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1. Sandwichman on 13.07.2010 at 13:59 (Reply)

   Tula,

   I want shorter work time explored as a solution to the unemployment crisis. Shorter hours and higher pay was the philosophy of the American Federation of Labor in its formative years embodied by Mary Steward’s slogan, “whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay.” Over the years the two parts of a single issue came to be treated as if they were two distinct and even competing issues: shorter hours OR higher pay. This was a strategic mistake of the highest order.

   My proposal is for re-invigorating the labor movement by returning to its roots. It contains two parts: first, institutional innovation as a vehicle for social change and second, a new tool for macro-economic analysis that can give direction to the emerging institution. I’ll send you the full, 2500-word discussion paper by email and post the introduction below:

   Persistent high levels of unemployment in the wake of the Great Recession are drawing attention to structural imbalances in the economy that require measures beyond the usual cyclical responses of fiscal stimulus. Encouraged by the success of the Kurzarbeit program in Germany, work sharing features as one of the suggested policy responses. Meanwhile, looming environmental perils – ranging from climate change and loss of biodiversity to accumulations of toxic waste and resource depletion – have prompted an upsurge of interest in alternatives to economic growth. Recent books by Juliet Schor, Tim Jackson, and Peter Victor, among others, have called for work time reduction as a strategy for maintaining employment in a low growth or steady state economy. The backbone of my book, The Gift of Prosperity is an in-depth examination of past and current insights, controversies and misconceptions about working time, leisure, technology, productivity, wages and employment. I have distilled from these extensive conversations two innovative policy proposals, nicknamed “the Canoe” and “the Compass,” which address current dilemmas about the economy, employment and the environment. The Canoe describes an institutional vehicle for the policy voyage and the Compass serves as navigational aide and direction finder for that journey.

   The Canoe addresses two key questions: first, what kind of new institution might foster a more socially equitable and ecologically sustainable allocation of work and working time? Second, how can we account for the social and environmental impacts of economic activity? Discussions of working time have often addressed only two options for allocating the hours of work: markets and government regulation. Collective bargaining has usually been assimilated to one or the other pole. Elinor Ostrom’s case study analysis of the management of common pool resources suggests a third distinct institutional model for determining the hours of labor: common pool resource management unionism. That new institution (albeit with important historical precursors) could serve as a starting point for new a mode of social and environmental accounting.

   The Compass helps chart a course through the dense and complex relationship between hours, employment, policy and productivity and to extract from that analysis estimates of the production and employment potential of work time reduction. Advocates of shorter working time have normally positioned reduction of hours as a buffer against job losses that would otherwise result from technological progress. On the other hand, mainstream economists adopt a model of income/leisure choice that treats the reduction of working time as an optional consumer choice made possible by productivity gains. Both of those responses can be described as volunteeristic. My analysis suggests, however, that failure to redeem the productivity dividend inherent in work time reduction results in the forfeit not only of leisure but also of potential efficiency and employment gains. The choice is thus not negotiable ; income and leisure are not substitutes for each other because their sum is sensitive to the relative proportion of its parts.

2. peggy dobbins on 13.07.2010 at 19:39 (Reply)

   Thank goodness Tom Walker posted this.

   I also strongly urge American labor leaders and all with influence with them to get with it on the imperative of finding a way to reduce the hours of labor for a livable wage as the only way forward for people who have to work for a living to survive globalization. Walker cites the German success with work sharing by those who still have jobs. India offers another approach, which is to guarantee a minimum number of hours of work a year for a subsistence wage. I have a feeling that the latter round the back way approach that sounds like returning to Dickensian work houses for the poor could establish a precedent for direct hiring by the government in the CCC/WPA tradition, reducing the legal standard hours of labor for standard benefits, including mandating a livable wage. Those who abhor the “dole” “government paying people not to work” should prefer “requiring” or “guaranteeing”
   20 hours of labor to “earn” the equivalent of the median payout of extending unemployment insurance which is also about the same as current subsistence for one adult and child receiving TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families ( formerly AFDC, aka”welfare”

   Walker is right in the big picture. Civilization cannot continue advancing insofar as some of us still believe innovations that increase productivity (more done in less time) are advances, unless those who presume to know what is in the best interest of we who have to work for a living, get their heads cleared enough to see what all their successful predecessors took as fundamental. The hours of labor for a livable wage have to keep coming down. We all need to understand FREEDOM is not freedom to choose between Coke and Pepsi, but free time, living time, free from worrying about how to pay the rent and buy milk. Next to infant mortality, paid days off is the best measure of a healthy, prosperous, happy state.

   Thanks for airing this too long ignored appropriate response to the current crisis

3. marshall on 14.07.2010 at 08:12 (Reply)

   THE LARGER PUBLIC SHOULD HEAR THE “VOICES” OF WORKING PEOPLE’ , THEIR CREATIVITY AND PERSPECTIVES ON WORK FAMILT AND COMMUNITY.
   tHEIR NARRATIVE VOICES CAN BE HEARD AT Umass.edu/lmwep

   Just published ” Kindred Voices: The Workers writing Project”

4. Social list on 14.07.2010 at 13:28 (Reply)

   Break with the Democratic Party, including taking all union financial support back from Democratic campaigns. No bureaucratic coopting of union support. Support independent working-class candidates. Build the Workers Party. Call it The Labor Party if that makes it sound better to you, but it will be a party of, by, and for working women and men and those who want to work, and it will be a Workers Party, to be
   democratically organized from the grass roots rank and file.

   All union officers and officials to be paid at the prevailing wage of those they represent, and to be recallable by majority democratic vote of the rank and file. All expense accounts for officers and officials to be democratically overseen by the rank and file.

   All officers, stewards, E-Board members, negotiating team members, to come before the members in candidate forums before union elections.

   Strike funds established and fully funded by all union locals. Active public solidarity for all strikes.

   All E-Board meetings to have an open component for rank and file attendance.

   Pooled fares for all delegates to national conventions, and all delegates elected from the rank and file.

   Regular monthly union meetings organized for a quorum, with all proposed meeting agendas to be published well in advance of any union meeting and adjustable by vote of the members attending. All meetings run by roberts rules of order, with voluntary chair chosen from the ranks, and reasonable time limits on contributions from the floor so that all who want to speak can do so, in turn, on stack kept by the chair and called on in turn. All substantive business subject to vote. Minutes kept for every union meeting and timely published to the rank and file. Expanded time period for nominations to office and for campaigning.

5. boxermom on 14.07.2010 at 16:28 (Reply)

   I think in order for labor to make the advancements we need, we must first get the laws changed that give corporations the same rights and protections as individuals. Our founding fathers never intended corporations to have these rights. We need to get back to our roots and strip rights that were meant only for individuals away from the powerful corporations so that we can finally control them for the benefit of all, rather than allowing them to control us for the benefit of a few. If we don’t do this first, our efforts to improve the lot of labor in this country will never bear the fruits that they should. To this end, AFL-CIO and Netroots Nation should be concentrating resources on promoting laws that would severely limit the rights of corporations.

6. Labor Ed on 14.07.2010 at 17:26 (Reply)

   Young workers are our future. The reality is that they normally come to unions with little actual understanding of what unions are; why they are needed; what they do; and how they do it.

   Worse many come filled with the distortions that exist in society about organized labor. Because there’s a vacuum of accurate information about organized labor society (and the enemies of industrial democracy) fill the air with distortions, exaggerations, half-truths, and lots of ugly stereotypes about unions all masquerading as the TRUTH.

   We need to find a way to expose them to the history of how the employer/employee relationship in the U.S. was “humanized” as it evolved from its roots in the master/servant and master/slave relationships. Students are idealistic. They have an abiding belief that the world should be fair. They want level playing fields. They believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, you should have a shot at achieving the American Dream. The story of what labor unions did to give the average working person a shot at making that a reality for union and non-union workers would resonate with them.

   School social studies standards are set on a state by state basis. Not all states have the power and determination to pass a law demanding labor history be taught in American History as did Wisconsin. That is why I believe framing it as the story of the humanization of the ER/EE relationship works better. There is a reason why average employees no longer regularly work 10-14 hour days and 6-7 day workweeks. There were forces pushing for and against that humanization. Students need to know who they were and the arguments each side used to defend its point of view. They can even look at original documents so the argument that a biased point of view is being presented is thrown out the window.

   If that happened, students who became employees and employers would have a better understanding of the nature of the ER/EE relationship. Our elected officials would have new information and maybe the debates in legislatures would be over the degree of unionization not over whether unions are needed and serve a purpose.

   The “raw material” that unions find in the workplace, i.e., employees would have a better understanding of what unions can and cannot do. They’d understand that a union’s power doesn’t come from its number of members alone, but more importantly its numbers of informed and involved members who are willing to engage in public and private acts of solidarity. They’d be more open to understanding labor’s 4 interconnected tools: collective bargaining, political involvement, organizing the unorganized, and building coalitions and alliances with like-minded groups.

   Employees would come to the workplace understanding that the values on which this great nation was formed, and which we are still trying to extend to all who live here…those values of giving voice to the previously voiceless, of due process, of providing checks and balances on arbitrary and capricious unilateral decision making are also the values that make unions work best.

   We must realize that by planting the acorn of labor education in the nation’s public and private schools today will reap us mighty oak trees of economic and social justice decades into the future.

   Netroots Nation can help promote and spread this idea so that more people who understand its power for change will work to get labor in our schools.

7. beeyawn on 14.07.2010 at 17:30 (Reply)

   Here are the issues I think working families face that would make for good topics to discuss as labor communicators:

   1) Affecting the creation of sustainable, green careers (and not simply jobs) to spur real, long-term economic growth

   2) Private and public sector unions working together strategically to increase union density

   3) Standing up to attacks on public sector unions being a drag or cause to our bad economy

   4) In light of our country’s economic problems, bring back the security of good pensions and protect the pensions working families deserve

   See you in Las Vegas!

   Ben Gamboa
   Chair, Public Relations
   California School Employees Association

8. vegasguy on 14.07.2010 at 18:04 (Reply)

   If you stopped giving politicians millions and millions you might be able to help the people who you took the money from!

9. Griff on 14.07.2010 at 18:11 (Reply)

   It’s a simple startby bring back jobs to the USA and convince corporations to come back by offering them tax incentives or other benefits , with the people working and paying taxes they earned working would more than make up the difference. Start a big campain well organized calling companies that leave unamerican . stop corporate greed.

10. Kent on 14.07.2010 at 22:47 (Reply)

    How can labor bring pressure to bear on the government to pass the Employee Free Choice Act? Though the bill is not at the top of Mr. Trumka’s agenda, it may be the only way to save organized labor from irrelevance. Lobbying legislators, by itself, failed. Trying to influence elections with large campaign contributions won’t accomplish labor’s goals, as the Arkansas primary showed. Is it time to use labor’s economic strength to influence Congress? Would mass marches be effective? What can we learn from foreign unions? Does US labor’s own history provide examples of how we might procede (for example, the struggle to win the eight-hour day)? We need the freedom to organize; let’s find a way to get it.

11. cmichie on 16.07.2010 at 18:04 (Reply)

    Netroots Topic – Workmen’s Compensation Reform and Support for Je Baca’s Bill – HR 635

    Dear AFL-CIO and Netroots Nation,

    The following message is sent in an effort to draw attention to a CRITICAL FAILURE within the Labor Arena!

    Working Men and Women face a personal catastrophe should they be injured “during and in the course of employment!” This issue and the conditions facing Injured Workers in this 21st Century is an embarrassment and an utter failure in representing the Health and Safety interest of All Working Men and Women.

    As a result of the achievement obtained in National Health Care Reform, Injured Workers must now be led and assisted out of the bondage of the current FAILED Workmen’s Compensation ( Employer Protection ) Scheme. At present, far too many Advocates including LABOR are S I L E N T on this Critical Topic and how Working Men and Women are impacted by this failed and outrageous scheme.

    At present I am not able to attend this event, but on behalf of “ALL INJURED WORKERS” this Topic must not remain S I L E N T any more. I will be happy to provide guidance and more information on this topic if I can obtain some local support at the meeting. Giving LIFE to HR 635 is also an important opportunity!

    This topic alone affects every single Working Man and Woman across the country. Unless you have been Injured at Work, and had your injury claim “DENIED,” this topic may not have any meaning. The conduct in this arena is simply Criminal and Violates Basic Human Rights Obligations.

    Please contact me if I can help to bring a Face and a Voice to this Important Issue for All Working Men and Women. Only we can change the course of History! Now this Issue is a MUST DO!

    Thank you, Please let me know if there are other options available to advance this important issue!

    Craig Michie – Injured Worker – Member of an AFL-CIO Labor Union
    NvVIAW@aol.com – Nevada Voters Injured At Work
    Las Vegas, Nevada

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