Financial Crisis Shouldered by City Workers

From the January, 2009 issue of Labor Notes

Last summer’s meeting of the National Conference of Mayors foresaw grim days for American cities — and that was before finance markets folded up in the fall. Now urban governments confront budget deficits that stem from falling tax revenues and the ongoing credit crunch.

More than a quarter of American cities hemorrhaged jobs in 2008. Mayors now propose to add to the jobless by firing yet more city workers. Wall Street’s collapse has opened a $4 billion hole in New York’s $60 billion balance sheet over the next two years—and support from state and federal coffers is less than forthcoming.

Chicago is trying to cover a $470 million gap in its $3 billion budget, a gap that has grown by $50 million since mid-August. Mayor Richard Daley initially proposed layoffs of more than 900 city workers. After negotiations with city unions, terminations were reduced by 145, salvaging electrical workers and inspectors’ jobs.

Even so, the city faces a shortfall in the hundreds of millions in the next budget year. All services except fire and police will be shut down for six days around the holidays. A challenge from the Laborers union produced buyout offers for senior workers. In exchange, remaining city workers will take an unpaid furlough day.

CUTS FOR THE LOWEST PAID

AFSCME fought the furloughs and is taking legal action. “This amounts to a pay cut for some of the lowest-paid city employees, a cut that they don’t deserve and can’t afford,” said Anders Lindall of District Council 31. While some of Daley’s cuts hit novelties like Segway-riding fire inspectors, basic services will suffer, with around 300 fewer workers picking up garbage and with less overtime for snow plow service and street repair. Reductions in health department workers will add to overcrowding at clinics.

Carty Finkbeiner, mayor of Toledo, Ohio, modeled cost-saving measures on Chicago’s, planning a temporary layoff of city workers to help cover a $10 million deficit. Three city unions, including AFSCME Local 7, sued to prevent the shutdown, calling it a breach of contract terms. The city agreed to reduce the number of unpaid furloughs, leaving 242 workers with a day’s pay cut.

Mayor Michael Nutter went on TV to tell Philadelphia residents to “plan for the worst” as he laid out an extensive austerity program to cover a $108 million deficit. The city wants to ignore contractual promises and freeze wages for 18,000 workers for three years, giving hikes only to police and firefighters.

“Not having increases in health care, wages, or pensions over the next few years is unrealistic,” said Cathy Scott, District Council 47 president. About 220 city workers were to be laid off and 600 open positions eliminated, but two AFSCME councils pushed to have vacant positions filled by those slated for firing. Still, dozens of part-time seasonal jobs will be cut, and non-union city workers face five unpaid furlough days.

Though Nutter postponed personal income tax cuts for eight years and took a 10 percent pay cut, glaring inequities remain: business tax cuts, tax abatements for real estate developers, and a hands-off approach to collecting outstanding taxes from corporations, some of which do business with the city, leave hundreds of millions of dollars unclaimed. “People do not believe there is a shared sacrifice,” Scott says, “and that’s when they say ‘no, we’re not going to take it.’”

MOTOR CITY WOES

Detroit has approximately 15,000 municipal workers after more than 5,000 layoffs in the last eight years. The city could face more than 1,000 more this year. Interim Mayor Ken Cockrel, Jr. inherits a $200 million deficit. City unions have fought to maintain their ranks, halting the privatization of custodial services but losing arbitration this fall over subcontracting to non-profits of city-green jobs, such as tree-planting work.

With a Big 3 collapse looming, the financial squeeze has spread to Detroit’s suburbs, too. Wayne County is trying to decrease retired workers’ health benefits, a move that faced resistance from AFSCME District Council 25. The union won arbitration and temporarily halted the county’s plans. “Whatever they retired with is a vested right, and they have the right to enforce it,” said attorney Bruce Miller.

Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Atlanta are lobbying for a piece of the $700 billion bank bailout to maintain pensions and repair infrastructure. A Detroit city council resolution asked for $10 billion for a city bailout.

“Why just let corporate America have it?” asked AFSCME Local 207 Vice President Andre Batie in Detroit. “They’re gonna have fun with that money, but we could use some of it in the cities.”

New Teacher Programs Chip Away at Job Stability

From December, 2008 Labor Notes

Graduation rates were climbing to all-time highs in New York City’s alternative schools, where John Powers taught last year, before the Department of Education’s consultants arrived.

Citing under-performance, the city closed schools, and chopped some into smaller units, giving them new names. A new nameplate, however, forced the school’s teaching staff to reapply for their jobs.

“They only have to hire back into that building 50 percent of the people that worked there,” Powers said. “Simultaneously, principals are given their own budgets and it becomes a financial obligation to hire younger teachers—cheaper labor.”

The city found that pipeline of fresh-faced, inexpensive help in the New Teacher Project.

The program has chapters in several cities, placing college graduates (and others seeking a career change) in “high needs” schools after a six-week summer training. For two years, they receive funding for graduate study, take evening classes necessary for teaching certification, and teach.

Applicants for the NTP in New York have risen from 2,100 to 20,000 per year over the last seven years. This fall, 1,800 teachers entered classrooms through the program. A full 11 percent of all the city’s teachers come through the NTP.

RESERVE TEACHERS

Claiming that an investment in “human capital” will close the gap in test scores between white children and students of color, the city is shuttering or restructuring low-performing schools—and using the NTP to chip away at the stability of teaching jobs.

The 2005 contract signed by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the American Federation of Teachers local in New York, has added to the instability. The contract ended “bumping rights” for tenured teachers who lose jobs. Instead of automatic placement in a new job based on experience, teachers with more than three years in the classroom now enter an “Absent Teacher Reserve” with pay and benefits until they can find employment—contingent on a principal’s consent.

Rising numbers of non-tenured teachers, entering through the NTP’s teaching fellows (and a similar program, Teach for America), make it difficult for experienced, higher-paid instructors to find work.

NTP’s chairman now is pressing to fix a timetable after which reserve teachers should face termination, a demand echoed by schools chief Joel Klein. He wants to fire teachers after 18 months on the reserve rolls. For the moment, UFT’s no-layoff clause protects the 1,400 tenured teachers who are seeking their own classroom.

“We’re creating a situation where your most talented and experienced will be fired,” said Powers.

INSECURITY FOR ALL

The new labor flexibility in schools whipsaws younger workers against older ones—and produces a workforce beholden to principals.

Three months into the school year, Andy Mandel is still subbing at a Harlem junior high. He hasn’t found the full-time job he sought by joining the NTP’s teaching fellows this summer.

When applying, Mandel and others signed a form requiring them to find their own classroom by December or lose their fellowship, funding, provisional license and all. Mandel says the form violates the state’s protection of union rights and the contract’s ban on at-will firings.

But the union, he says, isn’t focused on the needs of young teachers. The Department of Education has fired teaching fellows under this agreement three years straight. “They didn’t notice until we brought it to their attention,” Mandel said.

In his first months, Mandel has taught every grade and every subject but gym. “One of the fellows is filling in for the dean. He’s been working the in-school suspension room,” he says. “Another fellow has administered eye exams, and we volunteer to move desks around and carry boxes of books. It works out well for our principal.”

Lacking sufficient training, overworked teachers flood in and out of the system, with little ability to organize and few job protections when they speak up. “You’re not going to stick your neck out as much in a situation where the principal can just send you packing,” said Dianne, a math teacher in Brooklyn and union delegate who is thinking of her own neck.

CHAOS IN THE CLASSROOM

An urban instructor’s career once stretched 20 years or more, said Bill Balderston, a teachers union board member in Oakland, where the New Teacher Project also places teachers. “Now it’s very rare to have people for more than three years,” he said.

Michael Mebane experiences that instability first-hand at his Brooklyn middle school. “I have been subbing four classes a day at a very difficult school,” he said, “and teaching one special-ed computer class, which I’m not certified to teach.”

Under pressure from teachers upset about the classroom chaos, the union filed a grievance on behalf of New York fellows who face early termination.

Their December deadline nearing, new teachers tried to expedite a lengthy grievance process by protesting at the Department of Education in early November. Klein’s office turned them away.

As Labor Notes went to press, the union reached a tentative agreement with the education department. The city maintains the principal’s consent rule, but gives subsidies to schools to hire reserve teachers full time, covering the pay difference between a reserve and a new teacher.

Still, schools will have the option to hire reserve teachers provisionally and return them to the pool of waiting teachers at year’s end.

Members of the Independent Community of Educators, a UFT reform grouping, won a resolution last month calling for a rally November 24. Despite the new agreement, the protest is on to demand a hiring freeze until reserve teachers and teaching fellows are placed in classrooms. And rumors continue to fly that the DOE will axe teachers young and old as the city scrambles to close a $4 billion deficit in the next 18 months.

“Our no-layoff clause can be rescinded only if the city declares a fiscal emergency,” Powers said.

Labor Notes on the Auto Bailout

Hear Mark Brenner of Labor Notes on Democracy Now! this week. Brenner made the radio rounds discussing the next chunk of corporate welfare cheese coming to those too big to fail.

The auto bailout can't be another decadent giveaway for executive spa days. It can't just be tied to production shifts toward green cars either--Brenner argued on Portland public radio--but must also address the more fundamental structural flaws that have created the financial crisis: a credit-crunched, debt-driven consumer economy (with a sprawling, crumbling, and ultimately unsustainable infrastructure) in which services are too expensive not to put on layaway.

The cash infusion for GM must shore up the safety net through which (not only) auto workers have continued to fall as de-industrialization and de-unionization have torn it apart. The corporate attack has been facilitated by governments willing to wage economic war on their own citizens. And the Big 3's concessionary march, Brenner argues, has too-often brought the UAW leadership into "lock step" for 30 years.

It remains to be seen if the energy unleashed by Obama's victory will translate into a broader social movement that pushes for the livelihood of a working majority. And it's early--the man hasn't even taken office yet. But as Clinton-folk slither back around the White House, it's increasingly clear which (large) segment of Obama's grand "post-partisan" coalition--rife with antagonistic interests--he's inclined to betray. The shape of the auto bailout (if and when it comes) and government rescue efforts surely coming down the pike, will say a lot about the shape of change (or continuity) Obama has in mind.

Financial Crisis Socks California

From November, 2008 Labor Notes

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger approved $7 billion in cuts in October to help fill a $15.2 billion crater in California’s budget, leveling a broad attack on unions and working people as the world’s tenth-largest economy teeters.

Unemployment in California rose to 7.7 percent in August, its highest in a decade. Many of the new jobless are temporary state workers, 10,000 of whom were laid off this summer. “Working in the public sector is increasingly an emotionally difficult place to work,” said Dave Hart, president of the California State Employees Association, representing over 140,000 state workers. “You’re now at the whim of politics.”

Service Employees Local 1000 has won contract language protecting some temporary workers who work full-time hours. Those without permanent status, including retirees doing part-time work, were laid off. “A lot of these retirees had dwindling pensions, and were coming back to work to make ends meet,” said Cathy Hackett, an SEIU bargaining representative.

The deep cuts have put at least one state agency in a good position to bargain for exemptions. “The people in the unemployment insurance office are putting in overtime,” Hackett said. “They cannot keep up with the claims.”

CAN’T FIND ANOTHER WAY

Public sector unions defeated the governor’s attempt to lower state workers’ pay to the federal minimum wage pending a budget agreement over the summer. Now they’re challenging the state’s threat to do the same in January, when California will face another budget gap.

Tax revenues plummeted as consumers have cut back spending. Just weeks after signing a budget full of stop-gap borrowing schemes, the governor called an October emergency meeting to address a newly developing $1 billion deficit in expected tax revenue for the year.

The California Federation of Teachers says much of the budget hole could be fixed by reinstating vehicle registration fees and raising income tax rates 2 percent for just the top earners—those making over $300,000 a year.

California’s constitution makes it one of three states where a two-thirds majority is required in the legislature to raise taxes, but only a simple majority to cut them.

“The wealthy have been huge beneficiaries of regressive tax policies, while we have gone from No. 1 to No. 48 in funding public education,” said Kent Wong at UCLA’s Center for Labor Research and Education. The University of California’s labor program, with a $6 million budget, was the only research program cut from the budget.

At the University of California, service workers in AFSCME Local 3299, who held a five-day strike this summer, continue their bargaining struggle after the school refused demands to boost poverty wages. Nearly all the custodians, groundskeepers, and bus drivers that work for UC are eligible for some form of public assistance.

Bargaining just got harder, as the new budget slashes higher education funding. “The school blames budget cuts whether or not it’s the case,” said President Lakesha Harrison. “We know they spend frivolously, and our demands stay the same.”

Still, hospital workers represented by Local 3299 won increases to $14.50 an hour in a five-year contract announced October 20.

The governor terminated a proposal—pushed by Local 3299 in the legislature—to divert $15 million from administrators’ salaries to fund pay increases for low-wage workers.

Base funding for K-12 schools and community colleges fell by $3.3 billion. In Los Angeles, the budget crisis is one more hurdle for teachers at impasse in contract negotiations with the school district. The teachers union, threatened with a 3.5 percent pay cut, is planning larger job actions than the one-hour walkout it held in July.

Thin state budgets make local governments—and contract mediators—even less receptive to worker demands.

In response, eight unions of L.A. workers, including the teachers, are presenting a unified front, despite some historical rifts, to bargain health benefits with the school district.

NO MORE BORROWING

California state college employees are feeling the squeeze. The system received $215 million less than expected right when student enrollment is spiking.

“We have health centers with a line outside each morning, there are new buildings without maintenance staff, and things are deteriorating,” said Pat Gantt, president of the California State University Employees Union.

County health care programs for low-wage workers lost $42 million. Cuts to the state-mandated ombudsman program mean crippling layoffs for those who oversee state-funded but privately owned nursing homes. “These are people who find the neglect and abuse in long-term care facilities,” said Michael Connors of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. “They are eyes and ears for the community.”

California has taken short-term loans to cover costs during periods of weak tax revenue in the past. The global credit crisis makes this a less feasible way out. Union leaders say anger is growing among members who see that financial institutions will survive the crisis while public services take major hits.

“The opposition to the $700 billion bailout was a good indication that people smelled the rat,” said AFT Vice President Joshua Pechthalt. “We are moving into a period when they are going to be open to new ways of solving this.”

Sharpest Job Loss Since March 2003

by Dean Baker
The economy lost jobs for the ninth consecutive month in September, with the pace accelerating to 159,000 jobs. This was the largest one-month fall since March of 2003 when the economy lost 212,000 jobs. The unemployment rate held steady at 6.1 percent, even though the employment population ratio (EPOP) inched down to 62.0 percent. These data, together with other recent reports, leave little doubt that the economy is in a recession.

Virtually all the news in the household survey was negative. The EPOP fell to 62.0 percent which is equal to the low point from the last downturn reached in September of 2003. Unemployment for men rose by 0.5 percentage points to 6.1 percent. The unemployment rate for black men jumped 1.6 percentage points to 11.9 percent, the highest rate since February of 1994.

By education level, the least educated workers are feeling the worst effects of the recession. Unemployment among workers without high school degrees is at 9.6 percent, more than 2.5 percentage points above the lows hit in 2007. Unemployment for high school graduates is 6.3 percent, more than 2.0 percentage points above the lows hit last year.

The number of workers involuntarily working part-time jumped by another 300,000 in September and now stands more than 2 million above its low point in 2006. The U-6 index, which is a broad measure of labor market slack including underemployed and discouraged workers, hit 11.0 percent, the highest level since April of 1994.

One noteworthy item in this report is that the EPOP for white women exceeded the EPOP for black women for the first time ever, 57.8 percent compared to 57.7 percent. Historically black women have always had considerably higher labor force participation rates, since fewer could afford not to work. While the participation rates of black women are still higher than for white women (63.6 percent compared to 60.3 percent), because the unemployment rate for black women is much higher (9.3 percent versus 4.2 percent), white women now enjoy a slightly higher EPOP.

The establishment survey shows an equally bleak picture. The private sector lost 168,000 jobs in September. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also released preliminary benchmark revisions to the survey, which show that between March of 2007 and March 2008, there were 81,000 fewer private sector jobs than originally reported. Including this revision, the economy has created just 3,061,000 private sector jobs since President Bush took office. By comparison, it created 2,600,000 jobs annually during the Clinton administration.

Job loss was sharpest in manufacturing, where employment fell by 51,000 in September, and is now down by 442,000 from its year ago level. Since its peak in March of 1998, manufacturing has shed 4,257,000 jobs, losing 24.1 percent of employment in the sector. The auto sector has been especially hard hit. It has lost 140,000 jobs over the last year and 441,000 jobs since peaking in February of 2000. This drop is equal to 36.2 percent of employment in the industry.

Construction lost 35,000 jobs in September, while retail trade lost 40,100. Car dealers accounted for 8,600 of these jobs. Trucking shed 12,300 jobs, pushing employment down by 4.6 percent from year ago levels. Financial services lost 17,000 jobs and employment services shed 28,900. Employment growth in health care and state and local government, the two main sources of strength in recent months, has also faded. These sectors added 16,600 and 2,900 jobs, respectively.

The report also shows hours dropping, consistent with the growth in part-time employment reported in the household survey. The index of aggregate weekly hours fell by 0.5 percent last month and is now down by 1.3 percent from its year ago level. Wages grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate over the last quarter, almost the same as the 3.4 percent rate over the last year.

This report should remove any lingering doubts that the economy is in a recession. The rate of job loss is accelerating and the unemployment rate is virtually certain to cross 7.0 percent early in 2009.

Detroiters on Obama

In trying to get a sense for how Detroiters feel about this election, I spoke to Ron Scott, a long time journalist-activist-documentarian in the city. Scott was a co-founder of the Black Panthers chapter here, and he hosted the American Black Journal (see video archive, including '78 interview with Bobby Seale). Now he blogs at Detroit News online, and is a leader of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Bruality.

I've been asking: how does Obama's message of hope and change resonate with you?
Mr. Scott assumed it was a loaded question, referring me to some folks at the ACLU who might give a cheerier assessment of the campaign.

"I never hoped he would deliver a damn thing or that he was the second coming of christ. This is the first time in a long time people presume that there's a progressive strategy without confirming it. I don't hope. I'd rather know."

On the Obama mobilization in Detroit, Scott acknowledged that Barack is organizing in a different way that reaches new voters. But, according to Scott, he's not involving Black and working class youth as organizers, so as to create and sustain organizing networks that will last beyond the election season.

"It's comparable to Evo Morales in Bolivia. It would be like if he got the sons and daughters of the patricians to organize with him around land reform."

Scott's critique, though, bordered on critical support-an attempt to put demands behind the bloc of youth voters and black voters in the city, who are assumed stalwart supporters. Without a more coherent "urban agenda" Scott says the campaign isn't doing enough to address the problems in Detroit.

"I don't want to hear about the war on Iraq if he's not gonna talk about the war we got on Mack."

L.A. Port Truckers Closer to Shedding Dirty Past

From October 2008, Labor Notes

A labor-environmental coalition in Los Angeles including several Teamsters locals inched closer to making the city’s giant port less destructive for its neighbors’ lungs—and its workers’ rights.

A federal judge refused to grant the American Trucking Associations’ (ATA) request on September 8 to suspend a plan that would ban heavily polluting older trucks. It would also compel trucking companies to hire their workers as employees, not independent contractors, opening up the possibility for organizing them.

In the works for years, the plan will go into effect October 1. According to the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), a member of the coalition, there will be an immediate 50 percent reduction in truck pollution at the adjacent L.A. and Long Beach ports.

DIFFICULT HISTORY
Since federal deregulation of the industry in 1980, industry restructuring led port truckers to work as independent contractors, who are not allowed to form unions. More than 90 percent of the workforce was organized during the 1970s, a number turned on its head since then, said Gary Smith, an organizer with Teamsters Local 952 in Orange, California.

Southern California’s port truckers have seen organizing drives before. In 1996, Communications Workers Local 9400 led an innovative campaign at the booming ports, where the number of truckers had doubled in a decade. Local 9400 called rolling strikes, and had 4,000 truckers sign union cards. They sidestepped the independent-contractor barrier by arranging to contract with a new company that pledged to hire workers and recognize the union.

The ports were hostile, and iced the company out. The plan crumbled when owner Don Allen failed to fund his corporate transformation, leaving disaffected workers back at square one. In recent years, immigrant truckers have led wildcat strikes over fuel prices and work conditions.

Area Teamsters locals have also rallied in California ports for years. “A lot of locals are interested because down the line we want to organize,” Smith said. “This is a huge paradigm shift away from the misclassification.”

The Teamsters have been talking to port truckers since the late ‘90s, but Smith says the campaign didn’t take off until Change to Win got behind the port plan.Trucking companies are intent on shutting down labor’s side-door organizing strategy.

“The Teamster solution is to fuse their interests with the environmental groups’ interest in lower pollution,” said Michael Belzer, a trucking industry specialist and professor at Detroit’s Wayne State University. “The employers remember the Teamsters being the guys in control and now they are not ready to relinquish control.”

The ATA is appealing the plan to the federal Ninth Circuit Court, which could rule on the case in months. Several trucking companies in the ATA have abandoned the legal fight and signed agreements that tie access to the ports with compliance to new pollution and employment rules. Other companies have begun buying new trucks and hiring drivers.

The port plan proposes to phase out older trucks over three years, and fine companies using them. A bill in California’s legislature—threatened by the governor’s veto—would impose per-container fees on cargo ships to fund the green fleet.

CARRYING THE LOAD
If the state bill doesn’t force shippers to share the costs of upgrading the truck fleet, trucking companies will bear much of the cost. But in Long Beach it’s a different story. The same requirements for newer, cleaner trucks apply there, but companies won’t be required to grant their truckers “employee” status.

This puts the economic burden for the upgrades on a largely immigrant trucker workforce, who make about $30,000 a year. In late August, truckers protested Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster at a Clean Ports event, calling for cleaner trucks, but not at their expense.

The Long Beach plan offers a subsidy that would offer new $100,000 vehicles for a third of the price. It’s not affordable for most independent truckers, who pay for their own fuel and maintenance, and drive nearly 90 percent of 17,000 trucks that service the ports.
“What’s most likely to happen is that drivers have to default on their lease payments,” said Max Palma, who’s been hauling in L.A. for 16 years.

LAANE activists think that Long Beach’s port will be forced to come around. Because companies that signed up in Los Angeles will haul from Long Beach, too, there will be a de-facto transformation at both ports.

HESITANT STEPS
The ports plan still must vault other hurdles. Though they backed the plan, the federal courts questioned whether a local initiative can overrule federal deregulation laws. And the Federal Maritime Commission, an independent regulatory agency, has threatened to delay it.

The ports plan erodes legal barriers that have shut out unions for decades. But Teamsters activists in Southern California say they’re not sure a organizing strategy driven by lawsuits and deal-making can involve truckers and harness the rank-and-file energy of 1996 and the recent wildcats.

Organizing workers disaffected by past failures will be a tough task. “There are people resisting it, they don’t even want to hear the name of the union,” Palma said, adding, “I think they are misinformed. We will manage and we will succeed—and make a union.”

Something Truly Different About Someone Who Sounds So Much the Same

Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone. He takes the words right from the heads of a legion of ambivalent progressives trying to reconcile their attraction to/revulsion with Obama's candidacy:
...
"All of this saccharine talk of "change" is so transparently a mechanical come-on that if it were anybody but Barack Obama uttering the word, you'd want to throw up at the very sound of it. And yet, as I watch Obama deliver the same hackneyed act I've seen hundreds of times before, I feel against my will that I am actually watching something different at work."
...
"When those other guys took this act on the campaign trail, it was obvious they were just reading lines in a bad script. But maybe it sounds different coming from Obama because he actually means what he says, as weird as that would be. The American Dream, after all, is dying. We do need something new. That much is painfully obvious.

What's confusing about Obama is that he's so successful at projecting an air of genuineness and honesty, even as he navigates the veritable Mount Everest of fakery and onerous bullshit that is our modern electoral system. And the reason it's confusing is that we've grown so used to presidential candidates who fall short of the images they present in public, we don't even know anymore what a man worth the office would look like. Is this him? Or is this just a guy with a gift for concealing the ugliness of the system he represents?"

Curb Your Enthusiasm for Obama

By Chris Hedges from Truthdig

Barack Obama’s health care plan coddles the corporations that profit from the misery and illnesses of tens of millions of Americans. The plan is naive, at best, and probably disingenuous when it insists that we can coax these corporations, which are listed on the stock exchange and exist to maximize profit, to transform themselves into social service agencies that will provide adequate health care for all Americans. I wish we lived in such a rosy world. I know, and I suspect Obama knows, that we do not.

“Obama offers a false hope,” said Dr. John Geyman, the former chair of family medicine at the University of Washington and author of “Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry Is Dying, and How We Must Replace It.” “We cannot build on or tweak the present system. Different states have tried this. The problem is the private insurance industry itself. It is not as efficient as a publicly financed system. It fragments risk pools, skimming off the healthier part of the population and leaving the rest uninsured or underinsured. Its administrative and overhead costs are five to eight times higher than public financing through Medicare. It cares more about its shareholders than its enrollees or patients. A family of four now pays about $12,000 a year just in premiums, which have gone up by 87 percent from 2000 to 2006. The insurance industry is pricing itself out of the market for an ever larger part of the population. The industry resists regulation. It is unsustainable by present trends.”

We face a health crisis. The Democratic and Republican parties, awash in campaign contributions from the beasts they should be slaying on our behalf, have no interest in addressing it. A report in the journal Health Affairs estimates that, if the system is left unchanged, one of every five dollars spent by Americans in 2017 will go to health coverage. Half of all bankruptcies in America are because families are unable to pay their medical bills. There are some 46 million Americans without coverage and tens of millions more with inadequate policies that severely limit what kinds of procedures and treatments they can receive.

“There are at least 25 million Americans who are underinsured,” said Dr. Geyman. “Whatever coverage they have does not come close to covering the actual cost of a major illness or accident.”

Obama, like John McCain, did not support HR 676, the single-payer legislation. The corporations that run our for-profit health care industry, which would be shut down if the bill was enacted, have vigorously fought it through campaign contributions and armies of lobbyists. A study by Harvard Medical School found that national health insurance would save the country $350 billion a year. But Medicare does not make campaign contributions. The private health care industries do. They have lavished money on Obama. He received $708,000 from medical and insurance interests between 2001 and 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And Michelle Obama is a vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals, a position that paid her $316,962 annually.

“The private health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry completely and totally oppose national health insurance,” said Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, one of the founders of Physicians for a National Health Program. “The private health insurance companies would go out of business. The pharmaceutical companies are afraid that a national health program will, as in Canada, be able to negotiate lower drug prices. Canadians pay 40 percent less for their drugs. We see this on a smaller scale in the United States, where the Department of Defense is able to negotiate pharmaceutical prices that are 40 percent lower.”

Sen. Obama argues that we can improve the system by expanding government oversight. The government, he says, should require doctors and hospitals to prove they provide quality care. His plan links payment with reported quality. This would mean that health care providers would have to hire even larger staffs to collect and report this data to the government. There would be a $10-billion federal investment in health care information technology over five years under the Obama plan, in essence turning record keeping from paper to electronic data.

Obama’s plan, said Dr. Don McCanne, who writes on health care issues, would actually make health plans “more expensive, which compounds the problem.”

Obama says he would require insurance companies to use more income from premiums for patient care.

“There isn’t an enforcement mechanism,” Geyman said bluntly. “Most states have been unable to control rates or set a cap on rates.”

Obama’s plan would also not cover all Americans. Unlike in Canada, citizens would not be enrolled in a plan automatically. Americans would have to go looking for one they could afford. And if they could not find one they would remain uninsured. Dr. Woolhandler, who is also a professor at Harvard Medical School, estimates that “tens of millions” of Americans would remain uninsured under Obama’s plan. These numbers would swell as employers, who provide plans for 59 percent of those who are employed, continue to reduce coverage.

“The only way everyone will get insurance is with national health insurance,” she said from Boston in a phone interview. “There is nothing in the Obama plan that will change the bitter reality that working-class families face when their breadwinner gets sick. People with catastrophic illnesses usually lose their jobs and lose their insurance. They often cannot afford the high premiums for the insurance they can get when they are unable to work. Most families that file for bankruptcy because of medical costs had insurance before they got sick. They either lost the insurance because they lost their jobs or faced gaps in coverage that meant they could not afford medical care.”

Obama has borrowed John Kerry’s idea to have the government absorb certain severe costs, although again the details are not spelled out. Insurers, he says, would no longer be able to discriminate based on preexisting conditions. All children would have health coverage. He would, he says, expand Medicare and Medicare-like coverage to protect the very young and the elderly. This is laudable, if he can make it happen. But the fundamental problem is a health industry run for profit. Our health system costs nearly twice as much as national programs in countries such as Switzerland. The overhead for traditional Medicare is 3 percent, and the overhead for the investment-owned companies is 26.5 percent. A staggering 31 percent of our health care expenditures is spent on administrative costs. Look what we get in return.

We on the left, those who should be out there fighting for universal health care and total and immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, sit like lap dogs on the short leashes of our Democratic (read corporate) masters. We yap now and then, but we have forgotten how to snarl and bite. We have been domesticated. And until we punish the two main parties the way big corporations do, by withdrawing support and funding when our issues are ignored, we will remain irrelevant and impotent. I detest Bill O’Reilly, but he is right on one thing—we liberals are a spineless lot.

Labor unions don’t negotiate with corporations on the basis of good will. They negotiate carrying the threat of a strike. What power do we have as long as we cave on every issue we stand for, from opposition to the death penalty to battling back against the military-industrial complex?

It is not about liking or not liking Obama. It is not about race or class or gender. It is not about growing up poor or a member of the working class. There is no shortage of greasy politicians who, once in power, sold out their own. Look at Bill Clinton. It is about fighting back. It is about confronting a system that belittles us, what we stand for and what is best for the majority of Americans. We need to throw our support behind alternative candidates who champion what we care about, whether Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader. Bob Barr’s health care plan, like John McCain’s, is even worse than Obama’s tepid proposal. We need to begin to actively and militantly defy the corporate state, and this means stepping outside of the two-party system. Universal health insurance is one issue. There are others. Nothing we care about will change until we do.

The Democrats, who promise to end the war in Iraq, create jobs and provide universal health care, ignore these promises once election cycles are over. And we never make them pay. They gave us NAFTA, the destruction of welfare and increased military spending, and we gave them our vote. This is the party that took back Congress in 2006 on an anti-war platform and then increased troop levels and funding for the Iraq war. This is a party that talks about the crushing weight of debt carried by Americans and then refuses to cap predatory interest rates as high as 30 percent imposed by credit card companies. This is a party that promises to protect our constitutional rights and then passes the FISA bill to protect the telecommunications companies. The list goes on. These politicians, including Obama, must begin to feel heat. They must learn that there is a cost to be paid for working on behalf of corporations and disempowering citizens.

D.C. Teachers Divided on Merit Pay Plan

September, 2008 issue of Labor Notes

The Washington Teachers Union is on a collision course with D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee over her plan to kill job security for teachers in exchange for merit pay—up to $20,000 a year in bonuses—and higher salaries.

D.C. is home to the second-highest number of charter schools in the country and a slowly declining school-age population. Mayor Adrian Fenty, who took control of the school system last year, believes the plan will get rid of bad teachers, motivate the rest, up student achievement, and raise the profile of a district that has lost 22,000 students and 1,500 teachers in 10 years.

But merit pay has been taboo in teachers unions because it pits teachers against each other, and because awards are often tied to students’ scores on the dreaded standardized tests. Teachers say the tests, loved by administrators looking for quick ways to measure student progress, are not only an unreliable gauge of learning but also a route to deadly dull classrooms.

In many districts, teachers already receive performance pay for attaining board certification, mentoring, or teaching in low-performing schools. Since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind law, however, standardized tests have become the key measure of teacher performance and student achievement.

During 10 months of negotiations, Rhee’s proposals have created fault lines both within the union leadership and among its members. “This will attract teachers for the wrong reason,” said a veteran teacher and member of the WTU executive board. “Are they going to come for the pay or to make a difference for students?”

“I don’t consider this merit pay, because everyone would get a base pay raise,” said President George Parker. “This is incentive pay, which is a bonus for performance.”

When contract talks stalled in mid-July, Parker was criticized for convening meetings where the chancellor pitched her two-tier scheme to the local’s 4,200 teachers.

SEEING GREEN

Rhee is proposing that current teachers choose one of two tracks, Red or Green. Both include $5,000 “transition” stipends for two years, and better benefits.

Red track teachers would get a 31 percent raise over five years. Green teachers would get a smaller raise, but they’d be eligible for merit pay—as much as $20,000 a year if they met performance standards.

Many teachers left the meetings seeing green. “I’m looking at a 73 percent raise in one year,” said first-grade teacher Steve Oberly. “If we did this program for five years, I would have a retirement nest egg.”

To get on the merit-based pay plan, Oberly, a ten-year veteran, would undergo a year of probation, after which he could be dismissed for under-performance. Though fired teachers can appeal to an elected body of teachers and administrators, the school principal has the final say. Teachers say favoritism would rule the day.

“This could lead to mass terminations,” said Candi Peterson, a WTU trustee and building representative. “And they could get rid of a position, when they really want to get rid of a person.”

All new teachers would join the Green tier as at-will, probationary employees for four years. Over that period, they would see a 20 percent raise and up their total salary from $50,000 to $75,000—if they survived.

Teachers who chose the Red program and got fired would receive a salaried one-year leave or, for teachers with 20 years’ experience, an early retirement package. Green teachers would get nothing.

The union would be giving up job security across the board, as both plans do away with seniority for the hiring, firing, or placement of teachers. “There is no such thing as a safe tier,” said Peterson.

WTU’s parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, recently elected Randi Weingarten to the union’s top spot. As head of the New York City teachers union, Weingarten negotiated merit pay last fall, and her elevation signals AFT’s openness to such pay plans.

As early as 2002, the AFT endorsed what it calls “professional compensation,” but highlighted the pitfalls: “questionable or difficult-to-understand assessment procedures” and “teacher morale problems stemming from the creation of unfair competition.”

Opponents say D.C.’s merit plan contains the same dangers.

“They’re going to ask teachers to vote on this plan before determining how we’re going to be evaluated for performance pay,” Peterson said.

Solvency has been the biggest issue for merit schemes. “Numerous plans have begun in the last 40 years but they flat run out of money,” said Rob Weil, of AFT’s Educational Issues Department. “They’re often programs that we love, but when they require new money, they lose their luster.”

Rhee claims her pay plan has private backing from the Gates Foundation, among others, but only for five years. When this money runs out, she promises to free up resources by streamlining bureaucracy and ending the outsourcing of special education.

Her 20-year early-retirement plan, however, relies on a squeezed district budget. The city already rejected proposals for a 25-year plan last year.

LEADERSHIP SPLITS

The contract talks have exacerbated the rift between Parker and WTU’s Vice President, Nathan Saunders. After Parker barred him from speaking on behalf of the union, Saunders sued Parker, members of the executive board, and Rhee, charging them with conspiracy.

Saunders’ litigious streak has served the union well. A 2002 suit he filed uncovered a $5 million embezzlement scandal that sent then-WTU president Barbara Bullock to jail for nine years.

Now, Saunders and others are filing an unfair labor practice charge against Parker and Rhee after revelations that two nonprofits close to Rhee hired several teachers for $1,000 a week to lobby their colleagues to accept merit pay.

Despite internal divisions, the WTU is opposing any proposal that attacks tenure, a legal right shared by all D.C. employees. Tenure rights ensure due process and recognition of years of service in staffing decisions.

Meanwhile, Rhee has closed 23 schools in the last year, leaving 600 teachers awaiting re-assignment just weeks before school begins. According to Peterson, 78 instructors were fired in June. “Even though we have due process under the old contract, we’ve had people illegally terminated,” she said. “Imagine what it would be like with a weaker contract.”

New teachers can’t be hired, nor can negotiations move forward, until teachers are placed. Rhee’s push for a mid-July vote before the AFT national convention fizzled, heightening scrutiny of her proposals, and making an agreement unlikely before school begins in late August.

Black and White

1937 sit-down at the Fisher Body plant; Detroit, MI

Aerial View of Detroit; 1930

Wayne State has digitized portions of the Detroit News Collection dating from the late 19th century. More recently, they've added about 400 newsreels from the 1920's to their Virtual Motor City archive. A few favorites: unharnessed steelworkers putting up the Penobscot; and some bonnie lassies at Bob-Lo's Scottish fest. Better than your grand ma ma's scrapbook.

Barns for Obama

In June I received an email from "Obama for America". Barack had an important video announcement-news that he wanted me to hear first-about foregoing public funding (if it's broken, continue to break it!).

In the coming months, I (and millions more) have received several "personalized" messages from Barack telling me "this campaign is in your hands like no other time before." A recent one, entitled “Backstage," informed me that ten regular folks will be fist-bumping with Barack at the DNC.

Ten days ago, David Plouffe was proud to say I could hear Barack's choice for VP via text message: "Barack wants you to be the first to know who will join him in leading our movement for change."

Finding that out won't be difficult, in fact it was all over the news this morning (how do you best “make up” for being young and black?)

This overzealous, high-tech populism warrants our suspicion and betrays insecurity within Obama’s war room about accusations of elitism (look at all them Barns for Obama!). But few things are more elitist than making a novelty of the “regular” American.

We're offered a glowing blue form of access by email, twitter, and facebook, that doesn't alter the inaccessible corporate electioneering machine that keeps Obama centrist when not vague.

No faux-populism would be complete without inspiring faux-music. I couldn’t make it much past two and a half minutes.

Beep Beep Yeah

Take your shoes off.

Cultivate a point guard’s court vision. See your path a half-mile ahead (and behind), look for brake lights, disappearing lanes, detours, exits, and police. Position yourself accordingly.

Seek open space, take measured risks and seize openings.
Ex: The far-right lane is a vastly underused channel. The conventional “pass on the left rule” loses weight when you are in the center lane.

Traffic slowdowns aren't always bad. Turn the air off and open the window. Make phone calls. Fix your underwear or a snack.

When in traffic, resist the un-original temptation to jump in the lane that seems to be moving. Cars ahead of you are hastily doing the same thing, meanwhile freeing up the one you're in.

When you happen upon a jam due to lane closure, use the free lane to drive as far as possible before merging. But don't get caught at the end waiting to get in. The "No butts, no cuts, no coconuts" still holds currency.

Many off ramps are right next to on ramps. If you find yourself in traffic and near an exit, you can get off and then right back on, often bypassing some of the congestion. This has worked and backfired.

Cars are karaoke capsules. You’ll also be surprised at the range of dance moves available to the driver.

You can often attain your desired speed in the “slow lane” while letting the left-laners shoulder the risk.

Train yourself to recognize police forms: bumper guards, excessive reflective material, orb-spotlights, rooftop sirens, and buzz cuts, but also oddly spare cars like all-black or all-white unmarked Crown Vics).

Foster good will with the cars around you. Let people in and out of lanes when possible. The courtesy wave can be used as a sign of gratitude, but also a tool for initiating a bold move.

Maintain momentum and smoothness like a downhill skier. To this end, use the brakes as little as possible.

Steak and Shake's shoestring fries are worth the stop. Burger King will consistently disappoint.

In a tight spot, you might find yourself wondering, "What would Hasselhoff do?" Lean towards the 80's Hoff, and away from the post-Bay Watch Hassle.

On Hold

I dutifully dialed in five minutes ahead of yesterday's conference call with John Sweeney and the AFL-CIO's recently endorsed presidential candidate, Barack Obama. The muzak was terrible, failing even to effectively stylize a familiar tune. Every two minutes a calm, computer-like woman came on to thank us for joining her in patience.

“We are still waiting for Senator Obama to join us…please continue to hold."
I held for over 30 minutes. I know Barack is very busy these days, but I couldn't get past the feeling of recurring abandonment. (Clinton's NAFTA, and welfare "reform". And the failed '06 Congressional rush to end the war.) Working people once again kept in the waiting room, their co-pay registered, their political support taken for granted. But labor leaders still kissing ass and making appointments.

At 3:47, Obama arrived for a speech that was too short to contain anything more than platitudes. Broadly, he would champion the cause of working people, and restore the middle class dream with universal health care, and fair(er?) trade deals. Seven minutes later he was gone, the stench of lip service in the air, diffused only by the sycophantic applause from Sweeney's crowded DC boardroom.

The transparent display was insulting, leading me to wonder, (less and less):
Is Obama not only not working in the interest of working people but against them? (either we are in for a disappointment or Goldman Sachs).

Or; Are the Democrats well-intentioned, aiming to help working class people, but consistently wrong in their strategy? This is what they would have us believe. ("we were fed misinformation!" on Iraq) Or this hedge by Hillary, on NAFTA.


Obama signed off with the consistently empty; "god bless you, god bless america," and hung up. There was a pause for about ten seconds, then more muzak.

The computer woman returned: "The conference call is not concluded. Senator Obama’s line has been lost, and we are trying to re-establish." Negotiations commenced behind the scenes.

Two minutes of muzak. Then: "The call is over. You may now disconnect."
I waited for a few seconds just in case. Then a piercing beep came over the line and I hung up quickly.

University of California Service Workers Lead Five Day Strike

In August 2008 print edition of Labor Notes

After months of fruitless negotiations with the University of California, AFSCME Local 3299 members escalated their contract fight with a five-day strike in mid-July. Demanding a living wage of $15 an hour, custodians, groundskeepers, and bus drivers rallied at UC campuses and five medical centers from Sacramento to San Diego. They oppose a contract without guaranteed pay raises for most workers and bumps to $12 an hour for only a few.

Of the 8,500 service workers, about 8,200 are eligible for food stamps and other public assistance. The same jobs at UC state and community colleges pay 25 percent more.

The local also represents 11,000 patient care workers at university medical centers, who likewise have yet to agree on a contract. Though the patient care workers have been offered a raise of 26 percent over five years, it won’t help the service workers who lead the strike.

DON’T CROSS THE LINE

Medical centers threatened to revoke licenses from patient care workers who honored the picket lines outside hospitals. Still, entire departments stopped work for a day or two in support. Seven hundred strikers from both units rallied at UC Davis on day four to demand better pay and seniority.

“Service workers have no step system for pay,” said Secretary Treasurer Gail Price. “New people make the same as someone working here for 20 years.”

The action, which caused delays to bus routes, cafeteria service, and garbage collection, went on despite a court-ordered temporary restraining order. Workers in building trades unions refused to cross picket lines, temporarily halting campus construction projects.

Accused of leading an illegal strike that endangered patients, Local 3299 officials said they gave sufficient notice to employers about the stoppage. The strikers are challenging the injunction in court, accusing administrators of using illegal forms of intimidation.

“The university first argued this would cripple our medical centers,” said Kathryn Lybarger, a gardener at Berkeley, who sits on the bargaining committee. “After the strike they said it didn’t affect them at all.”

In a July 15 letter to the school president, 34 state legislators decried reports that “managers are advising picketers they will lose their jobs short of immediately returning to work.” If workers have exhausted mediation and negotiations, California law allows workers in higher education to strike once their contract has expired.

The university blames its belt-tightening on the state’s budget gap, but only 8.6% of the union’s members receive their wages from state funds. While UC claimed to have its hands tied, new president Mark Yudof was hired this spring into an $828,000 position. On day five, the strike culminated outside his Oakland office. Workers are infuriated by the meager offer of poverty wages. A year of bargaining, however, has hardened their resolve. “A lot of people are saying ‘let’s strike again,’” said Lybarger.

Labor Board Becomes Government’s ‘Rip Van Winkle’

In August 2008 Print Edition of Labor Notes and Monthly Review

Returning to school after winter break, Austin Garrido found that ULoop, an online marketplace for college students, had cut his hourly pay. Elsewhere on the University of California-Polytechnic’s campus in Pomona, his co-worker Sarah Doolittle also discovered a light paycheck.

Unhappy about $8 an hour and shrunken bonuses from the Craigslist-type outfit, the two posted their grievances at Uloop’s online message board for workers. “It’s the only way for employees on different campuses to communicate with each other,” Garrido said.

They started a thread that raised the prospect of unionizing, but management was reading, too. ULoop removed the post five minutes later, and 20 minutes after that the company fired Garrido and Doolittle over the phone.

Their new manager, hired to oversee the wage cuts, cited under-performance, but it was clear that Garrido and Doolittle were singled out for their online organizing via the message board. “They didn’t have a stated usage policy,” said Garrido. “There were a number of non-work-related posts on there.”

Claiming violations of their right to self-organize, the two filed a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint, seeking back pay and their jobs.

Much to their surprise, the grievance quickly rose to the NLRB's Office of Advice in Washington, D.C, where it entered into a contentious national debate over workers’ rights to online communication.

ON GUARD

Just before Garrido and Doolittle's complaint against ULoop, the Labor Board had laid out its first major ruling on electronic communications, in December 2007.

The controversial 3 to 2 Register-Guard decision stemmed from an incident in 2001, when management at the Eugene, Oregon, newspaper disciplined a copy editor, the Communications Workers (CWA) local president, for sending three union-related messages to the workforce on the company email system.

The Board majority said that the newspaper’s property rights allowed it to decide how the email system would be used—and that employees have no right to use the company email for “concerted activity.”

As long as the ban on concerted activity is not wholesale, the three argued, employers are not compelled to facilitate the most convenient method for worker communication about union matters.

CWA argued that the company’s policy banning “non-work” emails was illegal because it effectively banned union talk. On top of that, the company was selectively enforcing the policy by allowing solicitations about birthday parties and charity donations while punishing union use.

The Board majority broke NLRB precedent and gave employers the right to decide what types of “non-work” communication they wanted to allow.

THE RIGHT TO TALK UNION

The two dissenting members cited precedents dating to 1945 that said the employer’s property rights must yield to the rights of employees to self-organize and take action on the job.

Arguments for employer restrictions don’t hold up in the digital age, says West Virginia University law professor Anne Lofaso. “The Board talks about telephones and bulletin boards as having cost or space concerns,” she said. “Neither of these concerns apply to email."

Because electronic communications are the primary tool for workers to maintain connection in virtual and remote workplaces, Lofaso called the Board decision disingenuous. “Everyone knows that people rely on email at work, so why did the majority decide to ignore that?” she asked. “Because it weakens their case.”

The two dissenters called the decision hopelessly out of touch with workplace realities, and accused the majority of making the NLRB the “Rip Van Winkle of administrative agencies.”

UNENFORCEABLE?

The Register-Guard decision appears devastating for workers' rights, but its effect will depend on how or whether it is enforced.

In Eugene, CWA Local 37194 President Randi Bjornstad noted that the new company policy against mass emails bars the union from sending the types of message that led to the original conflict.

Still, Bjornstad says that union-related emails remain common, without reprisals from the paper.

“Through our entire bargaining process, we have sent emails back and forth to company reps and to each other,” she said. “It has been a rather nebulous kind of ruling in terms of how it has been put into practice.”

Meanwhile, the Register-Guard case is in the Washington, D.C., appeals court, where CWA is challenging the new employer powers to single out union speech for punishment.

In the wake of Register-Guard, the Los Angeles office of the NLRB saw test case written all over the ULoop complaint. However, the Mountain View, California, company is inching toward a settlement, in order to avoid litigation.

The Register-Guard precedent continues to restrict workers’ rights to electronic communications, but Lofaso is confident that the ULoop case exposes its fragility. “Even a McCain-appointed NLRB could overturn this ruling,” she said.

Dark Shades of Green

On the origins of Toyota's Prius in this month's In These Times.

I'll Remember Remembering You Fondly

I saw a Ford Escort parked at Michigan and Trumbull with a magnetic "security" sign on its roof last week. Tiger Stadium will be falling soon, demolition began June 30. I went back to see the stadium today, now with a gaping hole in the left field wall. All the backhoes and bulldozers seemed like a whole lot of wasted energy, precisely because it's fallen into disuse since '99.


I'm not exactly kicking myself for failing to get a pocket full of dirt from the infield, and I've never grappled in the stands for a home run ball. I don't even much enjoy baseball.

But as I walked over the pedestrian bridge and back to my car, I felt an uncontrollable reverence, near mourning, for the passing of a great Detroit ruin. I hear it all the time in reference to assorted buildings that have long since lost their initial purpose: "knock it down," and in reference to the city itself "just flatten the thing."

There's a value, sometimes tragic, to these relics when they gain new life by conversion. But they also serve a purpose by merely sitting dormant. Nostalgia fills many yawning voids throughout the city. Why should we destroy the markers of bygone greatness? Detroit, the old man on the examining table, proud and naked, exhibits its estrangement from vitality like no other.

I wish the marble floors of Michigan Central Station still clapped with traffic. But I'd prefer a slow crumbling to the wrecking ball. After all, there's no shortage of space around here.

Most fans have memories of games with Pops, but I mostly remember craning from the backseat to catch a glimpse of the orange Tiger growling through the big blue D on our drive along 75 to the east side. The stadium hovered close to the highway, like a white aluminum battleship merging into traffic.

I had no choice but to cheer for the Tigers after their prime, despite an auspicious beginning. The week after I was born, they won the '84 series. I watched and waited through the nineties for it to happen again, but the Tigers brought up the rear for the bulk of my youth, showing an uncanny knack for failure.


So I set about memorizing the happy days and the entertaining 1984 roster as if it were my own Detroit squad. At the helm, Sparky Anderson, directing an all-star cast including Kirk Gibson, Trammell, Chet Lemon, "Sweet Lou" Whitaker, and Rusty Kuntz.



I only went inside once when I was nine (I took my glove to catch foul balls more often at Toledo's Ned Skeldon stadium, former home of the scrappy AAA-feeder Mud Hens). My aunt Shelly took me and my cousins for "run the bases" night in Detroit, where everyone under four foot five got to trot around the diamond, basking in their moment under the big lights. I slid into home, it was great. Let the kids in again.

Thirty-year-old Palestinian Hossam Dwayat turned his Caterpillar bulldozer into a lethal weapon last week in West Jerusalem, killing three Israelis and injuring many more. It's not easy (in America) to contextualize this terrifying act without being accused of excusing it. I certainly don’t support the forms of resistance that kill innocents. It is impossible, though, to separate Dwayat’s attack from his daily experience under colonial rule.

Dwayat left his family in East Jerusalem, where 250,000 Palestinians have lived with military occupation since 1967. Juan Cole points out that most of the international coverage of the July 2 attacks omitted a key detail: Dwayat was working construction on the major thoroughfare of Jaffa Road, building a causeway for Israel’s light rail system.

If completed, the light rail line would join the western part of the city with Pisgat Ze'ev, the largest settlement in “Greater Jerusalem,” a euphemism for the city plus its illegal settlements (often softened to Israeli “neighborhoods”) on the West Bank. These colonies are connected by exclusive roads for Jewish Israelis, and tap into Palestinian aquifers. They are also the breeding ground for a violently anti-Arab culture. The line is one more attempt to normalize the settlements and integrate them into an expansive Israeli capitol while the "peace process" drags on.
It is not difficult to imagine Dwayat going mad with the realization that he had become an agent of his own colonization, literally laying the tracks for the Israeli colonial project.

Late for School in Los Angeles

Appearing in print edition of July 2008 issue of Labor Notes

Forty thousand Los Angeles teachers delayed the start of classes for one hour on June 6 to protest threatened cuts to education funding. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed cutbacks are part of an attempt to close an estimated $17 billion statewide budget gap. The reductions would create a $560 million shortfall in the next two years within Los Angeles schools, the state’s largest district. Cuts to education across the state could well top $4 billion in total.

The teachers union, United Teachers-Los Angeles, said the funding drop would equal an 8 percent pay cut for all district employees. Despite a no-strike clause in their contract and a loss of pay, more than three-quarters of UTLA members joined the hour-long “late-in” outside their schools. “It is fair to say this may have been the largest job action for teachers ever in California,” said UTLA Vice President Joshua Pechthalt. “It was definitely the right thing to do given the statewide response to the budget cuts.”

The turnout was built with community support. Across the district, members of California’s largest teacher local held weekly meetings with chapter chairs and parents’ councils. Robin Potash teaches at Wadsworth Elementary, where parent-teacher solidarity has grown for several years, and especially since April, when they fought a charter school’s attempt to use Wadsworth classroom space. When June 6 arrived, more than 15,000 parents, students, and community members closed ranks with the teachers.

“This was really a statement from parents and the community that we will protect public education,” Potash said. The Los Angeles school board went to court to prevent the widely publicized protest, but failed. Superintendent David Brewer dispatched recorded calls to 48,000 teachers and 700,000 parents the night before the action, accusing UTLA leaders of jeopardizing student safety.

Union president A.J. Duffy argues that the proposed cuts go beyond just schools. “There could be cuts to aid to the blind and disabled, food programs for low-income kids, and health clinics,” he said.

At the state level, the California Teachers Association (the state’s NEA affiliate) launched a “Cuts Hurt” spring bus tour and a “Day of the Teacher” action in May, which brought out thousands of teachers against the governor’s crippling proposals.

“We’re offering a broader strategy, fighting not just for public education but for all social services,” said Pechthalt.

The California Federation of Teachers (the AFT affiliate) has joined in the challenge with a progressive tax campaign which calls for boosting income taxes for those who make more than $400,000 a year. The 1.7 percent bump would create $5 billion in new revenue.

Duffy also points to a potential $1.3 billion windfall from taxing oil production. “We are the only state in the country, the only governmental entity in the world, that does not tax oil companies for taking oil out of the ground,” Duffy said.

UTLA has also had to fight just to get its members paid. The union filed a lawsuit last June against the school board over a faulty payroll system, another factor in teachers’ mounting
frustration that peaked with the late-in.

STATEWIDE STRIKE?

UTLA teachers are considering another one-hour work stoppage in the fall in conjunction with the CTA.“The idea of a statewide teachers strike needs to be on the table,” said Pechthalt.

While pushing their big-picture strategy, UTLA teachers continue a protracted contract fight. After winning a 6 percent pay raise in early 2007, the latest round of contract talks produced an offer with no salary increase. Despite reports of a $700 million budget surplus last year, the school board has stonewalled teachers in negotiations for nine months.

After the June 6 action, the school board’s revised budget proposal removed the threat of teacher layoffs. But the board also unilaterally imposed furlough days for teachers, while capping health care spending without accounting for rising costs.

Teachers across California expect a long fight. “Students didn’t create this budget
crisis,” said CTA president David Sanchez. “And their education shouldn’t be ransomed to solve it.”