Force Congress to Impeach Bush/Cheney: Step One

From PledgeToImpeach.org comes news of a strike:

Dear Pledges,

When you signed your pledge to participate in a strike to force Congress to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney, we promised you that your pledge would only be called in if we knew we had enough people on board to effectively shut down the nation, leaving Congress no alternative but to impeach Bush/Cheney. Though we have made substantial progress toward that end, we have not yet gained that certainty. What we do have is a growing solidarity between PTI, other impeachment groups, and now several labor unions, all working to close down our nations largest sea ports on April 30 and May 1. (Los Angeles, Long Beach, Newark, and Houston). Though this is not a calling of your pledge to stay home from work and shopping, it is a request that you find every way to support this action. Why? Because this action can give large numbers of determined Americans confidence in our cause and our ability to organize an effective national strike for justice through
impeachment/peace/fair labor practices.

In our effort to help the International Longshoremen's Union and IWW Union(Port Truckers) in their strike, we are asking that you hand out the attached flyer at every truck stop, or sea port near you, and inform every suffering truck driver, harbor worker, or otherwise outraged American that the day to warn Congress that American National Solidarity is near at hand and that we will soon be capable of calling an effective national strike that will force and end to the reign of corruption in Washington.

The Pledge To Impeach "Plan for Victory" to front-load enough people before delivering the ultimatum - "Impeach or We Strike!" to Congress remains the most viable among all stated plans. By joining with the truckers and longshoremen we are forming a real partnership with labor; one that we will continue to cultivate until we have a movement large enough to
force Congress to act.

We urge you to go to the pledgetoimpeach.org website to get up to speed on what we and the truckers and dock workers are doing on May 1, and why they are doing it, Between now and April 30, distribute the attached flyer, carry the Impeach or We Strike! sign. Then, at your own discretion, take sick/vacation leave, and refrain from any unnecessary purchases on April 30 and May 1.

This is not the strike that will bring us our goal of impeachment, but we feel it can be a major step toward it. Time is running short and it should be clear that the November election will not bring the change we need, regardless of who wins. Tell your co-workers to join you in staying home.

After three years of organizing it is time to act with determination and inform Congress that the people will not be ignored, or exploited any longer. If they won't defend the Constitution of the United States, then we will.

Over the last three years Pledge to Impeach has refused to participate in many actions we considered doomed to fail. We believe this action can lead to our day of victory, and we believe in the people taking it. We told you that demonstrations alone, that petitions alone, that vigils alone would not be effective. We told you that Kucinich and Wexler were not for real, and they have proven it. We now ask that you not fail to act when your action will bring results. Take part in defending America by helping expand an action that can lead to our first act of National Solidarity,

Spread the word. Our future depends on us.
PledgetoImpeach.org

SIGN THE PLEDGE HERE.

Technorati tags: Impeach, Impeachment, Bush, Cheney, strike, pledgetoimpeach.org, activism

Why Job Market is Even Worse Than You Think

Nation's first job loss in more than four years tells only part of the story of the weak labor market. The ranks of the long-term unemployed are growing.

By Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com Senior Writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A government report on January jobs showing that employers trimmed payrolls for the first time in four years set off alarm bells.

But the report, which was released Friday, tells only part of the story about the underlying weakness in the labor market.

The number of Americans out of work for at least six months is rising - reaching levels more typically seen deep into a recession or period of job contraction, not at the beginning.

Continue Reading

Yet one more hat tip to Al B.

Technorati tags: US Economy, Jobs, Labor, Recession

How To Screw an American Out of a Job

How To Not Hire An American: MUST SEE VIDEO

"Our goal is clearly NOT TO FIND a qualified and interested U.S. worker."

Daily Kos reports:

"It's on video, believe it or not, and even presented as a selling point to peddle their services by Cohen & Grigsby Law Firm. That's right, this group of attorneys put an entire seminar on how to screw over the American worker on YouTube. Imagine that, a seminar from lawyers on how to make sure one doesn't have to hire an American worker!"

In the video attorneys explain how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and how they disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers.

'Our goal is clearly NOT to find a qualified U.S. worker ... our objective is to get this person a green card ... so certainly we are not going to try to find a place where applicants would be most numerous.' -- Lawrence M. Lebowitz, Vice President of Marketing, Cohen & Grigsby

And on getting rid of extremely qualified applicants:

'If someone looks like they are very qualified, if necessary schedule an interview, go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them.'

From Dr. Norm Matloff:

The law on employer-sponsored green cards is similarly riddled with loopholes. Though that law requires that American workers must be sought before the employer hires a foreign worker for a job, it is routinely circumvented. I've mentioned the outrageous comments by a well-known immigration attorney:

'Employers who favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers who apply.'

--Joel Stewart, Legal Rejection of U.S. Workers Immigration Daily, April 24, 2000.

Here are just a few examples of fake job ads this seminar is referring to, run in the Sacramento Bee. The Bee's editor refuses to discuss the matter, and the fraudulent ads continue to run each week.

This video was amplified by the Programmers Guild and the original video clips are here.

This is what Bush and Congress via the current "comprehensive" immigration reform bill really mean by a 'shortage of skilled U.S. workers.'

Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and thousands of other companies are running fake ads in Sunday newspapers across the country each week.

Look at this folks, this is how bad it is.  A major selling point of law firms is all about how to screw over the American worker.

UPDATE: 06.18.07 4pm EST. It appears Cohen & Grigsby Law Firm has taken down their seminar videos. What a surprise but you can see at one time the originals were there.  We cannot put back up the originals for it's unclear if that would be a violation of copyright law, but let me assure you, they exist.

Technorati tags: H-1B, immigration, attorneys, labor, corruption, Department of Labor, green card, employment, news, video, youtube

Divided Over Trade

The Krug Man, as usual, provides a voice of reason and intelligence on Trade Policy. Excellent op ed.

Divided Over Trade
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Nothing divides Democrats like international trade policy. That became clear last week, when the announcement of a deal on trade between Democratic leaders and the Bush administration caused many party activists to accuse the leadership of selling out.

The furor subsided a bit as details about the deal emerged: the Democrats got significant concessions from the Bushies, while effectively giving a go-ahead to only two minor free trade agreements (Peru and Panama). But the Democrats remain sharply divided between those who believe that globalization is driving down the wages of many U.S. workers, and those who believe that making and honoring international trade agreements is an essential part of governing responsibly.

What makes this divide so agonizing is that both sides are right.

Fears that low-wage competition is driving down U.S. wages have a real basis in both theory and fact. When we import labor-intensive manufactured goods from the third world instead of making them here, the result is reduced demand for less-educated American workers, which leads in turn to lower wages for these workers. And no, cheap consumer goods at Wal-Mart aren’t adequate compensation.

So imports from the third world, although they make the United States as a whole richer, make tens of millions of Americans poorer. How much poorer? In the mid-1990s a number of economists, myself included, crunched the numbers and concluded that the depressing effects of imports on the wages of less-educated Americans were modest, not more than a few percent.

But that may have changed. We’re buying a lot more from third-world countries today than we did a dozen years ago, and the largest increases have come in imports from Mexico, where wages are only about 11 percent of the U.S. level, and China, where wages are only 3 percent of the U.S. level. Trade still isn’t the main source of rising economic inequality, but it’s a bigger factor than it was.

So there is a dark side to globalization. The question, however, is what to do about it.

Should we go back to old-fashioned protectionism? That would have ugly consequences: if America started restricting imports from the third world, other wealthy countries would follow suit, closing off poor nations’ access to world markets.

Where would that leave Bangladesh, which is able to survive despite its desperate lack of resources only because it can export clothing and other labor-intensive products? Where would it leave India, where there is, at last, hope of an economic takeoff thanks to surging exports — exports that would be crippled if barriers to trade that have been dismantled over the past half century went back up?

And where would it leave Mexico? Whatever you think of Nafta, undoing the agreement could all too easily have disastrous economic and political consequences south of the border.

Because of these concerns, even trade skeptics tend to shy away from a return to outright protectionism, and to look for softer measures, which mainly come down to trying to push up foreign wages. The key element of the new trade deal is its inclusion of “labor standards”: countries that sign free trade agreements with the United States will have to allow union organizing, while abolishing child and slave labor.

The Bush administration, by the way, opposed labor standards, not because it wanted to keep imports cheap, but because it was afraid that America would end up being forced to improve its own labor policies. So the inclusion of these standards in the deal represents a real victory for workers.

Realistically, however, labor standards won’t do all that much for American workers. No matter how free third-world workers are to organize, they’re still going to be paid very little, and trade will continue to place pressure on U.S. wages.

So what’s the answer? I don’t think there is one, as long as the discussion is restricted to trade policy: all-out protectionism isn’t acceptable, and labor standards in trade agreements will help only a little.

By all means, let’s have strong labor standards in our pending trade agreements, and let’s approach proposals for new agreements with an appropriate degree of skepticism. But if Democrats really want to help American workers, they’ll have to do it with a pro-labor policy that relies on better tools than trade policy. Universal health care, paid for by taxing the economy’s winners, would be a good place to start.

Photo Credit: Paul Krugman. (The New York Times)

Also See:

• Economist's View: Krugman and Galbraith

Technorati tags: Paul Krugman, New York Times, Economic Conditions and Trends, International Trade and World Market, Labor, Customs (Tariff), news, commentary, op ed

The Millions Left Out

By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

The United States may be the richest country in the world, but there are many millions — tens of millions — who are not sharing in that prosperity.

According to the most recent government figures, 37 million Americans are living below the official poverty threshold, which is $19,971 a year for a family of four. That’s one out of every eight Americans, and many of them are children.

More than 90 million Americans, close to a third of the entire population, are struggling to make ends meet on incomes that are less than twice the official poverty line. In my book, they’re poor.

We don’t see poor people on television or in the advertising that surrounds us like a second atmosphere. We don’t pay much attention to the millions of men and women who are changing bedpans, or flipping burgers for the minimum wage, or vacuuming the halls of office buildings at all hours of the night. But they’re there, working hard and getting very little in return.

The number of poor people in America has increased by five million over the past six years, and the gap between rich and poor has grown to historic proportions. The richest one percent of Americans got nearly 20 percent of the nation’s income in 2005, while the poorest 20 percent could collectively garner only a measly 3.4 percent.

A new report from a highly respected task force on poverty put together by the Center for American Progress tells us, “It does not have to be this way.” The task force has made several policy recommendations, and said that if all were adopted poverty in the U.S. could be cut in half over the next decade.

The tremendous number of people in poverty is an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. And one of the biggest problems is the simple fact that so many jobs pay so little that even fulltime, year-round employment is not enough to raise a family out of poverty. One-fifth of the working men in America and 29 percent of working women are in such jobs.

Peter Edelman, a Georgetown law professor who was a co-chairman of the task force, said, “An astonishing number of people are working as hard as they possibly can but are still in poverty or have incomes that are not much above the poverty line.”

So the starting point for lifting people out of poverty should be to see that men and women who are working are adequately compensated for their labor. The task force recommended that the federal minimum wage, now $5.15 an hour, be raised to half the average hourly wage in the U.S., which would bring it to $8.40.

The earned-income tax credit, which has proved very successful in supplementing the earnings of low-wage working families, should be expanded to cover more workers, the task force said. It also recommended expanded coverage of the federal child care tax credit, which is currently $1,000 per child for up to three children.

A crucial component to raising workers out of poverty would be an all-out effort to ensure that workers are allowed to form unions and bargain collectively. As the task force noted, “Among workers in similar jobs, unionized workers have higher pay, higher rates of health coverage, and better benefits than do nonunionized workers.”

In a recent interview about poverty, former Senator John Edwards told me: “Organizing is so important. We have 50 million service economy jobs and we’ll probably have 10 or 15 million more over the next decade. If those jobs are union jobs, they’ll be middle-class families. If not, they’re more likely to live in poverty. It’s that strong.”

The task force made several other recommendations, including proposals to ease access to higher education for poor youngsters, to help former prisoners find employment, to develop a more equitable unemployment compensation system, and to establish housing policies that would make it easier for poor people to move from neighborhoods of concentrated poverty to areas with better employment opportunities and higher-quality public services.

Mr. Edelman, an adviser on social policy in the Clinton administration, stressed that there is no one answer to the problem of poverty, and that in addition to public policy initiatives, it’s important to address the “things people have to do within their own communities to take responsibility for themselves and for each other.”

But he added, “It is unacceptable for this country, which is so wealthy, to have this many people who are left out.”

Photo Credit: Bob Herbert. (The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Bob Herbert, New York Times, 2008 Presidential Election, John Edwards, Economic Conditions and Trends, Labor, US Economy, US Politics, news, commentary, op ed

Labor Law Reform Not Just For Unions

Labor Law Reform Not Just For Unions
By Peter Dreier and Kelly Candaele
TomPaine.com

"A bill now moving through Congress to expand workers' rights could be the most important legislation in decades to advance the concerns of environmentalists, public schools, higher education, senior citizens, universal health care, housing, women's and gay rights, and civil rights.

The bill--called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)--is understandably the top priority for America's labor unions. It would mean better wages, benefits and working conditions for all employees. It would also make it more likely for unions to win organizing drives in workplaces.

But why should other constituencies rally behind this effort to reform the nation's labor laws? The reason is simple. The labor movement is still the most effective political force for electing liberal candidates at the local, state and federal levels. Once in office, pro-labor politicians are typically also the strongest advocates of strong environment laws, funding for public schools and higher education, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, universal health insurance, affordable housing and protection of Social Security. A strong labor movement benefits these other agendas and causes, which have been under attack by conservative forces in recent years...."

Technorati tags: Labor, Unions, Employee Free Choice Act, Democrats, Congress, news

For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls

Another Economic Disconnect
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Last fall Edward Lazear, the Bush administration’s top economist, explained that what’s good for corporations is good for America. “Profits,” he declared, “provide the incentive for physical capital investment, and physical capital growth contributes to productivity growth. Thus profits are important not only for investors but also for the workers who benefit from the growth in productivity.”

In other words, ask not for whom the closing bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Unfortunately, these days none of what Mr. Lazear said seems to be true. In the Bush years high profits haven’t led to high investment, and rising productivity hasn’t led to rising wages.

The second of those two disconnects has gotten a lot of attention because of its political consequences. The administration and its allies whine that they aren’t getting credit for a great economy, but because wages have been stagnant — the median worker’s earnings, adjusted for inflation, haven’t gone up at all since the current economic expansion began in 2001 — the economy feels anything but great to most Americans.

Less attention, however, has been given to the first disconnect: the failure of high profits to produce an investment boom.

Since President Bush took office, the combination of rising productivity and stagnant wages — workers are producing more, but they aren’t getting paid more — has led to a veritable profit gusher, with corporate profits more than doubling since 2000. Last year, profits as a share of national income were at the highest level ever recorded.

You might have expected this gusher of profits, which surely owes something to the Bush administration’s pro-corporate, anti-labor tilt, to produce a corresponding gusher of business investment. But the reality has been more of a trickle. Nonresidential investment — that is, investment other than housing construction — has grown very slowly by historical standards. As a share of G.D.P., nonresidential investment remains far below its levels of the late 1990s, and it has been declining for the last two quarters.

Why aren’t corporations investing, and what does the lack of business investment mean for the economy?

It’s possible that sluggish business investment reflects lack of confidence in the economic outlook — a lack of confidence that’s understandable given the bursting of the housing bubble, which has already caused G.D.P. growth to slow to a crawl.

But as Floyd Norris recently reported in The Times, there is a more disturbing possibility. Instead of investing in physical capital, many companies are using profits to buy back their own stock. And cynics suggest that the purpose of these buybacks is to produce a temporary rise in stock prices that increases the value of executives’ stock options, even if it’s against the long-term interests of investors.

It’s not a far-fetched idea. Researchers at the Federal Reserve have found evidence that company decisions about stock buybacks are strongly influenced by “agency conflicts,” a genteel term for self-dealing by corporate insiders. In the 1990s that kind of self-dealing often led to excessive investment, which at least left a tangible legacy behind. But today the self-interest of management may be standing in the way of productive investment.

Whatever the reasons, we now have an economy with incredibly high profits and surprisingly low investment. This raises some immediate, short-run concerns: with housing still in free fall and consumers ever more stretched, optimistic projections for the economy depend on vigorous growth in business investment. And that doesn’t seem to be happening.

The bigger issue, however, may be longer term. Mr. Lazear was right about one thing: business investment plays an important role in raising productivity. High investment in equipment and software was one major reason for the productivity takeoff that began in the Clinton era, and continued in the early years of this decade.

And low investment may be one reason productivity growth has slowed dramatically over the last three years — another development that hasn’t received as much attention as it should.

In any case, next time someone tells you that any action that might reduce corporate profits a bit — like actually enforcing health and safety regulations or making it easier for workers to organize — will reduce business investment, bear in mind that today’s record profits aren’t being invested. Instead, they’re being used to enrich executives and a few lucky stock owners.

Photo Credit: Paul Krugman. (The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Paul Krugman, New York Times, Economic Conditions and Trends, Gross Domestic Product, Stocks and Bonds, Labor, news, commentary, op ed

How Not to Get the Job Done

The New York Times reports that the "Labor Department has relieved new federal contractors of the obligation to have a plan for hiring minorities, women, Vietnam veterans and disabled people on Katrina-related projects...."