Facts show how badly the red state South lags

This wouldn't have anything to do with generations of right-wing state governance, would it? And it's fundamentally up to the region's residents to change that.

- For over four decades, the typical worker in the South has been paid less than their counterparts in every other region of the country.

- The share of workers in the South who are paid less than $15 per hour—22% in 2021—is substantially higher than that of any other region.

- Workers across the South are the least likely to receive employer-provided health insurance or a pension compared with workers in other regions. They are also least likely to have paid sick leave.

- The South has by far the lowest rates of union coverage; the states with the lowest rates in 2023 are South Carolina (3%), North Carolina (3.3%), and Louisiana (5.1%)—compared with 11.2% nationally. - EPI

Return-to-office is corporate BS

I've worked in places where one or more managers were, it would be fair to say, rather on the neurotic and controlling side. So I can relate. Perhaps you can as well.

Your manager may suggest that returning to the office is imperative for the company’s success, workplace culture, and overall productivity. However, there’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that’s bullshit. New research out of the University of Pittsburgh examined 137 of America’s largest corporations and found that return-to-office mandates did not result in significant improvements to firm performance.

“Using a sample of S&P 500 firms, we examine determinants and consequences of U.S. firms’ return-to-office (RTO) mandates,” said researchers from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. The study found that managers use RTO mandates “to reassert control over employees and blame employees as a scapegoat,” and concluded that “we do not find significant changes in firm performance in terms of profitability and stock market valuation after the RTO mandates.” - Gizmodo

The hidden costs of industrial ag are mind-blowing

The UN report linked in the quoted story actually covers all agriculture worldwide. But when you look at the second paragraph below, you know almost all the problems are originating with the greedheads of Big Ag.

Food systems are about much more than just food. What’s on your plate or in your bowl is important, of course, but food is linked with everything from labor rights and healthcare to social justice and the climate crisis.

But when consumers buy a cluster of tomatoes on the vine or a carton of eggs, the price does not necessarily consider that inter-tangled web of connections. These external impacts of food production—on human health, animal welfare, workers, biodiversity, waterways, or soil—aren’t always reflected in the market price.

The movement to calculate, value, recognize, and pay down these costs is known as True Cost Accounting (TCA), and we’ve talked about it before. But in a landmark report just published, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization took on the massive task of analyzing virtually the entire world’s food system through the lens of TCA.

This report estimates that the global quantified hidden costs of agrifood systems is approximately US$12.7 trillion.

It’s almost like a debt the food system owes to the world—a debt that, so far, it’s not making payments on. - Food Tank

The anti-labor/industrial complex

New tactics are being used in contemporary union-busting and worker exploitation.

Deterring unions in the workplace has become a veritable cottage industry — though perhaps that phrase is inappropriately diminutive for a sector which brings in hundreds of millions annually.

The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) offers some rare insight into these operations. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimated that total spending on the union-busting industry amounts to at least $340 million a year. However — because “loopholes in the law’s reporting requirements allow consultants and law firms [to] avoid reporting their work” — a full accounting is currently impossible.

It’s no surprise that the business lobby opposes even this limited disclosure. Corporate interests like the Chamber of Commerce, joined by the American Bar Association (ABA), are seeking to shoot down an Obama-era proposal for a “persuader rule” under the LMRDA, which would require disclosure of funds spent on anti-union consultants who advise management behind the scenes. Experts in legal ethics say that the lobbyist claims of First Amendment violations are unfounded, and that the ABA’s real interest is in protecting a lucrative legal niche. - Truthout

Yes, put an end to noncompete "agreements"

The rich man always has his whimpering, simpering propagandists proclaiming the supposedly unbeatable glories of market "freedom." Well, let's see them start living up to that.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a proposal Thursday to ban employers from imposing noncompete clauses on workers, preventing them from moving to a competing business or even starting their own business after leaving a job. If you’re reading that and imagining that these apply to high-level developers or researchers in deep with proprietary technology, think again. One in 5 workers in the U.S. is subject to a noncompete clause, according to the FTC, coming to around 30 million workers. That’s not a legitimate business practice to protect trade secrets. It’s a strategy to control workers. - Daily Kos

O brave new world of worker surveillance

This is atrocious, at least in my view, and I don’t know of a ready fix.

Technological incentives are a new adversary in the long history of workers trying to keep the tentacles of corporate America out of their personal lives. But unlike the precipitating causes of the bloody 1886 Haymarket Riot, where Chicago workers protested the blatant incursion of longer working hours despite their legal entitlement to an eight-hour workday, modern employer surveillance is restructuring the lives of workers in gradual and nearly imperceptible ways. The lines of what is work and what is life in the consecrated “work-life balance” are blurring because of the way surveillance technologies are proliferating. What began in the workplace is leaking its bile across your lap as you sit at home...

The physical workplace may be where employer surveillance started, but it’s not where it ends. The days of surveillance being technologically limited to physical spaces and analog tools like building cameras are slipping away. In their place are more accurate and ubiquitous technologies that run on hardware that employees already use, like computers and phones. And as more employees do their work outside of physical offices, the employer surveillance apparatus has mutated to keep them ensnared. The forecast is that soon at least 70 percent of companies will be using software that tracks worker productivity via their computers. This tracking might include keylogging, location tracking, web and email monitoring, or even in some cases, taking images of workers through their webcams at random intervals throughout the day. The expansion of these tracking technologies was another flare-up that the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated, and the logics of tracking that were established for remote work are here to stay. “Here,” in this case, meaning the home office, the living room, or any personal space where one uses digital devices. - The Baffler

Women take the lead in labor organizing

On a related matter, if it was up to me women would hold all political offices in this country, at least for a while. There's no question, from any rational standpoint, that things would be a lot better if that was to happen.

Over the course of the pandemic, the majority of essential workers were women. The majority of those who lost their jobs in the pandemic were women. The majority of those who faced unstable care situations for their children and their loved ones were women.

And now the majority of those organizing their workplaces are women.

Kroger workers are part of a surge in organizing led by women, women of color and low-wage workers impelled by this once-in-a-century pandemic. Many said they feel the pandemic has unmasked the hypocrisy of some employers — they were ​“essential” workers until their employers stopped offering protections on the job, good pay and commensurate benefits.

Among them, a deep recalibration is happening, dredging up questions about why they work, for whom, and how that work serves them and their families. For many it’s the chance to define the future of work. - In These Times

Young workers fuel the new labor movement

An upbeat take. Works for me.

This year, May Day was celebrated during a historic moment for the American labor movement. Nearly every day, news reports announce another example of workers exercising their rights as nonprofit professionals, Starbucks workers, and employees at corporations like Amazon, REI and Conde Nast announce their union drives. The approval rating for labor unions has reached its highest point in over 50 years, standing at 68 percent, and petitions for new union elections at the National Labor Relations Board increased 57 percent during the first half of fiscal year 2021.

Three years ago, we wrote an op-ed about how young workers in historically unorganized occupations — such as digital journalism, higher education and nonprofit organizations — were beginning to rebuild the labor movement. Today, Covid-19 has changed the way that we relate to work and created new sources of economic anxiety, while exacerbating old ones. Yet, young workers continue to fuel the new labor movement as they form new unions to win back a degree of control over their futures in a world fundamentally altered by a global pandemic. With momentum in union organizing and worker activism still growing, it is important to recognize the ways that workers in every industry are helping the labor movement live up to its values and reverse the years-long decline in union density. - In These Times

Forced arbitration is evil

There are proposed legislative remedies noted in the article, but they probably won't happen soon.

If anything, 26% is a very conservative estimate of wage theft among low-wage workers subject to forced arbitration. We believe the percentage is likely even higher, due to the lack of compliance incentive for these employers as a result of their decision to impose forced arbitration on their workers.

The claim-suppressive effect of forced arbitration was detailed in Cynthia Estlund’s pathbreaking 2018 article, The Black Hole of Mandatory Arbitration. Estlund found that, faced with the prospect of having to submit their claims to forced arbitration, the vast majority of workers—98%—never file a claim at all. With no effective access to justice, workers simply abandon their claims. - NELP

Labor in 2021, and right now

A good overview.

For the labor movement in the United States, 2021 was a year defined by the opening of new fronts. Though embattled and widely disempowered, U.S. workers and union organizers have taken up new mantles. Labor militancy has flared in response to both novel pressures and age-old antagonisms. The unique stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic further destabilized already-fractious arrangements — the grievances of the U.S. working class were mounting long before March 2020, a function of the decades of stagnation and austerity that have been imposed by concentrated private power.

Waves of protests and resignations signaled widespread disenchantment with the exploitative and authoritarian world of work, in a year that was regularly punctuated by organized action...

That said, advances remain tentative. It’s true that this year’s labor struggles played out across an unusually broad array of industries, but this variety belied the comparatively small scope of the 2021 “strike wave,” as it was deemed by many. The number of workers engaged in collective action fell short of the highs of recent years, as did the number of new union election filings. Recalcitrant energies are building, but they have yet to be organized, structured and channeled by a labor movement in which membership rates have long been in precipitous decline. - Truthout

Why the Great Resignation is happening

We'll see how it plays out. Hopefully a lot of good will come of it.

This trend has been characterized as the Great Resignation, and just about every economist and pundit has taken their crack at teasing out why it’s happening. Explanations have included health and safety fears, child care needs, a tight labor market, boosted savings from stimulus funds or reduced ability to spend money on bars and movies, enhanced unemployment benefits, increases in business formation, desire to work from home, early retirements, restrictions on immigration, demographic shrinking of the prime-age workforce, and my personal favorite, expectations of a labor shortage creating a labor shortage.

Some of these ideas have merit, though none can quite explain everything. In these moments, it’s best to actually ask the workers themselves. I did that, talking to dozens of people who have recently quit their job, or experts who closely track workers who have. And some patterns emerged.

Work at the low end of the wage scale has become ghastly over the past several decades. With no meaningful improvements in federal labor policy since the 1930s, employers have accrued tremendous power. Workers were afraid to voice any disapproval, taking whatever scraps they could get. “The U.S. needs a reset, needs a big push, to get to a place where work is more secure and livable for a lot of the population,” said MIT economist David Autor, who has tracked the misery of American deindustrialization and the shock of China’s rise as a manufacturing powerhouse. - The American Prospect

Workers are righteously quitting and striking everywhere you look

Certainly many, of the ultra-entitled in particular, are aghast and horrified, at the temerity of what they see as the "peasantry." Tough.

If such a high rate of resignations were occurring at a time when jobs were plentiful, it might be seen as a sign of a booming economy where workers have their pick of offers. But the same labor report showed that job openings have also declined, suggesting that something else is going on. A new Harris Poll of people with employment found that more than half of workers want to leave their jobs. Many cite uncaring employers and a lack of scheduling flexibility as reasons for wanting to quit. In other words, millions of American workers have simply had enough.

So serious is the labor market upheaval that Jack Kelly, senior contributor to Forbes.com, a pro-corporate news outlet, has defined the trend as, “a sort of workers’ revolution and uprising against bad bosses and tone-deaf companies that refuse to pay well and take advantage of their staff.” In what might be a reference to viral videos like those of McGrath, Ragland, and the growing trend of #QuitMyJob posts, Kelly goes on to say, “The quitters are making a powerful, positive and self-affirming statement saying that they won’t take the abusive behavior any longer.”

...The resignations ought to be viewed hand in hand with another powerful current that many economists are ignoring: a growing willingness by unionized workers to go on strike. - LA Progressive

Passing the PRO Act would be a good deal

As usual, these days, the obstacle is the Senate filibuster.

A coalition of over 40 progressive organizations on Saturday rallied online and in person to support the PRO Act—legislation that would strengthen workers' right to organize among other pro-worker provisions.

Groups behind the May Day actions include MoveOn, Indivisible, Democratic Socialists of America, and the Working Families Party...

In a fact sheet released in February, EPI summarized the proposal's benefits:

The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act addresses many of the major shortcomings with our current law. Passing the PRO Act would help restore workers' ability to organize with their co-workers and negotiate for better pay, benefits, and fairness on the job. Passing the PRO Act would also promote greater racial economic justice because unions and collective bargaining help shrink the Black–white wage gap and bring greater fairness to the workplace.

EPI also joined Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the AFL-CIO, and the National Employment Law Project this week in releasing a document that "examines the challenges of unionizing in the U.S. and explains how the PRO Act would be a corrective." - Common Dreams

More, and more successful, strikes in 2020

This article is a solid, comprehensive look at where things are at.

Like every other social movement in the U.S. this year, the compounding crises of 2020 proved a catalyzing force for the labor movement, compelling essential and frontline workers to join picket lines to ensure basic protections and increased pay as they continue to face disproportionate risks and increasingly perilous working conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

But essential workers weren’t the only sector on strike this year: Prisoners and tenants across the country also withheld their labor and rent to fight for their fundamental human right to life and housing. Building momentum after major strike waves in 2018 and 2019, 2020 has cemented the strike’s resurgence as a crucial tactic for workers and organizers not only in the U.S. but around the world. - Truthout

More indicators that the end of Big Oil could be sooner than people think

I find myself wondering whether vulture funds and the like will try to get involved. Or already are.

But the pandemic has had a material impact, hastening Exxon’s decline, but the company has been gliding downward for years. Part of its problem has been doubling down on oil, which has made the economy hum along for decades (thanks in part to Exxon’s aforementioned lying). A Carbon Tracker analysis released on Wednesday shows the company’s investment in exploration and resource- and carbon-intensive projects played a role in Exxon’s decline since 2014. The report notes investors “would have been better off putting their cash under the mattress” over the past six years. Climate change means the world needs to rapidly sunset the use of oil or face unspeakable horrors, and will further constrain Exxon’s future as long as it focuses on oil as its main means of making money.

Exxon is hardly alone in layoffs, though its overall totals are among the steepest in the industry. Earlier this year, BP announced it would lay off 10,000 workers as it transition to an “energy” company, a new fresh hell of greenwashing. At the time, the CEO called it the “right thing” to do. With the end of oil now coming up over the horizon, it’s more vital than ever to have a plan for affected workers who are about to or already are losing their livelihoods. - Gizmodo

The Trump tax giveaway is exactly what many of us thought

The numbers have been crunched.

The first data showing how all Americans are faring under Donald Trump reveal the poor and working classes sinking slightly, the middle class treading water, the upper-middle class growing and the richest, well, luxuriating in rising rivers of greenbacks.

More than half of Americans had to make ends meet in 2018 on less money than in 2016, my analysis of new income and tax data shows.

The nearly 87 million taxpayers making less than $50,000 had to get by in 2018 on $307 less per household than in 2016, the year before Trump took office, I find.

That 57% of American households were better off under Obama contradicts Trump’s often-repeated claim he created the best economy ever until the pandemic. - DC Report

The facts about jobs moving elsewhere under Trump

Everything about this guy, and his administration, and contemporary right-wing conservatism, is such BS that so much just gets lost in the muck.

While the Trump administration has claimed that the era of U.S. offshoring is “over,” the reality is that the United States has not begun to address the root causes of America’s growing trade deficits and the decline of American manufacturing. Decades of trade, currency, and tax policies that incentivized offshoring, combined with an utter failure to invest adequately in infrastructure and good jobs at home, have contributed to growing inequality and an eroding middle class.

President Trump’s erratic, ego-driven, and inconsistent trade policies have not achieved any measurable progress, despite the newly combative rhetoric. On top of that, COVID-19—and the administration’s mismanagement of the crisis—has wiped out much of the last decade’s job gains in U.S. manufacturing.

Unless steps are taken now—to reform our trade policy, to curb dollar overvaluation, to eliminate tax incentives for offshoring, and to rebuild the domestic economy—there won’t be a comeback. - Economic Policy Institute

Trump gang screws workers again

With the excitement over impeachment finally happening, a lot of bad things might end up, per an overused phrase, “under the radar” for a while. It would be better if that doesn’t happen.

Labor rights advocates and progressive economists slammed the Trump administration after the Department of Labor announced Tuesday a final rule on overtime pay to replace a bolder Obama-era proposal blocked by a federal court in Texas.

"While the administration may be trumpeting this rule as a good thing for workers, that is a ruse," said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). "In reality, the rule leaves behind millions of workers who would have received overtime protections under the much stronger rule, published in 2016, that Trump administration abandoned." - (Common Dreams)