Economic Crisis:

Global Labor Needs a Global Stimulus

By Scott Marshall

“Workers of the World Unite” is back by popular demand. And not just by demand, but by necessity.

Global transnational corporations and their partners finance capital are working full time to craft an economic solution to the world crisis that preserves their enormous profits and power while putting the burden of recovery on working people. How could it be otherwise?

The capitalist beast has not changed its spots. But it has mutated into a much larger, globally interconnected, behemoth. Its institutions, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization are in full swing. Not to mention the infamous G8 and G20 big country summits. Of course, none of these even have seats at the table for labor.

The global nature of the economic crisis, and the vast, new levels of global economic integration all demand that labor develop its own global strategy.

The recent meeting of world labor leaders in Washington, DC at the time of the last G20 emergency meeting was a very good start. (Read about it in the People’s Weekly World) This meeting of labor leaders from the big economies mapped out some important strings that should be attached to any global deals to protect the public interest. But labor needs to go far beyond just adding its own conditions to the plans being hatched by these global capitalist forums.

First the crisis demands that world labor take steps to accelerate the growing trend of international labor cooperation and even organizational integration. An important first step is world labor unity. How about the merger of global labor federations and industry groups without regard to political or ideological conditions – an end to the cold war for good? It also means further development of initiatives like the United Steelworkers and the British Unite the Union merger into a new global union. (Read about it here) These are all parts of a growing objective process that matches labor unity to the actual conditions of global capital. Again Workers of the World Unite!

Secondly, global labor needs a global program. This will take a lot of discussion. It will take the best thinking of us all. The truth is that the massive impact of the global economic disaster on working families everywhere, can make demands that seemed utopian and impractical in the past, realistic solutions for today.

For example don’t we need a massive global economic stimulus that creates jobs? How about a project by the G8 nations to provide clean drinking water for the billions of people who live without it around the world? Not only would this global infrastructure project be a major blow for world health, it could create millions of jobs in areas that need them most. Such a project would help build sustainable infrastructure for further development in poverty stricken areas of the globe.

Or how about a global minimum wage? As a beginning, why not set minimum standards for transnational companies that prowl the globe in search of cheap labor? They can afford it. Such a minimum wage would have to be based on real circumstances in any given country. But a global minimum wage would protect the living standards of workers in developed countries by raising living standards everywhere. Better wages and benefits help lift standards all around.

Lastly global labor needs to intensify its fight for global labor rights. Stronger labor movements help curb the worst excesses of global capital run wild. At home we need the Employee Free Choice Act to better defend the interests of all working people. More labor power is a counter balance to corporate greed and corruption. The kind of greed and corruption that helped produced the current economic crisis in the first place. Sustainable economic development requires more democracy in the system. Unions contribute to democracy by giving workers a bigger collective voice.

Stronger labor organizations will result in workers and their families keeping more of the wealth they produce. Unions raise the standards for all workers by creating upward pressure on wages and working conditions around them. This in turn creates more demand from below for goods and services making for a more sustainable economy.

Workers of the world unite – now more than ever!

A Modest Bailout Proposal

How about a trickle-up Bailout instead of trickle down.

By Scott Marshall

Perhaps the biggest fault of the bailout being debated (possibly passed by the time you read this) is that it is based on the idea that the relief given to Wall Street will trickle down to hard-hit working class folks on Your Street.

Who knows? Given that the underlying problem of crazy predatory mortgages and lending practices, and the housing bubble are not fundamentally addressed, then the bailout could just as well not avert a meltdown. Most people you talk to don’t have much confidence that the bailout will slow foreclosures, unemployment, or declining incomes.

But what if the bailout went the other way? What if taxpayers bailout themselves and then the benefit trickled up?

How could you do it? What if everyone who has lost a home to foreclosure in the last year, or is in foreclosure, or is behind on their house payments, got a bailout directly from the Treasury? This would be a direct injection of liquidity into the financial markets. Banks and lending institutions would receive an infusion of cold hard cash from their victims, er… customers. This would immediately stimulate consumer spending also. It would free up stressed incomes for working class families and right the injustice of the unfair and predatory lending practices used by the big finance boys on Wall Street. If this works then Congress might want to extend it to car loans and other big loans – this would inject liquidity into the auto industry instead of the $25 billion taxpayer bailout to auto already passed by Congress.

I can hear the rightwing now. How can you reward those who used poor judgment and borrowed over their ability to pay back? Well yeah…. Isn’t that the “principal” that is already enshrined in the Wall Street bailout? Not to mention that the housing bubble that got us into this mess began with risky, predatory loans. But now increasingly the crisis involves conventional loans, overwhelmingly by folks who have faithfully paid their mortgages. Wouldn’t millions of people getting a several thousand dollar bailout do more to free up spending and money circulation than a few dozen big lenders getting billions to put in their bank vaults?

This could even be extended to health care. Instead of a bailout of insurance vampires like AIG, or silly schemes to give tax credits for private purchase of insurance, why not pay the full premiums with no deductibles and no co-pays for every person in the US. (Might be called single payer) Then, working class families (the overwhelming majority) again, would have more cash to circulate and consume – billions in liquidity. And corporations would shed billions in healthcare costs thus freeing up huge amounts of capital to invest in creating jobs and Greening their industries. Congress might then realize that the predatory “middlemen” of big financials, like private insurance companies, don’t really play any useful purpose anyway – and could be allowed to go out of the healthcare business.

Not only would $700,000,000,000 probably be enough for a trickle up bailout, it would probably also calm world markets faster, because it would get at the root of the current economic crisis. And it would promote goodwill and a better image of America. It would show that even under gigantic state owned capitalism with all it’s vast inequalities, it is still possible to fight and win humane, logical, people-helping solutions.

I can hear my conservative friends now, “This will only lead to even bigger public programs. People will start taking about nationalizing the big oil and energy companies, nationalizing the banking system, free education and childcare, and on and on.”

Well yeah……

Striking Machinists at Boeing ask: “How do you hide $13 billion?”

Author: John Wojcik

“How do you hide $13 billion? Do you stuff it in an airplane? Do you give it to the CEO? Or, do you share it with your workers?”

These questions are printed on union flyers being distributed by thousands of striking Boeing workers at locations in Washington state, Oregon and Kansas as the total shutdown of the nation's largest airplane maker entered its second day.

Unprecedented profits now being made by Boeing are fueling the anger of the 27,000 workers who shut down the giant corporation Sept. 6.

Tom Wroblewski, who heads the union's negotiating committee, said that in the last five years Boeing has reported after tax profits of more than $13 billion - an increase of over 828 percent from the prior five year period.

“Yet Boeing continues to offer proposals more fitting of a company in bankruptcy,” he said.

Boeing says it is not in a position to pass along increased pay and benefits costs to customers.

“We agree,” said Wroblewski, “The costs should come out of their increased profits - not be passed along to the airline customer.”

The union says Boeing will come up with many additional excuses as to why it shouldn't share its profits with its workers but that the unprecedented backlogs of unfilled orders from all over the world, together with the record profits, constitute almost a moral imperative that the workers should see some benefit. The union makes no secret of the fact that it considers itself to be in a very strong bargaining position. “They need the workers,” a union source said, “they are hiring workers every day and they still can't fill the back orders.”

It is against that backdrop that workers became particularly angry when the company proposed not increases but cutbacks in benefits when it made its final offer.

Boeing demanded, for example, that a family of three should pay a maximum of $6,000 in out-of-pocket health care costs, up from the current $4,000 maximum. In addition, it proposed slashing of both vision and dental care benefits.

Steelworkers Convention 2008 – History in the making

By Scott Marshall

The United Steelworkers union (USW) made history with its 2008 convention just held in Las Vegas. That’s History with a capital “H.” The kind of history that can forever change labor and our country. The kind of history that was made in 1935 when the CIO - Committee for Industrial Organization was formed.

The establishment of the CIO was neither the beginning, nor the end of the struggle for industrial unionism in the US and Canada. But it did mark an historic organizational turning point for labor. By its founding the CIO moved beyond the general question to the particular struggle to organize workers on an industrial basis. This advance by labor was crucial to match the development of monopoly capitalism.

Even long before 1935 there was a strong left/center core of unions and union leaders who fully understood that craft unionism could not match the power of giant corporations with factories all over the country, and even the world. They also saw that local unions with only local contracts would have little leverage in dealing with giant monopolies that could shift production and force workers to compete across state lines. Inherent to industrial unionism was the idea that all workers in a company and in a workplace should be organized in the same union with the same master contract. Also inherent in the thinking behind industrial unionism was the idea that unions had to fully participate in political struggles in addition to the direct economic struggles of workers.

Remember the name “Workers Uniting.”

It may very well be the CIO of our time. On July 2, the Steelworkers, the largest industrial union in the US and Canada, and, Unite the Union, the largest industrial union in the United Kingdom and Ireland, signed an agreement clearing the way for the creation of Workers Uniting. This will be the world's first global union.

There can be no doubt that the new union sees its mission as broad and transformative.

"Globalization has given financiers license to exploit workers in developing countries at the expense of our members in the developed world. This new union is crucial for challenging the growing power of global capital," said USW President Leo W. Gerard to loud applause from the over 3200 delegates.

Workers Uniting, in its constitution, calls on its members to "build global union activism, recognizing that uniting as workers across international boundaries is the only way to challenge the injustices of globalization.”

It is also clear that this merger is only the beginning. Workers Uniting is in talks with other unions around the world. It plans to very quickly open offices in Central America, the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and other regions. The USW convention featured international delegations from 29 countries.

The new global union makes clear that they will go beyond ‘pure and simple trade unionism. Rather they will be championing international working class solidarity, economically, politically and socially on a global scale. For example the USW and Unite the Union, even before the merger, have been collaborating on worker justice and solidarity efforts in Colombia where more trade unionists are murdered every year than anywhere else in the world. The convention saw a powerful video featuring the unions combined efforts to bring economic and social justice to rubber workers in Liberia, Africa.

The formation of the CIO did not take place in a political or economic vacuum. Nor did its success. It was a perfect storm. The CIO was born in response to a new level of corporate attacks on working families and labor. It grew out of a failing capitalist economy. It grew out of intense legislative and political action by the CIO unions. And it grew in tandem with broad social movements of the day, movements that challenged racism and discrimination against women, that promoted independent political action, movements for unemployment compensation and social security.

Sound familiar? The USW convention reflected much the same kind of perfect storm. All of this was totally entwined with the possibilities of change represented by the Barack Obama campaign. Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, called on labor to lead the fight against the “evil of racism” to elect Obama. The convention rang with calls from the rank and file delegates and the leadership for national health care, economic justice, passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and the right to organize, ending the war in Iraq, preserving Social Security and pension, defending civil liberties, and on and on. All reflecting activism and involvement in the broader social movements of the day.

In his comments to the USW convention, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney recognized the moment when he said, “Your alliances with world federations and unions in Australia, Brazil, Germany and Mexico have provided us with a blueprint for worldwide solidarity, and your merger with UNITE the Union makes a mockery of the empty rhetoric of so many other organizations that give lip-service to global solidarity and global unionism — but do nothing to advance it.”

The founding of Workers Uniting is not the beginning or the end of “Workers of the World Unite.” But it is a remarkable turning point in the right direction. History has been made and global labor power is in the making.

Steelworkers Convention Blast Off – Las Vegas

Leo Gerard, President of the USW, kicked off the convention with a powerful speech. More on the content in a later blog, but the response of the delegates is as much the story.

This is a fired up convention, rowdy, fiesty, pumped, ready, and eager to fight – determined to take back our country for working people – determined to elect Barack Obama and a new Congress – and determined to fight for health care, the Employee Free Choice Act, to protect Social Security and pension and on and on.....

There is fighting momentum here that will go far beyond the November 2008 elections.

I think a delegate I talked to summed it up the best, “It's like this convention is taking a strike vote,” she said. “It's like the union leadership just told us we have no choice but to strike and the membership roared back, 'let's go now!'”

Of particular note was the response to a section of Gerard's keynote where he took a sharp, hard line on looming contract negotiations in the steel and oil industries. He received enthusiastic standing ovations when he said, “We need to fight! We need to be willing to fight!”

Steelworkers on the Move - Blog from Las Vegas

Sitting with over 150 retiree activists at the SOAR (Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees) conference in Las Vegas. Our conference preceeds the United Steelworkers (USW) Convention that starts on Monday.

The atmosphere is electric. The mood and militancy here shows clearly that labor is very much a part of the general upsurge that promises big changes for working people starting after Nov 4, 2008 elections.

The energy here is aimed at what we can win after we win in November: universal health care, the Employee Free Choice Act, re-regulation of industry, protecting social security, creating jobs, ending unfair corporate trade policies, and on and on – fired up retirees don't need to be given issues – we got issues and fighting momentum...

One of the most inspiring speakers was Leo Gerard, president of the Steelworkers. He gave the SOAR delegates an exciting preview of next weeks USW convention.

Gerard likened the possibilities for change today to the elections of Franklin D. Roosevelt for his second term, the election of John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson's defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964. He called it our time, a transformative time, a time for basic change with the election of Barack Obama and a new Congress.

Gerard also said that this USW convention will make history in three ways: 1. The founding of the first global transatlantic union, 2. a critical dues increase that will be emarked for struggle and fightback in the union's Strike and Defence Fund, and 3. the creation of a new executive board position (Vice President at Large) to be filled by a woman steelworker. Stay tuned.

More on all this later.