the defeatists!

Cynical Cyclicals

The Times has an interesting article this morning on the conflict between the Japanese concept of lifetime employment and the whole Milton Friedman "Shareholder value is not the most important thing, it's the only thing!" approach.  The UAW had negotiated a similar package for its members in the 50s and while it cost money, it did keep the social fabric in places like Detroit and Flint and Gary and other places devastated by the goat rodeo that was the auto industry in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. As that program was downsized and ultimately eliminated by through contract negotiations, bad situations got worse. Similar approaches were used by other firms, including professional firms, where "excess" engineers, planners, business managers and so on would be assigned to social programs or to nonprofits to help the recipient organizations cope with their challenges. I assume the corporation was able to write off that time on taxes as a charitable contribution, although I do not know. It certainly showed community involvement and was effective PR.

Basically, SONY offered its affected employees at one plant buy-outs and early retirements. They offered a 54 month buyout for early retirees, for example. However, a number of them refused the buy-out and so are sent to "Career Design Rooms" which the employees call "The Boredom Room." Basically, the company sends the employee there in the equivalent of sending a useless NCO off to issue basketballs in the gym or count the holes in the chainlink fence around the installation. In other words, until shame and boredom forces the employee to quit, the company expands and has a need for the now disgruntled and stale employee or the employee dies. Win/Win for every one.

Well, of course, that's the whole myth of the employment relationship. I work for company X; I can quit at anytime while they can fire me at any time. Called "At-will employment," this is a common law concept that "an employment contract of indefinite duration can be terminated by either the employer or the employee at any time for any reason; also known as terminable at will." There's an underlying assumption here that there's a general power balance between employer and employee. Well, that's obviously insane in the modern world and as a result in most countries there is a requirement for "good cause" or "just cause." The US is the only G20 nation that still has this on a national level which shows some of the benefits of a parliamentary system, I guess. In the US, only Montana is a "just cause for termination" state.  Now, if a firm is unionized or provides some other contractural assurances which can pop up in the oddest places, there are some protections; however, it appears that Japan business community which seems to include the elected government. wants to change it's system of guaranteed lifelong employment to an At-Will system. 

The standoff between workers and management at the Sendai factory underscores an intensifying battle over hiring and firing practices in Japan, where lifetime employment has long been the norm and where large-scale layoffs remain a social taboo, at least at Japan’s largest corporations. Sony wants to change that, and so does Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. As Japan’s economic recovery slows, reducing the restraints on companies has become even more important to Mr. Abe’s economic plans. He wants to loosen rigid rules on job terminations for full-time staff. Economists say bringing flexibility to the labor market in Japan would help struggling companies streamline bloated work forces to better compete in the global economy. Fewer restrictions on layoffs could make it easier for Sony to leave loss-ridden traditional businesses and concentrate resources on more innovative, promising ones.“I have a single wish for Japan’s electronics sector, and that’s labor reform,” said Atul Goyal, a technology analyst at Jefferies & Company.

On the other hand, the Japanese work force isn't quite as docile and ready to do a Banzai! charge over a cliff as the government or SONY and other companies might hope. This is probably an even stronger tendency after Fukashima  I suspect. Nothing like being systematically lied to and rapidly learning about it to make people not so believing the next time around.

 Critics of labor changes say something more important is at stake. They warn that making it easier to cut jobs would destroy Japan’s social fabric for the sake of corporate profits, causing mass unemployment and worsening income disparities. For a country that has long prided itself on stability and relatively equitable incomes, such a change would be unacceptable. “That’s not the kind of country Japan should aim to be,” said Takaaki Matsuda, who leads the Sendai chapter of Sony’s union. 

Oddly, the Times seems to take the position that there is something horrible about the Boredom Room. I mentioned this to the guy who made me aware of the article, and his response was "I'd give a lot for a moment or two of boredom. Frankly, while I understand that the boredom factor is a negative, the traditional large firm expectation in Japan  is still a helluva lot more humane than just laying people off in our somewhat ludicrous unemployment system and down economy. What does it say about the US, that the last best hope of mankind is ready to toss away 20% if its workforce like dity Kleenex?  What's I like to see is a restructuring of our system where the unemployed are offered suitable opportunities for re-training and community service while maintaining a reasonable income. Probably require an interesting adjustment to taxes but in much the way the California Disability Program works, it could be tied to the employee so that if longer term unemployment becomes the norm, the employee has alternatives besides hopelessness.

 

Philosophically, I think contemporary American capitalism puts most of us into boredom rooms most of the time. If not, there wouldn't be so many games of solitaire being played on company time! People don't play computer solitaire because they're dodging meaningful work. They're looking for a less soul-crushing and boring equivalent.

Damned right Japan doesn't want to be a company that allows employers to discard employees like waste and condemn it's workforce to cyclical  anxiety, boredom and despair. Which is what the US is, and we're paying some prices for that. Pity the unemployed in America trying to find work -- they're in effect in the waiting room for US economies boredom room.  

 

Spit on statistics -- it's what you measure and how, not the results

 

WILL WRESTLE YOUR MOTHER-IN-LAW FOR A BUCK!--Homeless Guy's Sign, Trust Stop Near Barstow

So, the unemployment rate has dropped below 9% to 8.6%. Why is the AXE less than excited by this? The unemployment rate is based on the number of people who are considered to be in the workforce, so if you eliminate people from the workforce who are unemployed, the percentage employed is skewed to teh right. In other words,  So, most of the drop is due not to the imaginary job creators of Republcian lore, legend and myth, but due to people giving up after months of trying, running out of unemployment benefits and falling off the grid and under the bus. In other words, a historically low number of workers are doing less badly, while there's an increase in people who are literally just waiting to die. 

American governments at all levels continued to bleed workers, for one. And the decline in the unemployment rate had a down side: It fell partly because more workers got jobs, but also because about 315,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. That left the share of Americans actively participating in the work force at a historically depressed 64 percent, down from 64.2 percent in October.Even excluding these hundreds of thousands of dropouts, the country still had a backlog of more than 13 million unemployed workers, whose spells of unemployment averaged an all-time high of 40.9 weeks. “They say businesses are refusing to look at résumés from the unemployed,” said Esther Perry, 59, of Bedford, Mass., who participated in a recent report on unemployed workers put together by USAction, a liberal coalition. “What do you think my chances are? Once unemployment runs out, I don’t know what I will do.”

Do the Occupied folks stay in the Workforce? Probably not -- while they're doing their thing, exercising their constitutional rights and getting pepper sprayed and beaten and shot with rubber bullets and so on, they're not looking for work or, conversely, they are working, just not getting paid. See how much fun this is? Statistics measure what you measure -- basing policy decisions on them or making political decisions on them -- THE PRESIDENT"S CHANCES FOR RE-ECLECTION IMPROVE AS UNEMPLOYMENT DIPS! -- without asking some structural, almost existential questions about what these things mean is really stupid, and I'm sure we'll do it soon, 24/7 on cable news, blogs like this one and talk radio. 

So, here's the test -- who do you know who's unemployed and you don't understand why? When they get a job, assume that the unemployment rate may be going down. Whom do you know who hates their job -- trick question, the stats that I have seen are pretty straight and seem confirmed by reality, just about everybody hates their job. However, pick someone who's dramatically underpaid, overworked and unhappy...see when they get a raise. Or feel comfortable quitting their job to look for a new one. Then what's happening is an actual increase in employment, as opposed to an artifical decline in a rate.  

 

Bad news travels like wildfire and good news travels slow...

Sweating in the ghetto with the wetbacks and the poor
The rats have joined the babies who are sleeping on the floor
Now wouldn't it be a riot if they really blew their tops?
But they got too much already and besides we got the cops
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.-- Phil Ochs

The problem becomes, of course, being able to tell the difference between the two, good news and bad news. Or, becoming aware that they exist in the face of cultural degradation and silliness. This is a day of universally WTF important stories that we are missing because of the Charlie Sheen phenomonon. We've got years of reruns of 2.5 Idiots and there's always Hot Shots and Navy Seals. Stop worrying about Charlie, oh great media machine and pay attention to the things that are going to get the rest of us killed. Oh Tempora, Oh Mores! as that great Italian defense attorney Cicero said in about 64 BCE. Of course, he was talking about viciousness and corruption; we need to add stupidity, greed and the inability to connect the dots. Caesar, Pompey, Cicero, Cato, Crassus, Brutus -- they could all connect the dots. Our politicians and our leaders - not so much.

First of all, there's the latest debacle in Afghanistan. Now, the Afghans are big on blood feuds, revenge killing, pederasty and goats. So, the accidental killing of a bunch of kids herding goats and getting firewood is not just a tragedy, it's symptomatic of everything that's wrong with this war...

Look, it's a low tech place, and kids play while they're doing choirs. See the helicopter and run around -- and, some door gunners think, "Oh shit, Taliban..."  and ratatattat. We've ruined the lives of Afghan families, which will piss off extended families and result in payment of blood money and probably American blood. Shoot my neighbor's kid from the sky while he's doing the equivalent of raking leaves, and I might be predisposed to not want to help you do anything but get the fuck out of my country...Inshallah! If we're worried about Psyops, well, this kind of shit that happens entirely too often is why we can expect no real results from Psyops. It a low tech place, in tough terrain, with a warlike populace who are pretty good at not going along with strangers. It's noble of Petraeus to go and apologize but to the Afghans invovled, he's just another outsider. It's his fault...they may understand that. They won't get accidents happen; collateral damage is inevitable.

I'm all for orderly withdrawals, since the alternative is a fighting retreat, but it needs to happen now...not in two or three or ten years.

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported on its Web site that the suspect was carrying a large amount of ammunition when arrested. The police said they could not confirm that report.A man whose office is near the site of the shooting, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect his business, said witnesses told him that before opening fire the gunman shouted “God is great” in Arabic. --NY Times

Then, there's the murder of two Airmen on their way to Afghanistan as they're getting on a bus at Frankfurt's international airport. The Politzei haven't identified the guy yet,but it appears that the guy works there. The Times points out that there have been no major terrorist attacks in Germany but states that they've been on alert for a while expecting some. The media claims that the guy is a Kosovar who was born in Germany...citizenship in Germany not being easily available to non-Germans. There are about a million Turks, Armenians, and every other type of non-German living in and born in Germany legally who have no citizenship rights. Supposedly the guy got into an argument with the GIs...ok, I can see that. What I don't see is why or how the guy had a gun...Germany has really stringent gun control laws. This non-citizen would not have come close to getting a pistol permit. Hell, he'd have had trouble getting a permit for a sword...I wandered all over that country, and never felt nervous. I stayed away from the docks and red light zones, and saw no evidence of street crime. I recall being on "Courtesy Patrol" -- an oddball Army thing where some NCOs or Officers would put on their Class A or B uniforms and go someplace that soldiers might go and get drunk and in trouble, so they could exert a calming influence at best and at worst haul the bastards back to the barracks. Normal vehicle was a jeep with radio, driver and two NCOs. When I did it, I told the senior guy  to man the phone/radio, and we took a five ton truck so if there were drunks, we'd have room to carry them. Anyway, this particular adventure was at a major Beer Festival in Wurzburg, my favorite city in, oh, the universe. We were standing around over by the main Politzei area, and some belligerent German drunks were dragged into the shed that the cops were using. A huge cop came out, smiled at us, and shut the door, standing against it and bracing his back against the door. Bodies proceeded to slam against walls for a few minutes -- I am not exaggerating to say the walls seemed to bulge. Next, the cop opens the doors and helps drag the drunks, now docile, out and away...I also was involved as a witness and as a translator a couple of times when the Kriminal Polizei were involved. Guns were drawn, and people were very cooperative. Whole Miranda thing not an issue over there. So, while I'm not naive enough to think that there were no guns in the hands of thugs when I was there, I am pretty sure that this indicates that they've lost the bubble on arms trafficking there. Expect more. Why exactly are we flying people into Frankfurt to move them on to Ramstein AFB before flying them to Afghanistan anyway? The piece mentions that we've downsized a lot in Europe, that there are now only 50000 total Army, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guardsmen there. I guess my thought is "Why are there any beyond essential liaison with our allies?" And, if our allies really want us there, why aren't they paying for it? I know that there are overcrowding issues at some US installations, but unmothballing a few and putting soldiers there would make more sense than not. And, create jobs here, by the way. Turning the Yakima Firing Range into an Afghanistan style joint readiness training center would work great...it looks like Afghanistan, and has basically the same sort of weather...hellish.

Then, there's Dr Doom and his merry Gang of Tricksters. Nouriel Roubini sent me this today... Download Gmail - Fwd RGE's Wednesday Note - Fallout From the MENA Days of Rage - March 2, 2011 - [email protected] The good doctor and his think tank are pretty expensive to subscribe to, but I do get some of his newsletters, and his team sent one today that was just marvelous to behold. Here's a bit...MENA is Roubiniese for Middle East-North Africa, by the way.

As RGE Chairman Nouriel Roubini examined in a recent piece, the economic costs of MENA unrest extend far beyond the region, with rising commodity prices the most significant linking factor. A further increase in oil prices would pose a significant downside risk to global growth. We expect demand destruction for fuel products to occur at lower oil prices than in 2008, as U.S. and EU consumers are more stretched. Fuel importers will suffer from higher prices, and global central bankers will face a more difficult job in setting policy. Countries like Turkey and South Korea with extensive goods and services exports to MENA countries could face two challenges from the region’s disruption: a stall in their projects with the countries and a deterioration of external balances from an increase in oil prices.

Beyond food and fuel security risks, the waves of unrest are washing up on the European continent in the form of increased numbers of migrants to southern EU nations. Already, Italy has reported an increase in Tunisians in Lampedusa, and some of the 100,000 Libyans flooding into Tunisia and Egypt may well try to make their way north. An increase in illegal migrants and refugees could stress the broader EU, which is still suffering from high unemployment rates and fiscal austerity...

Here's my problem. Austerity has been proven to not work, to drive down GDP and to screw things up in general. Yet, we have an entire Republican party devoted to saying "we're broke...: Well, not really. What we have is a revenue problem -- we need higher taxes at the state, county, municipal and federal levels. And, the immediate return to the Clinton Tax Rates for the richest makes sense, but we actually need a lot more. As the Wisconsin debacle has shown, we've got issues with reality; nobody likes to pay taxes and have government waste; however, we kinda like things like schools, libraries, roads, sewers and bridges. It takes money to build those things...I suppose we could anticpate our inevitable downfall and institute an annual corvee but that would be incredibly stupid. Expect the Tea Party to immediately endorse it...

Now, Robert Rubin has pointed out repeatedly, that the concentration of wealth at the top end does a disservice to the top end. The Koch Brothers probably think that their ideology makes sense and we're just dealing with hiccups, but not distributing money from the people who have money to do the things that need to be done in society while trying to take it from those who do not have so much money is pretty damn stupid. Now, I'm not rich enough to squirrel away a lot of my money in municipal bonds or state bonds. These are generally tax free, if you can afford to buy them. Earnings from Munis or State bonds are not tax free if part of a mutual fund. Hedge fund managers and portfolio managers love these things for salting away excess wealth -- no risk and the lack of tax makes them more attractive.So trust funds, pension funds, insurance agencies, low risk mutual funds and so on love them. They're considered almost as safe as T-Bills and you get better returns.

So when Doctor Roubini and his band of gypsies tell the Wall Street Journal that Municipals will probably drop about $100 Billion in defaults this year, that's hardly a good thing. It appears, from the Journal's piece that they regard this as being good news that at some level we've got disaster fatigue. The loss of a $100 billion worth of wealth will shaft investors, but will do a number on any municipality or state that happens to have to default. Or, appears threatened. Interest rates will shoot through the roof; when Texas state bonds are accorded junk bond status along with California and a few other places, what the hell, over? Pensions will go under, investors will go crazy, and some one will come up with the great idea of bailing out Hedge Funds...we can't let a trillion dollar industry go south, can we? Think of the children!

And, of course, the hits keep on coming. The Dems cave on this two week funding thing, everybody with any credibility tells the House Republicans and the Tea Party and the General Public that their economic plans are based on bad math, lousy economics and general ideological paralysis of the insane. And, we continue to go merrily down the road...

To Reverend Phelps and his church. Frankly, I tend to almost always side with the Bill of Rights. Free speech should be protected at almost all costs. But, the Founders would be dumbfounded by no constraints. They tolerated a lot, because they had faith that society would punish those who went too far. Hamilton died because he said things that he'd probably said before, possibly to Burr, but this time to someone who published them. The same reasoning that brought us Citizens United and the best Congress the rich can buy has now found in favor of the Westboro "Fag-Hating, Jesus-loving" Baptist Church.

“Westboro’s funeral picketing is certainly hurtful and its contribution to public discourse may be negligible,” Chief Justice Roberts concluded. “But Westboro addressed matters of public import on public property, in a peaceful manner, in full compliance with the guidance of local officials.”

I spent my life dedicated to the cause of free speech among others. This one bothers me...a lot. The only reason that these damn things have not degenerated into blood, mud, fire and riot is that we're far too disciplined in the military and veterans communities, and far too tolerant on the left. Idealism doesn't get in the way of Clarence Thomas or Scalia. I interpret this to mean that cross-burning, which is hate speech by definition, is probably protected speech. Yea! More fun ahead...

Meanwhile, Charlie Sheen has been spotted walking down the Vegas Strip with a gun, a speedo and a feather sticking out of his ass. Oh, half the men in the US have HPV. Which, since the virus is largely assoicated with women, means that a higher percentage of women have it. Which means that maybe we should be vaccinating everybody for it, since the virus itself is not so bad, but the cancers are. Or, maybe we should just skip it. Quick -- shoot Tiger Blood Charlie with a tranquilizer gun using the Siberian White Tiger dose and test him for it!

 

 

 

He's baaaccckkk...and needed.

The generic concept of “The Union” might be big and on the big scale it might over-reach and when you look at it only in the largest context it might sometimes be as irresponsible as some of the smaller of the big corporations, when you look at what it really is – the collected drops-in-the-bucket of the individually powerless $18,568 teacher’s aide in Fond du Lac or the $23,559 traffic warden in Milwaukee or the $48,152 cop in Appleton, or the $22,233 radio sportscaster in New York in 1980 – “The Union” is the only protection you have when the drunken boss comes in to fire you because he doesn’t like you, or because he got elected on a promise to his puppet-masters that he’d fire you and everybody else like you so as to soften this country up to pit the urban middle class against the rural middle class so nobody’s paying attention as the corporations reduce everybody they can to subsistence levels while they take the collected drops-in-the-bucket of the mere thousands of bucks stolen from the fired or the de-unionized or the retirement-delayed, and turn them into more millions to stuff into their own pockets.

Hey, Keith Olbermann can be a smug pain in the ass; on the other hand, he's knowledgable, consistent to his principles and doesn't hesitate to piss off the powers that be. It appears that he has a problem I've shared, great bosses who have lousy bosses. His new blog is up and it's got some interesting stuff in it. If I had been his boss, would I have shoved him out the door the day we made the decision? Probably not --I understand why MSNBC might have been nervous about a prolonged farewell, Lawrence O'Donnell has done a decent job and Rachel Maddow has stayed on target. I have no fondness for Ed Schultz, since he brings his right wing radio host who became a liberal schtick to the air at a time I am looking for something to watch. On the other hand, 2-3 hours of TV news over dinner is more than enough for this Irishman.

Olbermann's initial piece is about the Wisconsin brouhaha, and the place of unions. Like a lot of us, he had a union card or two as he trundled through his career. And, since being in the union saved his job once when a drunken exec decided to fire him because he didn't like him and thought that Keith's argument with his direct boss was grounds for firing and some character defamation, he's invested.

I'm sure Keith Olbermann is still a pain in the ass to his bosses. I suspect that I have been one to my bosses; I'm fairly sure most of the contributors here have been difficult to control at times... However, while I pride myself on not bowing to any Moloch-like Wannabe Toughguy or Gal, there are times when I wish there were rules enforced by an agreement to protect people like me; at the end, our only recourse is to sue, and that's not good for your wa or your karma. Although, it can be lucrative and a lot of folks are forced to do so.

Here's another thought -- unions may have problems, but in a company versus the union argument, justice will probably side with the employees. There are times when union work rules result in some injustice, but for the most part, the scales of justice are very heavily weighted toward the employee and the employee's representative.

Hey are we Guatemala, or Albania? Maybe Belarus...

(Remember the silly commercial for Direct TV about "Opulence, I haves it?" Well, when I think about what's happening politically and economically anymore, I kind of have thoughts of that...it's hard to picture some one like Rep. Jean Smith or John Boehner as one of those leggy broads pandering to the every need of the Russian Oligarch weasel, but work with me here...I mean, have you seen the Koch Brothers? Picture them in a suede suit with a gold turtelneck and a midget giraffe to kiss, kiss with?)

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross—Sinclair Lewis

This morning, the brilliant cellist and pastrami artist SB Glover made a comment on the Taibbi piece. He said that he could learn to stomach the Republicans if only they’d be up front about their goals – maybe put on T-Shirts or have a motto that really described what they are trying to do. “Together we CAN make the USA the next Guatemala!” was his suggestion. Of course, my correspondent said that the Democrats already have one, “I don’t care what you’re talking about, please stop yelling at me!” Well, since I’m quoting Lewis or quotes attributed to Lewis, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this one: The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, "The trouble with this country is..."

Wisconsin is probably the beginning of our potential devolution to the next Guatemala, although I think that’s probably unfair to Guatemala. Since Citizens United and the buying of the last election by the Chamber of Commerce and the big corporate interests, I’m starting to think that the level of corruption and general disaster is starting to look more and more like Russia or Ukraine. The nonsensical drills going on in the House of Representatives this week, with John “Snooki” Boehner alternately saying things like “So Be It” to job loss and “Read My Lips!” while his members pass amendments to the continuing resolution and budget that indicate that Helen Bonham Carter must have prepped for her role as the Red Queen in “Alice” by visiting Tea Party events in places like Council Bluffs and Anniston is another example of the slide into becoming the next, I don’t know, Albania?

So, we have a situation in Wisconsin that probably shouldn’t be surprising. The state is going to run a surplus, so the incoming governor, a wealthy man whose campaign appears to have been bankrolled by the Koch brothers, convinces his Tea Party dominated legislature to pass a lot of tax breaks for business. He then proposes a state budget that includes some non-budgetary aspects that basically will strip the state employees of their right to collectively bargain except for wages – wages which are already limited by law to the increases in the Consumer Price Index. The governor also wants this to happen by Monday, February 14; he announces his plan the previous Wednesday or so. Hilarity ensues – we got state workers doing sickouts and showing up in Madison, we got the Democrats in the State Senate shuffling off to Illinois or Minnesota so that the Senate doesn’t have a quorum thus invoking memories of Texas and Tom Delay’s gerrymandering, we got the Tea Party showing up en masse tomorrow to protest the protesters, we got kids out of school.  However, the comedic aspects beside the point, what we have is really an attack on workers by bosses.

Take this Job and Shove It - watch more funny videos

I’ve done labor relations consulting in government and all the frustrations that the Republicans allege have some validity. The problem is that the reasons for the frustrations arise from abusive acts in the past. As an employee, if there are no limitations placed on the employer, I’m naked to abuse in many forms. There is no law requiring the employer to provide affordable health insurance; there is no divine precept about vacations; there is no requirement for sick leave enshrined anywhere. Overtime, limits to the work weeks, limits to child labor, freedom from abuse and discrimination are legal protections that were largely enacted because of pressure from unions.

As a professional, I have always been an at will employee. This is an English Common Law Concept: My work is at will – they can fire me at any time and I can chose to quit anytime. For any or no reason. They don’t have to pay me severance, and I don’t have to give them notice. That’s about as fair and balanced as Glen Beck and Fox booking a guy who compares the President to the Anti-Christ. Seriously.

For employees who belong to unions, there is usually some redress here. I have had to explain to a lot of my professional and manager friends who wanted to sue someone who fired them for bad but not illegal reasons that we are protected by government for a lot of things. We are not protected from mismanagement. Unions provide workers with some protection against that. They level the playing field significantly. Bosses hate that. Much as I personally liked one of my past bosses, it used to drive me crazy when we were discussing some aspect of our relations with the union that he’d inevitably go into a rant about “Damn socialist-communist union Democratic California Liberals…” I’m a product of the 60s, and I recall that Unions were pro-Vietnam War and in fact busted a lot of “liberal heads.”

That, of course, is why we are where we are today. The big unions became more and more irrelevant; they were co-opted and when the Teamsters backed Nixon they eviscerated labor’s ability to influence elections as much as they did before. Fewer and fewer employees are members of unions because there are fewer and fewer exempt employees. Employers can browbeat employees if they have reason to believe that someone is interested in starting a union;  there can be equal browbeating the other way, but working class solidarity is largely a thing of the past. Union jobs are in Thailand now, and Matamoros and Costa Rica…and China, as companies like Boeing outsource work to “partners” over there. We struggle to be become “exempt” employees, which means we struggle to become salary-slaves without any protections for work weeks.

Bosses can be abusive. Supervisors can be arbitrary. Employees can find themselves having their jobs threatened for no good reason. In Wisconsin, the public employee unions are primarily opposing the changes in collective bargaining and the abrogation of work rules. The workers in unions – public and private –have the right to negotiate work rules; hours of work, standards of conduct, uniforms, special pays and so on. The guy that MSNBC has found from the Republican side of the Senate is frothing at the mouth because the unions have the right to negotiate these. There is an issue there – the states and local governments need to have better negotiators. As do companies that have unions…

Here’s why. The union member pays dues, and most of that money goes to support the collective bargaining function. As a result, the unions spend a lot of money training their negotiators, their stewards and their reps; business, not so much. The union sees the cost of spending that money on training and on preparation as an investment; in general, management sees it as an expense. Absurd, no doubt, but real. For example, the last collective bargaining I was involved in was fascinating – our lead negotiator on management’s side was an employment law attorney and he’s a very competent and knowledgeable guy. He was handicapped because he was acting as our spokesman but he and I had to constantly fight with the local and in some cases corporate leadership as to what we could do. He also had a full plate of his normal corporate lawyer stuff to do; and, he admitted that he hadn’t negotiated a contract in years.

The guy across the room – totally different story. He was the head of the Regional  Local of the International and had been doing this as a steward, union business representative and Regional Local Head for over 30 years. He knew the old CBA basically by heart, as well as all the other CBAs he had in the local which covers a major slice of Southern California including all of the Inland Empire as well as parts of Nevada. He can do this in his sleep; I kept warning out team that he wasn’t going to get tired, and was going to be prepared. His ass was iron; he mind was focused; and he knew what his members wanted, what he could get from us and how to make it meet in the middle.

That’s what unions provide their members – expertise, leadership and experience representing them. This occurs in grievance procedures where employees are fighting discipline; hell, it starts prior to that, with the Weingarten Rule. This applies to union members only, although there have been a couple of brief periods where the NLRB has flexed its muscles and applied it to all employees. The Weingarten Rule requires that if an employee is going to be interviewed in conjunction with an investigation that could lead to disciplinary action, they are entitled to have a union representative present. They don’t have the right to plead the 5^th Amendment; they have to cooperate and are subject to discipline if they don’t. However, they are entitled to have someone there to observe and prevent the arbitrary exercise of power.

Bosses hate that. “When I tell you to jump, boy, you just ask how high!” Well, that works on chain gangs and in the service; it works in organizations run purely by fear and intimidation. It doesn’t work that way in union shops. It shouldn’t work that way anywhere, of course. But again, the protection of the law is distant; the protection of the union is closer. If I lose my job so they can hire someone younger or without bits and pieces of PTSD, as an executive I have limited options. I can sue. Or, I can negotiate a severance package. However, a union member has a right to due process before being fired. Again, this is something bosses hate. “It’s my way or the highway!” God, they like to say that. If I’m running the Road Crew responsible for getting the ice and snow off the highway between Wausau and Madison on Christmas Eve, I want to be able to do what I want. Maybe give the overtime and double-time and call-out pay or something to my buddy Bob or my cousin Melissa. Maybe I’m concerned about productivity and I want my most experienced driver out there; maybe I have budget problems and I want to skimp on how many I call out. However, since Management and the Union have negotiated work rules, I can’t do what I want. I have to follow seniority, keep in mind rest requirements, crew size, relief drivers and so on.

Now, I have worked in Labor Relations in a state DOT. Most of the grievances were about violations of seniority. In fact, most grievances are about violations of seniority for assignment of overtime. This results in weak managers with poor collective bargaining skills getting frustrated. Good managers with good labor relations folks don’t have that problem.

Unions aren’t something new to Wisconsin government. I suspect that they have very practiced managers and well-trained labor relations staffs. Governments do spend a lot of money training their employees, and their practices of tenure within government result in having experienced people on both sides of the table.

This is not about money, and I actually don’t think it’s about work rules. It’s about union-busting. Unions are largely aligned with the Democratic party, except of course back in history when the Dems were largely rural and southern while the Unions were largely urban and…what? Socialist? Anarchist? Monarchist? How about, especially in Wisconsin, Republican? Unions do make it somewhat pricier to do business – there has historically been about a 15% differential between union workforces and non-union workforces in the same area doing the same work. That differential decreases when there’s a threat of a union organizing drive, of course, but in general there are some dollar advantages. However, in addition to the Collective Bargaining expense, a portion of union dues goes to union political activities. Since Citizens United, the only really large organizations to support the Democratic Party are the Union PACs as well as funding things like voter education and get out the vote drives. The DNC can raise some money and grass roots efforts can raise more – nobody ought to forget that after what the Obama campaign was able to do in 2007-08 and what Howard Dean did as head of the DNC. But, if I’m trying to buy TV time for my candidate, I’d rather be able to call up Freedom Works and get a six figure donation as opposed to having a bunch of interns and volunteers call everybody in Iowa asking for a couple of bucks a piece.

Break the unions, and we have a one party system run by the rich and business because of the Citizens United decision. That simple. That’s what this is about – the end of the American experiment of government for, by and of the people.

 

Fuck people. Incrementally.

Nothing says false comfort like a minimum wage rule. Tying a minimum wage rule to inflation seems like the way to keep it helpful to the average employee who is at the minimum wage, but it really is not. So, the Colorado decision to knock three cents an hour off the minimum wage is kinda, sorta a gratuitous insult. Legally it is definitely what they have to do, but as that great legal scholar, Charles Dickens, had a character put it in the UK version of The Federalist Papers, "The Law is an ass..."

Assuming a 40 hour week, which is more than a lot of minimum wagers get, the decrease will amount to  a roaring $1.20 a week. Roughly $64 a year Before taxes, which are probably irrelevant, except payroll taxes like FICA and Medicare. The impact on income in real terms, a can of coke a week from the vending machine down the hall next to the furnace where they shovel the coal to drive the engines of industry.

Merle Haggard - Mama's Hungry Eyes

Jeffery Allen Cropper - ( Personal Friend Page )|MySpace Videos
Now, I have been privately speculating about salary freezes and rollbacks for a while. This particular issue is probably a sign of something, and not being Paul Krugman , I'm not sure what. (By the way, the post I've linked to is pretty arcane, but take the time to do the math and think. Not a bad motto...) However, if wages drop then demand drops for shit because people have less to spend on shit; if demand drops, production drops; if production drops, people get laid off. Getting that flushed down the toilet of economics feeling yet?

Here's my thought: Mandate a living wage which will be based on the local median minus 20%. The only way to get out of this downward spiral is to sell stuff; the only way to sell stuff besides food and minimal housing is getting more, not less money into disposable income which largely comes from wages in the spending as opposed to the investment class. Bill Gates net worth decreases by 10%, he's still fucking wealthy; increases by 10%, he's still fucking wealthy, and I doubt that it'll have that much of an impact on his spending patterns. Give me a 10% negative swing, and I slow down and do little except pay down debt; increase it by 10%, and some of that will go to spending. Granted, some of that will go to paying down debt, but if I increase my after tax income by $5K, I probably won't buy another car, but I might buy a new Amp and maybe a better layout of office furniture for my home office. Just a thought; but, that would keep struggling musicians, the Line 6 company, furniture stores and Weyerhauser going a bit longer. Just doing my part...

Now, for gratuitous, unwarranted optimism...


Were that it were so, but as former Rosicrucian adept and car salesman Crispin Sartwell once plagarized, "Life is 60/40 against."

Tripping over facts while drinking your own Kool-Aid...

I've watched a lot of great ideas go south as a result of reality. The eight years between January 2001 and January 2009 are an example; Cold Fusion is another. Tom DeLay's lame imitation of Fred Astair; the Yugo; the Michael Richards' TV show. I think you're getting the picture.

Add the Barrack Obama administration.  A lot of the facts come from the Bush Administration, but still -- very disappointing. And, ironic -- I've been preaching in various forums available to me that the jobs data was totally whack, for example. People out of work getting MBAs -- does anyone sense the irony besides me? Sending people back to school who were loggers before to get degrees and certificates in Computer Graphics? Really...the idea that the future of America is virtual is vapor. Pure vapor -- hell, virtual vapor. I was preaching that in 1998! Today, The Times announces that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has consistently gotten in wrong. Hooorah! Defeatists 1, Government Bureaucracy -10000. It's a Pyrrhic victory, of course.

When the United States economy fell into recession at the beginning of 2008, many economists, including those at the Federal Reserve, refused to believe it was happening. They pointed to the employment numbers, which showed only mild job losses for the first half of that year...Recessions, they said, do not come with such mild job losses. ( AXE Comment: If the gas gauge says full, and the car won't move, accept that some goddamn thing is wrong. And, I'd don't know how to make this clearer -- if you've driven your Bugatti Veron flat out for the last hour and suddenly lose power and coast to a stop and the engine won't turn over, bet the gauge is fucked first. The measurement is usually wrong. )They were right. Unfortunately, it was the job numbers that were wrong. (AXE Commentary: Great, I was right. BFD. I'm not Obama, I have no leverage to fix this clusterfuck. Not that he does, but he can bitch about it from the bully pulpit. I have the Defeatists. ) On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered its latest revelation that the jobs picture was far worse than it had previously reported. Using newly available data, the bureau now estimates that during the 12 months ended last March, the economy lost 5.6 million jobs, 824,000 more than the 4.8 million previously reported...(AXE Snark: What's a 824,000 job error to an accountant or a statistician? A rounding error. What is it to a human being? Tragedy.) It now appears that during the first half of 2008, when the recession was getting under way, job losses averaged 146,000 per month. That is nearly three times the average of 49,000 jobs shown in the initial estimates. How did the government get it so wrong?

They got it wrong because they are fucking Hobbits who obtained their positions during the last 30 years, 20 of which were in the control of Reagan and Bush2 and their various advisers. Remember faith-based governance? Laffler Curve? Supply Side Economics? Ketchup is a vegetable? Karl Jaspers Karl Jaspers, the German Existentialist besides Heidigger, the one who wasn't a Nazi, provided an explanation as did Morris Massey, the OD guru about generations and learning. (Only one of these guys is dead, I think. In the 70s, Massey would show up at conferences and people would come up to him and say, "I thought you were dead." He ultimately theorized that they were confused because two important cultural  figures had in fact joined the Norwegian Blue in permanently pining for the Fjords...Maurice the Cat, star of 9 Lives Cat Food Commercials and the actor Raymond Massey.) It's actually a pretty straight forward proposition -- everything you do is influenced by everything you've ever done. If for 30 years you've been calling red ambergris, guess what -- to you, red is ambergris.

Going back to my gauge analogy, the measurement can be accurate, reliable and repeatable, but if it isn't measuring the right thing, well, the measurements aren't just meaningless, they are absolutely dangerous. Real people will make decisions on this stuff, and GIGOGIGOGIGO!

Now usually some twinge of optimism sneaks in at this point, but I'm out of it. I don't believe that we can do the fundamental things necessary to fix this mess. I'm enough of a Marxist to believe that systems collapse based on their own internal contradictions. What we observe in so many ways is the triumph of what Teddy Roosevelt called the "malefactors of great wealth." The system can't be changed until we can elect Philosopher-Kings whose only reason for running for office is to do good and do right. Power, ego, and all the perks have no place in governance. Unfortunately, Christ, Socrates and Jefferson aren't available.

Now, I do have some ideas -- confiscatory income taxes, government financing of all campaigns down through junior high student council, execution or exile for corrupt politicians or bureaucrats, mandatory IQ and basic skills tests for government employees and elected officials, and a series of constitutional amendments to "fix" some systemic problems. Little things like mandating marginal tax rates necessary to pay the government's way within 20 years of the expenditure; taxing corporations that lay-off workers; requiring severance, blah blah blah. Not going to happen anymore than the ascendancy of the philosopher kings...time for a defeatist old favorite -- a little Yeats, I think, is appropriate for the moment.

THE SECOND COMING

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Can you say "Coverup?"

Seriously, I suspect that Hoffa was ground into dog food as opposed to buried in East Rutherford New Jersey. Regardless, the FBI could use some decent publicity, and since they've blown it on violent nutcases, you might think they would be drill, drill, drilling in section 107.

Now, I was looking for some music, and it appears that some rapper named Akron slowed down the theme to Beverly Hills Cop and did a rap. However, unlike fight attendant and sage (rosmary and thyme) Crispin Sartwell, I don't consider rap to be music. There is a band called The Search for Jimmy Hoffa that does something like Christian Acid Fusion Metal, and that qualifed as noise. Not a lot else, and TSJH didn't have a song about or for or something related to Jimmy Hoffa. There's a band doing something called Detroit '67 which mentions Hoffa long with the riots, but when the video started  it sounded like Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow and, despite not being diabetic, I went into insulin shock. After I got the thing stopped, I discovered that Marcia Ball did something called "Blues for Jimmy Hoffa" years ago. Can't find it. Found this...shudder. Christian Honky Tonk...probably one of those "make your own CD" things, babbling about how "how he died before his time." (Really?? The dude was in his '60s when he died. Granted, he could have gone doddering into his 90s, but wasn't all that likely to do that much. He might, and I stress might, be hanging out like Robert Bruce's beloved daddy in a tower or a basement, whispering Macheivallian advice to his boys, but I doubt it. ) This piece is from a band called "Jakob" which is from New Zealand and announces the song on one version as something that you could "dance to." I didn't know mutton and kiwi could be mixed with Steinlager and ganga to make a really potent hallucinogen. 

A terrible beauty is born in a lovely thought

Fuck them all...

I have  met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Ultimately, we all are guilty bastards...but some far more than others. And from them much is owed, and much expected, and little received...

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The Ceremony of Innocence is drowned ;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Happy Fucking St Padraig's Day...

But Seriously, Who The Fuck Drives a Chrysler Anyway?

SNL (you can decide whether or not it sucks) not only understands the Republican party but is quite prescient about domestic economic issues. That, or the big three automakers are just re-hashing a three month old tv sketch for their survival strategy.

x-posted @ GFA51