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Servitude: “a condition in which one lacks liberty especially to determine one’s course of action or way of life”

Democracy: “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections”

Plutocracy: government by the wealthy

Labor union: an organization of workers formed for the purpose of advancing its members’ interests in respect to wages, benefits, and working conditions

You may have seen the recent flurry of stories about how hi-tech products are made in China. The stories focus on Apple, but it isn’t just Apple. These stories of exploited Chinese workers are also the story of how and why we — 99% of us, anyway — are all feeling such a squeeze here, because we are suffering the disappearance of our middle class. Our choice is democracy or servitude.

Working In China

A collection of excerpts from the Charles Duhigg and David Barboza story, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad and the Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher story, How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work both from the NY Times:

Rousted from dorms at midnight, told to work:

Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“Work hard on the job today or work hard to find a job tomorrow.”

Banners on the walls warned the 120,000 employees: “Work hard on the job today or work hard to find a job tomorrow.”

(How close is that to the very definition of servitude?) (more…)

There’s no denying the congressional Democrats and President Obama have been major disappointments, and there’s no denying that the forces arrayed against America’s unions have done considerable damage. Those are facts. But despite the hype being generated by Fox News, and the self-serving propaganda being spread by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the anti-labor crowd has pretty much run out of steam. They’ve lost their mojo. Here are 10 reasons why organized labor will ultimately win.

1. Necessity. The dynamic that exists between management and labor hasn’t changed since the Industrial Revolution. Despite those catchy New Age slogans about “synergy” and “symbiosis,” people who earn a wage and people who pay a wage don’t want the same thing. They want different things, divergent things. One wants a larger slice of the pie, the other wants to keep the pie to itself. Hence, the necessity of workers collectives (which is why they’ve been around for more than 200 years).

2. Numbers. Regardless of all the hand-wringing over declining union rolls, there are still (as of 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) 14.7 million union members in the country. That’s twice the population of Israel. On Nov. 15, 1969, when an estimated 500,000 people gathered in Washington D.C. to protest the Vietnam War, it was hailed as an historical turnout. Half a million? Not bad. But just think what 14.7 million could do if mobilized.

3. Citizens. When those “heroic” workers in the community — cops, firemen and nurses — finally step up to the plate and remind the public that unions aren’t the monsters the Koch brothers and the Mitch McConnell wing of the Republican Party make them out to be, it’s going to change everything. These people are our neighbors, our friends, our benefactors. Demonizing firefighters and nurses was a dumb tactic, one that’s guaranteed to backfire.

4. Exposure. The drive to privatize public schools will stall. In fact, those grandiose accounts of how brilliantly charter schools are performing — how charter schools will be the educational template for the future — have already been challenged. Let’s not forget: privatizing the public schools was never about helping America’s students; it was about busting the teachers’ union, and making money for sharp-eyed entrepreneurs.

5. Politics. Obama will win re-election (Who’s going to beat him… Romney?) and, as a lame duck president with nothing to lose, he will surprise and delight his detractors by making the “Reinvigoration of American Labor” the centerpiece of his second term, proving that those inspirational promises he made on the campaign trail in 2008 weren’t just empty rhetoric. Don’t laugh. It’s a long-shot, but Obama could surprise. (more…)

The Department of Justice must “go up Massey’s chain of command as far as possible” and hold accountable those individuals responsible for the deaths of 29 coals miners at Massey Energy’s Big Branch (W.Va.) mine in 2010, a group of lawmakers urged Attorney General Eric Holder.

In a letter to Holder from Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and 15 other House members, they say that although the recent settlement between the federal government and Alpha minerals—which took over Massey several months after the deadly disaster—includes a non-prosecution agreement with Alpha in exchange for $210 million in investments in mine safety and research, civil penalties and restitution to families,

It does not prevent the Department of Justice from investigating or bringing criminal charges against the individual’s responsible for the April 5, 2010 disaster.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA) investigation of the blast found that individuals acting both alone and in concert were responsible for the unsafe mining practices and conditions that led directly to the explosion.

Though these individuals stood at the head of the disaster, they have thus far escaped justice. (more…)

House Republicans voted (234-193) Wednesday to cut more than in half the number of weeks jobless workers can collect unemployment insurance (UI) benefits next year. The bill also cuts pay for public employees, cuts preventive health services, reduces premium assistance for low- and middle-income individuals buying health insurance and raises premiums for many Medicare beneficiaries.

A new report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) says the legislation:

abandons millions of U.S. workers and those communities hardest hit by the most severe jobs crisis since the Great Depression.

While the legislation extends the federal UI program that is set to expire Dec. 31, the huge reduction in weeks of benefits and other changes in the UI program are “reckless and irresponsible,” says NELP Executive Director Christine Owens.

To jobseekers and states hit hard by long-term unemployment, this proposal offers a cold cynical shrug. Anyone serious about helping workers and businesses get going again needs to know that is neither a serious nor acceptable way forward. (more…)

A new study by a team of top economists finds that if the tax rate for the highest-income Americans was pegged at—drum roll please—83 percent—it wouldn’t impact anyone but the “mega-rich.”

When Ronald Reagan and his Republican successors began three decades of hacking away at the taxes the rich paid—once as high as 80 percent—they claimed it would spur unfettered, long-term uninterrupted economic growth for all. Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher followed the same game plan. Well, say the authors:

Countries that made large cuts in top tax rates such as the United Kingdom or the United States have not grown significantly faster than countries that did not, such as Germany or Denmark.

Along with the tax cuts, the decades-long soaring level of executive pay, stock options and bonuses have given the top 1 percent an even greater share of the nation’s wealth. The authors say that share of the wealth has led to greater influence for the affluent and helped retain their impenetrable shield against tax increases. Even a tiny tax increase on the rich will crash the economy and kill jobs say the wealthy’s best friends—Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates. (more…)

You’ve heard all the reasons given for the economic implosion of 2008: the bursting of the housing bubble, the risky investments of financial firms, the use of incomprehensible financial instruments as get-rich-quick-schemes—all of them the result of a massive agenda of across-the-board deregulation pushed by Republican lawmakers since the 1980s.

But at the root of the behavior that led to the 2008 market crash that nearly took down the economy, according to experts who spoke yesterday at a conference at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., is the soaring level of executive pay at the nation’s giant corporations—a system of salary, stock options and bonuses that is not tied to a company’s long-term performance, but rather to the short-term profits that stand to enrich CEOs via the options and bonuses. Consequently, explained AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka at yesterday’s conference, ”Executive Pay and the Dodd-Frank Act,” excessive executive pay led to excessive risk-taking by CEOs and other top officials in corporations and financial institutions.

In 1980, Trumka said, executives at the nation’s largest companies earned about 42 times the level paid the average factory worker, according to an estimate by BusinessWeek magazine at the time. Today, he said, the average CEO at a corporation in the Standard & Poor’s 500 collects a payout that is some 343 times larger than the median paycheck received by the average worker. (more…)

Nick Hanauer is another multimillionaire who says its time to tax the rich. The venture capitalist, who has launched more than 20 companies and is an original investor in Amazon.com, says Republicans are completely wrong when they claim that raising taxes on the rich—the so-called job creators—would kill job growth because “Rich people like me don’t create jobs, middle-class consumers do.”

So let’s give a break to the true job creators. Let’s tax the rich like we once did and use that money to spur growth by putting purchasing power back in the hands of the middle class. And let’s remember that capitalists without customers are out of business.

Hanauer also points out that the 99 percent have not gotten a fair shake.

If the average American family still got the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would have an astounding $13,000 more in their pockets a year. It’s worth pausing to consider what our economy would be like today if middle-class consumers had that additional income to spend.

Click here to read his full column at Bloomberg.

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Re-Posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.

Terry Maile’s supervisor called her into a conference room with all of her co-workers to hear the news: It was their last day of employment at Level 3 Communications in Pittsburgh.

That was it. The jobs were gone to India.

“I couldn’t stop crying,” said Maile, a divorced mother of one, who until that moment had spent her professional life as a telecommunications worker before being laid off first by Verizon and then by Level 3.

Even then, Maile said, she still believed in the American Dream.

You’ve got to work hard… work hard.

Maile owned her own home. Although she had been forced to liquidate her retirement after the Verizon layoff, she had begun to build it back up. Then came the Level 3 layoff. It shook her to her core. (more…)

Newt Gingrich, frontrunner for the GOP nomination for president, wants schools to fire their union janitors and hire youngsters to do the cleaning instead. Get rid of those pesky child labor laws that keep children out of the classrooms and in the labor pool, Gingrich says. While at the same time, increase adult unemployment, Gingrich advocates.

If you’re getting ready to board a plane home after Thanksgiving or still fretting about safety in the crowded holiday skies for the upcoming holidays, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA)—the people who guide you home—offer five reasons to feel better about air travel.

Here they are in a nutshell, and click here for more details.

• There are more controllers on the job, nearly a 4 percent increase of fully certified controllers.

• Runways are safer than ever, with the number of serious runway incursions having dropped by 50 percent between 2009 and 2010 after falling by 52 percent the year before.
• Major steps have been taken to reduce controller fatigue this year, including staffing that ensures at least two controllers are on duty at all times.

• The aviation community is collaborating to mitigate delays with pilots, aircraft dispatchers, airport operators and other members of the aviation community and the system wide delays are decreasing, especially around the holidays.
• The aviation safety culture is at its strongest with NATCA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) committed to improving the safety of the air traffic control system, including a voluntary safety reporting program, the Air Traffic Safety Action Program.

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This entry originally appeared at the AFL-CIO Now Blog.