Friday, February 08, 2013

Our class enemy

Tte Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that wages adjusted for inflation continued their decline: in 2012, by 0.4% after having already declined 0.5% in 2011. It doesn’t seem much. With nominal wages rising, workers might temporarily be fooled into thinking that they’re moving ahead. But there is likely to be more  of those declines, and it will soon add up. 54% of those who’d been laid off and were lucky enough to find a job, now make less money than before. Less money in nominal terms, not even adjusted for inflation. A third of them suffered a pay cut of 11% to 30%. Another third reported that their pay had been slashed by over 30%. 60% of the workers believe that there is a “new normal,” a tough new reality where workers have to take jobs below their skill level, at lower pay, and with less job security. To survive , workers raided their savings. Even after all these years since the recession officially ended, 38% have “a lot less” money in savings than they had before, 18% have “a little less.” But the savings account is hard to refill as workers earn less, while prices continue to rise.

He who pays the piper calls the tune - except in the case of the unions and the Democrats. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that unions spent $1.1 billion between 2005 and 2011 supporting Democratic candidates for ederal office. In 2008 alone, according to the New York Times, labor laid out $450 million to elect Barack Obama. And the return for this money? Unprecedented income inequality; attacks on labor in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan; and a low-wage business model. Democrats have had ample opportunities to uphold workers’ rights and push forward a pro-labor agenda. Yet Democrats have failed to revive the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) to aid the 60 million workers who want to join unions. And not one Democrat in Congress sponsored a resolution repudiating the GOP’s attack on unions in Wisconsin and Michigan. Witness the the  attack on teacher unions by Democratic politicians, their privatization schemes and opposition to living-wage laws. Their idea of economic recovery only means simply returning to how things worked before the financial crisis, rising social and economic inequality. Workers don’t really have rights unless they are enforced. Real annual earnings of the bottom 90 percent of Americans shrank by 1.2 percent by 2011 yet from 1979 to 2011 the average worker put in 10.7 percent more hours at work. President Obama’s compromise income tax hike means that many high-earners will face less of a tax rise than a median workers will with their large Social Security tax increase. In the United States firms can in general fire workers at will. This means that if they can find workers elsewhere in or outside the country who will work for less, then they can dump their current workforce and hire lower cost labor. Most other wealthy countries require some sort of severance payment to longer term workers, but the United States does not.

Since the recession began, states have made combined austerity cuts of at least $337 billion, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. The 2012-2013 budget deficits for 34 states resulted in $55 billion in cuts. Democratic governors are now as eager as their Republican counterparts to destroy the pensions of public employees. Democratic politicians in Oregon, Washington, California, New Jersey, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maryland, Massachusetts, and several other states are leading the charge to erode the last bastion of retirement security for working people, while continuing to lay off public employees by the thousands. Democrats  are in complete agreement over Obama’s education policy, which closes “failing schools,” (those in poor neighborhoods), opens privately run, non-union charter schools, and fires “bad teachers,” (typically those who teach poor students). The whole system is based on standardized testing, which poorer students will spend most of their education preparing for. Democrat controlled states are competing to home corporations with lavish almost never-ending flow of subsidies, while “guaranteeing” them “investment security,” i.e., promising low taxes. This is the basis for several states implementing “right to work” laws that target unions for destruction, while also attempting to “revamp the tax code,” which is a euphemism for lowering corporate taxes. In Oregon the Democratic governor declared a “special session” emergency in order to ensure that NIKE’s super low tax status would be frozen in place for decades, outside the reach of the public, which might want to raise corporate taxes to fund public services.

Time and again the Democrats have demonstrated their willingness to sacrifice working people to curry favor with their masters, the rich. The labor struggle is about challenging an elite that possesses and wield all the power which means no alliances with the capitalists' political puppets.

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