In These Times

By Roger Bybee

[W[hen millions of American workers are facing severe hardship, driving our strongest companies with the best-paying jobs overseas certainly won't help. ... The ... U.S. cannot rest on past success and take its multinationals for granted. Policy makers must partner with business leaders to craft policies aimed at sustaining an environment in which U.S. multinationals can thrive...

—from "The Global Jobs Competition Heats Up" (Wall Street Journal, July 1) by Martin Bailey, Matthew Slaughter, and Laura D'Andrea Tyson

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The notion that the U.S. government has been "tak[ing] its multinationals for granted" and "driving them overseas" is certainly a novel proposition, coming after three decades in which federal policy has been more closely aligned than ever with the demands of these huge global corporations.

It is particularly revealing that this urgent concern is being expressed by Laura D'Andrea Tyson, a top economic advisor to President Bill Clinton and an influential voice in Democratic policy circles. Clinton's notable achievements included the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (job toll: over one million US jobs transplanted to Mexico and counting) normalization of trade relations with China, and China's admission to the World Trade Organization (2.2 million jobs lost and rising).

Yet Tyson and her colleagues are advancing this argument for more solicitous treatment of multinational corporations at a particularly bizarre moment: Corporate profits are skyrocketing, employment remains sharply reduced with devastating human costs, and wages represent a record-low share of national income.

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By Jeremy Gantz

It's been widely reported that "the Great Recession" was triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis, which in turn was triggered by banks' risky lending practices. Less noted has been the way many major banks managed to originate those bad loans: They paid employees in part on a commission basis.

But what if front-office bank workers weren't paid on a commission basis, and didn't feel so pressured to peddle faulty financial products? If they were protected by a union contract, could banks' risky profit schemes be averted, and the economy protected from another meltdown? The questions can't be answered in the United States, because the country's financial sector is almost completely unorganized: just 1 percent of all bank workers here are union members.

A brand-new organizing campaign by an unusual international coalition of labor union—the Service Employees Intenational Union, Communication Workers of America and the Brazilian Bank Workers Union—aims to change that. In an exclusive feature posted to InTheseTimes.com Thursday July 30, Mike Elk reports on the new campaign, and its nascent attempts to unionize workers at Sovereign Bank in Boston. Last year the bank was purchased by Grupo Santander, the Spain-based banking giant, whose branches outside the U.S. are on average 75-percent unionized.

If Santander employees are heavily unionized overseas, and the company's profits are so robust (it’s the world’s fourth largest bank by profits), then why shouldn’t American workers also join a union? Check out "Too Big Not to Organize" now.

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By Kari Lydersen

A ROC street protest.   (Photo courtesy Resturant Opportunity Center)

There hasn’t been “a day of regular business” at Andiamo restaurant in Dearborn, Mich., since the Restaurant Opportunity Center started its campaign for fair pay and treatment at the Italian chain about a year ago, says ROC policy director Jose Oliva.

The campaign that has included at least three major actions and a dozen smaller actions, plus daily pressure, is finally yielding results according to organizers.

This month the National Labor Relations Board ruled that workers fired in the course of ROC’s campaign were targeted for their organizing activities and must be rehired. (See my previous blog on the Andiamo workers’ struggle here.)

In January, eight workers filed a federal lawsuit seeking about $125,000 in unpaid wages. ROC also alleges widespread discrimination and sexual harassment at the restaurant, one of Andiamo’s 11 in the Detroit metro area.

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By Stephen Franklin

KALAMAZOO, MICH.–Amid the gentle rolling hills and lush emerald green fields of Michigan’s bucolic farm belt, the news is not so good.

Not from the farmworkers.

They say the fields are jammed with too many workers so everyone is scrambling to scrape by. They complain that the farmers have upped the production quotas for blueberries so regulars who can’t keep up are getting let go.

But even if they meet the quotas, they say the price of blueberries has come down so much, they can barely earn the minimum wage.

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By Lindsay Beyerstein

Steve Flynn testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on July 22, in Washington, D.C.   (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

BP's top safety officer fielded questions from a Senate subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety last week. The hearing was unusual in that there was only one witness: Dr. Stephen A. Flynn, Vice President, Health, Safety, Security, and Environment. The company had declined to participate in an earlier hearing on safety. But on July 22, over three months after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, Flynn showed up to field questions.

Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) opened the hearing with a recap of BP's dismal safety record. The fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico was hardly an isolated incident. In 2005 a fire and explosion at BP's Texas City killed 15 people. In 2009, BP incurred the largest fine in OSHA's history for failing to fix problems identified after the Texas City disaster.

Murray pointed out that four more workers have died at Texas City since the 2005 explosion. She added that there have been "countless reports" of unsafe practices at BP piplines in Alaska. She rounded out her intro with a littany of deaths, injuries, fires, and other mishaps at BP plants and in the oil and gas refining industry at large.

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By Art Levine

During the recent battles in Congress over extending unemployment benefits or promoting job-creation bills, the Republican Party has taken the lead in raising alarms over the impact such measures could have in worsening the deficit—while leading Democrats and pundits have echoed some of those concerns. 

But when it comes to allowing Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to expire, the GOP has shown that it doesn't really care about deficits or the $678 billion in lost revenues resulting from keeping those cuts in place.

Indeed, while claiming that the (discredited) miracle of supply-side economics would somehow boost the economy through tax cuts, GOP leaders have been reluctant to admit the tax cuts would actually balloon the deficit, although sometimes, they "slip up," as Think Progress reported this week. It caught Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) accidentally admitting the truth: "Well, I think that they increase the debt. If you let them expire at the end of the year we're going to have a huge, the largest tax increase in American history."

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By Micah Uetricht

(Image courtesy United Students Against Sweatshops)

With the memory of a previous victory over a multinational garment manufacturer still fresh in their minds, student labor activists and Honduran workers are celebrating what they say is another major win -- this one against industry giant Nike.

In 2009, Nike shut down two subcontractor plants in Honduras, leaving 1,800 workers without jobs. Under Honduran labor law, the workers were owed severance pay, to the tune of several million dollars. But Nike indicated it had no intention of paying.

Student activists with United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) were no strangers to labor disputes over Honduran factory closures. Also last year, they picked a fight with Russell Athletic, another major global garment manufacturer, over alleged unionbusting in Honduras after the company shuttered its only unionized plant in the country. After students heaped pressure on a slew of U.S. universities, convincing them to cut their Russell contracts, the company agreed to reopen the plant, scoring a major victory for students and the Honduran unionists.

Building on this experience, students began a campaign to force Nike to pay the 1,800 workers their severance. On Monday, they emerged victorious.

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By Akito Yoshikane

A new report says labor is at the “tipping point” of losing women and young workers unless unions make changes to become more inclusive and responsive to their needs.

The details were released last Friday by the Berger-Marks Foundation, a nonprofit that helps women join unions. It warns that female constituents may leave the labor movement in favor of social justice organizations that are more welcoming.

The report says that “unions must begin to make changes now or today’s young activists — and their even younger sisters attending college and high school — will abandon the labor movement and pursue social justice in other organizations with more welcoming cultures and values.”

“Stepping Up, Stepping Back: Women Activists ‘Talk Union’ Across Generations,” outlines the frank discussions held in New Orleans in March of this year by 30 women from at least 20 labor organizations in an effort to improve labor’s alignment with women's issues.

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By David Moberg

UNITE HERE President John Wilhelm says he and other leaders of the hotel and restaurant workers union are “giddy” with delight at the settlement late Monday of a bitter fight with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that has dragged on for more than a year and a half.

“All of us at UNITE HERE are thrilled about the content of the settlement even though we remain both frustrated and outraged by the diversion of energy and resources away from workers that has occurred for the last two years because of SEIU’s attempt to highjack our union,” Wilhelm says.

The conflict, which made nearly every major union president angry at SEIU and its president, Andy Stern, started with an internal split in UNITE HERE over strategy and a desperate move by then-president Bruce Raynor to split away part of the union when he saw that Wilhelm was likely to win the presidency in 2009.

In 2004, Raynor, head of the main union in the shrinking garment and textile industry, UNITE, and HERE president Wilhelm arranged a merger that would use UNITE’s financial resources to fund organizing in HERE’s growing industries.

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By Danny Postel and Ted Smukler

An undocumented immigrant stands on a curbside awaiting day labor work on July 26, 2010 in Phoenix. Arizona's new immigration enforcement law, SB 1070, makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants to 'apply for work, solicit work in a public place or perform work as an employee or independent contractor in this state.'   (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

The Arizona Interfaith Alliance for Worker Justice, a worker center in Phoenix, has seen a “huge spike” in wage theft since SB 1070, Arizona’s draconian immigration law, passed in April. Trina Zelle, the group’s executive director, has seen a “noticeable shift” in the four months since the measure was signed into law.

"Employers are even more brazen in their mistreatment of workers," Zelle says. "Increasingly, “Go ahead, try and make me pay you” is the response workers hear when they confront their employers over unpaid wages.

Under S.B. 1070, scheduled to be implemented on Thursday, the police are required to question anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” is in the country illegally, and arrest and move to deport anyone who can’t prove their legal status. The law will lead to racial profiling, deter immigrants from reporting crimes, and further exacerbate racism and intolerance.

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By Roger Bybee

A security guard stands outside the newly-inaugurated Harley-Davidson dealership in New Delhi, India, on July 14, 2010. The iconic motorbike maker is revving up to go full throttle on India's famously potholed roads.   (Photo by MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images)

Motorcycle-maker Harley-Davidson is revving up its engines, nearly tripling last year's profits in the second quarter by hauling in $71 million.

This follows first-quarter profits of $68.7 million. But Harley is still roaring toward a head-on collision with the workers in its hometown of Milwaukee, where the company has been a beloved symbol of the city's gritty blue-collar image and pride in craftsmanship. Harley is still demanding $54 million worth of wage and benefit cuts, along with changes in work rules, from the United Steelworkers within the next 60 days.

Unless Harley gets the concessions before the current contract expires in April 2012, it has announced that it will zoom off to a new location with at least 1,400 jobs. Harley, like many other U.S. firms, is managing to extract bigger profits despite slow, sometimes declining sales and shrinking workforces, as the New York Times reported:

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By Jeff Ballinger

Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Garment workers at a factory in Phnom Penh, in October 2006.   (Photo by TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty Images)

A recent blog post by Auret van Heerden titled "Where is CSR Heading?" begs a really big question: What good has "corporate social responsibility" been for workers, up to now? Sweatshop abuses are Exhibit A and that is where van Heerden plies his trade as head of the "Fair Labor Association" in Washington.

Founded in 1996 as the Apparel Industry Partnership--a desperate attempt by Bill Clinton to gloss over the depredations of supply-chain cheats and bullies producing for big American brands -- the FLA has produced helpful (to the industry) reports by van Heerden such as "Solving the Problem of Declining Wages". Van Heerden's post starts, "The global economic crisis has shaken the manufacturing industry to its core..." which means what, exactly? No more Mr. Nice Guy?

The big brands' record during the pre-crisis (fat profits) decades is reprehensible. Since the earliest "code of conduct" requirements for supplier factories (i.e., Levi's, Reebok, Nike and Mattel), labor rights have declined nearly to the vanishing point in production-for-export areas around the world.

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