in the area of Los Angeles known as Century City for the past week or so. The numbers involved are strikingly different: not hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands or even thousands. Less than a hundred union demonstrators representing janitorial workers have been protesting the dismissal of 16 workers. Tim Rutten has a particularly good take on the story.

Over the past week, a drama has been in progress outside two of the city's most expensive office buildings, 2000 Avenue of the Stars and the Century Plaza Tower in Century City.

Two weeks ago, 16 of the janitors who clean the high-rises that are home to some of the world's richest talent agencies, financial service companies and law firms were laid off. Their colleagues walked off the job in sympathy, and other members of SEIU, the union that represents them, have been staging a variety of protests, including a hunger strike that ended Friday. They're demanding that JP Morgan Chase, the $2-trillion bank that owns the buildings and paid out billions in bonuses to its executives last year, hire the 16 back.

The bank shrugs off the situation, pointing out that it contracts with ABM Industries to clean the towers. "The dispute is between a vendor and [its] employees, not Chase," corporate spokesman Gary Kishner wrote in a statement. Meanwhile, the city's news media have handled this story mainly as an exasperated tale of inconvenience and traffic jams for people going to and from work, rather than as a story about 16 people, many of them single mothers, who were tossed out on the street by a profitable company seeking to cut costs. It's hard not to be struck by the contrast between that lack of empathetic generosity and the courageous solidarity shown by their 57 fellow janitors who risked their own jobs in an economy with rampant unemployment. These people make $13.50 an hour; the tenants in that building have blazers on which every button costs three times that. ...

Publicly traded ABM is one of the country's largest maintenance contractors, with annual revenue of $3.5 billion. It earned $855.5 million in the second quarter of this year and paid its stockholders their 177th consecutive quarterly dividend. ABM also has the requisite flashy website that enumerates its corporate principles. Among them is "respecting our employees.... ABM treats everyone justly and fairly. When employees are happy, we know they'll do their best for our customers." [Emphasis added]

For some reason, the press doesn't seem too impressed by the economic injustice so blatant in the story. Apparently janitors and line workers and clerical workers just don't count. They're fungible, a dime a dozen. Those wearing the expensive suits were inconvenienced, and that's all that matters.

And the fact that ABM has just added to the unemployment ranks of California (which stands at more than 1 in 10 workers) so that the bottom line looks better to the shareholders who have come to expect their dividends as a matter of course is just an irrelevant blip on the whole matter.

Maybe this country really does need to Restore Honor, although I'm reasonably certain that's not what Mr. Beck and the Tea Partiers have in mind. They seem to be more interested in re-sourcing that honor from their idea of the Christian God.

I am reminded of one of the laments from an Old Testament prophet: "How long, o Lord, how long!"

Smoke And Mirrors

I have always been puzzled by the fact that contracts are considered sanctified, but only some of the time. Consumers can't wriggle out of credit card debt or insurance contract exclusions. However, when the contract is between an employer (private or governmental) and a union, that contract can be modified if the employer wants to improve its bottom line.

After years of building cars the American public suddenly decided it couldn't afford anymore, the automakers, with federal government assistance, looked to the workers to give up its benefits. In California, state workers took a 14% pay cut via the three-days-a-month unpaid furlough imposed by Governor Schwarzenegger. Now he wants to cut their pay another 5% and he expects the unions to agree to a reduction in pension benefits for new hires (several unions have already acquiesced).

Yes, California still has a severe budget deficit and the new budget (due June 30) is nowhere near in place. So the governor has been busy looking for ways to close the gap and his target is unsurprisingly the union worker and the poor and vulnerable. Steve Skelton, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has a sound analysis of just how dishonest the governor's dog-and-pony show is.

In truth, California's budget nightmare stems from a devil's brew of sins: lack of discipline on both spending and tax-cutting in the past; an outdated and unreliable tax system too susceptible to economic booms and busts; the unhealthy dependence of local governments on Sacramento; and a dysfunctional state budgeting process that requires a gridlock-generating two-thirds majority vote. ...

The unions represent about 10% of the governor's workforce, including firefighters, Highway Patrol officers, health and welfare personnel and psychiatric technicians.

The pacts return pensions for future employees to roughly the levels that existed before then-Gov. Gray Davis and the Democratic Legislature boosted benefits substantially in 1999. And that rollback is long overdue.

But the grand savings? All of $72 million a year. And only $43 million of that helps the general fund.

So the contracts negotiated in the past are simply being rolled back by the governor, one way or the other. The people who provide the government services are being asked to feel the pain and the blame the governor and state legislators are deflecting their way.

Union workers, however, aren't the only ones who will be suffering. Social services to the poor and vulnerable are also being cut, in some cases (welfare) cut out completely under the governor's plan.

So lawmakers need to whack away at spending. But some cuts result in no savings or actually increase costs — if not for the state, for local governments.

If Schwarzenegger, for example, succeeds in his effort to close down the state's main welfare program — a $1.2-billion savings — that "clearly would have a significant impact on the counties," [H.D.] Palmer concedes.

That's because counties legally must provide the safety net of last resort for the poor with their general assistance programs. Dan Carson, deputy legislative analyst, estimates there'd be a cost shift to the counties of "at least $1 billion" if the Legislature accepted Schwarzenegger's proposal. Which it won't.

So who escapes the governor's budget chainsaw?

Businesses. Monied interests. The wealthy.

As I noted on Saturday, Michael Hiltzig nailed it with respect to the state's treatment of business:

Meanwhile, corporate welfare programs such as tax breaks for some of our largest companies and "incentives" for our largest industries are to survive. To his credit, Schwarzenegger has proposed delaying some new corporate tax breaks.

Apparently there's welfare, and then there's "welfare."

Guess which one wins. Again.

Still Locked Out

Back in February, I posted on the lock-out at the Rio Tinto borax mine in Boron, California. Well, three months later, the union workers are still locked out and the mine owners are still busing in "temporary workers." The Los Angeles Times has a follow-up article which examines just what the lock-out is doing to the union workers and to the small desert town in which they live.

Three months after a labor dispute led the world's second-largest borax mine to lock out 570 workers in this small Kern County town, the effects are being felt far and wide. Businesses are struggling to stay afloat. Families are trying to make ends meet without paychecks and health insurance. There appears to be little hope for a quick settlement. ...

Rio Tinto Minerals, the British-Australian conglomerate that operates the mile-wide strip mine, says it has lost 25% of the worldwide borax market and business must adjust to survive.

The company offered workers a new contract that included a 2% annual raise, a $4,000 signing bonus and an early-retirement package. In return, they demanded wholesale changes in the seniority system, the creation of more non-union jobs and the right to make some full-time jobs part time.

Over five months of talks, workers refused to accept certain proposals, especially those dealing with seniority.

Rio Tinto may have lost a segment of the market, but the corporation's bottom line was still healthy last year. Very healthy. Apparently the profits weren't as high as the company wanted so it went after the union, figuring if they could bust the union out of the picture, they wouldn't have to pay as much in wages and benefits. The easiest way to do that was to go after the seniority rules and to push for the right to hire non-union workers.

Seniority is the sticking point, and the union refuses to cave on that issue, and it is right to do so. Those who've been with the company the longest generally earn more than the newest employees. Protecting seniority means protecting wages and benefits for all of the employees, especially those who intend to stay with the company. It keeps those who have been well-trained around to help newer employees learn their jobs and how to do those jobs efficiently and safely. It stops the company from laying off the most experienced and, yes, most expensive employees so that it can hire new workers willing to work for less, not an unusual situation during periods of high unemployment.

What's at play here is some old-fashioned union busting, and the company hasn't done a very good job at hiding that fact. Three months in and not only the union workers are having difficulty scraping by. Local businesses are about to fold as well. The entire town is affected economically during the worst possible time. But the chaps in London just don't care. Multinationals never do, as we've witnessed time and again, especially in the last several months in West Virginia and the Gulf of Mexico.

After plunging most of the planet into an economic disaster, our owners are looking for the next, best way to make money. In Boron, apparently that way is on the back of workers.

Another Mining Disaster

It was just four years ago that news of a mining disaster hit. I thought then that perhaps we finally had hit a tipping point with respect to mine safety, Sago was that dramatic. Silly me. What appears to be a replay of the Sago disaster is playing out in West Virginia: 25 miners dead, 4 missing. The presumed cause of the disaster at the Upper Big Branch Mine, operated by Massey Energy, was a build-up of methane gas which exploded. A sampling of news articles from the past two days provides the causes behind the cause.

First, from yesterday's NY Times:

Federal records indicate that the Upper Big Branch mine has recorded an injury rate worse than the national average for similar operations for at least six of the past 10 years. The records also show that the mine had 458 violations in 2009, with a total of $897,325 in safety penalties assessed against it last year. It has paid $168,393 in safety penalties.

“Massey’s commitment to safety has long been questioned in the coalfields,” said Tony Oppegard, a lawyer and mine safety advocate from Kentucky.

Those concerns, he said, were heightened in 2006 when an internal memo written by Mr. Blankenship became public. In the memo, Mr. Blankenship instructed the company’s underground mine superintendents to place coal production first.

“This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills,” he wrote.

Mine safety just isn't that important to Mr. Blankenship and many others in the mine owners caucus. Even if inspections turn up safety violations, the fines can be contested and reduced to levels which don't threaten the bottom line. The feds can be managed.

So can the state governments, as this op-ed column by Dylan Matthews for the Washington Post makes clear.

Even aside from its abysmal safety record, Massey, and its leader, Don Blankenship, are almost cartoonishly villainous in the way they approach everything from the environment to union rights to media scrutiny. They've pioneered mountain top removal mining, a particularly destructive form of mining that dirties local water supplies, ruins animal habitats, and damages the foundations of nearby houses, all while eliminating much of the Appalachians. Massey refuses to hire union workers, and thus denies its workers an advocacy group that could press for, among other things, safer ventilation systems. And Blankenship himself has been downright thuggish to critics and reporters, grabbing an ABC news camera and saying the cameraman was "liable to get shot" if he kept taking pictures.

Mr. Blankenship, however, owns West Virginia's legislature, governor, and even the state's supreme court. Bought and paid for by generous campaign donations, the state wouldn't dare cross this major Republican player.

Left out of the equation, miners go to work each day knowing that they have no back-up, that when the disaster hits, there will be a media frenzy, people will be outraged, but nothing will change. Some miners, however, those who are unionized, have a better chance at staying alive. Unfortunately for the victims of the latest disaster, the Upper Big Branch Mine isn't unionized, something that Susan Kushner Resnick noted her opinion piece for the Boston Globe this morning:

ANOTHER YEAR, another group of men killed in a coal mine. You already know the story, because it rarely changes. Inspectors discover violations. Mine operators ignore them. Miners work through the danger because they need to make a living. Gas builds up and explodes. Some men die instantly from the force of the blast, and some die from the carbon monoxide. There are always a few unaccounted for or trapped, and those mysteries keep everyone’s hope alive for a while. Then, usually, they die, too. ...

Finally, there are paychecks. If the Upper Big Branch mine had been unionized, Smith said, “our safety committee would have made sure the mine was aggressively followed up on and citations dealt with.’’

But it wasn’t. Not everyone can find a job in a union shop. But some choose to work in nonunion mines because they tend to pay better. Smith says when a union mine and a nonunion mine are located near each other, the nonunion men make a bit more per hour. What they lose, he notes, is the freedom to complain when safety is ignored. That kind of talk can lead to an escort to the door.

Ms. Resnick understands that the miners make a choice to work in a non-union mine, but it's the kind of choice that these men make so that they can take care of their families. That is hardly a sin, even if it ultimately proves to be foolish, even deadly.

The real sinners are the mine operators. Their choice to put profit ahead of safety cannot, as Ms. Resnick points out, be justified.

Walking Backwards

Once again, labor is expected to bear the load in saving a rapidly failing enterprise. We saw that in Detroit, where UAW workers were forced to make concessions, including wages and retirement benefits, before the US government would step in and bail out the automakers. No such concessions, however, were required of bank executives before their employers received TARP monies. The people who brought us the economic disaster, after all, had contracts. So did the assembly line workers at GM, but apparently that was different.

The latest failing enterprise of note is the City of Los Angeles, which is facing a nearly half-billion dollar budget deficit for this year and an even larger one next year. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has already promised to lay off 4,000 city employees (see my post here), even though the move will adversely affect the providing of services such as open libraries. The mayor isn't finished, however. He wants the city's union workers to agree to a 10% pay cut so that the sacrifice can be shared.

Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten thinks this is a terrific idea. Now Tim Rutten is a bright enough man, but I've found that his columns fall into two categories: those that show a grasp of the issue and those that suggests he suffers from cranio-rectal inversion. This column falls into the latter category.

As mayoral Chief of Staff Jeff Carr puts it, "It's simply a math problem: There's a $485-million deficit, and no matter what some people say, there's just not that much bureaucracy or waste to cut. So, to close the gap, you need to make massive layoffs, draconian cuts in services or get significant concessions from labor -- or some combination of those things." ...

Not long ago, Villaraigosa told a group of business leaders that he saw "no scenario where the city survives without layoffs or some concessions by the city unions." In that and other conversations, he said he would ask the unions to take pay cuts of between 5% and 10% in the coming year. "We can minimize layoffs if employees agree to a cut," he said. ...

What's required is a labor coalition, including police officers and firefighters, willing to put voluntary wage concessions on the table. If that were to occur, Carr said Friday, the mayor's team would begin rewriting the proposed budget and demanding similar concessions from elected officials and nonunionized staff. [Emphasis added]

Tim Rutten is just fine with that. In fact, he thinks that's a smashing idea because California has been so good to unions. Evidence of that is in the fact that California is one of the few states in which union membership is on the rise. What he doesn't seem to understand is that the unions have increased their membership because the state has been such fertile ground. Workers have joined unions because no one in the government sector was looking out for their interests.

Now the City of Los Angeles wants the unions to step up and voluntarily be the first to sacrifice so that maybe elected officials and department heads will be guilted into making a similar sacrifice. Union members are being asked to walk backwards, away from their union contracts. The problem with that is walking backwards makes it easier to get stabbed in the back, something Mr. Rutten doesn't seem to understand.

I wonder how Mr. Rutten breathes with his head located where it is in this column.

Arnold Plays Barber

This falls into the category of Totally Unsurprising News: Arnold Schwarzenegger targets the unions in his latest cost-cutting moves. From the Los Angeles Times:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has put organized labor squarely in his cross-hairs in 2010, opening a fight that will largely determine the shape of his final year in office.

Schwarzenegger's proposals would cut the size of the union workforce, reduce pay, shrink future pensions and roll back job protections won through collective bargaining.

Among the plans in the governor's budget: privatize prisons, which would strip members from the influential guards union; curtail seniority protections for teachers, a key union-won protection; and reduce the number of sick, disabled and elderly Californians cared for through the state's In-Home Supportive Services program -- almost all union jobs -- while cutting what their caregivers are paid.

Schwarzenegger also wants to permanently lower state workforce salaries by 5% without returning to the bargaining table with public-sector unions. And he would require state workers to chip 5% more into their retirement plans.

"The public sector also has to take a haircut," Schwarzenegger said, arguing his policies would save California billions of dollars, now and in the future. [Emphasis added]

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Sweeney Todd: now there's a role for the brawny Austrian-born actor.

When he ran during the recall election, he made it quite clear that he intended to roll back the influence of "special interests," by which he meant unions. He's dispensed with the euphemisms his last year in office because his legacy isn't looking too pleasant. He's going to need some help getting back into the GOP tent, and taking aim at the unions looks to be the ticket. Unfortunately, that ticket is going to be financed by us for years to come.

His assertion that this move would save the state billions, "now and in the future," is bogus. By slashing In Home Support Services, the elderly and frail on MediCal (the state's name for Medicaid) will have to move from their own homes directly into nursing homes, a far more expensive proposition for the state. By privatizing prisons, he gets to repay his buddies in the private prison industry all the money they've poured into his campaigns and into the campaigns of ballot measures he favored.

If he really wanted to save the state some money, he would direct the legislature to close some of the tax loopholes his wealthy friends have been enjoying for years. He would shut down some of the well-paying commissions which send California businessmen to exotic locales to "sell California products." But that's not the way Arnold and his friends operate. It's much more pleasant to target the middle and lower classes, people who (when there are jobs) actually work for a living.

I guess we should be used to this, both on the state and federal level, but I think we just might be reaching the tipping point. Good God, I hope so!

Solidarity

Well, now, the GOP actually pulled off what they intended to: they busted the UAW. That such was the intention of the Republican senators was made explicit when they blocked the bill to bail out the automakers. They stated openly that the American automakers were failing due to the "overly generous" benefit packages given to workers, even though the UAW had just made enormous concessions as part of the "plan" Chrysler and GM had to put together to get the funds. I was somewhat surprised by the senators' move, but I shouldn't have been. The fix was already in. They knew the administration would find a way to bail the companies out, and I suspect they also knew that part of the administration's plan would be to effectively defang the unions. That's exactly what happened.

The Washington Post has a reasonably accurate assessment of the resulting deal.

The $17.4 billion federal loan agreement does keep the domestic auto industry alive. But the terms of that loan also insist that the wages and benefits for union workers be lowered to "equal" the average of nonunion workers, specifically, those at the U.S. plants of Nissan, Toyota and Honda.

Those and other concessions would essentially erase the significant distinctions between union and nonunion auto workers, and the lack of such union worker advantages would render moot the union's fundamental purpose, some industry analysts and labor experts said.

What the article fails to consider is that the reason the workers in the "transplants" get as much as they do in terms of hourly wage, health insurance, and pension benefits is the union contracts negotiated for the past fifty years by the UAW. The hourly wage is lower (by about $4 per hour, on average), but the other benefits are roughly equivalent. The real difference in labor costs at this point involves pension benefits. The foreign plants haven't been open long enough to accrue the sheer numbers of retirees that GM, Chrysler, and Ford have. They will, however, catch up, and once that happens, the costs will be comparable. That the workers in the Japanese "Big Three" get what they do is still the result of the hard fought battles of the UAW.

By busting the UAW, however, that may not be the case in the future, and the real losers will be the workers, organized or not, a fact which apparently has been noticed by at least some Democrats.

At a news conference in Chicago yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama said that workers should not be the ones "taking all the hits" and that all stakeholders "are going to have to play a part in this process."

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the committee overseeing much of the government financial rescue efforts, was far tougher.

"The president has added an unfair assault on working men and women, which could require them to accept a disproportionately large reduction in what is currently legally owed to them," he said in a statement. "I am particularly opposed to the notion . . . that could give foreign auto companies in effect the ability to dictate wages for all American auto workers."

Frank said that because those requirements were "unilaterally inserted" by Bush, the Obama administration "should take whatever steps are necessary to remove them."

Noticing is one thing, but doing something about it is another. By January 21, 2008 the Hooverights will have at least theoretically even less of a say in what gets done and how. Unless Democratic leadership changes its modus operandi dramatically, however, that won't matter.

Heckuva job, Harry Reid.

Breaking: Spines Spotted In Chicago

Well, now: it finally happened. Workers not only woke up to the fact that all of the federal bailouts weren't going to do them a bit of good, they also decided to do something about it.

According to this AP article published in the NY Times (which I will not be quoting for obvious reasons), about 250 workers have occupied their employer's factory after the company shut its doors without any notice. They intend to stay there until severance and vacation pay due them is guaranteed.

The company is Republic Windows and Doors, and a spokesman for the company told the AP that the precipitous closure was necessary because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won't let them pay their employees, which is rather interesting because BofA recently received $25 billion from the feds as part of that massive bailout Bernanke, Paulson, and Bush convinced Reid and Pelosi was necessary or the sky would fall and the American Way of Life would end.

Well, for these employees the sky has fallen and the American Way of Life has ended. Now these people are left without a job, without the benefits and the back wages they have earned, and without health care coverage. But, hey!, the folks with Wall Street Connections are doing just fine, thank you very much.

It is fitting that this action took place in Chicago, the site of the Haymarket Square action. May workers all over the country being raped by the current government plans take heart over the actions of their brothers and sisters in Chicago and take action as well.

It's long overdue.


Update: The problem these workers face was caused by the Bank of America, a fact which I didn't make clear. BofA got $25 billion from the government to loosen up credit a little, but BofA was unwilling to use that cash for that purpose when it came to Republic Windows. There is something we can do about it. Let Bank of American know you are appalled by their decision, and send a copy of that letter to your congress critters and the President Elect.

Thanks to Karin Hussein for pointing this out.

Free Trade Fraud

Thank you, Speaker Pelosi, for refusing to let the worst administration in history make a shambles of the legislative process, as it has done to so much of our constitutional system.

The Colombia 'Free Trade' agreement proposed by the occupied White House does nothing for the workers, and nothing for this country. So much that the cabal has done is like this, it is only more welfare for our corporate sector.

Head of the AFL-CIO John Sweeney writes an op-ed today to try bringing light onto the matter. What he outlines for union workers there is more of a nightmare than our workers here have to deal with.

Globalization and trade should lift up and promote democratic societies. They should empower the many and lift the poor. They should create a fundamentally better world.

That is at the heart of an emerging and hopeful new consensus on trade.

For decades trade rules have protected business interests but offered few enforceable protections for workers' rights and human rights. Millions of good jobs have been shipped away from the United States, while living and environmental standards have been eroded in our trading partner countries. That is why we have fought to guarantee labor and environmental standards in our trade agreements.

But now the Bush administration's determination to ram through this agreement with Colombia before it has the capacity to uphold the rule of law threatens all the progress that has been made.

It's of little use to include a paper commitment to respect "freedom of association" when workers who organize and speak out for economic freedom -- and their families -- face an implicit death sentence. That is why working people in Colombian and American unions are united in opposition to ratification of this agreement.

President Bush and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe are pulling out all the stops to persuade Congress to approve the trade deal in this session. The Bush administration has mobilized its Cabinet to lead congressional delegations on sanitized field trips to Colombia. The Colombian government is reportedly spending more than $100,000 a month to lobby for the agreement.
(snip)
Colombia claims to be taking steps to reduce the violence. That's good. But so far, it has done too little. And it has failed to bring its labor laws into compliance with international labor standards or enforce them effectively.

How many murders are "acceptable"? How many is too many? I can't answer those questions with a number other than zero.

And I know this: Unless working people can exercise their right to lift their families out of poverty and exploitation, trade cannot strengthen democracy or advance a better world.

The decimation of public interest, which is the purpose of the cretin in chief, has been so total under the present executive branch, that it is no longer even a consideration in their actions. Nothing in this 'agreement' benefits the U.S. Like the present attempts to forge a commitment to the Iraqi government, the executive branch has made an offer of benefits to another country that does nothing for U.S. workers.

Realization of the White House aims is widespread, and reader comments at WaPo do an excellent job of explicating the mess they are trying to create.

Comment from a reader:

iacitizen wrote:
As bad as the trade unionists and the workers in Columiba have it--and they are living under terrible circumstances--workers in America are also losing jobs. That alone should be enough to kill this deal. I can't believe we're negotiating trade deals in these hard economic times. Any member of Congress who approves any more trade deals will lose my vote.

Another informed opinion;
Southeasterner wrote:
.............So the same Republicans who claim to be against NAFTA now want to create another free trade agreement with Colombia?

Why in addition to the billions of aid we already give Colombia do we also need to give them a one-way free trade agreement for them to be our friends? We want to open trade, which will decrease the amount of cargo checks on Colombian imports by over 85%, to a country that supplies most of our cocaine? They don't sound like an ally they sound like a welfare recipient with a gun pointed at our head telling us what to do.

With or without a free trade agreement Colombia will still be our ally and still help us with our war on terrorism because we are the ones funding their “drug war”. The supporters of this bill could care less about our political agreements and are only concerned with shipping even more US jobs to a country with zero labor laws and bringing back more cocaine illegally.

Lula and Brazil = US ally
Uribe and Colombia = Bloods, Crypts and MS 13 ally
Chavez and Venezuela = Chevron and BP ally

My comment:
jocabel wrote:
That the government of Colombia violates basic standards of decency toward workers is enough to make this 'free trade' agreement unacceptable. Its complicity in murders makes it offensive. The administration sanctions any business interest no matter how lawless and abusive. That it calls Colombia successful shows its own lack of standards, and lawlessness.

***********************************************

WaPo editorialanimists have reached a new apex in aggressive ignorance in "Lapsed Principle" today. The Hiatt team gallops in, slamming Obama for campaign financing that results in lots for him to spend, while totally ignoring John McCain's violation of campaign finance laws.

I will ignore the idiot editors entirely, and give a few responsible and intelligent comments.

FergusonFoont wrote:
I know that the partisan Republican who wrote this editorial would very much like to see Obama only have available to him somewhere between a quarter and a tenth as much to spend during the general election phase of this campaign as John McCain had, but even his archest enemies do not accuse Barack Obama of being blithingerly stupid.

What is much more interesting is John McCain's acceptance of public financing funds during the primary phase of this election and then "opting out" of its limits so he can attrack more contributions after he has the nomination sewn up, to spend on trashing Democrats, thereby accelerating the general election phase for himself.

One can support a change in our election financing toward public financing while continuing to operate under current rules, as Obama has done. It's a bit dicier to permit McCain to shift back and forth, accepting public money at need but rejecting the conditions for its acceptance.

That's called "fraud."

Then succinctly:
Avedon wrote:
So, the fact that McCain is breaking the law on campaign finance is no biggie, eh?

Why should Obama be hamstrung if McCain isn't even going to play by his own rules?

And you're going to give McCain cover for it, too.

And a neat exposition of just the facts:
cassidyt wrote:
How utterly absurd. In contract terms, Obama made an offer and McCain failed to accept. Now McCain - and the Post - want to argue that Obama gave McCain and open-ended option! Look, McCain didn't accept the offer, as evidenced by his recent attempts to exit the public financing system. Obama certainly didn't offer to give McCain the option of first determining whether private or public funding was more advantageous to his campaign before accepting or rejecting Obama's offer.

Another ridiculous editorial from the Post. Obama should, and will, spend McCain into oblivion. Sorry, Freddie.

Then there's mine;
jocabel wrote:
John McCain's violation of campaign financing laws will not be prosecuted because of a lack of members on the regulatory board. Still, WaPo editors seems to be ignoring it entirely. Strange that only Mr. Obama's practices, not Mr. McCain's are the object of concern. Law breaking by GOP candidates, it would seem, is so standard a practice that is assumed in any campaign.

The WaPo editors continue to feature shameful collections of bias rather than facts in the 'editorials' they post.

But At Least He Won't Raise Taxes

Back in the '90's, when welfare reform was a hot priority, one of the problems in getting welfare mothers into the workforce was that they were, of course, mothers. Childcare was so expensive that those women couldn't afford to go to work at entry level jobs and pay to have their children taken care of properly. In response to that, California began subsidizing child care. Grandparents, neighbors, siblings received a stipend from the state for watching the kids while mom worked. Unfortunately, the pay was lousy and the hours worked were long.

Last year, and again this year, a bill was drafted and passed by the state legislature allowing for collective bargaining for the child care providers. Last year, and again this year, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. From today's Sacramento Bee:

Legislation to grant collective bargaining rights to grandmas, aunts and other subsidized child-care providers was vetoed Thursday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Senate Bill 867 targeted a pivotal service for low-income parents, with about 90,000 providers assisting 700,000 families at a public cost of more than $3 billion.

Schwarzenegger's veto message cited the state's massive budget deficit, which despite recent trims is pegged at $8 billion.

"Given California's significant budget challenge, I cannot consider bills that would add significant fiscal pressures to the state's structural budget deficit," he wrote. [Emphasis added]

The Governator doesn't believe that this section of the workforce has the right to join a union, even though state employees have long held that right. Yes, the stipend would no doubt be more expensive, but then welfare was expensive, much more expensive than paying a decent wage for decent child care. And it's not like it's a free ride for these families. The working mothers are paying state income and sales taxes.

The stipend was intended to give the care givers an incentive, but the poor wages and long hours turned out not to be much of an incentive, as the bill's sponsors pointed out:

Supporters of SB 867 said it would bolster a vital program that suffers from extreme turnover – an estimated 30 percent to 40 percent annually – because providers typically work more than 60 hours per week for annual salaries of less than $16,000. [Emphasis added]

That's like, what? Less than $6 an hour? That's not even minimum wage.

Like his counterpart in Washington, Gov. Schwarzenegger insists on balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and vulnerable. Far better that than expecting the wealthy to share in the burden.

What a travesty.