Saturday, November 2, 2019

WHY AMNESTY FOR MORE "CHEAP" LABOR? 11.5M UNEMPLOYED LEGALS STILL WANT FULLT-TIME JOBS


No Labor Shortage: 11.5M Unemployed Americans Still Want Full-Time Jobs

The Associated Press
AP Photo/LM Otero
2:45

Despite claims by the big business lobby and corporate interests that there are labor shortages in blue-collar and white-collar workforces, the latest federal data reveal that about 11.5 million unemployed and underemployed Americans want full-time jobs.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed in its latest employment report for October that while Americans enjoy continued 50-year-low unemployment thanks to President Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” economy, there is still no labor shortage for employers.
Overall, there are about 5.9 million unemployed Americans — including 726,000 American teenagers, 319,000 black Americans, and 242,000 Hispanics, all of whom want full-time jobs. Of those unemployed, about 1.3 million Americans have been jobless for at least 27 weeks.
Likewise, about 4.4 million Americans are working part-time jobs but want full-time employment. Another 1.2 million Americans are not in the labor force at all, though they want full-time jobs as well and had searched for jobs within the last year.
Of those Americans not in the labor force, 341,000 told the Labor Department that they were discouraged by their job prospects and believe there are no jobs for them.


While Americans have enjoyed significant wage growth in Trump’s economy, especially blue-collar and working-class Americans, corporate interests have increasingly suggested that the U.S. must continue importing millions of foreign workers every year to fill jobs.
In April, former Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donahue said the U.S. needed more legal immigration because the country is “out of people.”
Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota has found that the country’s current legal immigration system — wherein 1.2 million mostly low-skilled workers are admitted annually — burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants.
Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, has found that every one-percent increase in the immigrant composition of American workers’ occupations reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

UAW sanctions plant closing, expansion of temps in deal with Ford

The Ford UAW council comprised of local officials at Ford facilities gave its approval Friday to a sellout contract patterned along the lines of the General Motors agreement. Voting is scheduled to be completed by November 15.
UAW Vice President-Ford Jimmy Settles, from left, UAW President Dennis Williams, Ford Motor Company Executive Chairman William Clay Ford, Jr., and Ford President and CEO Mark Fields pose during a ceremony to mark the opening of contract negotiations [Source: AP Photo/Paul Sancya]
While full details have not been released, what has been revealed demonstrates that it is a concessionary agreement tailored to the demands of Ford and Wall Street. This includes maintaining the two-tier wage system and giving a green light to the expanded use of temporary, part time and contract workers.
The contract will further facilitate the restructuring of the auto industry into a low wage sector, with an increasing percentage of contingent workers paid barely above poverty wages and denied basic benefits and rights.
Ford Chicago Assembly Plant
Even as the UAW announced the Ford contract, the UAW leadership faced another indictment this week. Edward Robinson, an official in UAW Region 5, was accused of working with “Official A” and others to steal $1.5 million from UAW dues income to fund personal expenses on luxury items. “Official A” is reported to be UAW President Gary Jones.
The UAW and corporate media launched their campaign for contract ratification with the typical bombast. In a statement following the council vote, Jones said, “UAW Ford members have created an environment for growth in products and jobs, and a serious commitment by Ford Motor Company to grow their footprint right here in the U.S.”
Protest by autoworkers at Ford Sterling Axle in suburban Detroit
“This contract continues a strong pattern that gives all workers a path to traditional wages and maintains the job security and benefits our members deserve.”
In the face of an unbroken record of betrayals and concessions contracts by the UAW, this will convince no one. In UAW doublespeak, creating an “environment for growth in products and jobs” means helping Ford slash costs in order to increase its profits.
Even if one takes at face value the self-serving “summary” being distributed by the UAW, the contract is another major attack on autoworkers.
Far from increasing jobs, the agreement sanctions the closure of the Romeo, Michigan engine plant employing 600 workers.
A report in the Detroit Free Press claims those workers will be offered buyouts or the chance to transfer to the Sterling Heights, Michigan transmission plant. However, the contract summary distributed by the UAW does not stipulate any guarantee of re-employment for laid off workers. Instead, those set to lose their jobs will be eligible for a one-time termination payment or “tuition assistance.”
The Ford deal includes two inadequate three percent pay raises, supplemented with two four percent lump sum payments in alternate years that are not folded into hourly wages.
Like the GM contract, the Ford agreement contains a bogus “pathway” for temporary workers to reach full time status beginning in 2020. Part time workers will get a pathway to regular status in 2021. As with the GM contract, however, this “pathway” will be full of loopholes. Workers will have to work three years without being laid off more than 30 days to be eligible for conversion. Otherwise the clock starts over.
Ford will be allowed to use temps and part time workers in excess of eight percent of the workforce only with UAW approval. This means in practice that the UAW will sanction the expanded use of temporary employees.
While the UAW summary claims that there will be no additional health care costs, the cuts to health care will be realized through the expansion of temporary and “in-progression” (second tier), workers. The latter receive substandard health care even after they reach the top pay rate for so-called “legacy” workers, which for many will not be until 2023.
The contract also maintains the substandard pay scale at the Sterling Axle and Rawsonville plants in Michigan. Base pay at these facilities starts at just $16.25 an hour and tops out at $22.50 an hour. In an additional twist of the knife, those workers already at the top rate will not be eligible for the 4 percent “performance bonus” due in December 2019.
The agreement contains a worthless “moratorium” on plant closings (except for Romeo engine). A similar “moratorium” in the UAW-GM contract did not stop the UAW from sanctioning the closure of four facilities in the latest contract, including Lordstown Assembly.
The UAW says Ford is committing to over $6 billion in product investments that will “create or keep over 8,500 jobs,” without specifying the number of new jobs. The agreement calls for a “Flat Rock viability strategy for a new product,” or in plain language, blackmail demands for further concessions to keep the plant open. It also refers to a proposal for “Buffalo Stamping Plant Competitiveness.”
Reacting to the deal to close the Romeo plant, one autoworker posted on Facebook, “I call BS. What happens when they move the workers and then reopen Romeo as a shell company, and they do the same work for 1/3 the price just to make larger profit margins. They did this in Saline 8 years ago and relocated over 1,000 jobs. That place is running around the clock now, but yeah they, didn't have work for us and had to close.”
The UAW only narrowly secured ratification of the GM contract following a 40-day strike. GM management and Wall Street hailed that deal, which ensured an increase in the number of temp workers earning vastly inferior wages and benefits. This is to be accompanied by the driving out of better-paid “legacy” workers.
Lurking behind the summary are a host of contract language changes and “memorandums of understanding.” It has long been standard to include language giving the UAW and management the right to alter terms of the agreement without a rank-and-file vote, a crass violation of workers rights that largely nullifies the purpose of a “contract.”
Not forgetting to line their own pockets, the UAW negotiated continued operation and funding for the UAW-Ford National Programs Centers, which has served as a conduit for hundreds of millions of dollars into UAW coffers.
The UAW is counting the example of its treachery in shutting down the GM strike to push through the Ford contract. The message is: “If you dare to vote down this agreement, you will be starved on the picket line for weeks in a strike that will result in no improvement to miserable settlement you rejected.”
To prevent this, workers must fight for the rejection of the contract and preparations for an all-out strike, mobilizing workers at GM and Fiat Chrysler as well as Ford. This requires the building of rank-and-file committees independent of the UAW in every factory and workplace. Workers must have adequate time to examine the contract and organize opposition. Workers representatives should monitor the vote.
The UAW is not a workers organization but a corporatist syndicate, a cheap labor contractor at the service of the auto companies. Only by their own independent action and initiative can workers ensure the defeat of this contract and the defense of their jobs and living standards.

Corruption scandal moves in on UAW President Gary Jones


United Auto Workers President Gary Jones is implicated in new charges filed Thursday by federal prosecutors against another top UAW official. The charges focus on the alleged embezzlement of more than $1.5 million in workers’ dues money to finance the purchase of luxury items and activity.
The latest allegations follow the UAW’s shutdown of the GM strike with an agreement, pushed through over widespread opposition, that meets all the company’s demands. The contract allows for the unlimited expansion of temporary workers and sanctions the shutdown of three plants, including Lordstown Assembly in Ohio.
UAW President Gary Jones [Credit: AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File]
On Friday, UAW executives gathered in Detroit rubber-stamped an agreement with Ford that follows the “pattern” at GM. The UAW is now scheming to ram through this contract before moving on to Fiat Chrysler.
The latest indictments further expose the nature of the organization that is supposedly bargaining on behalf of workers. The UAW is a bribed tool of corporate management, run by corrupt criminals whose incomes, official and embezzled, put them in the top one percent of the population.
The new charges filed in the US District Court in Detroit directly indict Edward N. Robinson, who allegedly worked with Vance Pearson and an individual identified as UAW Official A to embezzle more than $1.5 million between 2010 and September 2019, when Robinson left the UAW. “UAW Official A” has been identified by multiple media publications as Jones, based on sources close to the investigation.
Robinson was the president of the UAW Region 5 Midwest States Community Action Program (CAP) in Missouri, where Jones was the director until 2018. Pearson was Jones’ second-in-command at Region 5, until he took over the position of director after Jones was appointed UAW President.
A report in the Detroit Free Press gives a sense of the mafia character of the UAW: “The paperwork paints a dramatic picture of union officials concerned about the federal investigation, with references to a ‘burner phone,’ and assurances by Jones, as official A, allegedly telling Robinson that one of his relatives would be taken care of if he took responsibility for the embezzlement.”
Robinson is expected to cooperate with investigators, meaning that charges against Jones himself are likely forthcoming. Jones’ home was raided by the FBI in August, and a neighbor reported that he saw officials exiting the house with large sums of cash.
The complaint states that the UAW executives used the funds to fuel their “lavish lifestyles,” including through the use of fraudulent vouchers to finance “cigars, private villas, high-end liquor and meal expenses, golfing apparel, golf clubs and green fees.”
One instance of the criminal activity allegedly involved $700,000 in cash that was split between Robinson and Official A, or Jones.
The UAW issued a statement along the lines of each of its official responses to the expanding corruption probe. “We take any allegation or claim about the misuse of union resources very seriously,” it said. “The UAW is grounded in the principle of putting our members first, and that belief has never wavered.”
In fact, as the latest round of contracts demonstrates, the UAW exists as a criminal conspiracy against autoworkers.
Robinson is the twelfth person, including many top UAW officials, directly charged in the federal investigation. Former UAW President Dennis Williams, who was replaced by Jones last year, has also been implicated in various schemes, though he has not been officially charged.
In July of last year, Nancy Johnson, the top assistant to former UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell, told investigators that Williams directed top UAW executives to use funds from the UAW-company joint training centers to spend on personal items and travel.
The investigation into the UAW began with charges that then Fiat Chrysler (FCA) chief negotiator, Alphons Iocobelli, made payments to UAW officials, including then UAW vice president for FCA General Holiefield, “to obtain benefits, concessions, and advantages for FCA in the negotiation, implementation, and administration” of contracts.
Officials previously identified as involved in bribery, including Johnson, Williams, Jewell, Holiefield, Virdell King, and Keith Mickens, were involved in agreeing to and forcing through contracts in 2007, 2009 and 2015. From a legal standpoint, these contracts should be considered null and void, as they were supposedly negotiated by individuals receiving bribes from the companies.
The same, however, holds for the present contract. As the indictments implicating Jones make clear, the entire officialdom of the UAW has been involved in corrupt practices at the expense of the workers they claim to represent.
It is impossible for workers to defend their interests through this criminal syndicate. Nor can workers rely on federal prosecutors to “reform” the UAW. One of the aims of the corruption investigation has been to create an added incentive for UAW executives to ram through pro-company deals over mass opposition, or, if this fails, to implement some sort of receivership to allow the government to directly intervene on behalf of the companies.
To fight for the interests, workers must establish new, democratic rank-and-file organizations completely independent of the UAW. 

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