A Race to the Bottom

By BOB HERBERT

Toward the end of an important speech in Washington last month, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said to her audience:

“Think of a teacher who is staying up past midnight to prepare her lesson plan... Think of a teacher who is paying for equipment out of his own pocket so his students can conduct science experiments that they otherwise couldn’t do... Think of a teacher who takes her students to a ‘We, the People’ debating competition over the weekend, instead of spending time with her own family.”

Ms. Weingarten was raising a cry against the demonizing of teachers and the widespread, uninformed tendency to cast wholesale blame on teachers for the myriad problems with American public schools. It reminded me of the way autoworkers have been vilified and blamed by so many for the problems plaguing the Big Three automakers.

But Ms. Weingarten’s defense of her members was not the most important part of the speech. The key point was her assertion that with schools in trouble and the economy in a state of near-collapse, she was willing to consider reforms that until now have been anathema to the union, including the way in which tenure is awarded, the manner in which teachers are assigned and merit pay.

It’s time we refocused our lens on American workers and tried to see them in a fairer, more appreciative light.

Working men and women are not getting the credit they deserve for the jobs they do without squawking every day, for the hardships they are enduring in this downturn and for the collective effort they are willing to make to get through the worst economic crisis in the U.S. in decades.

In testimony before the U.S. Senate this month, the president of the United Auto Workers, Ron Gettelfinger, listed some of the sacrifices his members have already made to try and keep the American auto industry viable.

Last year, before the economy went into free fall and before any talk of a government rescue, the autoworkers agreed to a 50 percent cut in wages for new workers at the Big Three, reducing starting pay to a little more than $14 an hour.

That is a development that the society should mourn. The U.A.W. had traditionally been a union through which workers could march into the middle class. Now the march is in the other direction.

Mr. Gettelfinger noted that his members “have not received any base wage increase since 2005 at G.M. and Ford, and since 2006 at Chrysler.”

Some 150,000 jobs at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have vanished outright through downsizing over the past five years. And like the members of Ms. Weingarten’s union (and other workers across the country, whether unionized or not), the autoworkers are prepared to make further sacrifices as required, as long as they are reasonably fair and part of a shared effort with other sectors of the society.

We need some perspective here. It is becoming an article of faith in the discussions over an auto industry rescue, that unionized autoworkers should be taken off of their high horses and shoved into a deal in which they would not make significantly more in wages and benefits than comparable workers at Japanese carmakers like Toyota.

That’s fine if it’s agreed to by the autoworkers themselves in the context of an industry bailout at a time when the country is in the midst of a financial emergency. But it stinks to high heaven as something we should be aspiring to.

The economic downturn, however severe, should not be used as an excuse to send American workers on a race to the bottom, where previously middle-class occupations take a sweatshop’s approach to pay and benefits.

The U.A.W. has been criticized because its retired workers have had generous pensions and health coverage. There’s a horror! I suppose it would have been better if, after 30 or 35 years on the assembly line, those retirees had been considerate enough to die prematurely in poverty, unable to pay for the medical services that could have saved them.

Randi Weingarten and Ron Gettelfinger know the country is going through a terrible period. Their workers, like most Americans, are already getting clobbered and worse is to come.

But there is no downturn so treacherous that it is worth sacrificing the long-term interests — or, equally important — the dignity of their members.

Teachers and autoworkers are two very different cornerstones of American society, but they are cornerstones nonetheless. Our attitudes toward them are a reflection of our attitudes toward working people in general. If we see teachers and autoworkers as our enemies, we are in serious need of an attitude adjustment.

Hope Amid the Gloom

By BOB HERBERT

Is the end of the war in sight?

I don’t mean Iraq. I’m talking about the war against working people in the U.S. that has taken such a vicious economic toll over the past three decades.

Even as Americans by the thousands sign up for jobless benefits in this horrendous holiday season, or line up to declare bankruptcy, or stand sorrowfully aside as their homes are foreclosed upon, there are some slender reasons to hope.

On Friday, George W. Bush, in the slapstick final weeks of his disastrous presidency, grudgingly announced that, yes, emergency loans would be made available to prevent the collapse of the U.S. auto industry. He looked like a boy who had been forced to eat his spinach, or drink his castor oil.

But the economy is in such an awful state that even the most backward administration of our lifetime recognized that risking the chain reaction of a complete auto industry meltdown was not an option. (The Bush deal is unfairly onerous to auto workers, but the loans will serve as a bridge to the Obama era, when, presumably, a more equitable arrangement could be worked out.)

Mr. Bush’s announcement came a day after it was learned that President-elect Obama had chosen Representative Hilda Solis of California, a fierce advocate of workers, to be his labor secretary. The Obama administration also is committed to moving quickly on an economic stimulus package that could reach $1 trillion over two years.

These are developments that portend a radically different environment for the nation’s workers. From Ronald Reagan’s voodoo economics to Henry Paulson’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, we’ve put the mighty resources of the national government overwhelmingly on the side of those who were already rich and powerful.

Ordinary workers have suffered. It took years to get a lousy little boost in the minimum wage for the working poor. Attempts to expand health insurance coverage were fought almost to a standstill. Guaranteed pensions vanished. And the maniacs who set fire to the economy with their incendiary financial instruments (yet another form of voodoo) were hot to privatize Social Security.

As Andy Stern, president of the huge Service Employees International Union, told me on Friday: “We’ve had a 25-year experience with market-worshipping, deregulating, privatizing, trickle-down policies, and it has ended us up with the greatest economy on earth staggering, and with the greatest amount of inequality since the Great Depression.”

The contempt for workers over this long period has hardly been hidden. Until Mr. Bush was forced by circumstances to tap the TARP program for the auto industry loans (small potatoes compared with the gargantuan Wall Street bailouts), the administration had gone out of its way to keep the program’s hundreds of billions of dollars reserved for the elites of the financial services industry and their associates.

These elites, of course, were the geniuses who ruined the most powerful economy on earth. When Citigroup went into yet another swoon last month, the rush to rescue it was breathtaking. Posses don’t come more elegant: the outgoing treasury secretary, Hank Paulson; the incoming treasury secretary (and president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York), Timothy Geithner; and a former treasury secretary (not to mention Citigroup board member), Robert Rubin.

They materialized magnificently, armed with hundreds of billions in taxpayer bailout cash.

Leo Gerard, president of the steelworkers union, summed up the government’s attitude nicely when he said: “Washington will bail out those who shower before work, but not those who shower afterwards.”

Working people have been treated like enemies, a class to be preyed upon. Labor unions were ferociously attacked. Jobs were shipped overseas by the millions. People were hired as temps or consultants so benefits could be denied.

All of this may finally be changing. It remains to be seen how strong a voice Ms. Solis will have in the Obama administration, but she is pro-worker to her core, a politician who actually knows what it’s like to walk a picket line.

And there have been other promising developments. More than 200 laid-off workers staged a successful six-day sit-in at a factory in Chicago this month, demanding and eventually getting severance pay and benefits that they were owed by law.

A more substantial victory occurred in Tar Heel, N.C., last week when workers, after a brutal 15-year struggle, succeeded in organizing the notorious Smithfield Packing slaughterhouse, the largest hog-killing and processing plant in the world.

These are shaky steps in the overall scheme of things, to be sure. But at long last, they are steps in the right direction.

Gail Collins is off today.

The Clinton-Colombia Connection

Did Clinton know that Mark Penn was selling out Colombia's labor movement?

(From Greetings:) The Wall Street Journal wrote, what I felt was a biased editorial on the Mark Penn/Colombian government representation scandal. (As a working American, I couldn't call it any less.

I felt that this op-ed in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, written by the legal counsel to the United Steelworkers (albeit as an individual and not a representative of the union), expressed succinctly the problems with Penn having represented Colombia, Colombia presenting Bill Clinton an award while simultaneously endorsing Senator Clinton and expressing doubts about Senator Obama, and all of the fallout from that - as well as that government's history of ties to "hit squads" on union activists. This Op-Ed should be in front of every working person and journalist in PA and the U.S., as well as as many voters as possible. This is only an excerpt. Click on the link below for the full content. Very well laid out. I don't see this as attacking, but as presenting facts as to who Senator Clinton has running things for her and possible situations that have arisen and will arise from it in the future. It also addressed the Wall Street Journal I mention. I will be adding it to my blog and sending it to any journalists I know.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008 By Daniel Kovalik

(Daniel Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer who lives in Highland Park (dkovalik@usw.org). He also works as counsel for the United Steelworkers but this article reflects his personal views.)

For years, Colombia has been the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists. More than 2,300 were killed there since 1991, including 17 in the first three months of this year, according to Colombia's well-respected Semana magazine.

Four of this year's victims were murdered over a four-day period after a spokesman for President Alvaro Uribe characterized a nonviolent march they helped to organize as being "convened" by the Marxist FARC guerillas who have battled the government for decades. Such a characterization, while untrue, is a well-known signal for right-wing paramilitary groups aligned with the government to attack its political opponents.

In the five years of Mr. Uribe's tenure, more than 955 civilians have been murdered directly by the government's soldiers, as well -- a 65 percent increase over the prior five-year period.

Among these also have been union leaders.

As a result of this unprecedented violence against the labor movement, and in light of Mr. Uribe's aggressive anti-union legislation and decrees, fewer than 1 percent of Colombia's workers have the right to bargain collectively with their employers for decent wages or working conditions. This is the lowest level in the Western Hemisphere and a quarter of what it was in Colombia 10 years ago.

Given Mr. Uribe's horrible record on worker and human rights, the U.S. labor movement has joined Colombia's trade unionists in opposing the proposed Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, which would reward Colombia with special trade preferences.

It is against this backdrop that the controversy has arisen over the revelation that Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's now-departed chief campaign adviser, met with Colombian officials in Washington, D.C., last week to plot strategy for gaining passage of the Colombia trade agreement -- even though Mrs. Clinton has claimed for some time to be adamantly opposed to it. President Bush on Monday sent the agreement to Congress for ratification.

While Mr. Penn resigned as chief strategist for the Clinton campaign over the weekend -- after having been fired by the Colombian government -- he remains an adviser. And it is now clear that for more than a year, he had been working simultaneously for the Clinton campaign and the Colombian government, having signed a one-year contract with Colombia last March to help it win passage of the free trade agreement.

As one commentator noted, Mr. Penn's firm had "set up a campaign-style operation to respond immediately to any critical news about Colombia." And in June 2007, while Mr. Penn was advising both the Colombian government and the Clinton campaign, President Uribe came to Washington to lobby for the trade agreement.

During that visit, Mr. Uribe awarded a "Colombia is passion" award "for believing in our country and encouraging others to do the same" to former President Bill Clinton. As the Associated Press reported at the time, the award was given to Mr. Clinton "for his efforts to reverse the country's image for violence and drugs." In other words, Mr. Clinton was awarded for doing the same kind of public relations work for Colombia as Mr. Penn.

All of this makes it more than just a coincidence that Mr. Uribe last week publicly expressed his concern about the prospects of a Barack Obama presidency, effectively endorsing Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Uribe's visit to Washington followed that of a government delegation led by his vice president, Francisco Santos, last May that also was advised by Mr. Penn. Mr. Santos' main mission was to convince members of Congress that the former head of Colombia's FBI (the DAS) had nothing to do with providing paramilitary groups with a hit list of unionists. This turned out to be a lie. As the Miami Herald reported after the Santos delegation left Washington, Mr. Uribe's own attorney general had investigated the allegation and concluded that the head of the DAS had indeed provided the paramilitaries with names of union targets.

What all this means is that Mrs. Clinton's chief adviser had been working aggressively against the U.S. labor movement in its efforts to prevent passage of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement and discover the truth about those responsible for the killing of trade unionists in Colombia.

That Mrs. Clinton, at a minimum, ignored Mr. Penn's role in such mendacious lobbying efforts for a year should be of great concern to those concerned about labor and human rights and who worry about her bona fides on union issues. Even more worrying is the prospect that while Mrs. Clinton says publicly she is against the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, she may have knowingly allowed Mr. Penn to give a wink and a nod to the Colombian government to allay any concern it might have about her public position should she become president.

There is some evidence to support this scenario. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Colombian embassy was uncertain as to whether Mr. Penn was working with Colombian officials in his personal capacity or on behalf of the Clinton campaign. It might be that he was doing both.