DID THE DEMOCRAT PARTY
FINISH OFF AMERICA?
“Throughout this period, the
trade unions
transitioned from their alliance with the Democratic
Party on the basis of ferocious anti-communism
into outright instruments of the corporations and
the state. They have and continue to collaborate in
the “orderly shutdown” of factories and
mines, after pushing through wage and benefit cuts
on the bogus pretext of “saving jobs.”
transitioned from their alliance with the Democratic
Party on the basis of ferocious anti-communism
into outright instruments of the corporations and
the state. They have and continue to collaborate in
the “orderly shutdown” of factories and
mines, after pushing through wage and benefit cuts
on the bogus pretext of “saving jobs.”
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY:
HELL BENT ON FINISHING OFF THE AMERICAN WORKER!
"At one point she
hailed the “record profits” of the auto companies. She did not mention that
these profits came at the expense of the jobs, wages and retirement benefits of
thousands of auto workers, decimated under the terms of the auto bailout
organized by the Obama administration."
Anger mounting among US autoworkers in wake of GM layoff announcement
Anger mounting among US autoworkers in wake of GM layoff announcement
By Shannon Jones
30 December 2016
Frustration and
stress is mounting in General Motors plants in the wake of the mass layoff
announcement last week by the largest US-based automaker.
On December 19,
GM said it would eliminate one full shift, almost 1,300 jobs, at its
Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant in March. In addition it said it would idle
five plants for one to three weeks in January, impacting some 10,000 workers.
In November, GM
reported plans to eliminate shifts at its Lordstown, Ohio plant and Lansing
Grand River plant in Michigan, impacting some 2,000 workers. In reporting the
cuts GM cited excess inventories and slower sales. The layoffs, however, are
coming at a time when many plants are imposing forced overtime.
The United Auto
Workers has given its support to the job cuts, taking the position that the
mass layoffs are a business necessity. In a statement issued in the wake of the
job cut announcement UAW Local 22 at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant justified the
cuts on the grounds of “cost efficiency.”
Hardest hit by
the layoffs will be young workers, many of who are on long-term temporary
assignment and do not qualify to be placed at other GM facilities. Many are
also being deprived of supplemental unemployment benefits, which pay a portion
of the difference between their state jobless benefits and their regular wages.
Most of the workers facing layoff were hired in April of 2016. That means the
layoffs were timed so that these workers will have less than the one-year
seniority required to receive supplemental unemployment pay and other benefits.
A young GM
worker at the GM Detroit-Hamtramck plant, who wished to remain anonymous, told
the World Socialist Web Site she had previously worked for a
GM subcontractor, but could not carry that seniority with her. “It sucks. They
said they would see if they will transfer us to either Lake Orion or Romulus,
but it is not a promise.”
Andrew, another
young GM Detroit-Hamtramck second shift worker who faces layoff, said, “A guy
who works near me quit a job at FedEx in Cleveland because he thought working
at GM would be a more secure job.
“Out of the
1,300 that are being laid off, only about 300 are permanent employees. The rest
are temporary and that means they can’t move to another plant. You are out of a
job, and we don’t get sub pay.
“What is also
upsetting is the uncertainty. I could be out of a job for a year. Do I start
looking for a new job or hope to go back to work at GM?”
He continued,
“The health insurance part is major. I am only getting one extra month of
health insurance. My wife went off her health insurance plan at the job she was
working so she could be covered under my plan at GM, which was better. But now
she can’t get back on her old plan until November. Meanwhile, she has major
medical expenses.”
Under terms of
the UAW-GM sellout national agreement signed in 2015, the number of temporary
workers that can be hired by management was doubled. This has created a
super-exploited, “third tier’ of workers who can essentially be hired and fired
at will by the company.
A veteran worker
at the GM Delta Township plant near Lansing told the WSWS, “The majority of
those being laid off are temporary workers. The shift they are eliminating at
the Grand River plant are new hires. They will be coming over here to Delta and
they will displace the temporary workers.
“We have
temporary workers who work very hard. A lot of them quit other jobs to come
work for GM where they thought they could get a foot in the door. They have
made purchases and they have bills. In fact we just brought in another 100
temps the week before Thanksgiving.
“We call them
‘perma-temps.’ You can have them in there for years. It is not right. The
decision should be made to hire them full time after 90 days.”
Workers pointed
to the contradiction of GM insisting that it must slash jobs and production
even as it has forced workers to labor extra hours and on weekends in order to
build up inventory.
The Delta
Township worker commented, “People are working two to three Saturdays in a row
and they are laying people off. People are overworked. It is not right. It has
got to stop.”
A worker from
Ford's assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan said her factory had been impacted by
layoffs. “I think it’s horrible what they’re doing. We have no rights. We were
laid off for a week before Christmas from December 12 through the 19, and we
will be off in February for another one or two weeks. They say it’s due to a
slump in sales, yet they’ll work us 10 to 12 hours a day to boost production
just so they can lay us off."
Workers also
focused on the role of the UAW in facilitating the attack on jobs. Andrew, the
Detroit-Hamtramck GM worker, said, “The UAW comes around once in a while. They
claim they did not know in advance about the layoffs, but I find that hard to
believe.”
The former GM
subcontract worker said, “When they made the announcement there was not one UAW
person on the stage to answer questions. Their position is basically you are
out the door, ‘goodbye.’”
The Delta
Township worker noted the fact that the UAW was one of the largest holders of
GM stock. “They signed off on the decision to move small car production to
Mexico, even though it would hurt jobs.
“The UAW has
allowed GM to amend a lot of the old contracts in order to help the company
make money. What the union isn’t saying is that it is in the interest of the
union itself so that it doesn’t drive their stock down.
“A couple of
years ago the union decided to raise union dues, saying there would be a big
strike and they needed money for the strike fund. The strike never happened,
but they did not lower the dues. Instead they gave themselves raises.”
AMERICA'S ROAD TO REVOLUTION
“Our entire crony
capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy
approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great
country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THE AMERICAN THINKER.com
AMERICA THE HOME OF THE HOMELESS:
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS AT WORK!
"The decline in homeownership is one sign of the
deep
social crisis in the United States. As rents and
housing costs have
soared, spurred on by financial
speculation that has enriched the
ruling elites,
incomes and jobs for most Americans have
shriveled."
THE CLINTON “JOBS” PLAN ENDORSED BY NARCOMEX – IT’S CALLED
AMNESTY!
Clinton, in the guise of a “jobs” and “infrastructure” program,
promoted yet another scheme to hand out tax cuts and other incentives for
companies to hire workers at poverty-level wages, with the trade unions brought
in to keep the workers in line in return for a cut in the spoils.
SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing indictment
of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country,
whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are
just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive
inequality and mass poverty
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:
IT WORKS! BUT ONLY FOR THE SUPER RICH!!!
"The same period has
seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated
at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the
1920s."
"He (Trump) is able to get a
hearing because millions of people are being driven into
economic insecurity and poverty while the rich and
the super-rich continue to amass obscene levels
of wealth. He is able with some success to divert mass discontent
along reactionary nationalist and racialist channels precisely
because what passes for the “left” in American politics,
anchor by the Democratic Party, has moved ever further
to the right, culminating in the Obama administration which
has presided over endless war and an unprecedented redistribution of
wealth from the bottom to the top of the economic ladder."
THE CLINTON – OBAMA FILE:
THEIR
LOOTING OF AMERICA MADE THEM FILTHY RICH, KEPT OUR BORDERS WIDE OPEN, KEPT
CRONY WALL STREET BANKSTERS OUT OF PRISON, AND ENRICHED MUSLIM DICTATORS
"This offers cold comfort to millions of college students saddled
with massive debt and workers confronting the prospect of dead-end, low-wage
and part-time jobs. The economic legacy of the Obama administration has been a
bonanza for Wall Street, with huge income gains for the top 1 percent and
falling and stagnating wages for the vast majority. The main beneficiaries have
been wealthy individuals like Chelsea Clinton herself, who is married to a hedge fund
manager."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/uc-workers-starving-in-state-that-hands.html
World’s richest increased their wealth by $237 billion in 2016
By Nick Beams
29 December 2016
The world’s wealthiest 200 billionaires increased their net worth by $237 billion in 2016, taking their total wealth to $4.4 trillion as of the close of trading on Tuesday, an overall increase for the year of 5.7 percent, according to calculations by Bloomberg.
The major factor in the wealth increase is the surge in the US stock market since the election of Donald Trump on November 8, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average heading towards 20,000, an increase of close to 9 percent in seven weeks, or 69 percent on an annualized basis.
At the top of the rich list is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose net worth is $85.9 billion. As the Bloomberg report noted, without taking into account any interest payments or other wealth-enlarging factors, he would have to spend $2.3 million every day for the next 100 years to run down this vast fortune.
The biggest gainer for the year was Warren Buffett, whose investment firm Berkshire Hathaway saw its net worth increase by $11.8 billion, largely on the back of holdings in airlines and banks, whose stock values have soared since the election of Trump. His total wealth has risen to $74.1 billion, an increase of 19 percent for the year.
US billionaires have increased their wealth by $77 billion since the Trump victory based on expectations that his commitment to end corporate regulations and carry out both corporate and personal income tax cuts will boost profits.
That perception has been reinforced by Trump’s appointees to key cabinet posts, including billionaire Wilbur Ross to head the Commerce Department and former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary.
Summing up the post-election euphoria in ultra-wealthy circles, hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, who ranks 63rd on the top 200 list, said last week that Trump had lifted the “animal spirits” of capitalism and the market could rise even further. Simon Smiles, the investment manager for ultra-high-net-worth clients at UBS Wealth Management, said, “2016 ended up being a spectacular year for risk assets.”
Another major beneficiary was oil industry mogul Harold Hamm. His wealth more than doubled, rising by $8.4 billion to reach $15.3 billion, on the expectation that a Trump administration will slash regulations on the extraction of fossil fuels. Overall, the 49 energy, mining and metal billionaires saw the biggest increase in wealth of any category, recording an increase of $80 billion after a decline of $32 billion in 2015.
Other major beneficiaries were Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook. Bezos, who doubled his wealth in 2015 to $60 billion, increased it by a further $7.5 billion this year, while Zuckerberg added $5.4 billion.
The accumulation of wealth at the heights of society is mirrored in income statistics. A recently completed
study by economists Thomas Piketty,
Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found
that the share of national income received by
the bottom half of the US population has been
reduced from 20 percent in 1980 to 12
percent, while the income of the top 1 percent
has risen from 12 percent to 20 percent. In
other words, some 8 percent of national
income has been transferred from the bottom
half of the population to the top 1 percent.
This trend has been accelerating not least because of the spread of part-time and contract working under the Obama administration, as revealed in a major study released this month. Conducted by Harvard economist
Lawrence Katz and Princeton economist Alan
Krueger, it found that 94 percent of the 10
million jobs created during the Obama
administration were temporary, contract or
part-time positions. The proportion of
workers engaged in such jobs increased from
10.7 percent of the population to 15.8
percent. At the same time, the study found
that under Obama, there were 1 million fewer
workers engaged in full-time jobs than there
were at the start of the recession.
The growth of this type of contingent work provides a significant boost to profits. Employers of part-time labour are not required to provide benefits for employees. Young workers have been the hardest hit by the growth of contract labour and were the largest proportion of such employees. The study found that they generally do not receive any benefits, even when they are employed on a full-time basis.
Krueger, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said he was surprised by the findings of his own study, noting that the loss of full-time work has hit every demographic. “Workers seeking full-time, steady work have lost,” he said.
Together with the growth of fabulous wealth for the upper echelons and the figures on rising income inequality, the Krueger-Katz study further punctures the hype of the outgoing Obama administration that it has organised an “economic recovery” benefiting the mass of ordinary workers and their families.
These trends are reflected internationally. A report released by the International Labour Organisation earlier this month found that wage growth worldwide has decelerated since 2012, falling from 2.5 percent to 1.7 percent. If China, where wage growth has been faster than elsewhere, is excluded, the growth in global wages drops from 1.6 percent to just 0.9 percent.
The ILO study also pointed to the rise of social inequality, noting that in Europe, the top 10 percent of employees take home 25.5 percent of total wages, while the bottom 50 percent get 29.1 percent.
This year has been characterised economically by a further increase in wealth and income for the top layers of society, continuing the trend since the global economic crisis. This redistribution of wealth and income from the bottom to the very top has been fuelled by the provision of trillions of dollars in ultra-cheap money to the banks and financial speculators.
Politically, it has been marked by a shift in the other direction, with the growth of social opposition.
This has taken the form of intensifying hostility to the entire official political establishment, reflected most notably in the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the US presidential election, not only in the support for Trump but more directly in the support for the self-proclaimed “socialist” Bernie Sanders.
At present, however, the political situation is marked by a profound contradiction. While the growth of social opposition is being driven by growing anti-capitalist sentiment, so far it has resulted in political gains for right-wing political forces, a contradiction that finds its sharpest expression internationally in the election of Trump and his installation of a cabinet of billionaires, military figures and ultra-right-wing and fascistic demagogues.
The responsibility for this situation rests
entirely with the official “left” parties and the
trade unions, which have functioned as the
chief enforcers for all the attacks on the
wages and social conditions of the working
class in the US and worldwide since the crisis
of 2008.
But while right-wing political tendencies have been the initial beneficiaries, the social crisis will intensify and assume ever more explosive forms, posing the necessity for the resolution of the present political impasse through the development of a mass socialist movement armed with a revolutionary perspective for the conquest of political power by the working class.
30 December 2016
Frustration and
stress is mounting in General Motors plants in the wake of the mass layoff
announcement last week by the largest US-based automaker.
On December 19,
GM said it would eliminate one full shift, almost 1,300 jobs, at its
Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant in March. In addition it said it would idle
five plants for one to three weeks in January, impacting some 10,000 workers.
In November, GM
reported plans to eliminate shifts at its Lordstown, Ohio plant and Lansing
Grand River plant in Michigan, impacting some 2,000 workers. In reporting the
cuts GM cited excess inventories and slower sales. The layoffs, however, are
coming at a time when many plants are imposing forced overtime.
The United Auto
Workers has given its support to the job cuts, taking the position that the
mass layoffs are a business necessity. In a statement issued in the wake of the
job cut announcement UAW Local 22 at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant justified the
cuts on the grounds of “cost efficiency.”
Hardest hit by
the layoffs will be young workers, many of who are on long-term temporary
assignment and do not qualify to be placed at other GM facilities. Many are
also being deprived of supplemental unemployment benefits, which pay a portion
of the difference between their state jobless benefits and their regular wages.
Most of the workers facing layoff were hired in April of 2016. That means the
layoffs were timed so that these workers will have less than the one-year
seniority required to receive supplemental unemployment pay and other benefits.
A young GM
worker at the GM Detroit-Hamtramck plant, who wished to remain anonymous, told
the World Socialist Web Site she had previously worked for a
GM subcontractor, but could not carry that seniority with her. “It sucks. They
said they would see if they will transfer us to either Lake Orion or Romulus,
but it is not a promise.”
Andrew, another
young GM Detroit-Hamtramck second shift worker who faces layoff, said, “A guy
who works near me quit a job at FedEx in Cleveland because he thought working
at GM would be a more secure job.
“Out of the
1,300 that are being laid off, only about 300 are permanent employees. The rest
are temporary and that means they can’t move to another plant. You are out of a
job, and we don’t get sub pay.
“What is also
upsetting is the uncertainty. I could be out of a job for a year. Do I start
looking for a new job or hope to go back to work at GM?”
He continued,
“The health insurance part is major. I am only getting one extra month of
health insurance. My wife went off her health insurance plan at the job she was
working so she could be covered under my plan at GM, which was better. But now
she can’t get back on her old plan until November. Meanwhile, she has major
medical expenses.”
Under terms of
the UAW-GM sellout national agreement signed in 2015, the number of temporary
workers that can be hired by management was doubled. This has created a
super-exploited, “third tier’ of workers who can essentially be hired and fired
at will by the company.
A veteran worker
at the GM Delta Township plant near Lansing told the WSWS, “The majority of
those being laid off are temporary workers. The shift they are eliminating at
the Grand River plant are new hires. They will be coming over here to Delta and
they will displace the temporary workers.
“We have
temporary workers who work very hard. A lot of them quit other jobs to come
work for GM where they thought they could get a foot in the door. They have
made purchases and they have bills. In fact we just brought in another 100
temps the week before Thanksgiving.
“We call them
‘perma-temps.’ You can have them in there for years. It is not right. The
decision should be made to hire them full time after 90 days.”
Workers pointed
to the contradiction of GM insisting that it must slash jobs and production
even as it has forced workers to labor extra hours and on weekends in order to
build up inventory.
The Delta
Township worker commented, “People are working two to three Saturdays in a row
and they are laying people off. People are overworked. It is not right. It has
got to stop.”
A worker from
Ford's assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan said her factory had been impacted by
layoffs. “I think it’s horrible what they’re doing. We have no rights. We were
laid off for a week before Christmas from December 12 through the 19, and we
will be off in February for another one or two weeks. They say it’s due to a
slump in sales, yet they’ll work us 10 to 12 hours a day to boost production
just so they can lay us off."
Workers also
focused on the role of the UAW in facilitating the attack on jobs. Andrew, the
Detroit-Hamtramck GM worker, said, “The UAW comes around once in a while. They
claim they did not know in advance about the layoffs, but I find that hard to
believe.”
The former GM
subcontract worker said, “When they made the announcement there was not one UAW
person on the stage to answer questions. Their position is basically you are
out the door, ‘goodbye.’”
The Delta
Township worker noted the fact that the UAW was one of the largest holders of
GM stock. “They signed off on the decision to move small car production to
Mexico, even though it would hurt jobs.
“The UAW has
allowed GM to amend a lot of the old contracts in order to help the company
make money. What the union isn’t saying is that it is in the interest of the
union itself so that it doesn’t drive their stock down.
“A couple of
years ago the union decided to raise union dues, saying there would be a big
strike and they needed money for the strike fund. The strike never happened,
but they did not lower the dues. Instead they gave themselves raises.”
AMERICA'S ROAD TO REVOLUTION
“Our entire crony
capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy
approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great
country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THE AMERICAN THINKER.com
AMERICA THE HOME OF THE HOMELESS:
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS AT WORK!
"The decline in homeownership is one sign of the
deep
social crisis in the United States. As rents and
housing costs have
soared, spurred on by financial
speculation that has enriched the
ruling elites,
incomes and jobs for most Americans have
shriveled."
THE CLINTON “JOBS” PLAN ENDORSED BY NARCOMEX – IT’S CALLED
AMNESTY!
Clinton, in the guise of a “jobs” and “infrastructure” program,
promoted yet another scheme to hand out tax cuts and other incentives for
companies to hire workers at poverty-level wages, with the trade unions brought
in to keep the workers in line in return for a cut in the spoils.
SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing indictment
of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country,
whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are
just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive
inequality and mass poverty
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:
IT WORKS! BUT ONLY FOR THE SUPER RICH!!!
"The same period has
seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated
at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the
1920s."
"He (Trump) is able to get a
hearing because millions of people are being driven into
economic insecurity and poverty while the rich and
the super-rich continue to amass obscene levels
of wealth. He is able with some success to divert mass discontent
along reactionary nationalist and racialist channels precisely
because what passes for the “left” in American politics,
anchor by the Democratic Party, has moved ever further
to the right, culminating in the Obama administration which
has presided over endless war and an unprecedented redistribution of
wealth from the bottom to the top of the economic ladder."
THE CLINTON – OBAMA FILE:
THEIR
LOOTING OF AMERICA MADE THEM FILTHY RICH, KEPT OUR BORDERS WIDE OPEN, KEPT
CRONY WALL STREET BANKSTERS OUT OF PRISON, AND ENRICHED MUSLIM DICTATORS
"This offers cold comfort to millions of college students saddled with massive debt and workers confronting the prospect of dead-end, low-wage and part-time jobs. The economic legacy of the Obama administration has been a bonanza for Wall Street, with huge income gains for the top 1 percent and falling and stagnating wages for the vast majority. The main beneficiaries have been wealthy individuals like Chelsea Clinton herself, who is married to a hedge fund manager."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/uc-workers-starving-in-state-that-hands.html
World’s richest increased their wealth by $237 billion in 2016
By Nick Beams
29 December 2016
29 December 2016
The world’s wealthiest 200 billionaires increased their net worth by $237 billion in 2016, taking their total wealth to $4.4 trillion as of the close of trading on Tuesday, an overall increase for the year of 5.7 percent, according to calculations by Bloomberg.
The major factor in the wealth increase is the surge in the US stock market since the election of Donald Trump on November 8, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average heading towards 20,000, an increase of close to 9 percent in seven weeks, or 69 percent on an annualized basis.
At the top of the rich list is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose net worth is $85.9 billion. As the Bloomberg report noted, without taking into account any interest payments or other wealth-enlarging factors, he would have to spend $2.3 million every day for the next 100 years to run down this vast fortune.
The biggest gainer for the year was Warren Buffett, whose investment firm Berkshire Hathaway saw its net worth increase by $11.8 billion, largely on the back of holdings in airlines and banks, whose stock values have soared since the election of Trump. His total wealth has risen to $74.1 billion, an increase of 19 percent for the year.
US billionaires have increased their wealth by $77 billion since the Trump victory based on expectations that his commitment to end corporate regulations and carry out both corporate and personal income tax cuts will boost profits.
That perception has been reinforced by Trump’s appointees to key cabinet posts, including billionaire Wilbur Ross to head the Commerce Department and former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary.
Summing up the post-election euphoria in ultra-wealthy circles, hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, who ranks 63rd on the top 200 list, said last week that Trump had lifted the “animal spirits” of capitalism and the market could rise even further. Simon Smiles, the investment manager for ultra-high-net-worth clients at UBS Wealth Management, said, “2016 ended up being a spectacular year for risk assets.”
Another major beneficiary was oil industry mogul Harold Hamm. His wealth more than doubled, rising by $8.4 billion to reach $15.3 billion, on the expectation that a Trump administration will slash regulations on the extraction of fossil fuels. Overall, the 49 energy, mining and metal billionaires saw the biggest increase in wealth of any category, recording an increase of $80 billion after a decline of $32 billion in 2015.
Other major beneficiaries were Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook. Bezos, who doubled his wealth in 2015 to $60 billion, increased it by a further $7.5 billion this year, while Zuckerberg added $5.4 billion.
The accumulation of wealth at the heights of society is mirrored in income statistics. A recently completed
study by economists Thomas Piketty,
Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found
that the share of national income received by
the bottom half of the US population has been
reduced from 20 percent in 1980 to 12
percent, while the income of the top 1 percent
has risen from 12 percent to 20 percent. In
other words, some 8 percent of national
income has been transferred from the bottom
half of the population to the top 1 percent.
This trend has been accelerating not least because of the spread of part-time and contract working under the Obama administration, as revealed in a major study released this month. Conducted by Harvard economist
Lawrence Katz and Princeton economist Alan
Krueger, it found that 94 percent of the 10
million jobs created during the Obama
administration were temporary, contract or
part-time positions. The proportion of
workers engaged in such jobs increased from
10.7 percent of the population to 15.8
percent. At the same time, the study found
that under Obama, there were 1 million fewer
workers engaged in full-time jobs than there
were at the start of the recession.
The growth of this type of contingent work provides a significant boost to profits. Employers of part-time labour are not required to provide benefits for employees. Young workers have been the hardest hit by the growth of contract labour and were the largest proportion of such employees. The study found that they generally do not receive any benefits, even when they are employed on a full-time basis.
Krueger, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said he was surprised by the findings of his own study, noting that the loss of full-time work has hit every demographic. “Workers seeking full-time, steady work have lost,” he said.
Together with the growth of fabulous wealth for the upper echelons and the figures on rising income inequality, the Krueger-Katz study further punctures the hype of the outgoing Obama administration that it has organised an “economic recovery” benefiting the mass of ordinary workers and their families.
These trends are reflected internationally. A report released by the International Labour Organisation earlier this month found that wage growth worldwide has decelerated since 2012, falling from 2.5 percent to 1.7 percent. If China, where wage growth has been faster than elsewhere, is excluded, the growth in global wages drops from 1.6 percent to just 0.9 percent.
The ILO study also pointed to the rise of social inequality, noting that in Europe, the top 10 percent of employees take home 25.5 percent of total wages, while the bottom 50 percent get 29.1 percent.
This year has been characterised economically by a further increase in wealth and income for the top layers of society, continuing the trend since the global economic crisis. This redistribution of wealth and income from the bottom to the very top has been fuelled by the provision of trillions of dollars in ultra-cheap money to the banks and financial speculators.
Politically, it has been marked by a shift in the other direction, with the growth of social opposition.
This has taken the form of intensifying hostility to the entire official political establishment, reflected most notably in the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the US presidential election, not only in the support for Trump but more directly in the support for the self-proclaimed “socialist” Bernie Sanders.
At present, however, the political situation is marked by a profound contradiction. While the growth of social opposition is being driven by growing anti-capitalist sentiment, so far it has resulted in political gains for right-wing political forces, a contradiction that finds its sharpest expression internationally in the election of Trump and his installation of a cabinet of billionaires, military figures and ultra-right-wing and fascistic demagogues.
The responsibility for this situation rests
entirely with the official “left” parties and the
trade unions, which have functioned as the
chief enforcers for all the attacks on the
wages and social conditions of the working
class in the US and worldwide since the crisis
of 2008.
But while right-wing political tendencies have been the initial beneficiaries, the social crisis will intensify and assume ever more explosive forms, posing the necessity for the resolution of the present political impasse through the development of a mass socialist movement armed with a revolutionary perspective for the conquest of political power by the working class.
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