It seems almost everyone has a “sky-is-falling” attitude toward the economy these days.

You know we’re in trouble when long-time NPR commentator Daniel Schorr starts singing depression era songs.

“I have found myself reflecting on the recession, no depression, that I experienced in my youth,” said 92-year-old Schorr in his analysis yesterday of our present economy. After describing the horrific economic tragedy of the Depression, he then was asked by Liane Hansen, the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition, about the music of the era. He said there was one song he remembered, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime.”

It’s a haunting song about the Great Depression written by Yip Harburg.

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

Here’s a more updated version by George Michael I love:

While it was a great radio moment, hearing Schorr sing the old tune a cappella, I couldn’t help but think these type of comparisons are hurting all of us.

I know, Starbucks is closing 600 stores and with that 12,000 jobs will be lost. And the U.S. auto industry is in a tail spin. Not to mention banking and the brokerage industry. Thousands of jobs among hourly workers, and even among the mansion set have been hacked and slashed.

But are we really talking economic collapse? There’s been so much shrill in the media lately and among politicians that it got me wondering if we really should be making any analogies to the Depression.

Since I didn’t live through that time I figured I had to ask a historian if our present economic state mirrors the Depression, or have we all lost our minds?

“I’d be happy to offer my two cents though you ask quite the large question,” says Peter Cole, an associate professor and labor historian from Western Illinois University.

“My short answer is no, we are nowhere near the economic conditions of the Great Depression, fortunately,” he maintains.

Phew!

“While foreclosures are at the level that they were then, seeing that unemployment is SO much lower that there’s really no comparison,” he adds.

You all might be wondering why I’m making such a big deal out of this. Why I care that some people equate our present situation to something much more dire.

The reason is simple, if we think the sky is falling we may be apt to make rash career decisions right now. We may be convinced to accept less pay or benefits because everything is falling apart, and oh, aren’t we lucky that an employer has offered us a job at all.

This is never a good way to navigate through your work life, with a sense of panic.

Look, it is bad out there right now. We’re all struggling with higher prices and many of our jobs could be up on the chopping block, but we have to resist this crowd mentality of fear. There are still jobs to be had and many companies are stilling turning in profits.

So, take a deep breath and concentrate, with a level head, on your own situation and your own job opportunities.

Clearly, there are economic problems, but our worries may be feeding the flames.

Here are some more of Cole’s insights:

The tremendous anxiousness of most US workers and the powerlessness most feel, the ever-dwindling number of folks with employer-based health and retirement benefits, the very real fear that globalization will result in more jobs lost (not just in manufacturing), the seemingly-endless decline of US organized labor (essential, I believe, for a healthy society and economy with a large middle class) all suggest real issues that dramatically affect the lives of us workers as well as the entire economy. Just look at the stats on number of strikes today compared to previous decades; SO much lower. That, too, is a result of not just Bush’s anti-worker National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor but longer trends of corporations cavalierly ignoring US labor law because they know no enforcement is happening.

I wouldn’t say that the problems we are facing our trivial, not by a long shot, but I wouldn’t say that they have risen (or, perhaps, I should say fallen) to the level of the 1930s. Of course, it was the economic crisis of the 30s that produced many of the programs that ALL Americans have benefited from for almost a century as well as a revitalized labor movement that greatly democratized workplaces and our nation. Americans are more individualistic today but I believe that a dose of collective action would be quite beneficial. But Americans and US workers are scared and individualistic and unions are weak, if attempting to rectify that.

Now I understand being spurred to take “collective action”. But that can only be spurred by anger and disgust on the part of workers who believe they’re getting the shaft, and not because pundits, journalists and politicians pull a Chicken Little on us and have everyone running scared.

There’s an essay in the New York Times magazine today on how the “New Deal” is never coming back.

The author, a Democrat, puts out a challenge to his party — Come up with a plan to replace the “New Deal”.

The New Deal, which spawned Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and a pact between business and government: “Business, you provide a living wage and benefits, and government, you fill in the gaps with programs to help those who fall through the gaps.”

The author, Dalton Conley, puts it more eloquently:

Government and big business had an understanding, famously embodied by the line, “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.” Employers, in turn, agreed to pay their (male) employees a living wage and provide generous benefits. Men, in turn, had an obligation to provide for their dependents. To complete the sequence, the state would step in if any of these links broke down by providing a minimal level of support in the case of unemployment, death, desertion or disability.

Conley makes some good points about providing new systems where people can become part of a pool and buy affordable health insurance, and creating savings incentives.

But alas Conley does not tackle what is probably the biggest problem in our economic structure today, the demise of a living wage.

Wages in this country have been stagnant. Jobs that once paid a good wage, where workers could have a solid middle class life and send their kids to college are disappearing. All the major U.S. automakers are laying off or offering buyouts to huge chucks of their workforces so they can replace them with employees who will work for half the money. And large retailers, such as Circuit City, a recent example, are showing veteran workers the door so they can also fill their jobs with people that will take less.

Last night, I was talking with my neighbor who told us his dad — who without a college education, worked for AT&T as a telephone repair man — and his mom — who was a stay-at-home mom — where able to raise seven kids and provide for them without ever getting help from the government.

Is that possible today?

Paying someone a fair salary will go a long way in providing for the nation’s middle class. We can have endless programs to fill in the gaps, but how will they work if the gaps are like black holes able to consume a whole segment of the population that once hoped it could fend for itself if only they were paid enough.

The tech titans in Silicon Valley don’t seem to care that the people cleaning their lavish offices make insanely low wages in one of the most expensive places on earth.

The average pay for Silicon Valley tech workers is the highest in the country, but the janitors there make way less than their counterparts in places like New York and Chicago. Case in point, New York’s janitors make $25.25 an hour compared to $11.04 in Silicon Valley.

This is outrageous. In a place like Silicon Valley such wages are near poverty.

And, you’re probably not going to believe this, it takes two and a half years before they are eligible for health insurance. Can you imagine starting a new job and being told you have to wait two plus years?

Not surprisingly the janitors overwhelmingly authorized a strike over the weekend.

From the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday:

Janitors who clean offices in Silicon Valley and Alameda and Contra Costa counties voted Saturday to authorize a strike after contract talks with management representatives broke down over wages and health benefits.

As many as 6,000 janitorial workers, members of Service Employees International Union Local 1877, could go out on strike at any time after Saturday’s nearly unanimous vote in San Jose, Gina Bowers, a spokeswoman for the union, said.

From the employer side:

Jim Beard, chief negotiator for the cleaning contractors, said workers were offered wages and benefits that added up to an additional $3 over four years.

“We think this is a pretty good deal,” Beard said. “It covers the increasing costs of health and welfare.”

It’s a disgrace how we divvy up wealth in this country. The disparity in pay among the top and bottom half of our society has been widening more and more each year.

From CBS News earlier this month:

There have always been “haves” and “have-nots” in the United States, but over the past three decades, the gap between them has gotten a lot wider, statistics from congressional numbers crunchers show.

According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, income for the bottom half of American households rose six percent since 1979 but, through 2005, the income of the top one percent skyrocketed - by 228 percent.

No where is this chasm more pronounced that among the elite, so-called enlightened on the West Coast in this more than golden tech hub we all know as Silicon Valley.

Maybe Google’s founders and all those other tech executives who have more money than they know what do with need to start putting pressure on the contractors they hire to treat workers fairly.

Google’s founders are now worth about $18 billion each. It may be a good time for them to remember when they were broke and working out of a garage.

This just doesn’t sound right no matter how you slice it: Unions striking secret deals with employers.

When it comes to workers, there’s plenty of secrecy to go around at the companies they work for. So, you’d figure a union would be all about transparency.

Not today. Two of the nation’s biggest unions, the Service Employees International Union, known as SEIU, and Unite Here, have been engaged in striking back-room deals with employers. I’m serious folks. You can’t make this stuff up.

There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal looking at the secret pacts.

Two of the nation’s largest labor unions have struck confidential agreements with large employers that give the companies the right to designate which of their locations, and how many workers, the unions can seek to organize.Two of the nation’s largest labor unions have struck confidential agreements with large employers that give the companies the right to designate which of their locations, and how many workers, the unions can seek to organize.

The agreements are raising questions about union transparency and workers’ rights. A summary document put together by the unions says it is critical to the success of the partnership “that we honor the confidentiality and not publicly disclose the existence of these agreements.” That includes not disclosing them to union members.

I don’t know about you, but if a union were representing me I’d want everything disclosed.

This move seems like the last gasp of a dying labor movement in this country that has seen membership plummet.

One union, the SEIU, has actually been gaining members. I write about that often. But if this is the way they are swelling their ranks then maybe they should rethink their tactics.

Some labor experts also see it as an unnerving development:

The secret deals, says Gary Chaison, professor of Industrial Relations at Clark University, “are very worrisome and some unions, particularly SEIU, seem to specialize in them. What I see are unions attempting to strike a balance between organizing new members and representing them. Often, unions find that they have to do special deals with employers in order to gain neutrality and special arrangements, like membership card counts instead of elections, as a way to prove majority support and achieve status as bargaining agent. But here’s the conflict. Secret deals to gain status as bargaining agent runs counter to the unions’ roles as bargaining agent, when they have to be open and transparent organizations.”

This seems obvious, no? What are we missing here?

In the Journal piece the unions defend their tactics:

The SEIU’s president, Andy Stern, said the unions sought the agreements after realizing that traditional organizing campaigns at individual sites were proving ineffective. “The old ways aren’t working, and we’re trying to find different relationships with employers that guarantee workers a voice,” he said. He dismissed the idea that the new agreements are undemocratic. “These workers have no unions; that’s where we start from,” he said.

and…

The agreements have “resulted in tens of thousands of workers getting unions” and been a major advance for the labor movement, said the president of Unite Here, Bruce Raynor.

He defended keeping them confidential, saying the companies involved insisted on that for competitive reasons.

This excuse has been used again and again by executives in the business world. Having a union official using it as a reason to keep deals secret from workers makes me feel like I’m in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Chaison offers a gloomy scenario:

“Is this the beginning of the end of the labor movement? I think a strong case could be made that secret deals (along with the loss of political clout and the concessionary bargaining (wage cuts and freezes) that has become some common for example in the auto and airline industries, does mark a beginning of an end….that unions have loss so much influence and power in the world of work in which they recruit members and bargaining, that they find themselves moving apart from the members and making special deals with employers. The final decline of American labor unions will be marked not only by intense opposition from employers but a workers’ loss of faith in need for and effectiveness of unionism and in their unions as organizations controlled by workers. Once workers see unions as making special secret deals, workers’ will no longer feel attached to their unions, and the rejection of unionism at nonunion workplaces will increase and fewer workers will be willing to strike or participate in union administration and governance. Hence, unions will lose their greatest resource…the energy and support of their members.”

It’s something unions have been losing for years. But are these desperate measures for desperate times too desperate?

There has been an ongoing battle between two large national unions and it’s a bit sickening to watch.

The SEIU (the Service Employees International Union) and the CNA (the California Nurses Association) have been fighting like a bunch of babies over representing workers at hospitals in different parts of the country.

It blows my mind that at a time when workers need the help of unions the most union leaders can’t get their acts together and play nice with each other.

I know, unions fight all the time over turf as they try to gain power and increase their ranks, but this skirmish has become ugly and public and it makes organized labor look like a bunch of angry boobs.

They are filing restraining orders and even getting violent.

This from the Los Angeles Times:

The California Nurses Assn. on Wednesday secured a temporary restraining order against the Service Employees International Union, accusing it of harassing the board members of the Oakland-based group.

The two influential nationwide unions have a long, acrimonious rivalry that reached a new height in March after they publicly battled over whether the SEIU should represent more than 8,000 nurses and other healthcare workers in Ohio.

The dispute flared again at a labor conference in Dearborn, Mich., on Saturday, when SEIU protesters attempted to gain access to a ballroom where Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the nurses association, had been expected to speak. Several people were injured in a scuffle, including a 68-year-old woman who fell after being pushed.

DeMoro accused SEIU members and staff last week of stalking nurses association board members at their homes, looking through windows and shouting.

SEIU spokeswoman Lynda Tran said union organizers have been driving a nurse and respiratory therapist to board members’ homes to express their disapproval of the association’s tactics in Ohio last month.

It’s a she said she said and it’s doing little to build up workers in this country.

At a time when wages are falling and government agencies that area supposed to be protecting workers rights and safety are being hacked back, you would think the labor movement would be able to sit down and take out the peace pipe.

From where I sit, it seems these unions are more concerned with protecting their corner of the playground than protecting workers.

I get tons of emails about companies going green, green jobs, green ways to commute, etc.

I usually just hit the delete button, but not last week when an email showed up in my mailbox about a union that was going green.

My first thought was: “why the heck is a union using it’s valuable time worrying about the environment when workers’ paychecks are declining and most working stiffs are worried about losing their jobs in this economy?”

The email was from the Service Employees International Union and it details a host of things its leadership wants to do in order to help the world become a green place.

If I had gotten the email from any other union — say the United Auto Workers, which has seen its membership decimated and its members put through the ringer — I would have gone ballistic in this blog, mocking any initiative that doesn’t help its members shore up their livelihoods.

But the SEIU, with its 1.9 million members, has actually been one of the few unions in this country that is growing.

Do they have the luxury to focus on “green” and not just wage and hour issues? I’m not sure. But I’ll give them a bit of leeway here.

Basically, they want a bit of “green” language in their local contracts for members. And some of what they propose will also help workers themselves, well, more directly than helping cut down on overall pollution for the earth.

Here is some of what the SEIU proposes:

Public transportation benefits to decrease automobile use.

Replacement of toxic cleaning supplies to protect workers, land and water.

Encouragement of daytime cleaning to reduce nighttime energy use in buildings.

Establishment of labor-management environmental committees for ongoing monitoring of environmental issues in the workplace.

All these sound reasonable, but the SEIU leadership has to convince management and their own members, that pushing these issues during contract negotiations is critical. Typically, such negotiations are contentious enough as both sides battle over money and benefits. So, adding “green” demands will probably stir up the pot even more.

“We need to do a whole education thing with our members about this,” says Gerry Hudson, SEIU’s executive vice president. “We need to do something about climate change. We can use our bargaining power to be helpful.”

The green initiative will kick off with a resolution at the SEIU’s convention in June, and Hudson is hopeful the proposal will get some momentum coming out of the convention that will lead to pilot projects after the November election.

That’s when he believes dialogue involving climate change throughout the country will “heat up.”

UPDATE BELOW –

Is our government turning a blind eye to worker injuries, and even death?

I know you’ve all heard a bit about the deadly sugar plant explosion in Georgia. Maybe you caught a bit of the story on the nightly news. Yet another accident kills workers. We let these stories just disappear into the next day’s news. Remember the mine workers in Utah? Probably not.

I don’t blame you. We get bombarded with news everyday. We all hope someone investigates these tragedies. We all hope someone, or some agency, or some corporations is held accountable. The sugar refinery tragedy was heart wrenching.

From the Associated Press:

SAVANNAH, Ga.—A vase of red roses sat in front of the church altar Saturday, flanked by portraits of Truitt Byers and a blue baseball cap with the logo for Dixie Crystals—the brand of sugar produced by a refinery where the 54-year-old was killed in an explosion.

The first memorial services for Byers and the other victims came a day after crews recovered the final body from inside the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth west of Savannah. The explosion killed nine people Feb. 7—eight found dead inside the plant, and a ninth worker who died of burns at an Augusta hospital.

The major question is: Could these accidents have been prevented? In this case, the answer might be yes.

(more…)

“This is not our grandfathers’ economy,” says Andy Stern, president the Service Employees International Union, today in response to the end of the Hollywood writer’s strike.

“Today’s global marketplace asks creativity and forward-thinking from us all,” he adds. “As new technologies continue to change our country and the world around us, we need to ensure that all working people are justly rewarded for their work.”

Stern, who head up one of the biggest unions in the country with nearly 2 million members, is referring to the concessions the writers got regarding Internet royalties. Basically, they wanted a cut of the money made by studios when shows, that the writers wrote, end up streaming on the Web or on cell phones, or other techno gadgets. This type of repackaging of shows and movies on the Web is fairly new and no one is quite sure how much money it will translate into down the line, but the writers believed they were owed a piece.

After three months on strike, workers are ready to go back to work and unfortunately, it seems, they didn’t get that much. But that’s the way negotiations go, especially when new technology is involved and there’s little incentive by businesses to share the wealth.

So, back to Stern’s comment about it not being “our grandfathers’ economy.” He is not kidding.

We are going through a monumental change in the economic structure of this country. We all know about the fall of manufacturing.

Just yesterday General Motors announced it’s offering buyouts to 74,000 employees.

With reductions in a host of industries, what will be left and who will have the leverage? You would have thought writers, who are not easily outsourced, would have carried a lot of weight. But even they spent 3 months on a picket line and then felt compelled to take less than they wanted.

Tell me all you employees out there. Do you have power in the workplace? Are you treated fairly and paid a fair wage? I’d love to know the industries/professions that even our grandfathers would be proud of.

It’s way tiny. Really small. But it was an increase.

Yes, union membership in the United States actually rose slightly last year. This is a big deal because for decades now unions have been shrinking like those Shrinky Dinks we used to play with when we were kids.

Here are the numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor:

In 2007, the number of workers belonging to a union rose by 311,000 to
15.7 million, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported today.  Union members accounted for 12.1 percent of employed wage
and salary workers, essentially unchanged from 12.0 percent in 2006.  In
1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the
union membership rate was 20.1 percent.  Some highlights from the 2007
data are:

--Workers in the public sector had a union membership rate nearly five
times that of private sector employees.

--Education, training, and library occupations had the highest unioniz-
ation rate among all occupations, at 37.2 percent, followed closely
by protective service occupations at 35.2 percent.

--Among demographic groups, the union membership rate was highest for
black men and lowest for Hispanic women.

--Wage and salary workers ages 45 to 54 (15.7 percent) and ages 55 to
64 (16.1 percent) were more likely to be union members than were
workers ages 16 to 24 (4.8 percent).

It’s hard to say what’s going on but I’ll have some analysis for you guys later in the day when economists begin to wake up and I can get them on the phone.

Unions have been going into overdrive these past few years trying to recruit more members. And, the disparity among pay between the rank and file and the top dogs at companies has been exploding.

Maybe the combination has created a perfect storm for unions in this country. Only time will tell if this slight increase is a blip or the sign of things to come.