Everybody Who Thinks McConnell Is Going to Help These Coal Miners, Stand On Your Head

I sincerely hope they are trolling Senator Motherfucker, because they are morons if they think he gives a flying fuck about them.

From the Herald:

Because a pension fund for thousands of coal miners faces insolvency within three years, a contingent of retired coal workers will descend on the Capitol Wednesday, hoping to convince Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to back a fix.

It’s the ninth consecutive year the group has pressed Congress to act — but McConnell wants a broader fix to ensure the health of the federally chartered Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which insures millions of Americans in defined benefits pension plans but is facing its own fiscal challenges.

“There is momentum to fix the entire system, but that’s going to move slowly,” said Phil Smith, director of government affairs for the United Mine Workers of America. “Our plan is separate because we can’t wait for a global pension fix.”

Smith said the slump in the coal industry and company bankruptcies have hurt the pension fund, which now has just one major company, Murray Energy, contributing to the fund.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, who is sponsoring legislation to address the coal miners’ pensions and will appear Wednesday at a press conference to push his legislation, said Tuesday he wants a more sweeping fix, but worries about the immediate risk for the retired coal workers and their families.

“I don’t know how he can just turn his back on the miners in Kentucky and West Virginia,” Manchin said of McConnell in an interview Tuesday. “He just can’t continue to stonewall them and leave them with nothing.”

As if The Treason Turtle has ever done anything BUT stonewall working Kentuckians and leave them with nothing.

Of course he will stonewall them.  And of course every single one of them who is still alive after their pensions are taken away is going to vote for Bevin this fall and McConnell and Trump next year.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article230129654.html#storylink=cpy

Alternative

From Wonkette commenter Shanonigan:

Victory for Workers in KY Bourbon Strike

This happened three weeks ago, but it's still important because union solidarity and determination killed the devastating pro-owner contract provision that has destroyed unions nationwide for the last 40 years:  the two-tier contract.

From the Courier:

The Four Roses strike ended Friday afternoon (Sept. 21) after the unions representing striking workers and the bourbon maker reached a tentative agreement.

SNIP

"We're all just excited. It's a good day for Four Roses and it's a good day for workers," said Jeff Royalty, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 10d.

SNIP

The workers left the job Sept. 7 and had picketed outside both locations until Friday afternoon, when the parties emerged from a day-long bargaining session.

A major issue for the unions was a company proposal to change the sick leave policy for incoming employees, providing workers 10 sick days per year but prohibiting them from carrying them over to the next year or bank them, as current employers can.

Instead, the new hires would have been eligible for short-term disability. The unions balked at what they described as a two-tier package for benefits that treats current workers differently from those hired later.    

In the end, Royalty said, the parties agreed that workers would get the option to keep the current sick leave policy or sign up for short-term disability. Both new workers hired in and those now on the payroll can choose either program, he said.

"We stood our ground on two tier," Royalty said, adding that the company was receptive to reaching a compromise.

From an op-ed the week before by union organizer Richard Becker:

 Production work came to a halt at the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg on Sept. 7 and at the company’s bottling facility in Nelson County. The workers, who are represented by three different unions, have been in prolonged and fractious negotiations with the company for several weeks. After the company issued its “last, best, and final offer,” the workers nearly-unanimously rejected it and voted to go on strike. 

But this is no ordinary strike. What’s happening at Four Roses has implications for both the broader labor movement, as well as future generations of American workers.

Kirin Brewery Company, the parent company of Four Roses, has proposed a partial “two-tier” contract, in which future workers will have less paid time off than current workers. Two-tier union contracts have become increasingly common over the past several decades, but have only recently begun to capture the public’s attention. If you’ve followed the brewing unrest at UPS over their contract, you may have already heard of the concept. Essentially, a two-tier contract creates a second level of benefits and/or wages for workers hired after the effective date of the contract, while wages and benefits for current workers remain generally the same. 

Background: Union workers strike at Four Roses distillery just before bourbon fest

 

Obviously, companies seek to implement such systems in order to cut labor costs over the long term. And the evil genius of them is that their likelihood of passing in a vote by the workers is quite high because in theory, current workers have nothing to lose from such a setup. That’s what makes these workers’ resistance to the company’s proposal so uniquely selfless. These workers understand that two-tier contracts are potentially devastating for the survival of a vibrant American labor movement. 

These types of contracts create a divided workplace atmosphere. To give a hypothetical example, two workers on an assembly line working side by side and doing the same job, may have wildly different rates of pay, with the worker who’s been at the company three years making $25/hour with possible top-out pay of $40/hour over the course of his career, while the newer worker makes $17/hr with a maximum top-out pay of $30/hour by the time he retires. 

The story around this strike goes further than two-tier contracts, though. Generally, unions have come to expect companies to demand concessions during difficult times in the industry. But right now, the bourbon industry, and Four Roses in particular, is booming. Global demand for Kentucky’s signature spirit and profits for bourbon manufacturers are through the roof, and Four Roses has just completed a multi-million dollar expansion of their production facility. That leaves only one explanation for why Four Roses is offering its workers the worst contract since Prohibition: corporate greed. 

Just as President Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers nearly 40 years ago set off a new era of anti-union sentiment among American businesses, so too has Gov. Bevin’s relentless assault on workers’ rights – particularly passage of the so-called “Right to Work” law – unleashed a wave of anti-worker attacks by Kentucky employers. Emboldened by a government that tells them that, in the words of Gordon Gecko, “greed is good,” Four Roses and other employers across the commonwealth are waging a campaign of attrition on workers both union, and non-union. And at the end of the day, it won’t just be union workers who suffer. 

The whole country should be watching this strike. How the two sides end this dispute will likely help drive the next phase of negotiations at UPS and other companies locked in similar conflict. 

As Kentucky celebrates the Bourbon Heritage Festival this week, all Kentuckians should unite in supporting the workers putting it all on the line to ensure a brighter future for all workers.

Massa Bevin: Slaves Were Just Apprentices

When your racism and White Privilege are so ingrained that you can't even pretend any more.

Joe Gerth at the Courier:

When Master Matt Bevin thinks of the “good ol’ days,” who knew he thinks about the late 1700s?

Marse Bevin — according to WFPL — went to the Kentucky Registered Apprenticeship Summit on Monday and extolled the virtues of indentured servitude as being something akin to an early form of an apprenticeship.

According to the radio station, Marse Bevin said that a couple of his ancestors came to America as indentured servants, learned how to make bells from their master and went on to form their own company after they were freed.

He hailed the harsh practice of keeping people in bondage as a way to give workers hands-on experience.

Well shackle me up and teach me to cast bronze.

Indentured servitude, of course, was the practice of paying one’s way across the pond by selling oneself into bondage for a prescribed number of years — essentially a form of slavery.

It differed from the enslavement of Africans practiced throughout the South, though, in that with Southern slavery, there was no contract and the prescribed number of years was the rest of one’s life, and the rest of one's children’s lives and the rest of their children’s lives, and so on.

So, slavery was far worse. But indentured servitude was no picnic, either.

Sure, a few indentured servants learned trades, but the vast majority of serfs were field workers and household servants, working alongside the African slaves, or doing the same jobs in lieu of the African slaves.

For Master Bevin, this is not to be thought of as a time we should regret and think “thank heavens we’ve gotten past that and don’t allow such a barbarous practice any longer.”

No, for Master Bevin, it is the age of enlightenment. A time of great learning.

(Someone should point out right here that labor unions, which Bevin has harshly criticized and pushed to neuter or kill with right-to-work and other anti-union legislation, run amazing apprenticeship programs that don’t require bondage or a period of servitude.)

When I Say Privatizaation Kills, I Mean That Literally

Via Zandar:

Kiera Feldman at ProPublica takes a long look at the most dangerous job in the Big Apple: working the private garbage trucks that roam the city in the darkness.

SNIP

 In New York City overall, private sanitation trucks killed seven people in 2017. By contrast, city municipal sanitation trucks haven’t caused a fatality since 2014. SNIP

$80 bucks a shift for 18 hours and no benefits whatsoever, paid cash off the books and you have to buy your own uniform and safety gear, if you get paid at all.  That's where "cheaper, private carting" gets you in NYC these days.  And that's just the start of this piece.

Less than $5 an hour.  That's a literal crime: one-third of New York's mandated minimum wage.  Those workers should be getting 10 times that much. The owners of this criminal enterprise - and the city officials and employees who authorized the contract - get more than that.

The Resistance: Solidarity

from Down With Tyranny:

And Repugs Want To Take It Away

Blatantly stolen from Down With Tyranny:



So with every bite of hot dog and sip of beer, thank those commie union agitators for:

The Weekend
The 40-hour Week
Safe Workplaces
Lunch Breaks
Overtime Pay
Minimum Wage
Workers' Compensation
Paid Vacations
Sick Days
Pensions

The Resistance: "We Must Come Together Now"

You all know what an adamant, aggressive Atheist I am.  I cut freakazoids no slack whatsoever. But when it comes to preaching social justice, there's only one voice in the room.

Rev. Barber preaches the paint off the walls at the United Steelworkers:

Bevin Lied to Justify Right to Slave Labor

Just like his hero. Repugs can never tell the truth about the anti-worker, anti-family, racist, sexist, greedhead and un-American policies they are shoving down our throats, because if they did, they'd never win another election.

From the Herald:

Automaker Volvo and Swedish officials dispute Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin’s recent claim that Volvo refused to consider locating a production plant in Kentucky in 2015 because the state did not have a so-called “right-to-work” law at the time.

Insider Louisville reported Friday that a spokeswoman for the Embassy of Sweden denied Bevin’s claim that Ambassador Bjorn Lyrvall told the governor that Volvo would have set up shop in Kentucky if it had a law that allows employees to work in unionized workplaces without paying union dues. Also, Volvo Car USA denied that a right-to-work law was a requirement as it searched for locations.

“I sat next to the ambassador from Sweden a couple of weeks ago who told me Volvo wanted to be here,” Bevin said during his State of the Commonwealth Address. “Volvo could have been here, would have been here, had we been serious about passing right to work, had we shown any interest in them as a company with any real significance, they would have been here. Those are the kind of companies that want to see this.”

In a response to Insider Louisville, the ambassador’s spokeswoman, Monica Enqvist, said “there must be some kind of misunderstanding with regard to what the Ambassador said during his talk with Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky.”

Insider Louisville also reported that Volvo Car USA replied to a tweet about Bevin’s comments by saying “We have never confirmed which locations we considered, but a ‘right to work’ bill was not a requirement.”

Volvo broke ground on a factory in Berkeley County, South Carolina on Sept. 25, 2015. Production of the Volvo S60 is expected to begin there in late 2018. The company must invest $600 million and create 2,000 jobs by Dec. 31, 2023, in order to get more than $200 million in incentives from the state and county, according to The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C.

 

Bevin’s office did not respond to a request for comment, according to Insider Louisville.

Kentucky’s Republican-led General Assembly approved a “right-to-work” law last month over the loud protests of union workers. Bevin immediately signed it into law.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article133826479.html#storylink=cpy

The Resistance: Solidarity

Scott Walker used this trick in Wisconsin six years ago, and it's not working any more.  Cops and firefighters know they can't trust elected repugs any more, and their only hope of survival is solidarity.

Zandar:

Cops and firefighters across America voted for the Trump and the Party of Law And Order® and all that, and they expect Republicans to treat them well.  The problem with that is cops and firefighters are still government employees with strong public sector unions, pensions, and benefits, and Republicans will not let those remain.  Iowa is a good example of this, where first responders are finding out the hard way that they voted themselves into oblivion.

.In the highly contentious battle to extinguish public worker rights, Iowa Republicans have attempted a divide-and-conquer approach to pit unions against each other. Their legislation splits public workers into two groups, one that’s “public safety workers,” and one that isn’t. The idea was to strip away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most public employees, but keep most of it for police and firefighters, who are politically more difficult to go after.

It didn’t work.

Hundreds of helmeted firefighters have flooded the Statehouse in the last week and police officers and sheriffs have lined up at committee hearings to speak against it. They don’t trust that this carve-out for their jobs will last long, nor do many of them feel it’s appropriate to deny the bargaining rights they have to fellow workers who have also had them for over 40 years.

Only Unions Make Living Wage Jobs

"Right to work (for less)" laws are nothing but union-busting.  Because corporations and their wholly-owned repug subsidiary politicians have watched for 40 years how well union-busting works for them.

Without strong unions, there is nothing to stop companies from shutting down factories here and building them overseas. And that's exactly what they did, once they'd killed the unions.

Apologies to Robyn Pennachia at Wonkette for copying almost her entire post, but every word is essential reading.

This is, as you might imagine, not at all about “freedom” for workers. It is about decimating unions — which Republicans see as a threat to their political power, on account of the fact that they traditionally back Democratic candidates, and it is about company owners getting to pay their workers less. And less, and less, and less as time goes on.

If we want fair wages, if we want equal pay, if we want maternity/paternity leave, if we want safe workplaces, the only way we are getting those things for quite some time is through unions and collective bargaining. Rather than letting unions deteriorate, we need more unionization, and we need those unions to fight for those things, and make them so normal that non-unionized companies have to play along or lose out on qualified labor. We need unions now more than ever.

We also need to fight for this if we ever want to win another election. Because we need to be the party that stands up for the American worker. We need to fight poverty, we need to fight for higher wages and a higher standard of living.

There are a lot of people out there who voted for Trump on account of the fact that he said he’d bring manufacturing jobs back, assuming that those jobs would pay like they did before NAFTA. This will ensure that even if they do, by some miracle, come back, they will not be doing that. If you think companies are going to go from paying sweatshop wages to paying you a living wage out of the goodness of their hearts without pressure from a union, you are an idiot. Manufacturing jobs did not always pay well — people had to fucking fight and die for them to pay well.

It's also racist and sexist in addition to being anti-worker.  Trifecta!

This legislation will be a major hit to the black community, in particular. Black workers — specifically black female workers — are more likely to be represented by a union than any other demographic. Union membership provides a buffer to wage discrimination based on race and sex, resulting in those who belong to unions making higher wages and receiving better benefits than their non-union peers.

Economic justice is also social justice. There is a reason so many of our most admired and fiercest advocates for social change were union organizers. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, A. Philip Randolph, Dolores Huerta, Lucy Parsons, Cesar Chavez all came from labor. Martin Luther King was assassinated while helping to organize a sanitation worker’s strike in Memphis. It is a way to fight for social change without the permission of the government, which is why Republicans hate it.

If one single factor is to blame the most for the extreme, unequal distribution of wealth in this country, it is the decline of unions. If all those “white working class Trump supporters” want to know why they are “poor” — it is the decline of unions. Not only did unions raise wages for their workers, they increased wages across the board — because non-union companies had to compete with union wages. This is still true today. Workers in Right To Work states make an average of $6,109 less a year than states that don’t have “Right To Work” on the books.

Unions have been steadily losing power since the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers strike, setting a dangerous precedent. To summarize, the union went on strike, and instead of negotiating with them, Reagan just fired them all and hired new people for less money, and then also banned all those who struck from ever having a federal job again — a ban later lifted by President Clinton. Prior to that, this was an unthinkable thing to do. Reagan made it thinkable.

In addition to that (and, admittedly, several public scandals involving corrupt union bosses), Republicans further pushed an anti-union agenda by aggressively pushing the idea that unions were essentially anti-American. Real Americans wanted to negotiate their salaries for themselves! Because why should they make the same amount of money as someone who wasn’t as good as them?

And won’t someone please think of the poor job creators? Who won’t be able to create jobs and profit from them if you don’t let them pay people next to nothing to do them?

Convincing Americans that their fellow Americans are all just lazy fucks who just want to mooch off of their hard work is one of the greatest tricks the GOP ever pulled. Keeping poor people more resentful of other poor people than they are of the rich is a great way to keep those people poor.

As a result, people are fucking poor now, and CEOs are incredibly, incredibly wealthy. Because surprise! Your boss doesn’t actually think you are worth more than that guy over there! He doesn’t think you’re as special as you think you are! And that guy over there probably thinks you’re not as good as he is.

Americans, by and large, have bought this line of thinking. They have drifted away from embracing labor rights and unions the way they used to, and no longer bother looking for the union label. Union membership is constantly decreasing, and I regularly hear people brag about working 60+ hours a week, never taking actual lunch breaks, etc. etc. Millennials, in particular, so fear the “entitled” label thrust upon them, that they feel the need to work more than they are paid for, and constantly disparage other millennials as the “entitled” ones that they are different from.

Last year, a woman who worked for Yelp’s Eat24 service wrote an open letter complaining to the CEO about how little she was paid, and was subsequently roasted by the internet for being so entitled as to think she ought to be able to buy groceries on her salary. And then was fired by Yelp. Ugh! Can you even believe it? How tacky! And why is she living in San Francisco if she doesn’t have money (never mind the fact that in order to operate in San Francisco, Eat24 does require employees that live there)! She should be grateful she even has a job!

Thinking about this behavior as some kind of unprecedented “everyone deserves a trophy” entitlement is part of the scam. You see, many years ago, people regularly fought for higher wages. They even died for them. They died for the weekend, for the 40 hour work week, for lunch breaks — and they died for unions.

Back in 1912, workers in a textile mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts, launched what is popularly known as the “Strike for Bread and Roses,” due to the fact that their pay was cut when a new law shortened the work week. A strike led by poor, immigrant women and children. One woman, Anna LoPizzo, was shot and killed by police during the strike. But they fought, and they won.

The term “Bread and Roses” comes from a speech by socialist and feminist Rose Schneiderman, in which she said that “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too.” Meaning that not only must people be paid enough to eat, but also to enjoy their lives. Were someone to say that now, they would certainly be called “entitled.”

But thank goodness they were entitled, huh? Thank goodness they did not put the “job creators'” well-being and ability to profit above their own needs. Thank goodness they were not scared of being told “Well then I guess we won’t be creating any jobs for you in the future” and didn’t buy into that shit anyway. Thank goodness they were not frightened off by the kind of anti-union bullshit that Wal-Mart feeds its employees. Thank goodness they were brave. Because otherwise, our lives would all be pretty damned miserable right now.

If anything, we, as a country, have become far less entitled than we need to be. We have forgotten how to be brave, we have forgotten how to fight. We are all too willing to gratefully accept whatever is handed to us. We are entitled to labor rights, we are entitled to fair wages, we are entitled to overtime, we are entitled to robust unions that fight for those things. We must stop national Right To Work For Less, because it’s only going to get worse from there.

They are coming for the trade unionists, and — this time — we had better speak the fuck up.

Yes, working class white, repugs are fucking you with a barbed dildo

But they're really sticking it to the niggers and the spics and the ragheads, and making liberals cry, so it's all worth it, right?

Charlie Pierce:

All the bustle and noise has been on the Senate side for a couple of weeks, what with the brawl over nominations at all. But the real mischief is going on over in the House of Representatives. That's where all those white working people who have had major publications and networks buying them cookies for the past two months are getting sold down the river in one quick hurry. As I think I've said before, I empathize, but I do not sympathize. Not a lick.

They're going to be the ones that suffer when regulations get rolled back. It's their water and air that is going to get fouled when the regulations against mountaintop mining get eviscerated, which was debated on the House floor just Wednesday afternoon. It's their streams that will run green and purple. It's their landscapes that will get gouged and ruined.

SNIP

But the real whopper came in a press conference in the Rayburn building in which Congressman Steve King and Congressman Joe Wilson—now there's a pair to draw to—announced that they would be filing a bill to enact a national right-to-work law. Of course, this has been a corporate and conservative dream shot ever since the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935.

Needless to say, the enactment of this kind of law—which experience shows lowers wages precipitously, and which severely drains the ability of unions to lobby for themselves—would not do much for the president*'s image as a hero of the working class.

KY Repugs Start By Killing Women and Workers

They've finally got the all-repug majority they need to destroy the Commonwealth, and they're starting with women and workers.

Tom Loftus at the Courier:

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Republicans in total control of the 2017 Kentucky General Assembly wasted no time Tuesday in moving conservative priority bills, including two measures to restrict a woman's ability to get an abortion.

SNIP

A new Senate bill would ban abortions for women after the 20th week of pregnancy, according to Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester.

Stivers told reporters that a mother has a "choice early on to make a decision to conceive or not conceive. But once conception starts, there becomes another life involved. And the legislature has its ability to control how that life may proceed or how it would be terminated."

He said he expects the bill to move through committee and be passed by an overwhelming majority on the Senate floor later this week.

Stivers is a lying piece of shit.  Women have no choice about conception when Stivers and his repugs close down Planned Parenthood clinics and make it impossible for Kentucky women to obtain birth control.  And no, blastocysts are not people, babies, children or anything other than a clump of cells as "human" as a cancerous tumor. Also, totally unconstitutional.

Amber Duke, communications director for the ACLU of Kentucky, said, "It's unfortunate after weeks of lawmakers promising business would be their top priority and social issues wouldn't be on the front burner that within hours of gaveling in we see two anti-abortion bills that seem to be on the fast track."

SNIP

The bill applies fines and suspensions to doctors for violating the ban but no penalty to the pregnant woman.

Duke said the ACLU is particularly concerned about the bill banning abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy. "Legislation about bans like this pose a serious threat because they ignore women's health needs in individual circumstances," she said. "We believe that women deserve dignity and should have the right to make personal and private medical decisions without interference from politicians."

Restrictions on legal and safe abortions do not reduce the number of abortions by a single one.  All they do is force women in desperation to seek out an illegal and unsafe abortion, which frequently ends up killing an actual, adult, living and breathing human being.

Hoover was more confident that two measures Republicans have sought for years but have been blocked when the House was controlled by Democrats will be passed by the full House later this week.

Those are the so-called right-to-work bill, which would ban membership in a union or payment of union dues as a condition for employment, and a repeal of a requirement that a regional prevailing wage be paid to construction workers on public construction projects.

SNIP

Also Tuesday, the Senate referred for committee consideration a bill Stivers sponsored that he said would require workers "to affirmatively opt in" to having union dues withheld from paychecks rather than the current practice where a worker must act to opt out of having an employer withhold dues.

But Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, disagreed.

"They are pursuing a policy to penalize unions," Londrigan said. "It's a low road to economic development that will actually end up costing all Kentucky workers in the form of lower wages."

Sold Down the River

Yeah, all you Kentucky coal county folks who voted 90 percent for a corrupt game-show host, his repug buddies in Congress are now killing your union health care and retirement.  Stop acting surprised.  Hillary Clinton and all us commie muslin terrist feminazi faggots have been telling you so for months.

Charlie Pierce:

... the (repug) elves in the Congress are busy, busy, busy selling out the Rust Belt suckers to whom, if the guilt-ridden elite political media is to be believed, we all owe a cookie for the next decade. First up, the coal miners! From the MetroNews in West Virginia:

The Miners Protection Act to address health and pension benefits for coal miners and their families will not be included in a continuing resolution bill, according to a Tuesday announcement. Congress said the bill, which would continue to fund the federal government, only has four months of funding for those retired miners and their widows. Cecil Roberts, international president of the United Mine Workers of America, called the announcement "a slap in the face to all 22,000 of them who desperately need their health care next month, next year and for the rest of their lives."

But, wait, isn't West Virginia represented in the Senate by that highly influential Democrat, Joe Manchin, who's been running around telling every camera crew inside the Beltway that that his party has to get right with the workin' man? Yeah, he's got the juice, no question.

Approximately 12,500 retired union miners and the widows of retirees stand to lose their pension and health care benefits across the nation

And those stalwart Kentucky defenders of Big Coal - which will benefit enormously from the ass-fuck, as opposed to the actual coal miners, AKA the ass-fuckees -  Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, and Representatives Hal Rogers, Thomas Massie, Brett Guthrie, Andy Barr and Ed Whitfield, repugs all, voted for the ass-fucking then refused to face the voters they just ass-fucked.

Folks, you're being sold down the river. I feel for you because selling you down the river is not good for the country. It never was. It is not immigrants who are selling you down the river. It is not minorities who are selling you down the river. It is not LGBTQ folks who are selling you down the river. Please remember all of that when you wake up pissed that you're, you know, down the river. If you look around the table and can't figure out who the mark is…

You Don't Have A Good Job Because Employers Like Jim Beam Won't Hire the People They Need

So 250 well-paid workers at Jim Beam Distilleries in Kentucky are on strike.

Not for higher pay; they're some of the highest-paid manufacturing workers in the country.

Not for better conditions; Jim Beam treats them OK.

No, they're on strike for fewer hours.

This is the dirty little secret of the recovering economy; instead of hiring all the people they really need - and paying them a living wage - employers are keeping skeleton crews and working them to death.

From the Courier:

On Saturday, employees of the Jim Beam facilities in Clermont and Boston, Kentucky, entered a strike following failed contract negotiations that they say didn't place enough emphasis on hiring more full-time employees to reduce current workers' hours.


SNIP

But Mudd said that while the employees realize they are paid well, they also feel that the company has neglected to hire the number of full-time workers needed to keep up with production demands.

"The reason they didn't do it was because the workload fluctuated so much," Mudd said, acknowledging that bourbon production is traditionally seasonal. "They always said they didn't want to hire (full-time employees) because when the workload drops off, then they would have to lay them off. But for the past two to three years, the workload has been consistently on the high side."

Remember: corporations have loyalty to no one and nothing but profits. They will sell out their employees, sell out their communities, sell out their country. Always.

AynRandy to Coal Miners: Fuck You and Your Union, Too

It's such a perfect lying cop-out for the Tribble-Toupeed One:  No one can have insurance and pension relief from their criminal former employers until everyone gets the exact same thing.

Thus preventing anyone from getting anything.  Except of course for corrupt Big Coal, which skates as always. So conservative and libertarian at the same time!

Meanwhile Democratic Senate candidate Jim Gray is standing up for Kentucky coal miners.

Adam Beam of the AP:

The bill, currently before the U.S. Senate, would use some of the $490 million each year that flows through the federal Abandoned Mine Land program to rescue the health benefits for union coal miners whose companies have gone out of business. It would also shore up a United Mine Workers of America pension fund that is on the brink of collapse following the 2008 recession.

The bill would preserve the health benefits of about 3,500 Kentucky coal miners, most who worked for Patriot Coal, which filed for bankruptcy in 2012. It would also protect the retirement benefits of about 9,800 retired Kentucky coal miners who were members of the United Mine Workers of America labor union.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, who like many fellow Republicans has criticized Obama's energy policies as a "war on coal", does not support the bill in its current form. He says he supports the concept of the bill, but only if it provides relief for all coal miners, not just those who joined a labor union.

"If they will give the coal companies relief, and the nonunion workers relief as well as the union workers, I could be persuaded to be for it," Paul told The Associated Press in an interview. "For something to get passed, it has to please more people."

Paul is seeking re-election in November after ending his presidential campaign earlier this year. He faces Democrat Jim Gray, the mayor of Lexington, Kentucky's second-largest city.

Gray said he if he were a senator he would vote for the bill because "you don't let the perfect get in the way of the good."

"I think it represents a positive, bipartisan step. I think it shows that at least some members of the Senate can cross party lines and work together. And that's what I promised I'd do," Gray said. "It's (Paul's) usual endless rhetoric that prevents anything good from being done."

The bill passed the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday by a vote of 18-8, with six republicans joining all 12 Democrats to vote "yes."

If you're getting paid, thank a Union.

Because if it weren't for Unions, and the hundreds of union members who have given their lives to ensure we have decent wages, an eight-hour day, a forty-hour week, weekends, safety regulations and workers' compensation, we'd all be getting pennies a day to suffer in some Trumpian sweatshop.

Think Progress:

When Labor Day was originally conceived as a federal holiday, it was as a concession to the labor movement after bloody union unrest that left 30 striking workers dead. It was meant as a day to celebrate the efforts and sacrifices of unionized workers.

A shrinking share of Americans are union members today. But the benefits brought about by the union movement are still just as strong, particularly when it comes to workers’ pay.

Being in a union is particularly helpful for marginalized groups that tend to be paid less than white men. A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that black union workers earn wages that are, on average, 16.4 percent higher than black workers who aren’t in a union. The same is true for women: a report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that women in a union earn 30.9 percent more than women who aren’t unionized.

Unionization also yields salary benefits for white men, who get a 20.1 percent boost for being in a union. But the wage-boosting power of unions has been hampered as the share of workers who belong to one has declined. In 1983, the earliest year the Bureau of Labor Statistics has data for, 20.1 percent of the workforce belonged to a union. Today that share has been cut nearly in half, down to 11.1 percent.

That’s hurt everyone’s wages, not just unionized workers. The wage-boosting power of unions usually spills out into other workplaces because they set standards that everyone ends up adopting. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute found that for men working in the private sector who aren’t in a union, their weekly wages would be about 5 percent higher if union membership had stayed at the same rate as it was in 1979. That would mean an extra $2,704 per year on average.

Non-union women would also benefit, but the impact would be smaller — a 2 to 3 percent increase in wages — because women have historically been a much smaller share of union workers.

The drop in union membership, and the subsequent erosion of the wage benefits for all workers, has played a role in widening wage inequality, holding down pay at the bottom of the scale but less so at the top. In fact, other researchers have found a strong correlation between the fall of union power and the rise of income inequality.

Eat and Drink Union

From Think Progress:

It's Our Day, Workers: The Day to Go Union!

Celebrate the huge Union victory at Verizon back in June.  Why would you not want one of these for yourself? Unions are the only protection workers have. Oganize!

Erik Loomis at LGM:

The Verizon strike is over and it is a landslide victory for the workers and their unions, the Communication Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

The four-year contracts would give workers a nearly 11 percent increase in pay over all, up from the 6.5 percent increase that Verizon had proposed before the strike, as well as modest ratification bonuses and profit-sharing.

SNIP 

The unions managed to beat back proposed pension cuts, including a cap on the accrual of pension benefits after 30 years of service. 

The company also agreed to withdraw a proposal that would have allowed it to relocate workers for up to two months anywhere in its geographic coverage area, although it had already expressed an openness to withdrawing the proposal before the strike.

Proposals to change seniority rules and to make the company’s sickness and disability policy more strict were also withdrawn, and the company agreed to change a performance review program in New York City that many workers considered abusive.

Significantly, the new contracts also cover some 65 unionized workers at Verizon Wireless stores, signaling the first time that retail wireless workers at the company have been included in a union contract, a potentially important precedent.

This is an incredible contract. The workers win nearly twice as much money as they originally asked for. They force Verizon to cave on all the benefits and the relocation drive that infuriated workers. They make Verizon back down on outsourcing jobs overseas. They force the company to create 1000 new union jobs and allow Verizon stores to become part of the bargaining unit. In return, the workers give up basically nothing. They allow individual workers to take a buy out if they want it. OK. And they open up slightly on who precisely takes a given call, but maintaining that the worker taking it is a union worker. Who cares. They also had to do some givebacks on health care, but these are the compromises that must be made sometimes. Overall, this is an outstanding contract and a gigantic win for workers.

 

SNIP

For Hamilton Nolan, the lesson is that strikes work and that we should all go on strike when we feel the need to do so.

Strikes work. Strikes have always worked. Strikes still work. Pro-business forces like to deride unions as socialist parasites, but strikes are, in a sense, one of the purest free market actions that workers can take: the refusal to sell labor at a price that is deemed too low. This has the effect of raising the price of labor.

Though “Economics 101″ idiots like to pretend that the free market will always magically produce the perfect wage for every job, the reality is that working people—people with less money—are always at a disadvantage when it comes to asserting the leverage necessary to raise their own wages, because they can’t afford to stop working and lose a paycheck. This is the biggest hurdle that strikes have to clear. It’s hard for working people to leave work, demanding better wages and working conditions. It’s a gamble. But it tends to pay off.

As much as workers need wages, businesses need labor even more. The free market has not raised your wages in decades. The government has not raised your wages in decades. You need to raise your own wages. Organize. Then strike. It’s always good to be reminded that it works.

I’m a bit less sanguine about this. After all, there certainly have been disastrous strikes. But he’s mostly right. If workers stand up and act upon their demands, their chances of living a dignified life are much higher.

For me, the real lesson is that if you don’t support joining a union, you are a fool because you are only hurting yourself. Almost all of us should have unions. Even if you are a faculty member or public employee in the South and live in a right-to-work state, you should still have a union because it will serve as an organized voice and point of power, even if you can’t win a contract. I know, because I helped one get off the ground. Entry-level lawyers at big law firms should have unions. Workers at every private factory or establishment should have unions. Starbucks and McDonald’s workers should have unions. We should all have unions. Organizing like the Verizon workers is not a throwback to the past. It should be an entryway into the future.

Rejecting Unions Is Racist and Misogynistic

Low-paying non-union service jobs are held by women and minorities.  High-paying unionized manufacturing jobs are held by white men.

 

But there's no law of physics that says service jobs have to be low-paying. All they need is a union.

That's why it's not just a Fight for Fifteen.  It's a Fight for Fifteen and a Union.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

This is an excellent point by Ben Casselman.

Why do factory workers make more in Michigan? In a word: unions. The Midwest was, at least until recently, a bastion of union strength. Southern states, by contrast, are mostly “right-to-work” states where unions never gained a strong foothold. Private-sector unions have been shrinking across the country for decades, but they are stronger in the Midwest than in most other parts of the country. In Michigan, 23 percent of manufacturing production workers were union members in 2015; in South Carolina, less than 2 percent were.

Unions also help explain why the middle class is healthier in the Midwest than in the Southeast, where manufacturing jobs have been growing rapidly in recent decades. A new analysis from the Pew Research Center this week explored the state of the middle class in different parts of the country by looking at the share of households making between two-thirds and double the national median income, after controlling for the local cost of living. In many Midwestern cities, 60 percent or more of households are considered “middle-income” by this definition; in some Southern cities, even those with large manufacturing bases, middle-income households are now in the minority.

Even in the Midwest, however, unions are weakening and the middle class is shrinking. In the Indianapolis metro area, where the Carrier plant Trump talks about is located, the share of households in the middle tier of earners has shrunk to 54.8 percent in 2014 from 58.9 percent in 2000. And unlike in some parts of the country, the decline in the middle class there has been primarily driven by people falling into the lower tier of earners, not moving up. The Carrier plant, where workers make more than $20 an hour, is unionized.

But this much is clear: For all of the glow that surrounds manufacturing jobs in political rhetoric, there is nothing inherently special about them. Some pay well; others don’t. They are not immune from the forces that have led to slow wage growth in other sectors of the economy. When politicians pledge to protect manufacturing jobs, they really mean a certain kind of job: well-paid, long-lasting, with opportunities for advancement. Those aren’t qualities associated with working on a factory floor; they’re qualities associated with being a member of a union.

When Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or anyone call to bring back manufacturing jobs per se, what they are saying is primarily that they want good paying jobs for working class Americans again. And where those good paying jobs exist, like at the Carrier plant, they need to remain there. But the reason that we think that manufacturing jobs pay well is because a century of union struggles. As we can see when those manufacturing jobs go overseas, just because you work in manufacturing doesn’t mean you have a good job. What you have is usually a hot, dangerous, exploitative job where you have no rights and that takes very little brain power. The workers of Bangladesh, Honduras, and China could tell you that just because you have a manufacturing job does not mean you have a good life. So could the workers in Lordstown in 1972. 

 

What made that palatable to American workers after 1935 was that they could unionize those factories and thus give their lives dignity. That legacy is still with us as manufacturing still usually pays better than fast food. But there’s nothing inherently more dignified in working in a timber mill than there is flipping burgers. The difference is that we don’t see those jobs as jobs that should be paid well and should be unionized. Popularly, they are seen as entry level jobs. But the woman in the chain coffee shop where I am writing this post is in her 40s and is probably making not much more than minimum wage, as are so many service industry workers. Those jobs should be union jobs too. They should make as much as steel workers made in 1965 or whatever. Manufacturing is never coming back to the United States in 1965 numbers. That’s for a number of reasons. Globalization is not going to put back into a box. And what jobs do come back are going to be heavily automated. This we know.

That doesn’t mean that we should ignore manufacturing. Whether in the U.S. or Honduras or Bangladesh, the goal needs to be that workers of the world make enough money to live a good life, have a say over their conditions of work, do not get exposed to pollution, and work in safe workplaces, among other things. That happens only with unions. And in the current globalized world with modern trade agreements, it happens with workers and citizens having access to the new legal systems developed to protect corporate rights and it happens with companies be held legally accountable for their supply chains.

 

One other critical point here, which is that manufacturing nostalgia is also nostalgia for the age of the white male single breadwinner. And while I support jobs that pay enough to support a family, there’s definitely social and racial problems here and there’s no question that these issues animate the nostalgia people feel for these jobs.

But whatever the job, wherever it is, people live dignified lives if they have unions. If they don’t have unions, their lives are worse. That’s why companies are engaging in extreme capital mobility, creating extralegal courts to protect their rights, using opaque supply chains, putting long-term temp workers on the same workplace floors as unionized workers, etc. The goal is to repeal workers’ gains of the last century.

Our goal therefore needs to be to move the gains of the last century onto the jobs of the new century while doing what we can to ensure that wherever companies move their production that those gains will also be achievable by the workers of the world. Until we do that, our dignity will be under constant threat. But fundamentally, it doesn’t really matter whether the jobs is in a steel mill, a hamburger joint, or teaching. All workers must have good wages and unions.