The outcome of living in a Red State or a Blue State

In the early days of the industrial revolution, capitalism had two classes: the capitalistic class and the working class. The capitalists wore tops hats and suits and the workers--work clothes. This was the case in the US after the Civil war and until the height of the Progressive movement.

Workers worked 60 hours a week under oppressive conditions. There were no benefits, and safety in the work place was non-existent. Child labor was common. Many of the industrial management practices in the US were based on techniques used during slavery in the antebellum South

It wasn't until the Progressive movement which broke up trusts, the rise of labor unions and the New Deal that a vibrant middle class developed in the US.

It seems the entire objective of Red State conservatism and,in particular, libertarianism, is to return the US to a two class system. Conservatives have achieved this to a certain degree already. The middle class has been declining since the Reagan era and class mobility in the US is the most stagnant of the industrial nations. Even billionaires are concerned about lack of social mobility in the US.

In the past, a college education was a ticket out of the working class, but college expenses have risen as fast as medical care and many young people do not wanted to be saddled with lifelong student debt. Extending public education two more years may provide a partial solution to the conundrum millennials are now in.

Student debt and working wages are the main reason millennial couples cannot afford to purchase a house. Blackstone, the hedge fund has been buying up houses in the $100-$150K range because it suggests “renting is the new American dream.”

Conservatives say the nation will be better off with more privatization and less regulation. They support right to work laws and want to raise the retirement age for Social Security, which will be raised to 67 shortly, and to privatize Medicare and Veterans Affairs. Conservatives also strongly resisted the Affordable Care Act which has reduced the number of medically uninsured to below 10 per cent in the US for the first time.

Red Staters can waive their Confederate flags, picket planned parenthood clinics and yell about State's Rights, but it is clear the Red States lag behind the Blue in many areas: lower literacy rates and higher drop out rates, more STDs and teen pregnancy, lower wages and more poverty. Most of the federal welfare disbursements in the US go to the Red States. 

In the end the Blue States with more liberal polices win. Many of the people who live in the Red States will be lucky to make it to 74. Most of the people in the Blue States live past 80 years of age.

sources:

http://www.historydoctor.net/Advanced%20Placement%20European%20History/Notes/Industiral_Revolution_%283%29.htm

http://www.businessinsider.com/social-mobility-is-a-myth-in-the-us-2013-3?op=1

http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/life-expectancy-by-county

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/06/14/credit-dotcom-renting-american-dream/71053284/

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The Taft-Hartley Act: How about some union deregulation?

Let's start with the Taft Hartley Act!

The amendments enacted in Taft-Hartley added a list of prohibited actions, or unfair labor practices, on the part of unions to the National labor Realtions Act (NLRA), which had previously only prohibited unfair labor practices committed by employers.

The Taft–Hartley Act prohibited jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns.

It also required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits with the government.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

How about corporations that receive government contracts signing loyalty and anti-fascist oaths? 

Union shops were heavily restricted, and states were allowed to pass right-to-work laws that outlawed closed union shops. Furthermore, the executive branch of the federal government could obtain legal strikebreaking injunctions if an impending or current strike imperiled the national health or safety, a test that has been interpreted broadly by the courts.

According to Wikipedia, smaller unions were affected as a result of the act, the labor movement as a whole was not greatly impeded by Taft-Hartley.

source: Wikipedia

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Perhaps you need to start wearing the union label, too

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WIN: Hundreds of Chicago low wage workers form new union

By Doug Cunningham

Hundreds of low-wage food and retail workers in Chicago today launched a new union called the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago as they rallied to push for a $15 an hour wage and a union contract. 

Two hundred worker leaders from 100 stores held a founding convention for the new union, then rallied and marched through Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Satoria Briggs spoke with Workers Independent News via cell phone form the rally in Chicago. Briggs stated: 

I mean I just feel like it’s time the 99 percent to stand up. It’s time that we stop sitting there and just accepting what is thrown in our laps. Because at the end of the day we’re the ones working the long hours, tired, beat, hungry. And you know, it’s a shame that I can work a week’s pay – work for a week – and I can’t even make it to the next week. We have a worker here who’s worked 26 years at McDonald’s and still makes $8.25 an hour.”

The workers say their “Fight For $15” hopefully will bring more scrutiny to the impact low wage jobs have on families and communities nationwide. 

Wages are now so low for millions of workers around the country that they are below the poverty line. 

A recent report written by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Dr. Mark Doussard says 31.2 percent of workers aged 18-64 in Chicago are working in low-wage jobs.

Rightardia is sympathetic. Retail is notorious for low wage part-time jobs with no benefits This is case of the fast food industry as well.

The Walton family who founded Walmart and Sam's Club makes as much income as the bottom 30 per cent of Americans. 

John Schnatter of Papa John's infamy, lives in a 40,000 square foot castle like a feudal prince. 

Because retail and fast food wages are so low, many people who work in these industries qualify for Medicaid and and SNAP (food stamps). So the federal government and the taxpayers ends up subsidizing these workers. 

The right wing will scream about ending welfare and getting people off of the plantation, but this isn't a welfare problem. It is a corporate greed problem. T

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Unions are one of the solutions to strengthen the middle class

The best job Wirehead, our IT writer had,  ever had was working for an IT company that had a union, The Communication Workers of America (CWA).

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Daily KOS on the War on Workers: Amazon and Bed Bath & Beyond face warehouse fights

". . .(A)fter months of scrutiny and protest drawing attention to reports of Amazon warehouses at which ambulances were kept stationed outside to treat workers inevitably collapsing from the summer heat, Amazon announced it is spending $52 million to air-condition its warehouses. Workers in those warehouses will still be worked unreasonably hard for unreasonably little money with poor job security, but air-conditioning should substantially reduce one hazard.

One set of warehouse workers is trying to join a union, though, strengthened by the fact that they are actually employed by a retailer and not by temp agencies. The overwhelmingly Latino workforce at a New Jersey Bed Bath & Beyond distribution center is moving toward a union representation vote . . ."

Rightardia has pointed out that Amazon is a big ALEC supporter which is worrisome. Bed, Bath and Beyond is underpaying warehouse workers and only grants them three days of sick leave a year.

Part of the reason that middle class wages haven't kept up with worker productivity, is the decline of the union movement in the US. 


According to the Deprtment of Labor, 11.8 percent of americans are in unions. Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (37.0 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers which is 6.9 percent.

Corporations are scared of unions and hire legal teams that charge out at hundreds of dollars per hour to stop a union from organizing.

See This week in the War on Workers: Amazon and Bed Bath & Beyond face warehouse fights 

source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

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America's largest corporation paid no income tax

At one time corporations paid about 30 per cent of federal revenues. Now corporations pay about 6 per cent.

Yet Republicans want to cut corporate income tax.

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WIN: A Long Hot Summer For Republicans Who Attacked Collective Bargaining

7/20/2011

By Doug Cunningham

Red hot movements in Wisconsin and in Ohio this summer are keeping the heat on Republicans who have attacked collective bargaining rights.

In the first Wisconsin state senate recall election sparked by the Republican attack on public worker collective bargaining a Democratic senator defended his seat this week by trouncing the Republican challenger. 

We Are Wisconsin’s Kelly Steele says a strong grassroots effort is likely to lead to the recalls of several GOP state senators August 9th. And despite an unlimited and anonymous corporate flood of cash Steele says Republicans see the writing on the wall.Steele added:

I think they realize that their message and what they’ve done is not competitive from an electoral standpoint. I think they see the writing on the wall. I think that’s why they’re doing all this re-districting stuff as fast as they can - because they know at the end of the day the people in this state stand with the workers who are in these districts. 


And they stand against the senators who are helping Scott Walker with his attack on these working families. We will be outspent by these corporate interests that are flooding the state with anonymous money. I can promise you that we will not be outworked in any of these districts. People who are in these districts are turning out in record numbers to volunteer, turning out in record numbers to make phone calls, canvassing doing these things. As much money as they want to pour into this they can’t buy that kind of ground operations.

In Ohio, more than 900,000 petition signatures have been validated to repeal the Republican attack on collective bargaining there. That means SB5 will be on the November ballot and the anti-union measures can’t be implemented until the people of Ohio vote on them. "We Are Ohio’s" Melissa Fazekas said:

It is really a historic effort. We’re really excited. Our base is energized and engaged and they’re ready to keep this fight up and make sure we repeal it in November.


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Gov. Scott Walker wants a busness friendly environment in Wisconsin

graphic courtesy of Constructive Anarchy

By disbanding teacher's fire-fighter and police unions at the state and municipal level, this will somehow create a better situation for corporations? 

What will the union people lose? First, more relatives and political cronies will be hired by the state and municipal governments. Nepotism laws will be weakened and yearly evaluations will be politicized.

State workers will no longer be able to file grievances against bad managers. The wrong people will be promoted and state and municipal workers will see their pay checks and benefits shrink.

Workers will also lose the "nuclear option." They will not be able to strike! The threat of striking often brings management to the contract table at the 11th hour.

Many of the Rightardia staff have been union members. It is a kindler gentler work environment that is more democratic.

BTW the crowd in Madison, WS is now estimated to be 25,000.

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A Union On Deep Water Horizon could Have Averted Gulf Tragedy

07/09/10 Submitted by Doug Cunningham on July 8, 2010 - 5:03p

Hindsight is always better than foresight but Rightardia agrees that If union workers had been the Deepwater platform , the oil leak would have been averted.


Unions insist on safety and training for their workers. If a manager tells a worker do something that is illegal or unsafe, the worker can grieve the manager and submit a formal complaint. Try this is an on-union shop to see what happens.


Admittedly there are lots of bad workers but there are also plenty of bad managers.  The Deepwater disaster happened because management wanted to save three days of work at the expense of installing a cutoff valve.

If the Deepwater Horizon workers had been in a union with a strong safety standard written into their contract the Gulf oil spill disaster may never have happened. Dean Corgey, Vice-President of the Gulf Coast’s Seafarers International Union, told Chicago’s Labor Express radio that union safety provisions would have given the workers the power to refuse to work in unsafe conditions.

Corgey: “If the workers on the Deep Water Horizon had the ability to have that type of job protection and to be able if they were terminated for voicing there concerns that they would be able to rely on a grievance and arbitration procedure to protect them, I think those folks might be alive today and we might not have all that oil floatin' around out in the Gulf of Mexico."

Corgey says when Gulf workers are approached individually they often express desires to be in a union, but there’s strong employer hostility to unions throughout the region.

Corgey: “There's a culture of anti-unionism among the employees - and when I'm talking employers it's not just the oil companies, it's primarily the oil services which most of the workers work for. And there's a culture of anti-unionism out there that to be frank is disturbing, and we feel un-American."

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Flight attendants unionize at Delta Compass Airlines

Rightardia supports the right of American workers to organize. Union workers are better trained and make about 25 per cent more than non-union workers. 

source: Clip Syndicate

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The economic stimulus kept thousands of teachers in classrooms

The economic stimulus kept thousands of teachers in your child's classroom. Look for the union label. It assures quality. 

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Workers Need Employee Free Choice to Get Ahead

by Seth Michaels, Sep 28, 2009

Here are two great recent pieces on the need for the Employee Free Choice Act, proposed federal legislation to give workers the tools they need to build a better life for themselves and a strong economy for everyone.

Writing at the Drum Major Institute, Amy Traub says that just investing in training and education isn’t enough to help workers earn their way out of the economic slump and into the middle class. They need the freedom to form a union:

Education alone won’t solve the economic problems underlying the middle-class squeeze. If it were, college graduates would be doing better. And while educated workers are more likely than those without a degree to enjoy a middle-class standard of living, wages for most college graduates have grown sluggishly in recent years and their access to employer-provided health care and pensions has dropped. And then there are the tens of millions of Americans who work at jobs that don’t require a college degree.

The solution, Traub says, is to make sure all workers have the ability to bargain for a fair share and get the leverage they need to ensure they have good pay, good benefits, safe conditions and respect on the job:

The Employee Free Choice Act is a game-changer, directly attacking the systemic problem of employees’ lack of power in the labor market. The impact would boost low-wage service employees struggling to gain a middle-class standard of living as well as college-educated professionals trying to hold onto it…empowering people to join unions directly redistributes economic power back to working people, enabling Americans to win gains for themselves in the workplace.

Writing in the Muncie Star Press, Indiana State AFL-CIO President Ken Zeller calls the Employee Free Choice Act a commonsense update of the nation’s labor laws and a way to make sure workers can get a fair first contract:

Today, many companies refuse to bargain with the union their employees elected to represent them in negotiations because there is no penalty for doing so. The fact is that no CEO works without a contract, so why should workers?

As long as workers are denied a seat at the bargaining table, corporate greed will continue to run roughshod over our economy. The Employee Free Choice Act will give workers the power to bring a measure of democracy back to the workplace.

source: AFL-CIO BlogNow

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The Young Turks: Union thugs beat up innocent Astroturfer

Guess what the innocent Astroturfer doesn't have?



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US Unemployment by state

Fiftenn states and the

click to enlarge 

According to the right wing, everything is 'peaches and cream' in the land of the 'right to work ' laws. The anti-union environment of the South is just buzzing along.

This graphic suggests that the Red States are actually worse off than many of the other states. Fifteen states and the DC have unemployment above 10 per cent. The 'Left Coast' and Mid-West are also hurting.

Some Republican governors, including Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, Mississippi's Haley Barbour, South Carolina's Mark Sanford and Sarah Palin of Alaska , have threatened to reject portions of the federal stimulus funding.  All of these governors are experiencing high unemployment in their states.

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