The union bureaucracy has shared in the
looting operation carried out by Wall Street
during the pandemic. According to the UAW’s
latest federal financial filings, for example, its
assets increased by $31 million last year, and
the union shelled out tens of thousands of
dollars for trips to resorts and casinos for its
top bureaucrats, hundreds of whom earn more
than $150,000 per year. In recent years, the
UAW has been exposed as an organization
run by corrupt gangsters who steal workers’
dues money and accept bribes from the
companies in exchange for ramming through
concessions contracts
Biden: 'I'm a Union Guy...It's about Time They Start to Get a Piece of the Action'
(CNSNews.com) - "I'm a union guy," President Joe Biden told a gathering in Pittsburgh on Wednesday as he prepared to announce phase one of his $2.5-trillion infrastructure plan, part of which would weaken right-to-work laws in 27 states. Those laws bar compulsory membership in labor unions.
"I support unions. Unions built the middle class. It's about time they start to get a piece of the action," Biden said.
Biden said his proposals will create millions of jobs -- "good-paying jobs."
He said it will "ensure free and fair choice" for workers to organize and bargain collectively," provisions found in the Democrats' "Protecting the Right to Organize Act," or PRO Act, which the House has passed and is now included in Biden's Jobs plan.
Biden's plan to rebuild the middle class goes beyond roads, bridges and ports. It includes expanding home-based care, retrofitting buildings, replacing all lead pipes, and scrapping "exclusionary" state and local zoning laws. Yet Biden compared it to the building of the interstate highway system in the 1950s:
It's not a plan the tinkers around the edges. It's a once in a generation investment in America, unlike anything we've seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago. In fact, it's the largest American jobs investment since World War II. Create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs that'll grow the economy, make us more competitive around the world, promote our national security interests, and put us in a position to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years.
It's big, yes. It's bold, yes. And we can get it done. It has two parts, the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan. Both are essential to our economic future. In a few weeks, I'll talk about the American's Family Plan [sic], but today I want to talk about the American's Jobs Plan [sic]. I'll begin with the heart of the plan. It modernizes transportation infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, airports.
Biden highlighted the following elements of his plan, as noted in his own words:
-- "The American Jobs Plan will modernize 20,000 miles of highways and roads and main streets that are in difficult, difficult shape right now. It'll fix the nation's 10 most economically significant bridges in America that require replacement...We'll also repair 10,000 bridges, desperately needed upgrades to unclog traffic, keep people safe, and connect our cities, towns, and tribes across the country."
-- "The American Jobs Plan will build new railcars and transit lines, easing congestion, cutting pollution, slashing commute time, and opening up investment in communities that be--can connect it to the cities and cities to the outskirts where a lot of jobs are these days. It will reduce the bottlenecks of commerce at our ports and our airports.
-- "The American Jobs Plan will lead to a transformational progress in our effort to tackle climate change...building a nation-eyed-- wide network of 500,000 charging stations, creating good-paying jobs by leading the world in the manufacturing and export of clean electric cars and trucks. We're going to provide tax incentives and point-of-sale rebates--rebates to help all American families afford clean vehicles of the future."
-- "When we make all of these investments, we're going to make sure ... that we buy American.
-- "The American Jobs Plan will put plumbers and pipefitters to work replacing 100 percent of the nation's lead pipes and service lines so every American, every child can turn on a faucet or a fountain and drink clean water." (Biden said up to 10 million homes in the U.S. and more than 400,000 schools/childcare centers have lead pipes.)
-- "American jobs will make sure every single -- every single -- American has access to high-quality, affordable, high-speed Internet for businesses, for schools. And when I say affordable, I mean it. Americans pay too much for Internet service. We're going to drive down the price for families who have service now and make it easier for families who don't have affordable service to be able to get it now."
-- "My American Jobs Plan will put hundreds of thousands of people to work...line workers, electricians, and laborers laying thousands of miles of transmission line, building a modern, resilient, and fully clean grid, and capping hundreds of thousands of literally orphan oil and gas wells that need to be cleaned up because they're abandoned, paying the same exact rate that a union man or woman would get having done that well in the first place.
-- "We'll build, upgrade, and weatherize affordable energy efficient housing and commercial buildings for millions of Americans.
-- "American Jobs Plan's gonna help in big ways. It's gonna extend access to quality, affordable home and community-based care. ...For too long, caregivers who are disproportionately women and women of color and immigrants have been unseen, underpaid, and undervalued. This plan along with the American Families Plan changes that, with better wages, benefits, and opportunities for millions of people who'll be able to get to work in an economy that works for them."
-- "American Jobs Plan is the biggest increase in our federal non-defense research and development spending on record. It's gonna boost America's innovative edge in markets where global leadership is up for grabs. Markets like battery technology, biotechnology, computer chips, clean energy, the competition with China in particular."
(Biden did not mention this, but a White House fact sheet notes that his plan would "Eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies." According to the fact sheet: "For decades, exclusionary zoning laws – like minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements, and prohibitions on multifamily housing – have inflated housing and construction costs and locked families out of areas with more opportunities. President Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative, new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate such needless barriers to producing affordable housing.")
Biden urged Americans "think about" what his physical and social infrastructure plan means to "you and your loved ones." "We just have to imagine again," he said.
"Imagine what we can do, what's within our reach if we modernize those highways. You can your family could travel coast to coast without a single tank of gas onboard a high-speed train. We can connect high-speed, affordable, reliable Internet wherever you live. Imagine knowing that you are handing your children and grandchildren a country that will lead the world in producing clean energy technology..."
Biden put the price of his American Jobs Plan at "roughly two trillion dollars...spread largely over eight years."
"So how do we pay for it?" Biden asked. He wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, up from the current 21 percent. "Just doing that one thing will generate one trillion dollars in additional revenue over 15 years," Biden said.
"We're going to also eliminate deductions by corporations for offshoring jobs and shifting assets overseas. You do that, you pay a penalty...And use the savings from that to give companies tax credits to locate manufacturing here and manufacturing and production here in the United States. And we'll significantly ramp up the IRS enforcement against corporations who either failed to report their incomes or under report. It's estimated that could raise hundreds of billions of dollars.
"All this adds up to more than what I proposed to spend in just 15 years."
Biden repeated his promise not to raise taxes on "people making less than $400,000."
He also said he's "open to other ideas, so long as they do not impose any tax increase on people making less than $400,000."
Biden ended with a plea for bipartisanship:
"Let me close with this. Historically, infrastructure had been a bipartisan undertaking, many times led by Republicans. It was Abraham Lincoln who built the Transcontinental Railroad. Dwight Eisenhower, Republican, Interstate Highway System. I could go on. And I don't think you'll find a Republican today in the House or Senate, maybe I'm wrong, gentlemen, who doesn't think we have to improve our infrastructure?
"They know China and other countries have eaten our lunch. So there's no reason why it can't be bipartisan again. The divisions of the moment shouldn't stop us from doing the right thing for the future. I'm going to bring Republicans into the Oval Office, listen to them, what they have to say, and be open to other ideas. We'll have a good faith negotiation with any Republican wants to help get this done. But we have to get it done," Biden insisted.
March jobs growth dominated by low-wage sectors
Despite a better than expected jobs report for the month of March, one year after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the US remains blighted by high levels of unemployment, including a stubbornly high number of long term unemployed.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that employment rose 916,000 in March, a number boosted by large numbers of hotel, restaurant and other service workers returning to work as states moved rapidly and prematurely to remove COVID-19-related restrictions. Employment in education also rose significantly as the Biden administration moved ahead with the forced reopening of public schools.
The official unemployment rate fell to 6.0, still well above the pre-pandemic figure. However, a more realistic measure of the unemployment rate, which takes into account so-called discouraged workers and those forced to work part time who want full time work, stands at 10.7 percent. Known as the U6 rate, this figure gives a more accurate picture of the degree of social distress.
Reflecting the reentry of lower-paid workers into the labor force, average hourly earnings fell slightly in March.
In another indication of the depth of the social crisis, more than 4.2 million have been out of work for more than six months, and that number rose slightly in March from the previous month.
The largest job gains in March came from leisure and hospitality with a 280,000 increase. Bars and restaurants added 176,000 jobs, while arts, entertainment and recreation saw 64,000 new hires. These three sectors, typically low-wage and seasonal, accounted for well over half of the March job gains.
Local, state and private education added 190,000 jobs in March as schools reopened in cities across the US under the pressure of the Biden administration and Democratic Party politicians, who see the schools as a child care service for potential workers. This homicidal policy will only serve to add new fuel to the pandemic, which despite vaccinations, is surging in Michigan and a number of other states.
Construction added 110,000 jobs in March, while manufacturing added 53,000. Manufacturing is down 515,000 jobs since February 2020. Altogether, through March the US economy is still down 8.4 million jobs since before the pandemic.
While some economists predict that April will also show strong employment gains and an optimistic report by the Wall Street Journal predicted monthly job gains averaging 500,000 for the rest of the year, that would leave overall employment below pre-pandemic levels. According to the Federal Open Market Committee, a return to the 3.5 percent unemployment rate prior to the pandemic would take until the end of 2023 in the unlikely event there are not intervening economic shocks.
Another measure, the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the population employed or actively seeking work, was little changed in March at 61.5 percent. That compares to the pre-pandemic level of 63 percent. The number of workers forced to work part time who wanted full time employment stood at 5.8 million, 1.4 million higher than February 2020. The number of discouraged workers stood at 523,000, unchanged from the previous month.
The release of the jobs report follows the publication of the Department of Labor report on weekly unemployment claims that showed an increase of 61,000 state claims from the previous week to 719,000. This marks more than one year of historically unprecedented numbers of new unemployment filings. In addition, there were 237,025 new claims filed under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program that provides assistance to contract and self-employed workers not covered by regular unemployment benefits.
In the face of the rising employment numbers, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell rushed to reassure markets that the cash spigot would be left open despite signs of an improving economy. The US central bank has been propping up equities markets through the purchase of $120 billion in bonds each month while keeping interest rates near zero. Were this flow of money to be stopped or even slow down, the inflated stock market would likely crash.
The precarious nature of the financial boom was illustrated earlier this week by the stock selloff around the collapse of investment firm Archegos Capital that resulted in massive losses for major banks. The degree to which the failure of even a relatively small firm could threaten to spark a panic in the markets testifies to the highly leveraged and unstable character of the world financial system, inflated by the infusion of ultra-cheap money.
In a sign of continuing social distress, food banks report no let-up in demand. According to a local news report, the Alameda County Food Bank in the San Francisco Bay Area is continuing to see high demand. In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the food bank distributed 3.2 million pounds of food. In March 2021, that number was 6.0 million. The food bank went from helping one in five residents of the county to rising over the course of the past year to one in four.
At the Mission Food Hub in San Francisco, donations are collected for farm workers. It has gone from distributing food to 300 families a year to over 9,000. "The pandemic has caused them to get COVID and they can't work. And when they can't work they get no money. They don't have savings and 401Ks," organizer Roberto Hernandez told KTVU News. "You have people who lost their jobs a year ago. And they won't be able to go back to those jobs because a lot of those businesses are gone."
According to a report released by the Georgia Food Bank Association, an additional 344,000 residents of the state have been forced into food insecurity since the start of the pandemic. The report said that 1.7 million people in the state face food insecurity, including 562,000 children.
Nationwide food bank network Feeding America projects that 1.4 million New York City residents will struggle to secure adequate food this year. Enrollment in food stamps had increased 12 percent to 1.66 million city residents as of January.
Food Bank for New York City, which distributes food through a network of 1,000 food banks and charities, has seen a 61 percent increase in demand over the prior year. Zac Hall, vice president of programs for the nonprofit, told the Wall Street Journal, “I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think the same level of response that we have today is going to at least be needed for the next couple of years.”
Growth in class struggle in the US pits workers against the pro-capitalist trade unions
There are a number of expressions of a significant growth of the class struggle in the United States, which pose fundamental questions of perspective for the working class.
At Columbia University, 3,000 graduate students are fighting against “COVID-19 austerity” and are demanding decent pay, health and child care benefits. In Worcester, Massachusetts, more than 700 nurses have been on strike for more than four weeks against unsafe staffing ratios in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. These ongoing strikes were joined this week by important sections of industrial workers, including 1,300 workers at steelmaker ATI in the northeast US and 1,100 miners at coal company Warrior Met in Alabama.
These struggles are a component part of a growing movement of workers internationally, including a one-day general strike against a pay-rise cap in Belgium, a four-day strike by 2,000 Amazon workers in Germany, a strike by 2,000 coal miners in Bosnia and Herzegovina over unpaid wages, and a planned walkout of primary school teachers against school reopenings as the pandemic surges in France.
This is only an initial expression of an enormous growth of social antagonisms throughout the world as a result of the ruling class response to the pandemic. The subordination of public health to the profit interests of the rich has led to more than 2.8 million deaths globally, including more than 560,000 in the United States alone. At the same time, the pandemic was used to orchestrate a historically unprecedented bailout of the rich, which is being followed by a massive restructuring of class relations to force workers to pay for it.
Every struggle of the working class raises directly the reactionary role of the corporatist trade unions, including the AFL-CIO in the US, which serve to suppress the class struggle and, when they cannot avoid a strike, to isolate and defeat it. The “unions” intervene not on behalf of the workers that they falsely claim to represent, but on behalf of management against workers.
At Columbia University, the United Auto Workers, which covers graduate students, is working to keep the strike isolated from graduate students at NYU only a few miles to the south, who are in the same local. Last month, the president of the UAW local revealed that they had planned to shut down the strike before a strike vote at NYU. The UAW is doing nothing to mobilize auto workers behind the graduate students and everything to prevent them from even knowing about the strike.
Meanwhile, the UAW is starving graduate students out on the picket line with a meager $275 weekly strike pay, in spite of the fact that the UAW controls a strike fund of $790 million.
The Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), the largest state organization of the National Nurses United with 123,000 members, is isolating the 700 Worcester nurses while not providing any strike pay. Instead, the MNA is forcing nurses to beg for charity: it is running a Venmo account to receive donations from the public to pay for nurses’ living expenses.
As for the ATI and Warrior Met workers, the United Steelworkers and the United Mine Workers are using the tactic of an “unfair labor practice” strike to avoid raising any concrete demands, and to allow the union to shut down the strike as soon as possible under the pretext that management is “bargaining in good faith.”
Over the past year, the executives that operate and control the AFL-CIO have played an absolutely essential role in enforcing the homicidal policy of the ruling elites. The teachers unions—the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—have been instrumental in forcing a reopening of schools against overwhelming opposition from both teachers and parents. Local teacher unions have forced through reopening agreements by forcing teachers to vote on a fait accompli, as in Chicago and Los Angeles, or by not allowing them to vote at all, as in Philadelphia and Detroit.
The United Food and Commercial Workers union and its subsidiary, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, have kept meatpacking workers on the job even as more than 50,000 in the United States have become infected and at least 286 have died. In the auto industry, the UAW is not only keeping workers on the job but forcing them to work 50, 60 and even 80 hours per week, while covering up all information on the extent of infections and deaths.
The word “union” conjures up images of an organization that defends workers against the deprivations of the companies, or at least one whose fate is somehow bound up with its ability and willingness to defend workers’ standard of living. This, however, bears no relationship whatever to the present unions. They function as labor syndicates, controlled by wealthy executives whose incomes move in inverse proportion to the fate of workers.
Within every major national organization in the AFL-CIO, there are literally dozens, and in some cases hundreds, of bureaucrats at both the national and local levels who earn more than $100,000 per year, many times more than the workers in the unions. Top executives have incomes that place them in the top 5 or even top 1 percent of income earners in the US.
Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the relatively small RWDSU, which is campaigning for recognition at Amazon, made $344,464 last year, and secretary treasurer Jack Wurm made $324,022. In the RWDSU national office, there are 29 staffers who “earned” more than $100,000 last year, and the union spent more than $6 million on salaries for the national office alone.
Randi Weingarten of the AFT made $564,236 in total compensation for the fiscal year ending June 2019, according to the AFT’s IRS filings. The national office received more than $253 million in receipts and spent more than $238 million, including $43.75 million on salaries and zero dollars on strike benefits last year. Fully 234 people in the AFT national office alone made more than $100,000 during the union’s last reporting period, and 28 made more than $200,000.
The Teamsters union has more than 200 officials on its payroll making more than $100,000 a year, and ten making more than $200,000, including President James Hoffa ($387,000).
As the unions’ dues base has continuously shrunk as a result of their own betrayals, the executives have resorted to control of strike funds, pension funds and even ownership of corporate stock in order to finance and supplement their income. This directly ties the financial status of the organizations and the executives who control them to the profitability of corporate America and the performance of the stock market. They fear a movement of the working class not least because it would threaten their own financial interests.
The union bureaucracy has shared in the looting operation carried out by Wall Street during the pandemic. According to the UAW’s latest federal financial filings, for example, its assets increased by $31 million last year, and the union shelled out tens of thousands of dollars for trips to resorts and casinos for its top bureaucrats, hundreds of whom earn more than $150,000 per year. In recent years, the UAW has been exposed as an organization run by corrupt gangsters who steal workers’ dues money and accept bribes from the companies in exchange for ramming through concessions contracts.
The unions are emerging more and more as a critical instrument of bourgeois statecraft. The unprecedented intervention into the unionization campaign at Amazon by Biden and the Democrats, and even right-wing Republican Marco Rubio, reflects the intense fear within ruling circles of the growth of the class struggle, and their calculations that this can be blunted by putting workers under the guardianship of the AFL-CIO and byzantine US labor law.
Under conditions of growing commercial and military conflict between the US and its rivals China and Russia, the unions are viewed as a means of tying the working class to the capitalist state and its war preparations.
This year is the fortieth anniversary of the betrayal by the AFL-CIO of the PATCO air traffic controllers, who were fired by President Ronald Reagan in a deliberate provocation. The attack on the PATCO workers was preceded by an agreement from the AFL-CIO that it would oppose any broader mobilization of the working class to defend them. This was followed by a series of struggles that were systematically isolated and defeated with the collaboration of the unions. This was a key turning point, not just in the US but around the world, in the complete integration of the unions into the structure of corporate management.
The expansion and unification of the struggles of the working class requires the formation of rank-and-file factory and workplace committees, completely independent of the pro-capitalist trade unions. Such committees are the form through which workers can advance their own demands, including emergency measures to stop the coronavirus pandemic, an end to the unsafe reopening of schools and workplaces, with full compensation for workers and small businesses.
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