THE ASSUALT ON AMERICAN PENSIONS CONTINUES!
US Congress to vote on union-backed plan to cut workers’ pensions
............... next to members of Congress, there's
nothing more crooked than a Union boss!
UNIONS PARTNER WITH
WALL STREET-OWNED BARACK OBAMA and MEXICO TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED
These are self-serving lies pumped out by the ruling class
through its political servants and media apologists. Since the financial crash
of 2008, the Obama administration’s pro-business policies of bank bailouts,
virtually free money for the banks from the Federal Reserve, wage and benefit
cuts for auto workers, corporate tax cuts and deregulation have transferred
trillions from the working class to the super-rich.
Instead, the financial oligarchy that controls the economy and
both big-business parties is determined to steal the pensions that tens of
millions need to survive and return workers to the dark days when they labored
without end until they died.
REALLY WANT AMNESTY?
U.S. jobs pay an average 23% less today
than they did before the 2008 recession, according to a new report released on
Monday by the United States Conference of Mayors.
In total, the
report found $93 billion in lost wages.
Jobs lost during
the recession paid an average $61,637. As of 2014, jobs in the same sectors
paid an average of $47,171 annually.
"Under a
similar analysis conducted by the Conference of Mayors during the 2001-2002
recession, the wage gap was only 12% compared to the current 23%--meaning the
wage gap has nearly doubled from one recession to the next," stated the Conference
of Mayors in a statement.
President Barack
Obama, who is on a two-week vacation at
Martha's Vineyard, has yet to comment on the dour economic findings.
CRONY CAPITALISM at work
Obama’s “recovery” and the social crisis in America … the recovery that
NEVER was!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/08/america-under-obamas-crony-capitalism.html
even
now Obama and the Democrat party are conspiring to hand millions more jobs to
illegals and billions more in welfare to LA RAZA and their bankster paymasters!
Sage
Foundation: Wealth "Inequality" Will Continue to Worsen
In another so-called research study
about wealth inequality, the liberal think-tank Sage Foundation said in
June that while the super-rich have fully recovered from the Great
Recession, the vast majority of Americans have not. Specifically their report shows that median household net
worth “was $32,000 lower in 2013 than it was 10 years earlier,” a decline of 36
percent. It concluded: (SEE LINK TO BLOG)
These wealth losses,
however, were not distributed equally.… Wealth inequality increased
significantly from 2003 through 2013; by some metrics inequality roughly
doubled.
(SEE LINK
TO BLOG BELOW)
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/08/america-under-obamas-crony-capitalism.html
THE CONSPIRACY to DESTROY AMERICA’S BORDERS…
Obama and his Wall Street banksters
Obama and his Wall Street banksters
“This nation no longer is a democratic
republic...rather it has become a tool of the super-rich members of the above
mentioned elite who preselect our presidents based on their cooperation and
complicity with the elite’s ultimate goals. Obama has, in their opinion done
superbly carrying out the plans well laid out for him by his backers.”
CRONY CAPITALISM at
work
Obama’s “recovery” and the social crisis in America … the recovery that
NEVER was!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/08/america-under-obamas-crony-capitalism.html
Obama’s “recovery” and the social crisis in America … the recovery that
NEVER was!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/08/america-under-obamas-crony-capitalism.html
Sage Foundation: Wealth "Inequality" Will Continue to Worsen.
Wealth inequality
increased significantly from 2003 through 2013; by some metrics inequality
roughly doubled.
roughly doubled.
THE ENTIRE REASON THE BORDERS ARE
LEFT OPEN IS TO CUT WAGES!
“We could cut unemployment in half
simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers,”
“President Obama is
on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president
should
support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they
need and
deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.”
THE BELOW FIGURES ARE DATED! IT IS
NOW ESTIMATED THAT ENDLESS
HORDES OF ILLEGALS THROUGH AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS DEPRESSES WAGES
FROM $300 to $400 BILLION ANNUALLY.
HORDES OF ILLEGALS THROUGH AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS DEPRESSES WAGES
FROM $300 to $400 BILLION ANNUALLY.
“The principal beneficiaries of our current
immigration policy are affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard
wages for low-end work. Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American
workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant
flooding of the labor market at the low-wage end.” Christian Science Monitor
Obama
Administration Challenges Arizona E-Verify Law
The Obama administration has asked
the Supreme Court to strike down a 2007 Arizona law that punishes employers who hire
illegal aliens, a law enacted by then-Governor Janet Napolitano. (Solicitor General's Amicus Curiae Brief).
Called the “Legal Arizona Workers Act,” the law requires all employers in
Arizona to use E-Verify and provides that the business licenses of those who
hire illegal workers shall be repealed. From the date of enactment, the
Chamber of Commerce and other special interest groups have been trying to undo
it, attacking it through a failed ballot initiative and also through a lawsuit.
Now the Chamber is asking the United States Supreme Court to hear the case (Chamber
of Commerce v. Candelaria), and the Obama Administration is weighing in
against the law.
To date, Arizona’s E-Verify law has
been upheld by all lower courts, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Ninth Circuit, in particular, viewed it as an exercise of a state’s
traditional power to regulate businesses. (San Francisco Chronicle, June 2,
2010). Obama’s Justice Department, however, disagrees. Acting Solicitor
General Neal Katyal said in his filing with the Supreme Court that the lower
courts were wrong to uphold the statute because federal immigration law
expressly preempts any state law imposing sanctions on employers hiring illegal
immigrants. Mr. Katyal argues that this is not a licensing law, but “a
statute that prohibits the hiring of unauthorized aliens and uses suspension
and revocation of all state-issued licenses as its ultimate sanction.” (Solicitor General's Amicus Curiae Brief,
p. 10). This is the administration’s first court challenge to a state’s
authority to act against illegal immigration, and could be a preview of the
battle brewing over Arizona’s recent illegal immigration crackdown through SB
1070.
Napolitano has made no comment on
the Department of Justice’s decision to challenge the 2007 law, but federal
officials said that she has taken an active part in the debate over whether to
do so. (Politico, May 28, 2010). As
Governor of Arizona, Napolitano said she believed the state law was valid and
became a defendant in the many lawsuits against it. (Id.).
THE REALITY OF OBAMA AND JOBS:
With the full assistance of
the UAW, the White House slashed tens of thousands of jobs, wiped out “Jobs
Bank” income protections for laid-off workers and cost-of-living adjustments
for current workers. It cut retiree health care benefits and expanded the
two-tier wage system, which pays newly hired workers $15 an hour or roughly
half of what longer-term workers earn.
Nevertheless, Rattner
expresses the frustration of Wall Street that the percentage of workers making
poverty level wages will be limited to a quarter of the workforce by 2015.
Obama’s “Car Czar” says workers
should have taken deeper cuts
By Jerry White
21 December 2011
21 December 2011
President
Obama’s former “Car Czar” says the government should have slashed the wages of
auto workers and imposed even deeper concessions on United Auto Workers (UAW)
members during the 2009 restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler.
After
a speech at the Detroit Economic Club last week, Steven Rattner told reporters,
“If we had more time, we might have asked all the stakeholders to sacrifice a
little bit more. We didn’t ask any
active worker to cut his or her pay. We didn’t ask them to sacrifice any of
their pension and we maybe could have asked them to do a little bit more.”
Rattner, an investment banker
whose net worth was estimated to be up to $600 million when Obama selected him
to head the Auto Task Force, said his “friends on Wall Street” were concerned
by GM’s earnings and communication with investors. Even though the Detroit
automaker’s profits have sharply risen, the market has punished GM stocks,
which have fallen 50 percent since its IPO last year.
After
Rattner’s remarks were made public, he denied he was suggesting auto workers
should have or should now be forced to take pay cuts. Writing on his blog, he
said, “So let me be clear, I have no desire to see auto workers (or anyone
else) take a pay cut. The members of President Obama’s Auto Task Force did not
work as hard as we did in order for workers to see their pay slashed.”
In
fact, that was central purpose of the task force. Using the threat of
liquidation, the Obama administration set out to shut unprofitable plants and
drastically reduce labor costs so Wall Street could be ensured high returns
even if car sales fell to historic lows.
With the full assistance of
the UAW, the White House slashed tens of thousands of jobs, wiped out “Jobs
Bank” income protections for laid-off workers and cost-of-living adjustments
for current workers. It cut retiree health care benefits and expanded the
two-tier wage system, which pays newly hired workers $15 an hour or roughly
half of what longer-term workers earn.
This was a signal for the
launching of a wage-cutting campaign, which has stretched to every section of
the working class, from teachers and public employees to industrial and other
private sector workers.
In
the recent round of labor agreements the UAW handed over more concessions,
agreeing to contracts that raise labor costs by their lowest margin in four
decades. Nevertheless, Rattner expresses
the frustration of Wall Street that the percentage of workers making poverty
level wages will be limited to a quarter of the workforce by 2015. They
feel conditions are ripe—with mass unemployment, rising poverty and the full
complicity of the UAW—to reopen the auto contracts in the not too distant
future in order to cut the wages of the remaining 75 percent of workers.
The
current lockout of rubber workers at Cooper Tire in Findlay, Ohio is indicative
of the “new normal” being demanded by corporate America, which is intent on
closing the wage gap between American workers and their brutally exploited
counterparts in China, Latin America and other impoverished regions.
In
his blog, Rattner continued, “[A]s I have watched events unfold in the past 2½
years, I have become increasingly concerned about the competitiveness of
American manufacturing, including autos. We are competing more and more against
countries whose workers are paid a small fraction of what American workers are
paid but whose productivity is getting closer and closer to U.S. levels (in
some cases, even exceeding it).
“All
I was trying to say was that if we had achieved more shared sacrifice at the
time of the restructurings, we would be in a better position to retain more
American jobs in the face of this competition. I wish sacrifice was not
necessary.”
Notwithstanding
his lament over “necessary sacrifice,” Rattner is speaking for the financial
aristocracy, which has no intention of investing in manufacturing unless the
gains of a century of working class struggle are overturned. Having worked
intimately with the UAW during the auto bailout, Rattner is well aware that the
UAW is fully on board as long as it can retain its position of a purveyor of cheap
labor.
Rattner
is typical of the financial parasites that have risen to the top of the US
economy over the last three decades of deindustrialization and assault on the
working class. According to Fortune magazine, he lives in a “sprawling”
Manhattan apartment, which “overlooks Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum
of Art (where he is on the board).” The magazine continues: “He has a horse
farm in North Salem, New York, in northern Westchester County, near his friend,
New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and is building a 15,575-square foot house
on the water in Martha’s Vineyard.”
Rattner was forced to leave
the Auto Task Force after the New York state attorney filed two civil suits
charging that he committed fraud when, as head of the Quadrangle Group private
equity fund, he used bribes and kickbacks to obtain management over $150
million in assets of the New York State Common Retirement Fund. Rattner—who is
also a major figure in the Democratic Party establishment—settled the case with
no admission of guilt by paying $10 million.
Guess LA RAZA his happy with OBAMA’S endless
hispandering! THEY SHOULD BE!
There
are only eight states with a larger population than LOS ANGELES COUNTY,
where 47% of those with a job are ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY
NUMBERS! This same mex gang infested county puts out $600 million in welfare to
illegals!
“The inspections have
determined that hundreds of companies throughout the U.S. have significant numbers of illegal
immigrants on their payroll yet
none have been punished, according to a Houston newspaper that obtained
internal ICE records through the Freedom of Information Act. At least 430 audit
cases listed as “closed” by the agency had high percentages of workers with
“questionable” documents yet they faced no consequences.”
*
latimes.com
Corporate
America, it's time to spread the wealth
Businesses
are sitting on a record hoard of cash, but they're not using it to hire workers
or pay existing ones better wages. Broadly distributing the fruits of economic
growth is the only way to sustain that growth.
Michael Hiltzik
August 25, 2010
Corporate America must be in a bad
way. Job growth has stagnated, the prospects for hiring, at least in the near
term, seem grim, and the polls of top executives sound universally glum.
And yet, operating earnings of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index jumped 38.4% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters, and companies are sitting on an estimated $1.8 trillion in cash -- by some measures, a record mound of cash.
Somebody's making money in this economy. Unfortunately, it's not the middle class or the working class. And that's our real problem.
The business lobby talks as though the flat-lined job picture isn't the fault of employers. Certainly it's true that it's not entirely the fault of employers. Chamber of Commerce types overemphasize doubts about the strength of the economic recovery, the prospect of higher federal taxes and the costs of government initiatives such as healthcare reform.
Some aren't above suggesting that American workers have simply become too lazy to get off unemployment and do some real work.
That was the theme of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal quoting several business owners marveling at the dearth of applicants for skilled job openings. But you had to do some math to find a clue to why this might be.
One business was looking to pay $13 an hour for machinists. That works out to about $27,000 a year (assuming vacation is paid for), or about the federal poverty line for a family of five.
Now, it's possible that the business owner couldn't possibly afford to pay a penny more. Or he might be thinking that with unemployment nosing 10% he could try bidding down. But the article also quoted him saying his company could grow sharply if it only had the personnel, so perhaps he should consider bidding up.
The idea that only a shrinking proportion of American workers deserves a solid middle-class income seems to have become ingrained in parts of the business community over the last few years. That was the thought behind the punishing Southern California grocery lockout and strike of 2003-04, when the supermarket chains pressed for a wage and benefit system on which it would be difficult if not impossible to raise a family. (They got their way for new employees.)
How has that worked out? The share price of Safeway Inc., the owner of Vons and Pavilions and one of the chief drivers of the dispute, has barely budged since January 2004. The company swung from a profit of $560 million in 2004 to a loss of roughly $1 billion last year, a performance it largely blames on the crummy economy.
This is just one more manifestation of increasing income inequality in America, where the rich have gotten richer and the middle and working class have gone into debt to merely hang on. Whenever I write about the need for corporations and the wealthy to shoulder their fair share of taxes, I can count on receiving numerous e-mails instructing me that we need to cosset the rich because they're the source of job growth. "I've never been offered a job by a poor person" is the usual refrain.
The answer to this argument is that there are precious few firms that can survive purely on the patronage of the top 1% of income-earners, or even the top 20%. When no one can afford to buy, no one has customers. Broadly distributing the fruits of economic growth is the only way to sustain that growth.
Ford Motor Co. understood as long ago as 1914, when it raised its daily wage to $5. The company's new living wage all but eliminated absenteeism, built workplace loyalty and helped create a huge new market for automobiles. You want to call Henry Ford a "socialist" for implementing this idea, go right ahead.
Corporate America, in the aggregate, has the apparent capacity to do the same today. The Federal Reserve reported in June that nonfinancial companies were holding cash totaling more than $1.8 trillion, having built up their hoards at a rate unmatched in more than 50 years. That's a lot of money being held out of the economy, dwarfing what the government stimulus program is putting in.
There's nothing inherently good or bad about a company's stockpiling of cash. It can bespeak a strong balance sheet. Or, if it's the proceeds of lots of expensive borrowing, a weak one. It can build corporate wealth if it's invested profitably in the business or stagnation if it just sits around in low-yielding instruments.
It can be the work of a visionary chief executive building a war chest for a big move or of a shrinking violet with nothing on his mind except inflating his company's bank account with big numbers.
The only important question is: "What are they doing with the money?"
One thing they're not doing is lavishing it on personnel, though some have taken steps to help shareholders. At least 135 companies in the S&P 500 jacked up their shareholder dividends in the first half of this year.
Among the others, let's consider one of the most cash-rich companies in the S&P, Hewlett-Packard Co., which has been getting scrutinized by management pundits lately for reasons other than, um, corporate strategy. As of July 31, HP reported cash of $14.7 billion (up from $11.3 billion in 2007), which ranked it around 13th among S&P 500 companies.
And yet, operating earnings of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index jumped 38.4% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters, and companies are sitting on an estimated $1.8 trillion in cash -- by some measures, a record mound of cash.
Somebody's making money in this economy. Unfortunately, it's not the middle class or the working class. And that's our real problem.
The business lobby talks as though the flat-lined job picture isn't the fault of employers. Certainly it's true that it's not entirely the fault of employers. Chamber of Commerce types overemphasize doubts about the strength of the economic recovery, the prospect of higher federal taxes and the costs of government initiatives such as healthcare reform.
Some aren't above suggesting that American workers have simply become too lazy to get off unemployment and do some real work.
That was the theme of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal quoting several business owners marveling at the dearth of applicants for skilled job openings. But you had to do some math to find a clue to why this might be.
One business was looking to pay $13 an hour for machinists. That works out to about $27,000 a year (assuming vacation is paid for), or about the federal poverty line for a family of five.
Now, it's possible that the business owner couldn't possibly afford to pay a penny more. Or he might be thinking that with unemployment nosing 10% he could try bidding down. But the article also quoted him saying his company could grow sharply if it only had the personnel, so perhaps he should consider bidding up.
The idea that only a shrinking proportion of American workers deserves a solid middle-class income seems to have become ingrained in parts of the business community over the last few years. That was the thought behind the punishing Southern California grocery lockout and strike of 2003-04, when the supermarket chains pressed for a wage and benefit system on which it would be difficult if not impossible to raise a family. (They got their way for new employees.)
How has that worked out? The share price of Safeway Inc., the owner of Vons and Pavilions and one of the chief drivers of the dispute, has barely budged since January 2004. The company swung from a profit of $560 million in 2004 to a loss of roughly $1 billion last year, a performance it largely blames on the crummy economy.
This is just one more manifestation of increasing income inequality in America, where the rich have gotten richer and the middle and working class have gone into debt to merely hang on. Whenever I write about the need for corporations and the wealthy to shoulder their fair share of taxes, I can count on receiving numerous e-mails instructing me that we need to cosset the rich because they're the source of job growth. "I've never been offered a job by a poor person" is the usual refrain.
The answer to this argument is that there are precious few firms that can survive purely on the patronage of the top 1% of income-earners, or even the top 20%. When no one can afford to buy, no one has customers. Broadly distributing the fruits of economic growth is the only way to sustain that growth.
Ford Motor Co. understood as long ago as 1914, when it raised its daily wage to $5. The company's new living wage all but eliminated absenteeism, built workplace loyalty and helped create a huge new market for automobiles. You want to call Henry Ford a "socialist" for implementing this idea, go right ahead.
Corporate America, in the aggregate, has the apparent capacity to do the same today. The Federal Reserve reported in June that nonfinancial companies were holding cash totaling more than $1.8 trillion, having built up their hoards at a rate unmatched in more than 50 years. That's a lot of money being held out of the economy, dwarfing what the government stimulus program is putting in.
There's nothing inherently good or bad about a company's stockpiling of cash. It can bespeak a strong balance sheet. Or, if it's the proceeds of lots of expensive borrowing, a weak one. It can build corporate wealth if it's invested profitably in the business or stagnation if it just sits around in low-yielding instruments.
It can be the work of a visionary chief executive building a war chest for a big move or of a shrinking violet with nothing on his mind except inflating his company's bank account with big numbers.
The only important question is: "What are they doing with the money?"
One thing they're not doing is lavishing it on personnel, though some have taken steps to help shareholders. At least 135 companies in the S&P 500 jacked up their shareholder dividends in the first half of this year.
Among the others, let's consider one of the most cash-rich companies in the S&P, Hewlett-Packard Co., which has been getting scrutinized by management pundits lately for reasons other than, um, corporate strategy. As of July 31, HP reported cash of $14.7 billion (up from $11.3 billion in 2007), which ranked it around 13th among S&P 500 companies.
CORPORATE PROFITS UP! WAGES
DEPRESSED!
In 2009, under its just-departed CEO Mark Hurd, the firm cut base pay for many employees, cut its matching contributions to their 401(k) plans and made them conditional on financial results, and eliminated a discount on share purchases by its employees. Hurd also cut HP's research and development spending to 2.5% of revenue in 2009, half its ratio in 2003, another act that elevates the here-and-now over the what-lies-ahead.
HP hasn't raised its dividend lately, but in 2008 and 2009, its board authorized share buybacks totaling $16 billion, according to its SEC filings. By supporting the share price, that money flows to shareholders rather than wage-earners. All of this might help explain why (judging from public message boards) the HP rank and file were delighted by Hurd's departure, albeit resentful that he was leaving with a severance package worth more than $30 million.
Obviously there's no way to force employers to hire more workers or to give the ones they have better pay, any more than there's any way to force bailed-out banks to use their money to make loans. But funneling corporate wealth to shareholders at the expense of the workers who create that wealth isn't any smarter today than it was 10 years ago, when it got us into this economic fix, and it sure won't lead us to a brighter tomorrow.
Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik, and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.
Workers’ incomes plummet during the
Obama “recovery”
11 October 2011
As
the anti-Wall Street protests against social inequality and the tyranny of the
financial oligarchy spread across the US, a new study released Monday documents
the devastating decline in working class living standards over the past four
years.
The
study, authored by two former US Census Bureau officials, concludes that
inflation-adjusted median household income plunged 9.8 percent from December
2007, the official start of the recession, to June of 2011. Moreover, household
income fell more than twice as rapidly during the Obama “recovery,” which began
in June of 2009, than during the 18 months of official recession.
According
to authors Gordon W. Green Jr. and John F. Coder, median real household income
fell 3.2 percent during the official recession, a dramatic decline, but one far
surpassed by the additional 6.7 percent drop between June 2009 and June of this
year.
Calling
the nearly 10 percent decline over a three-and-a-half year period “a
significant reduction in the American standard of living,” the report notes
that while wage gains outpaced inflation during the recession itself, wages
failed to keep pace with inflation during the so-called “recovery.” (The report
is available at www.sentierresearch.com and a graph here)
Green
and Coder attribute the sharp fall in household income for the majority of
Americans largely to continued mass unemployment. The New York Times, in
a front-page article on their report Monday, notes the staggering increase in
the average duration of joblessness.
When
the recession was said to have begun in December 2007, the figure was 16.6
weeks. It had increased to 24.1 weeks by June of 2009, when the recession
supposedly ended. Last month, according to the Labor Department employment
report released on Friday, the average duration of unemployment had reached
40.5 weeks, the longest in 63 years.
The
Times cites a separate study by Henry S. Farber, a Princeton University
economics professor, which found that workers who lost jobs during the recession
and later found work again earned an average of 17.5 percent less in their new
jobs than in the ones they had lost.
Over
the same period, bankers and corporate CEOs have grown richer than ever, thanks
to trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, unlimited cheap loans from the
Federal Reserve Board, and the refusal of the Obama administration to prosecute
the Wall Street criminals responsible for the financial meltdown or implement
any real banking reform.
The
growing numbers of people participating in the anti-Wall Street protests and
the millions more in the US and around the world who sympathize with them must
recognize that the impoverishment of the majority and further enrichment of the
top 1 percent are not simply the result of impersonal economic forces. They are
the result of the calculated and deliberate policies of the American ruling
class and the Obama administration, its loyal servant.
Ever
since coming to office, Obama has devoted his administration’s policies to
protecting and increasing the wealth of the financial elite. He has refused to
implement any programs to hire unemployed workers or provide significant relief
to the victims of the depression—those who have lost their homes to
foreclosure, those whose incomes have been devastated by unemployment, those
students who face crushing debts and soaring tuition costs, etc.
He
has refused to provide serious aid to cities and states bankrupted by the
slump, thereby encouraging the wholesale destruction of public jobs and
services, especially in education, and a brutal assault on workers’ wages,
pensions and health benefits. Now he is pushing for hundreds of billions of
dollars in cuts in federal social programs, including Medicare and Medicaid.
He
has pursued a policy of keeping unemployment high in order to use it, with the
assistance of the trade unions, to blackmail workers into accepting wage cuts.
It is not an accident that workers’ incomes have fallen more sharply since June
2009 than in the preceding months.
In
that month, General Motors filed for bankruptcy as part of the restructuring of
the US auto industry dictated by the Obama Auto Task Force. The terms, agreed
to by the United Auto Workers, included an expansion of tier-two wages to
include all newly hired workers, creating a super-exploited work force earning
around $14 a hour—half the traditional wage rate. The massive wage-cutting at
GM and Chrysler was the signal for an assault on wages across every sector of
the US economy.
All
of the components of household income—wages, Social Security, welfare payments,
pensions—have been gutted as a result of the policies of the Obama
administration and both big business parties. They are exploiting the crisis to
carry through a counterrevolution in the social conditions and living standards
of the working class.
Corporations
are already reaping the rewards in booming profits and are rubbing their hands
in anticipation of even bigger windfalls to come. High unemployment,
wage-cutting and speedup are at the center of the government’s pledge to double
US exports in five years. Obama’s talk of reviving US manufacturing is based on
turning the US into a cheap labor platform for exporting goods around the
world.
On
Friday, the Wall Street Journal featured two articles boasting of the
initial successes in increasing US competitiveness by imposing near-poverty
wages on American workers. “Buck Up, America, China is Getting Too Expensive”
was the headline of the first, and “Otis Shifts Work Closer to Home” was the
title of the second.
The
first described the beginnings of a movement to “re-shore” manufacturing from
China back to the US, based on low wages and greater labor “flexibility.” It
cited a recent report by the Boston Consulting Group entitled “Made in America,
Again,” which included among the forces pushing certain manufacturing sectors
to return to the US “more flexibility from some US unions, resulting in fewer
work rules and lower labor costs.” The article on Otis Elevator Co. reported
the firm’s shifting of production from Mexico back to the US.
The
Boston Consulting Group report cites as one example of this trend Ford’s
decision to bring 2,000 jobs back to the US “in the wake of a favorable
agreement with the United Auto Workers that allows the company to hire new
workers at $14 an hour.” The report goes on to say that “certain US states,
such as South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee, will turn out to be among the
least expensive production sites in the industrialized world.”
The
Obama administration, the Democratic and Republican parties, the corporate-controlled
media are all instruments of the American capitalist class and are
irreconcilably hostile to the interests of working people and youth. There can
be no viable fight against social inequality and the domination of Wall Street
outside of a political struggle against these forces and the profit system
which they defend.
The
attempts by the trade unions and their pseudo-left allies such as the
International Socialist Organization to exclude socialist politics from the
anti-Wall Street protests must be rejected. This is nothing but an attempt to
channel the movement behind its worst enemies—the Obama administration, the
Democratic Party and the capitalist two-party system.
The
current crisis reflects the failure of the capitalist system on a world scale.
The defense of basic social and democratic rights requires the building of a
mass socialist movement to break the grip of the financial oligarchy and place
the banks and corporations under the democratic control of the working class.
Barry
Grey
Illegal
labor pool and its impact on unemployment rates
http://www.onenewsnow.com/politics-govt/2012/12/20/illegal-labor-pool-and-its-impact-on-unemployment-rates
An immigration reform think tank has published a new study that shows the labor pool of illegal immigrants continues to have a negative impact on U.S. unemployment.
The Center for Immigration Studies says its study has revealed that 79 percent of illegal aliens have no more than a high school education and are in direct competition with less-educated American citizens for employment opportunities.
CIS executive director Mark Krikorian contends there is no shortage of such American-born workers able to do the kind of work done by those who are in the country illegally.
"When you look at the unemployment numbers for native-born Americans who don't have a high school diploma, they're huge," he emphasizes. "So the idea that there's no people to do the kind of relatively less-skilled jobs that illegal immigrants do is just complete baloney."
Krikorian says while admittedly there are some Americans who are unwilling to work, that does not mean the solution is to hire illegal immigrants.
"By not having to address the kind of work-ethic problems that do exist in some parts of our society, all it's doing is making it worse and kicking the can down the road," he remarks. "Immigration enables a short-term fix for, say, the owners of a restaurant who want reliable dishwashers, [but it] creates long-term problems in the future."
Krikorian admits that with the current political makeup in Washington, it is unlikely that a legislative remedy for the large immigration numbers will be possible anytime soon.
*
Illegal
labor pool and its impact on unemployment rates
Chad Groening
(OneNewsNow.com)
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Thursday, December 20, 2012
An
Immigration reform think tank has published a new study that shows the labor
pool of illegal immigrants continues to have a negative impact on U.S.
unemployment.
The
Center for
Immigration Studies
says its study
has revealed that 79 percent of illegal aliens have no more than a high school
education and are in direct competition with less-educated American citizens
for employment opportunities.
CIS
executive director Mark Krikorian contends there is no shortage of such
American-born workers able to do the kind of work done by those who are in the
country illegally.
"When
you look at the unemployment numbers for native-born Americans who don't have a
high school diploma, they're huge," he emphasizes. "So the idea that
there's no people to do the kind of relatively less-skilled jobs that illegal
immigrants do is just complete baloney."
Krikorian
says while admittedly there are some Americans who are unwilling to work, that
does not mean the solution is to hire illegal immigrants.
"By
not having to address the kind of work-ethic problems that do exist in some
parts of our society, all it's doing is making it worse and kicking the can
down the road," he remarks. "Immigration enables a short-term fix
for, say, the owners of a restaurant who want reliable dishwashers, [but it]
creates long-term problems in the future."
Krikorian
admits that with the current political makeup in Washington, it is unlikely
that a legislative remedy for the large immigration numbers will be possible
anytime soon.
WHY THE JOBS GO TO ILLEGALS:
“What employers
really want in many cases by hiring immigrants is to hold down wage costs,
experts say.”
UNDER OBAMA, TWO-THIRDS OF JOBS GO TO
HIS PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS!
"We have a
situation where the job market — the bottom fell out, yet we kept legal
immigration relatively high without even a national debate," he said.
"As a consequence, a lot of the job growth has been going to
immigrants."
Mr. Obama did take
action this year to grant many illegal immigrants up to 30 years of age a tentative
legal status that prevents them from being deported and authorizes them to work
in the United States.
Some Republicans in
Congress have criticized Mr. Obama's policy, saying it violates his powers and
will mean more competition for scarce jobs.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Why the new
jobs go to immigrants
By David R. Francis
Wall Street cheered and stock prices rose when the US
Labor Department announced last Friday that employers had expanded their
payrolls by 262,000 positions in February. But it wasn't entirely good news. The statisticians
also indicated that the share of the adult population holding jobs had slipped
slightly from January to 62.3 percent. That's now two full percentage points below
the level in the brief recession that began in March 2001
ILLEGALS NOW
CONTROL THE CA STATE LEGISLATURE WHERE ALL AGENDAS ARE FOR LA RAZA SUPREMACY!
NOW ILLEGALS WILL
BE GETTING UNEMPLOYMENT FOR THE JOBS THEY STOLE FROM LEGALS!
Undocumented immigrants could get jobless benefits
Published: Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012 - 12:00 am | Page 4A
Last Modified: Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012 - 11:20 am
Legislation introduced Tuesday would
give about 400,000 undocumented immigrants in California the same rights as
citizens to unemployment benefits and various other government
services.
Assembly
Bill 35 targets a select group of undocumented immigrants, participants in
President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, who
came to the United States as youths and have lived generally productive lives
for numerous years.
Gov.
Jerry Brown signed legislation, effective Jan. 1, that enables participants in
the federal program to obtain California driver's licenses. AB 35 would provide
them with rights to a state ID card, unemployment
benefits and state-administered medical services.
AB
35 was proposed by Assemblyman Roger Hernández, a West Covina Democrat who was
named chairman of the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee this month.
"California
embodies the greatest diversity in the world," Hernández said in a written
statement. "We recognize we will need the collective skills and talents of
these young immigrants to aid out state in reaching our true potential."
As
labor committee chairman, Hernández said, "I am ready to carry my part in
making sure their integration into our workforce, economy and society becomes a
reality."
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/12/5048195/undocumented-immigrants-could.html#storylink=cpy
…and still they
sabotage E-VERIFY to ease more illegals into our jobs!
FEDS PREDICT
SOARING UNEMPLOYMENT UNTIL PAST 2015… Good time for amnesty?
Obama and Justice Sotomayor (A LA
RAZA PARTY MEMBER) Vow to Illegals to SABOTAGE E-verify!
VIVA LA RAZA SUPREMACY?
*
REP. LAMAR SMITH HAS CONSISTENTLY AND OPENLY VOICED OPPOSITION TO OBAMA’S
ASSAULT ON OUR BORDERS AND JOBS… even as most politicians HISPANDER for the
illegals’ ILLEGAL VOTES.
Obama soft on illegals enforcement
Arrests
of illegal immigrant workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama,
according to figures released Wednesday. Criminal arrests, administrative
arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all
fell by more than 50 percent
from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.
The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said a period of economic turmoil is the wrong time to be cutting enforcement and letting illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans otherwise would hold.
The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said a period of economic turmoil is the wrong time to be cutting enforcement and letting illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans otherwise would hold.
REP. LAMAR
SMITH for PRESIDENT
"We could cut unemployment in
half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers," said
Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs
Caucus. "President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on
immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal
immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce
immigration laws." REP. LAMAR SMITH
DURING BARACK OBAMA’S FIRST TERM, 2/3s OF ALL JOBS WENT
TO IMMIGRANTS, BOTH LEGAL AND ILLEGAL.
IT’S ALL ABOUT MAKING BILLIONAIRES BY KEEPING WAGES
DEPRESSED.
SHOULD WE KEEP IMPORTING FOREIGN BORN TECH WORKERS YEAR
AFTER YEAR AFTER YEAR?
Silicon Valley Poverty Is Often Ignored By The Tech Hub's Elite
VIVA LA RAZA SUPREMACY?
during Obama's first term, 2/3s of
all jobs went to immigrants... BOTH LEGAL and ILLEGAL... and workplace
enforcement of FED LAWS PROHIBTING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS plummeted 70%!
given Obama was reelected by LA
RAZA, enforcement is expected to be nonexistent.
THE ENTIRE REASON FOR OBAMA’S AMNESTY HOAX IS TO KEEP WAGES
DEPRESSED WITH 40 MILLION NEW HEAVY BREEDING MEXICAN DEMS!
Despite Obama’s rhetoric about creating “decent-paying” and
“middle class” jobs, the reality is that his administration has made the
slashing of workers’ wages a deliberate goal, beginning with the 2009
restructuring of Chrysler and General Motors, in which Obama’s Auto Task Force
made the imposition of a 50 percent wage cut for new-hires the condition for
providing bailout funds to the US auto makers.
Low-wage
America
7
August 2013
Not only
is the US economy adding too few jobs to make a significant dent in mass
unemployment, the vast majority of the new jobs that are being created are
part-time or temporary, and pay far less than those that were eliminated during
the 2008-2009 downturn.
Of the
lackluster total of 162,000 jobs added last month, a staggering two-thirds were
part-time, and most were in low-wage sectors, according to the latest US jobs
report, published last Friday by the Labor Department.
Over the
past four months, the US economy has added 791,000 new part-time jobs, but only
187,000 full-time jobs. This is despite the fact that part-time work makes up
less than 20 percent of all existing employment in the US.
Sixty-one
percent of the jobs created so far this year have been in low-paying
industries, even though employment in these sectors constitutes less than 40
percent of total jobs in the US, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics.
The fastest job growth has been in retail sales, food preparation, freight and
warehouse work, wait staff, and home health care—positions that pay less than
$12 an hour.
The
Moody’s report noted that middle-income jobs have constituted less than 22
percent of new jobs added so far this year, while high-paying jobs have
amounted to less than 17 percent.
Partly as
a result of the growth of low-wage employment, average hourly earnings fell by
two cents last month, to $23.98. This is on top of an enormous erosion of wages
over the past five years. Between 2007 and 2011, the US median household income
plunged by 11.6 percent, from $57,143 (in 2011 dollars) to $50,502, according
to Census Bureau figures.
A 2012
report by the National Employment Law Project found that low-wage jobs, paying
between $7.69 and $13.83, constituted the majority of jobs created in the US
since the 2008 Wall Street crash. By contrast, medium-wage jobs—which made up
60 percent of the job losses during the economic downturn—represented only 22
percent of job growth during the “economic recovery.”
The
overwhelming growth of low-wage and part-time employment has contributed to a
significant increase of poverty and social distress.
Last
month, the Associated Press reported that four in five Americans are
“economically insecure”—meaning they have had an income below 150 percent of
the poverty line, have been unemployed, or have relied on anti-poverty programs
such as food stamps for a year or more of their lives.
Automotive
manufacturers, including General Motors, Volkswagen and BMW, have responded to
the 2008 downturn by vastly expanding their use of temporary labor.
Particularly in plants in the US South, such as Volkswagen’s Chattanooga,
Tennessee facility, auto makers carry out all new hiring for production jobs
through temporary agencies. These employees can be fired at will and without
cause.
A full 12
percent of the American work force, 17 million people, are employed in
temporary jobs, the Associated Press reported last year. The number of
temporary jobs has increased by more than 50 percent since 2009, according to
Labor Department figures.
The
extraordinary growth of temporary employment is by no means a solely American
phenomenon. A report by England’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and
Development showed that more than one million workers in the UK have so-called
“zero-hour” employment contracts, i.e., there is no guarantee the employees
will work even one hour per week.
Far from
being an aberration or anomaly, the vast expansion of low-wage work in the
United States is the deliberate policy of the Obama administration and both
political parties, which are working to boost the profits of the corporations
by driving down labor costs.
This was
made clear by Obama’s decision last week to make a major economic policy speech
at a Chattanooga, Tennessee warehouse run by Amazon.com, which is notorious for
subjecting its fulfillment center employees to brutally low wages and sweatshop
conditions.
The base
pay for workers at Amazon’s fulfillment centers is $11 per hour, and up to half
of the work force is contracted from temporary employment agencies during busy
periods. Employees are made to work in extreme temperatures, are prevented from
speaking with one another, subjected to personal searches, and routinely
threatened with termination.
Praising
the company’s “job creation” in his speech, Obama declared that “Amazon is a
great example of what’s possible.” Obama called for “new tax credits so
communities hit hardest by plant closures can attract new investment.” The
Amazon fulfillment center where he was speaking is exactly the type of “new
investment” to which Obama was referring. It received a waiver on state taxes
from Tennessee, which has among the highest unemployment rates in the country,
in exchange for opening up two warehouses in the state.
Despite
Obama’s rhetoric about creating “decent-paying” and “middle class” jobs, the
reality is that his administration has made the slashing of workers’ wages a
deliberate goal, beginning with the 2009 restructuring of Chrysler and General
Motors, in which Obama’s Auto Task Force made the imposition of a 50 percent
wage cut for new-hires the condition for providing bailout funds to the US auto
makers.
This
policy is shared by both political parties in the US and the ruling classes of
all countries. Earlier this year, Maria Damanaki, Greece’s representative to
the European Commission, told Greece’s Vima FM radio that “the strategy of the
European Commission over the past year-and-a-half or two has been to reduce the
labour costs in all European countries in order to improve the competitiveness
of European companies over the rivals from Eastern Europe and Asia.”
Low
wages, abusive working conditions, and permanent job insecurity are all that
the capitalist system has to offer working people. The only way to guarantee
decent wages and living standards is to replace this obsolete social order,
based on the domination of a handful of millionaires and billionaires over all
aspects of social life, with a system—socialism—based on the satisfaction of
social needs, not the enrichment of a privileged few.
Kristina
Betinis and Andre Damon
Income
inequality grows four times faster under
Obama than Bush …. we bankroll Mexico's welfare state in our borders as the number of
Americans (Legals) sink into poverty! Illegals also get all the jobs!
The study noted that, in the aftermath of the Great
Depression, the US undertook policies “during the New Deal [that] permanently
reduced income concentration until the 1970s.” In contrast, the study noted a
striking absence of any measures to reign in social inequality in the present
crisis. Far from it, the Obama administrations’ bank bailouts, austerity
program and wage-cutting policies have vastly expanded the prevalence of social
inequality.
SOARING POVERTY IN AMERICA – SOARING PROFITS FOR WALL STREET
CRONY CAPITALISM: HOW OBAMA KEPT HIS PROMISE TO MAKE THE
RICH RICHER AND VOTING ILLEGALS GET OUR JOBS, WELFARE AND LA RAZA SUPREMACY OFF
THE GRINGOS’ BACKS.
OBAMANOMICS AT WORK:
IBM OUTSOURCES
Whether it’s through the exporting of jobs overseas or the
importing of foreign workers, the hiring and lobbying practices of big business
have big results. The relentless pursuit of the bottom line, whether through
offshoring or packing payrolls with immigrants eager for an American job at any
wage, lowers the living standard of all citizens.
THOUSANDS of
AMERICANS (Legals) LAID OFF… as Dems put millions of Mexicans in our jobs!
"They hauled them down to the
border," Sakuma said. "Three days later, they were standing in our
office, but they had a different name and a different Social Security
number."
THE
IMMORALITY OF AMNESTY to abet LA RAZA Mex looting in our borders
AMERICA: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY!!!
Most
evangelicals, 73 percent, said that, instead of bringing in more immigrant
workers, employers should be ‘required to try harder to recruit and train,
Americans from those high-unemployment groups. And most evangelicals, 68
percent, said they are willing to pay higher prices if it is necessary for
employers to raise wages to fill jobs with Americans instead of adding more
foreign workers.”
The US should think long
and hard about the high number of Latino immigrants.
The principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are affluent
Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work. Harvard
economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190 billion
annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market
at the low-wage end.
JOBS – WORST UNDER
OBAMA SINCE THE DEPRESSION ...meanwhile millions of Mexicans have jumped our
borders and jobs for obamacare, LA RAZA welfare, anchor baby welfare and to
vote dem for more!!!
more at this link – post on your Facebook and email broadcast
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/08/two-thirds-of-all-jobs-under-obama-go.html
DURING
OBAMA’S FIRST TERM 2/3s OF ALL JOBS WENT TO IMMIGRANTS, BOTH LEGAL AND ILLEGAL.
FEDERAL WORKPLACE ENFORCEMENT of LAWS PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT of ILLEGALS
PLUMMETED 70%... AND OBAMA - HOLDER SABOTAGED E-VERIFY EVERYWHERE THEY COULD TO
EASE MORE LA RAZA INTO OUR JOBS!
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