VIDEO
Wall Street's RECESSION WARNING: "Big Layoffs are Coming"
One of the leading investors is Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Google. He is now an investor who wants to maximize his supply of cheap, controllable, skilled labor. In 2013, he helped form the secretive FWD.us lobby group which consists of wealthy West Coast investors, such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.
Despite his Wall Street, big business, Big Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has attempted to portray himself as a small-town fighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania
VIDEO
Ralph Nader: Biden's First Year Proves He Is Still a "Corporate Socialist" Beholden to Big Business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTIUtjkDss&t=28s
Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors. Alexander Nazaryan
As a senator, Biden vigorously voted for several similar bills. In short, based on his voting record, Joe Biden is not (and never was) a champion of disadvantaged Americans, unless you consider multi-billion-dollar credit card corporations and millionaires “disadvantaged.” Chris Talgo
The American trade unions and the parasites who run them
In the American working class, life is increasingly defined by intense and unrestrained exploitation by corporate employers whose profits soar as wages fall and families struggle more and more to keep up with inflation and the rising cost of living. Wages for workers who belong to a union increased in 2021 by far less (3.3 percent) than both the rate of inflation (officially 9 percent) and the increase for non-union workers (5.3 percent).
In an earlier period, the level of workplace exploitation was restrained in a limited way by the trade unions, which workers had built as defensive organizations through powerful and bitter strikes and struggles involving millions of workers. Today, unions represent only 6 percent of those employed in non-government industry. Even where unions exist, there is hardly any restraint on the level of exploitation workers confront at work or in society at large.
A new report published by Radish Research, “Labor’s Fortress of Finance,” aggregates data on union finances that sheds light on both the anti-working class character of the trade unions today and the parasitic role played by the tens of thousands of executives who staff them.
The data makes clear that the trade unions are not organizations of the working class. They have been transformed into organizations that rob workers of billions of dollars in dues money in order to enrich bureaucrats who live comfortable lives in the richest 10 percent of American society. They suppress the class struggle and form a critical part of the Democratic Party and the imperialist state.
According to the federal filings of 14,000 unions, American trade unions had $35.8 billion in assets in 2020, greater than the gross domestic product of over half the countries on earth. In 2020 alone, as hundreds of thousands of workers were dying of COVID-19, the trade unions increased their assets by $2.7 billion after subtracting operating costs, almost equal to the 2020 annual profit of Air BnB.
Eighty-five percent of the unions’ revenue comes from dues money ($15.5 billion in 2020 alone), a figure that represents a massive annual transfer of wealth from the working class to the upper middle class. In addition, the unions make tremendous sums through various other parasitic operations, including interest on investments, ($509 million in 2020), rent ($262 million), and royalties and grants ($2 billion).
The 2020 asset increase “was not a one-off event, but a consistent long-term pattern,” the report explains. “Since 2010, organized labor has generated large surpluses, netting over $18.5 billion over the last eleven years, or $1.7 billion annually on average.” From 2010 to 2020, the unions lost 465,000 members while total revenues surged 28 percent, from $14.3 billion to $18.3 billion. The report notes, “The revenue increase was driven by higher membership dues per member, rising from $818 per member in 2010 to $1,091 in 2020. In addition, significant increases in investment (+46%), rental (+47%) and miscellaneous income (+24%) contributed to the overall rise in revenues.”
The unions spend tens of billions of dollars, not on improving the conditions of the workers they represent, but on an apparatus of staffers who workers never see nor hear from. The unions spent $15.6 billion in 2020, overwhelmingly on wages and benefits to tens of thousands of union staff. In most cases, these officials are simply Democratic Party staffers whose work campaigning for Democratic politicians is essentially involuntarily subsidized by the working class.
The report explains, “average annual compensation [of union staffers] increased by 37% since 2010” and that “management occupations increased by 28% from 7,360 to 9,390 employees.”
According to 2020 data, “over 10,000 officers and employees received a gross salary over $125,000, putting them in the top ten percentile of income in the US (this does not include the generous health, pension, and other benefits typically provided by unions).”
Hundreds of these union staffers serve on the payroll of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, a CIA-front organization that advances the interests of American imperialist foreign policy around the world through election meddling, disinformation and the suppression of the class struggle.
By comparison, the unions spend next to nothing on strike pay, averaging just $70 million per year since 2010, or less than one half of one percent of revenue per year. To the executives, a dollar spent to increase the power of workers on strike is a dollar out of their own pay. The interests of the union executives are not aligned with but are antagonistic to the interests of the workers themselves. Time after time, the unions isolate workers on strike and force them to accept terms favorable to the companies.
Remarkably, these numbers significantly understate the assets of the trade unions and their executives. The report does not include unions that consist solely of public employees, because these unions are not required to file federal reports of their assets, income and expenses, although mixed unions like the SEIU must file. Nor does the report include the value of private and public union pension funds, which are worth an estimated $7 trillion.
If nothing is done to reverse these trends, the report notes that the trade unions’ assets would rise from $35.8 billion to $75.6 billion in 2030, even as the unions will be expected to lose another 800,000 members. In other words, tens of thousands of union executives plan to steal several tens of billions of dollars more from workers dues money in the years to come in order to enrich themselves.
To challenge the domination of the corporations over every aspect of life, the working class can and must harness its tremendous potential economic power and break free of the stranglehold imposed upon it by the unions.
The campaign of Pennsylvania Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman for UAW president is a critical step in this struggle.
The bulk of the UAW’s leadership, including two recent presidents, have been convicted for accepting corporate bribes in exchange for selling out autoworkers. But the UAW corruption is only the most brazen expression of the relationship between the AFL-CIO and corporate management, and autoworkers, like their counterparts in other industries, have confronted decades of attacks on wages and living conditions overseen by the companies and unions.
For this reason, Lehman explained in a statement following his nomination at last months’ UAW convention that his campaign is aimed at “building a rank-and-file movement against the entire pro-corporate UAW apparatus.”
Lehman has won support for his demand to place the assets of the UAW out of the control of the apparatus and under the democratic control of the workers themselves, where it can be used not to enrich the bureaucracy but to fight the corporations and give power to the working class.
This means not replacing one bureaucrat with another, but building a mass movement of workers internationally and across industry to “fight for what we need, not what the corporations and UAW bureaucrats say is possible. Such a fight cannot and will not be carried out by the corporate toadies making six-figure salaries in Solidarity House. The bureaucratic apparatus that exists only to suppress our struggles cannot be reformed. It must be swept away.”
Lehman’s campaign will face fierce opposition from all those within the apparatus who stand to lose their jobs and salaries when the workers take back power. For this reason, not a single member of the Democratic Socialists of America nominated Lehman at the convention and not a single pseudo-left publication has written about his campaign. These individuals and tendencies represent the same affluent upper-middle class to which the union executives themselves belong.
A rebellion is brewing in the working class on a global scale, exacerbated by the pandemic and US imperialist war provocations against Russia and China. The coming rebellion will find political expression through the building of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-file Committees (IWA-RFC), an international network of worker-controlled, democratic organizations aimed at breaking the isolation imposed by the national trade unions. Through the IWA-RFC, the working class can and will launch a global fight against the global corporations and the governments that serve their interests, and trigger an international counteroffensive against decades of social counterrevolution.
Will Lehman, socialist candidate for UAW president, answers questions from autoworkers
Following his nomination last month to be on the ballot for UAW president, autoworker Will Lehman has received letters from workers throughout the US supporting his campaign and asking questions about his program.
The WSWS has endorsed Lehman’s campaign. We are publishing below a selection of letters and responses from Lehman. The letters have been edited to ensure the anonymity of the workers.
For more information on Will Lehman’s campaign, visit WillforUAWPresident.org.
***
Hey Will,
My union reps and the company are as ONE! We don’t have proper representation, there’s too many concessions made for the company. I hope that you will make some much needed changes. We are struggling and the future generations will as well, if something is not done. Benefits need to be increased dramatically. We support Ford, yet they throw millions of dollars into an in-plant car wash system, lifts, overhead door dryers that never work. Yet, the economy doesn’t fit our budget as our wages stay the same as living expenses rises!
Make it make sense, right! We need a team that will strike and make a statement to these companies. They lied years ago, and the union representation shook hands on the deal, really!
We need great leadership, you got my support, if you are serious about accountability of those hurting the UAW.
R
Dear R,
Thank you, but as I have stressed, I cannot do this alone, and I am not some kind of magic problem solver. Workers need to build rank-and-file committees to bring changes about. I agree that the future generations need us to push now more than ever for the betterment of material conditions for workers everywhere in the future.
The team I intend to build is composed of workers on the shop floor, that is my rank-and-file committee approach. I hope you will be interested in building a rank-and-file committee at your plant.
Yes, Ford is egregious in their exploitation while having no concern for workers. In July, I was on two calls with workers at Ford plants in India and Germany. These were with workers at plants that are both facing plant closures. Workers everywhere need to realize that our struggles are all connected. We have the power to save jobs and elevate our working conditions if we build rank-and-file committees and coordinate internationally. Please let me know your thoughts on the building of a rank-and-file committee at your plant.
Thank you,
Will Lehman
***
Will,
How do you plan to change things in the UAW? The way it is, we pay dues as a formality to have slightly better healthcare and wages than non-union jobs. Dues are pretty much bribe money. I work at Mack, and we have lost every contract since Volvo took over. They wanted temps, and indirectly (thru 6 years of wage progression MOU) they got temps. Everything they want, they get.
The strike in 2019 was a fake. I won’t cross a picket line, but rest assured I won’t be part of nonsense fake strikes. Who the hell goes back to work when nothing is ratified? Volvo was planning down-weeks anyhow, and they let it go long enough to start receiving a little bit of bad press and then they called an end to it. Aside from all this we have a huge rat infestation at the plant. Everybody is telling the supervisor on everybody else. Nobody knows how to mind their own business. I applaud you for trying to fight, but I’ll tell you what I think: The time has come and gone.
I think it’s over.
***
Yes, that is the way it is now, and if we do nothing things will continue to get worse until we are ground into the dust. I’m proposing workers do something, now, on the shop floor level. We need to group up into the rank-and-file committee that was started here last year when NRV was out on strike. There are many reasons for organizing in this way, principally so we have an open organization where everyone can freely speak about the actions we should take without being hindered by the UAW’s typical losing strategy.
Secondly, we need rank-and-file committees so when it comes time to take action workers are the ones that will be in control of that action. Arguably, we should have formed a committee in 2019 and called for not returning until we had all the details of the agreement. We need to lead our own actions, not be misled under the leadership of a bureaucracy. Yes, the 2019 strike was manipulated, but we voted by 79% to strike. There wasn’t anyone I knew at the time that told me they voted “no” to the strike authorization vote. The will was there, but it was misled. We need to be ready to fight again. And if we’re going to win, we can’t be misled again.
Whether things change or not depends on workers being willing to fight. If you are, I suggest you join up and help build. Get coworkers in that you know are solid. I’m not a lone great reformer. My turn is to the workers. The working class has the power to make monumental changes if we all decide to organize and fight.
I’m not running on the platform of “I alone can fix it,” or “I will bring some new bureaucrats in with me to fix things.” I’m trying to encourage workers to build on the floor because that’s the only way it’s going to happen. Our material conditions have been declining for quite some time, and this will continue to horrible extremes if we do nothing. There will be a breaking point when workers can take no more losses, and I’m trying to point the way forward now so we’re in the best position to fight when that happens. We need to organize in a new way if there is to be any change.
Will Lehman
***
We’re pretty lucky in my opinion at our shop. We were working every two Saturdays and the 3rd off for a long time, but since Covid that’s slowed down due to the “parts shortage.” I’m a fairly new hire, but I’ve been union my entire adult life. I feel General Motors uses and abuses our temps. That’s my main goal. Get back to 90 days, hire or fire, with a competing pay scale of a minimum of $20 an hour for the temps.
B
Dear B,
There was a time when workers fought and risked their lives for the 8-hour day and 40-hour week. Those hard-fought gains should have never been conceded, as well as equal pay for equal work and a family sustaining wage.
From where I stand, the working class generates all the profit so the working class should determine where it goes, naturally with equality at the forefront of that discussion. I tend to put it as: If a worker is doing a full-time job, a job that any worker at top rate could also potentially hold, they should be receiving top rate pay for the completion of that job. I’m not as concerned with the companies’ “rights” of hiring and firing or their “right” to 90 days to decide to transfer temps to full-time. Those decision makers often do zero work, are used to the habitat of an air conditioned office and wouldn’t know real work if they were staring at a real worker doing it.
I also don’t agree with the “temp” status. If more workers are needed, there should be more workers. Temp status is a cheap way for a company to get out of paying a worker to do a full-time job. It is meant to divide the working class up, with the intention of sending all the ill-gotten profits to the lazy bureaucrats and shareholders that put in zero work.
The way we’re going to get past concessions back is through the formation of rank-and-file committees, and it’s up to workers like you who recognize there are gains to be made to build those committees. If you are interested in starting one, let me know and we can discuss that further.
Thank you,
Will Lehman
***
Hello Will,
I have been encouraged by the emails about your campaign for UAW president. I agree wholeheartedly with your platform. It’s well past time to put the power back in the hands of the rank-and-file.
I am a member of the UAW at Michigan Technological University. Throughout my years here, I have often felt that the union doesn’t do enough for its members. In fact, it actively hampers upward mobility. Being in the union here is more damaging to my career and pay than if I were a salaried employee. As union employees, we are the lowest tier.
I have had to take on extra work without being compensated appropriately because my position is in the union. We don’t get cost of living increases or significant raises of any kind. As someone who knows the value of their work and genuinely loves their job, it just feels insulting. In fact, right now there are so many open union positions on campus that they are offering $1,000 signing bonuses; they are desperate for employees, but don’t take care of the ones they have. If union employees were paid better wages, there wouldn’t be so many open positions.
It’s been frustrating and disheartening fighting what feels like a losing battle against an organization that doesn’t do the bare minimum for its members. Many of us have given up on any hope of positive change.
Thank you for your time, and I truly hope that your campaign is successful. I believe you could bring some much needed change to the UAW.
Sincerely,
K
Hello K,
I do want to stress that I alone cannot put the power back in the hands of the rank-and-file and that change will only occur to the extent that workers recognize the need to fight for it and organize rank-and-file committees. Have you been able to share any of the campaign messaging with your coworkers and if so, what do they think? I would be very interested to know if there is interest in forming a rank-and-file committee where you work. You are not alone in the UAW bureaucracy failing you either. The bureaucracy at the international and local level fails everyone that pays them dues, some worse than others.
I had more than one coworker die from COVID after being infected in our plant. One worker, William D, passed after Thanksgiving, and when our rank-and-file committee reached out to our local about it they didn’t even know he had passed. Mack Trucks, where I work, had a supervisor canvass me for his job two days later, and he was just as casual about the position being open as any other position being open. That type of indifferent and negligent attitude towards social murder is a large part of why I am running.
Our continuously worsening economic condition is tied to my running as well, as is the popularizing of workers doing the one thing that can bring about change. That is the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, the need for abolishing capitalism and bringing about socialism. It would help my campaign’s effort greatly if you could spread the word on social media and in your workplace.
Thank you,
Will Lehman
***
How do you feel about how the janitorial members are treated i.e, contract, treated as if we took Big Three jobs from them, wages, etc.
P
Hello P,
At Mack they put the janitors in a separate, lower tier, classified as “General Maintenance.” In my opinion any worker on the floor doing a job that is deemed its own position should not be paid less than the rest of the workers on the floor.
One of the biggest things the companies have created over the years, with the blessing of the UAW bureaucracy, is glaring inequality. They divide workers up and seek to foster the growth of anti-worker talk among us workers. Any time you hear one worker saying why another worker doesn’t deserve this or that form of equality, that is the type of talk I’m referring to.
That kind of talk is to get workers distracted, to view our own working class brothers and sisters as enemies while distracting from the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid out to UAW bureaucrats, and in some cases tens of millions of dollars paid out to corporate bureaucrats. They use that kind of talk about workers in other countries too, when no matter what country you’re from, what should unite us is working class solidarity.
Prime examples of the pay of the real parasitic culprits the companies don’t want you to see are the total income of GM CEO Mary Barra, Volvo’s CEO Martin Lundstedt, Flex-N-Gate CEO Shahid Khan and the wealth of HarperCollins owner Rupert Murdoch. The money they are gorging themselves off of is the money we’re generating but never sees our pockets because we are divided on the floor and don’t understand the need for our class unity, and lack historical working class knowledge that would lead to us having a better understanding of the working class unity we need.
In short, there is a lot to be said to get to the understanding of working class solidarity but I would say it begins there, and every worker, the ones generating all the profits, should have a democratic say in how those profits are generated and a decent living afforded to them no matter where they are or what type of work they do. To get to that point though we need to start grouping up in rank-and-file committees and educating ourselves on the way to achieve that equality. It will not be achieved through reliance on corrupt trade unionism leading the way.
Thank you,
Will Lehman
For more information on Will Lehman’s campaign, visit WillforUAWPresident.org.
One month after ramming through sellout deal in Indianapolis, UFCW Local 700 attempts to push through second deal at Fort Wayne
Fort Wayne workers, join the Kroger Workers Rank-and-File Forum on Facebook for uncensored discussion outside of the control of management and the union bureaucracy.
A month after forcing a sellout contract onto to the backs of Kroger workers in Indianapolis, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 700 has announced a tentative agreement with Kroger in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Voting will take place on August 18 and 19 and cover 2,600 workers at 22 stores.
The union is recommending a “Yes” vote on a contract that it refuses to show to workers. After announcing the agreement on August 10, the union released a terse list of highlights that failed to provide any insight into the contract's contents.
Providing highlights, instead of an actual copy of the contract, is a common trick by union bureaucrats to conceal the details of a sellout deal until after workers have voted on it. But even these highly manicured lists often include at least some information about pay or benefits. This announcement only claims the deal includes “Guaranteed pay raises and ratification bonuses” of an unspecified amount.
When the union sold out workers in Indianapolis, they were provided access to the contract before the vote, allowing workers to read and discuss the deal and organize a “No” vote on the first round of voting. Kroger workers in Columbus, Ohio were able to do the same after reviewing the inadequate contents of their proposed contract late last month.
UFCW Local 700 appears certain to avoid the same mistake. This time, it has only provided workers with four vague bullet points indicating increased pay, “Affordable, quality healthcare,” “Retirement security,” and “Language improvement.”
Nearly zero information is provided about what these changes to the previous contract will actually entail.
The UFCW is making it as difficult as possible for workers to ask questions and discuss the contract among themselves. The UFCW 700’s Facebook page remains inactive after the local took the extraordinary step of deleting it in response to mass opposition to the claimed passage of the contract in Indianapolis, which workers suspected was rammed through with ballot fraud.
One worker responded to the agreement on the union’s Twitter page, asking “Is this everything? Doesn't seem very good. Indy got screwed over and had a better contract than this.” The union’s response was that members of the negotiating committee and union reps would be in stores to answer questions at a later date.
Given the fact that they have not even been given copies of the contract, Kroger workers in the Fort Wayne area should reject this contract on principle. The union declared that there will be pay raises but will not state what they are. This suggests that pay “increases,” as in virtually every other contract, are far below the current rate of inflation of more than 8 percent, amounting to a massive cut in real wages.
If the contract is worth voting in favor, then why is the union hiding what is in it? If the contract had pay raises adequate to meet workers’ needs, then the union should be willing to say what they are. Instead it is hiding the numbers to avoid confrontation with the membership and to head off the organization of opposition by workers themselves.
Any contract which is pushed through under such circumstances can only be the product of collusion between the union and the company. On August 3, UFCW Local 700 announced that it was extending the contract, which would have expired on August 6, to September 3 and that negotiations on the new contract would begin on August 9. Just one day after negotiations began, the union has come back with an insultingly short description of the tentative agreement. The union may as well have provided no update at all.
There is no reason to believe that the union, after forcing through a terrible contract in Indianapolis and trying to do so in Columbus, has suddenly negotiated an adequate contract in a single day. Kroger, which has raked in massive profits during the pandemic, is on the offensive against workers, cutting hours and restructuring workers out of full time and top pay. If negotiations took over just one day, it can only be assumed that it was a formality for the union to sit down and receive its marching orders from management.
The UFCW has time and time again demonstrated its allegiance to the company. It does not operate as a workers organization, fighting for the interests of its membership, but as a glorified labor contractor exchanging the right to collect dues for maintaining order and enforcing pro-company contracts.
Kroger workers must reject the efforts of the UFCW and Kroger to attack their pay and working conditions. But a “No” vote on this contract is not enough. When workers in Indianapolis rejected their contract, the union forced them to vote the exact same agreement again, claiming it passed despite widespread opposition.
Fort Wayne Kroger workers need to build their own organizations, rank-and-file committees in every store, that can organize and coordinate opposition to both Kroger and the union, fighting for what workers know they need, not what the company and union say they can have.
“People can hardly afford to eat”: US inflation continues to hammer workers
How are rising prices affecting you and your family? Fill out the form at the bottom of this article to share your story.
Annual price increases for US consumer goods remain at their highest level in nearly 40 years, according to the latest inflation data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Prices for items in the Consumer Price Index rose 8.5 percent in the 12 months ending in July, down slightly from the 9.1 percent rate reported in June, but still the second-largest yearly increase since December 1981.
Food prices in particular have surged in recent months. The BLS’ overall food index rose 10.9 percent year-over-year in July, while the cost of food at home increased 13.1 percent, the biggest increases since May 1979.
Amid a heat wave which has blanketed much of the US this summer and broken records in a number of regions, electricity costs rose 15.2 percent compared to last year, increasing by 1.9 percent over the last month alone.
The cost of shelter also pushed higher, with rent rising 6.3 percent nationally since 2021, with increases far greater in many major metropolitan areas, forcing large numbers of young people to live with their parents, and threatening others with eviction and homelessness. In California, 1.5 million households are behind on their rent, according to Census Bureau data released in late July.
Although the cost of gasoline, which is more volatile, fell somewhat from June, down 7.7 percent, it remained 44 percent higher than a year ago. The national average price for a gallon of gas is hovering near $4, compared to $3.18 in 2021.
The Biden administration and sections of the corporate media nevertheless seized on the latest data to claim that inflation is easing and that a corner being turned, with Biden misleadingly asserting that the BLS report showed “zero percent inflation in the month of July—zero percent.”
In a two-minute appearance, Biden painted a fantastical picture of a booming economy, but the reality facing masses of workers is one of increasing desperate struggle for daily existence. According to a separate BLS release Wednesday, real average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory employees fell 2.7 percent year-over-year in July.
Rampant inflation and price-gouging by the corporate giants have fueled the growth of working class struggles over the last two years, both in the US and internationally. The trade unions, which have sought to impose company-friendly contracts with sub-inflation raises, have faced a growing rebellion of rank-and-file workers, with workers’ overwhelming rejection of union-backed contracts an increasingly common phenomenon.
“I have not bought chicken in months. Honestly, I can’t afford it”
Workers who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site Wednesday consistently described lowered living standards and a scramble to adjust to higher prices, while voicing outrage over the soaring profits being reaped by corporate America.
“I have cut back to twice a month instead of every week grocery shopping,” a veteran worker at the General Motors Wentzville Assembly plant near St. Louis said. “I haven’t been traveling as much as I usually do. We still haven’t got a cost of living raise in over 10 years.” Cost-of-living adjustments (COLA)—almost universally eliminated with the assistance of the pro-corporate trade unions in recent decades—have been demanded with increasing forcefulness by workers in contract struggles over the last two years, provoking nervousness on Wall Street.
A worker at Dana Inc., an auto parts maker, in Pennsylvania said that they still face a high cost of living despite the relative decrease in gas prices. “Things are going down a few pennies here and there, but our wages are still being eaten up.”
In 2021, Dana workers across the US voted by 90 percent to reject a contract offer that included low wage increases and forced them to increase their contributions to health care. Workers organized a rank-and-file committee in order to oppose the sellout agreement being pushed by the unions. Despite the near-unanimous rejection, Dana workers were kept on the job by the United Steel Workers and United Auto Workers bureaucracies.
The Pennsylvania worker explained to the WSWS that second-tier workers at their plant had been promised retroactive pay increases for the month and a half in which they were kept at work after the previous contract had expired, but that they have still received nothing. “Our rep has told us the UAW is adamant about giving us this back pay, but they say we have to wait at least five to six more months before we get a definite answer.”
An auto parts worker in Indianapolis reported to the WSWS: “They say that inflation has eased up, but it’s unnoticeable. I’m still struggling too hard. At the first of the year, a four pack of drumsticks was $3 and change, now it’s $11 and change. I have not bought chicken in months. Honestly, I can’t afford it.
“I’m living on lunch meat and cheese. I can’t afford a decent meal that I cook at home. I used to buy a can of chili for $2 and a box of spaghetti. Now chili is five bucks, and that meal is out of reach. Cabbage is almost too much. People can hardly afford to eat.
“Gas went up. Water went up. When they have to make improvements to the storm drains, the bill you pay for sewage doubles and triples. ASE is the utility company for both water and gas. I am hardly ever home, but my electric bill jumped from $20 a month to 50 some dollars a month.
“The average person cannot go on vacation. Fuel went up. The airlines went up. There is no break for nobody, nowhere. It’s happening everywhere.”
A worker at the Lear Seating auto parts plant in Hammond, Indiana, told the WSWS that the previous contract pushed through by the UAW in 2018—after two massive votes against it by workers—was wholly inadequate to keep their wages up with inflation. “Definitely not enough, for sure. People are picking up any overtime they can get. With all the layoffs people want more secure work.”
As throughout the auto industry, the UAW has worked with Lear to impose a divisive tier system, with so-called “sub-assembly” workers making less than those categorized as “just-in-time.” Workers “have been fighting the union over this,” the worker said, “but they are okay with it.”
“They don’t want us to be able to tread water anymore”
Workers at the grocery chains themselves, facing poverty wages with few benefits, are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. A Kroger worker in Indiana said, “They don’t want us to be able to tread water anymore. Duke Energy is raising everyone’s bill for no reason in my area.”
This year, workers at Kroger have been engaged in a two-front battle against both the company and the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), which keeps workers divided via numerous separate local contracts. At Kroger stores in Indianapolis and more recently in Columbus, Ohio, workers also voted to reject UCFW-backed sellout agreements which would keep them mired in poverty.
“It’s ridiculous,” said another Kroger worker in Indiana about inflation, “especially on things you can’t cut back on much, like groceries. I went to Aldi [a discount grocery chain] a few weeks ago for the first time in ages, and found their prices not that much cheaper. I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better as people have less and less to spend on basically anything but the bare necessities, which will then affect jobs overall. I am thinking about asking for extra hours, but it’s hard on me. I hate doing six days and 10 hours, it’s almost too much.”
“The oil companies are raking in the money while the average person can’t get by”
A worker at agricultural equipment giant John Deere in Illinois told the WSWS that the claims that inflation is easing are “ridiculous,” explaining, “The oil companies are raking in the money while the average person can’t get by. It’s all about big corporations and big companies.”
In 2021, workers at Deere carried out a courageous five-week-long strike, twice voting down a UAW-backed contract which failed to meet their demands for major wage increases and the restoration of previous concessions, including retiree health insurance. As at Dana, Deere workers launched a rank-and-file committee in order to break through the information blackout imposed by the UAW.
A retired Deere worker in Iowa described trying to cope with rising prices on a fixed income, saying, “It’s bad. Raises are being lost to inflation. I only drive to town every couple weeks for groceries, supplies. Shop more at discount grocers, eat out less. Made our vacation closer to home. Basic stuff. A grocery cart full at Aldi’s used to cost $50. Now it’s $100.”
KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED IS MADE EASY BY FLOODING AMERICA WITH 'CHEAP' LABOR ILLEGALS!
VIDEO
Wall Street's RECESSION WARNING: "Big Layoffs are Coming"
One of the leading investors is Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Google. He is now an investor who wants to maximize his supply of cheap, controllable, skilled labor. In 2013, he helped form the secretive FWD.us lobby group which consists of wealthy West Coast investors, such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.
Even as Inflation Cools, Inflation Adjusted Wages Are Still Down From A Year Ago
The easing of inflation in July meant that American workers actually saw average hourly wages rise when adjusted for inflation.
The Consumer Price Index was flat with June while the average hourly and weekly wages climbed 0.5 percent. As a result, real or inflation-adjusted wages rose significantly for the first time this year.
That’s a big improvement over May, when real hourly and weekly wages fell 0.6 percent, and June, when hourly wages fell 0.8 percent and weekly wages fell 0.9 percent.
Compared with a year ago, however, inflation-adjusted wages are still down. The real average hourly wage is down three percent compared with a year ago. The real weekly wage is down 3.6 percent.
The July monthly figure is good news for workers but it may worry Federal Reserve officials. Just as the July jobs figures indicated, the rise in real wages shows demand for labor is red hot. Businesses are likely to try to pass on higher labor costs to prices and increased real wages may translate into increased real demand for goods and services, supporting inflation at a higher level than the Fed would like.
What’s more, the rise in real wages and the economy adding 528,000 workers to payrolls in July was accompanied by a slight decline in the labor force participation rate. This indicates that even plentiful jobs and rising pay are not drawing Americans into the labor force. That could hold back the economy’s ability to grow output, which would add inflationary pressure.
Many economists had been sanguine about a wage-price spiral precisely because wages had not kept up with prices. A lasting decline in real wages creates a downward pressure on inflation, as consumers cut back on spending or trade down to cheaper items. Now the reverse may be getting underway.
LOFGREN OF MEX DUMPSTER STATE OF MEXIFORNIA
PIG LAWYER-POLITICIAN AND SLUT FOR HIGHT TECH COMPANIES THAT DO NOT HIRE ANYONE BORN IN AMERICA!
LOFGREN'S FACE MELTED FROM ALL THOSE YEARS OF SUCKING OFF HIGH TECH!
Big Tech and Big Law dominate Biden transition
teams, tempering progressive hopes
Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors. Alexander Nazaryan
Most of the media have never given a damn about the Clinton (LAWYER), Obama (LAWYER) or Biden (LAWYER) corruption, which is massive. JACK HELLNER
Analysis conducted last year reveal that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers.
Despite his Wall Street, big business, Big Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has attempted to portray himself as a small-town fighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
By failures of border security, a lack of the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States and huge numbers of visas for high tech workers, the lives and livelihoods of Americans and their children, are being stolen by America’s corrupt political elite who are doing the bidding of those who provide them with huge “Campaign Contributions” (Orwellian euphemism for bribes) pursue legislation that is diametrically opposed to the best interests of America and Americans.
MICHAEL CUTLER
93% of the campaign bribes this lawyer-politician Lofgren sucks off comes from the very special interests that benefit from the NAFTA Democrat's never ending assault on the American worker and borders for "cheap" labor!
House Democrats Sneak Visa Worker Giveaway into Pentagon Bill
Almost every House Democrat voted on Thursday to reward Indian H-1B visa workers by offering the huge prize of citizenship to their adult children in exchange for their parents taking Fortune 500 jobs from American graduates.
Sixty-two Republicans also voted for the corporate giveaway within the defenses authorization bill for 2023.
But the legislation was rejected by most of the GOP’s leadership — including Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Jim Banks (R-IN), and Jim Jordan (R-OH).
The GOP leadership’s opposition may help stop Senate approval, said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at NumbersUSA. But, she warned, “We have our work cut out for keeping this off the Senate version.”
“Your green card expansion will not be in the final [Pentagon bill] after [the joint House-Senate] conference, we will make sure of that,” said a tweet from the Federation for American Immigration Reform to the leading Democratic sponsor, Rep. Deborah Ross (D-NC). “It is bad policy and has no place in a defense bill,” the tweet added.
If approved by the Senate, the giveaway legislation will make it easier for Fortune 500 companies — and their many subcontractors — to fill corporate jobs with more Indian visa workers instead of American professionals.
Many corporations use the H-1B visa program to dangle the prize of citizenship before cheap and compliant Indian graduates when recruiting for jobs that would otherwise go to skilled, underused, innovative, and outspoken American professionals. This replacement process spikes the stock bonuses of C-suite executives but undermines the companies’ ability to innovate amid growing foreign competition.
The existing visa worker system has brought at least 1.5 million foreign contract workers into coastal-based jobs at many Fortune 500 companies.
This huge inflow of foreign workers drains investment from GOP-majority Midwest and Southern towns and it demotes millions of the ambitious sons and daughters of American parents. The giveaway legislation benefits the visa workers and their foreign-born children but provides no compensation to Americans or their communities.
The chain migration giveaway also threatens the jobs of GOP members. Naturalized Indian immigrants are one of the most pro-Democratic voting blocs, partly because they feel little pressure to give up their ancient caste culture to better integrate into U.S. society.
All but three of the 218 Democrats voted for the chain migration giveaway.
This lockstep Democratic support for corporate outsourcing may be risky. A July 5-7 poll of 849 registered voters by Siena College showed that Democrats have the support of 57 percent of white college graduates. That group — and their children — are most impacted by the expanded giveaway of benefits to foreign contract workers. The clear opposition by the GOP leadership gives the GOP an opportunity to reduce that crucial Democratic advantage — if the GOP leaders are willing to anger their national corporate donors in the Fortune 500.
The giveaway bill is marketed as a humanitarian benefit to roughly 200,000 older children of visa workers from India. Each year, the federal government offers 140,000 green cards to visa workers and their families. But the huge surge of Indians into Americans’ jobs has created a massive backlog in the giveaway process. The backlog ensures that some of the Indian workers’ children age out of the legal process as they turn 21. This lifts the age limit, so allowing the adult children of visa workers to potentially benefit from their parents’ job offer. Jenks said:
It is ridiculous that people who come here on a [parents’] temporary [work] visa believe they have a right to stay permanently. They have decided, unilaterally, that it doesn’t matter what the law says, it doesn’t matter what rational expectations might be — they are entitled to remain in the United States indefinitely.
“Congress has a responsibility to American citizens,” said Jenks. “To ignore the needs of Americans and ignore the cost to Americans, and to instead grant special favors to the foreigners, is ludicrous,” she added.
These adult children are good for campaign P.R., especially because few reporters show any skepticism, or even recognize that the children’s taxpayer-funded education in the United States makes them valuable hires in their homeland. Much of the stealth campaign for the expansion included personalized arguments during face-to-face lobbying of legislators in their home districts, usually by the visa workers, Indian doctors, and their children
Advocates for the giveaway campaign also added the adult children of non-Indian E-2 visa holders. The E-2 visas allow some foreigners to stay in the United States while they are running a business.
The corporate giveaway was backed by some GOP leaders. The yes voters included Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), a former lobbyist who now runs the GOP’s 2022 campaign committee; Tom Cole, the pro-outsourcing top Republican member of the rules committee, and Rep. John Katko (R-NY), the top Republican on the homeland security committee.
The giveaway was also backed by anti-Trump Republicans, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), and Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI).
Many of the GOP supporters have influential groups of Indian visa workers in or near their district. This group includes Herrea-Beutler and Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), the leading GOP sponsor of the legislation with Deborah Ross (D-NC). “Today the House passed my amendment which will protect over 200,000 documented dreamers,” Miller-Meeks said in a tweet. “These dreamers grew up in the United States and call this place home. Sadly, due to a broken immigration system, many of them are forced to leave.”
The MyVisaJobs.com site sketches out the number of H-1B in each state — North Carolina, for example. Those numbers show perhaps one-quarter of the resident population of white-collar outsourcing workers, such as H-1Bs, L-1s, J-1s, H4EADs, TNs, B-1/B-2s, and OPTs. That white-collar inflow does not include the inflow of legal immigrants and the semi-legal inflow across the southern border.
Like many other Americans, Miller-Meeks’ Iowa constituents lose local white-collar jobs — and wage increases — because of the visa workers.
But they also lose possible jobs, wealth, and status because the federal migration economic policy sends myriad new workers, renters, and consumers to coastal investors in their coastal states. The population pipelines minimize pressure on coastal-based investors to hire people and serve consumers in distant Midwestern states.
Many other Midwest Republicans also voted for the bill that diverts wealth and investment from their districts. They included Jim Baird (R-IN), Rep. Troy Balderson (R-OH), Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI), Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN), Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (D-OH), Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH), Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH), Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH), Rep. Billy Long (R-MO), and Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO).
In contrast, the many coastal Democrats who voted for the giveaway strengthened the federal incentives that enrich home-state investors and landlords. Their support for the surge of wage-cutting and rent-boosting visa workers also hurts their districts’ American employees and renters.
Pro-migration Republicans backed the giveaway, even though the bill benefits visa workers, not immigrants. They included orchard owner Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA), Rep. Jaime Herrea-Beutler (R-WA), and Rep. David Valadao (RCA). Other supporters of the corporate giveaway include Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL).
Many of the GOP yes voters are expected to be gone after the 2022 election. They included Cheney, Kinzinger, Upton, Katko, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH), Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-OH), and Rodney Davis (R-IL), In addition, Newhouse, Meijer, and Herrera Beutler face tough primary races.
The GOP’s rising number of pro-migration Latino representatives mostly voted for the corporate giveaway to the Indian white-collar workers that take jobs from American Latino graduates. They include Rep. Mayra Flores of Texas, Rep. Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Tony Gonzalez (R-TX), Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA), and Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL),
Business-first Republicans also backed the giveaway. They included Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Mark Amodei (R-NV), Rep. Patrick Fitzgerald (R-PA), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Rep. Young Kim (R-CA), and Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA).
Democrats padded the final result –277 yeas to 150 nays — by combining Miller-Meeks’ giveaway amendment into a difficult-to-resist “en bloc” mega-amendment of almost 140 different amendments. The bloc of amendments included roughly 21 amendments proposed by Republicans, including:
[Andy] Barr (R-KY) – Amendment No. 468 – Requires the Secretary of State to report on Chinese support to Russia with respect to its unprovoked invasion of and full-scale war against Ukraine
Cammack, Kat (R-FL) – Amendment No. 479 – Requires a report on the feasibility of establishing a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Preclearance Facility on Taiwan
[Dan] Crenshaw (R-TX) – Amendment No. 498 – Requires Sec. of State reporting on what is needed to provide access to free and uncensored media in the Chinese market
[Virginia] Foxx (R-NC) – Amendment No. 512 – Creates an Inspector General for the Office of Management and Budget to bring transparency and accountability to the agency
[Claudia] Tenney (R-NY) – Amendment No. 422 – Restricts the ability of covered entities (owned, directed, controlled, financed, or influenced directly or indirectly by the Government of the People’s Republic of China, the CCP, or the Chinese military) from using federal funds from engaging, entering into, and awarding public works contracts
Barr, Tenney, and Foxx voted for the en bloc amendment, but Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) voted no.
The Democratic leaders buried their giveaway in an en bloc amendment to help protect their members from the voter opposition to the giveaway, said Jenks. “Any member of Congress who voted for this can say “Oh, no, I didn’t vote for it because of that [giveaway] amendment. I voted for it because of X, Y, or Z amendment,” she said.
“Some of the Republicans didn’t even know the amendment was in there, and they voted for it to get something completely different, and now they’re like, ‘Oh, crap, I voted for that,'” Jenks added.
Extraction Migration
Since at least 1990, the D.C. establishment has extracted tens of millions of legal and illegal migrants — and temporary visa workers — from poor countries to serve as workers, consumers, and renters for various U.S. investors and CEOs.
This federal economic policy of Extraction Migration has skewed the free market in the United States by inflating the labor supply for the benefit of employers.
The inflationary policy makes it difficult for ordinary Americans to get married, advance in their careers, raise families, or buy homes.
Extraction migration has also slowed innovation and shrunk Americans’ productivity, partly because it allows employers to boost stock prices by using cheap stoop labor instead of productivity-boosting technology.
Migration undermines employees’ workplace rights, and it widens the regional wealth gaps between the Democrats’ big coastal states and the Republicans’ heartland and southern states. The flood of cheap labor tilts the economy towards low-productivity jobs and has shoved at least ten million American men out of the labor force.
An economy built on extraction migration also drains Americans’ political clout over elites, alienates young people, and radicalizes Americans’ democratic civic culture because it allows wealthy elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.
The economic policy is backed by progressives who wish to transform the U.S. from a society governed by European-origin civic culture into a progressive-directed empire of competitive, resentful identity groups. “We’re trying to become the first multiracial, multi-ethnic superpower in the world,” Rep. Rohit Khanna (D-CA) told the New York Times in March 2022. “It will be an extraordinary achievement … we will ultimately triumph,” he boasted.
The progressives’ colonialism-like economic strategy kills many migrants. It exploits poor foreigners and splits foreign families as it extracts human-resource wealth from poor home countries to serve wealthy U.S. investors. This migration policy also minimizes shareholder pressure on U.S. companies to build up beneficial and complementary trade with people in poor countries.
Business-backed migration advocates hide this extraction migration economic policy behind a wide variety of noble-sounding explanations and theatrical border security programs. For example, progressives claim that the U.S. is a “Nation of Immigrants,” that migration is good for migrants, and that the state must renew itself by replacing populations.
The polls show the public wants to welcome some immigration — but they also show deep and broad public opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.
The opposition is growing, anti-establishment, multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity that Americans owe to one another.
House Democrats — aided by some Republicans — are using the pending 2023 defense bill to subordinate the careers of U.S. professionals to the interests of investors and Fortune 500 executives.
The proposed amendment to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act would allow “any alien” with a claimed Ph.D. in science to apply for a green card from the Secretary of Homeland Security, a position Alejandro Mayorkas currently holds.
The amendment sets the bar for migrants so low that it provides green cards to an unlimited number of Indian, Chinese, and other foreigners who earn degrees in their home-country universities. Foreigners who get U.S. degrees from a lower-tier “historically Black college or [minority-serving] university” in the United States would also be allowed to get green cards.
The amendment would also expand an existing law that allows U.S. CEOs to hire foreign graduates with dangled promises of green cards. That law is now used by executives to reward roughly 70,000 foreign graduates for taking jobs from U.S. professionals.
The three-cornered amendment would allow government officials to flood the labor market and so suppress salaries for American professionals. It would even make it more difficult for the professionals’ children to get places in good universities.
“This is the kind of [skilled immigration plan], that when reported [by the media] as the supporters are framing it, sounds plausible enough,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. But, he added:
There is literally no way that it would be limited. It just cannot happen. Over and over and over again, we’ve seen immigration proposals that sound plausible on their face end up being perverted … There’ll be a guy who has a PhD in economics and [officials will] say, “Well, this is a STEM field, so okay. “And then there’ll be a PhD in home economics, and they’ll say, “Well, okay, you too.” There’s no way they’ll limit it.
The Democrat party is increasingly reliant on votes from white-collar professionals, yet it keeps trying to outsource their jobs to migrants, said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers:
What they’re signaling is there is no place for professionals in the Democratic Party … They’re literally voting the professionals out of the party [coalition] and replacing them with [visa workers and] immigrants that can’t vote.
The outsourcing amendment is being pushed by Democrat Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Jim Langevin (D-RI), and by Republican Reps. John Curtis (R-UT) and Peter Meijer (R-MI).
Lofgren represents the investors in Silicon Valley who use visa workers to spike the stock value of their companies.
Meijer is an heir of the wealthy Meijer fortune. He is facing a stiff primary challenge this year after already voting for a 2021 plan to massively increase the inflow of cheap blue-collar migrants into jobs held by American residents of rural districts. That cheap-labor policy impoverishes rural districts because the migrants earn little and buy much less in local shops and communities.
The Democrat-run Committee on Rules will decide Tuesday afternoon whether or not to allow the amendment — and other migration-related amendments — to stay in the bill. If they keep the Lofgren measure, it will pressure all Democrats to publicly vote on the House floor against the core economic and civic interests of their professional-class voters.
The committee is chaired by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), and it includes several pro-migration Democrats, such as Rep. Deborah Ross (D-NC), and Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO).
Ross, for example, has drafted an amendment that would further reward Indian graduates who take outsourced jobs from her home-district American college-graduate voters. The reward would consist of guaranteed, no-cost green cards for their Indian-born children. That government-delivered reward is hugely valuable for Indians, so it serves as a hidden subsidy for the CEOs who cheap Indian graduates for jobs that can be done by American professionals in Ross’ own district. Her giveaway amendment is backed by Rep. Cindy Axne (D-IA). and GOP Rep. Brian Patrick (R-PA).
Another amendment would offer green cards to any Russian with master’s degrees in science and technology. That amendment is being pushed by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), whose district includes part of Silicon Valley.
The GOP minority on the rules committee is led by pro-migration Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) but also includes Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX).
The Lofgren-Meijer amendment comes as West Coast investors are lobbying Congress to expand the inflow of foreign graduates for jobs that would otherwise go to U.S. professionals.
One of the leading investors is Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Google. He is now an investor who wants to maximize his supply of cheap, controllable, skilled labor. In 2013, he helped form the secretive FWD.us lobby group which consists of wealthy West Coast investors, such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.
In 2015, Schmidt called for the government to import more consumers for Google’s advertisers.
In 2020, Schmidt demanded the importation of “Top Tier” talent to help U.S. companies outpace China’s government-aided companies, many of which rely on Chinese-born, U.S.-trained workers. However, the visa-worker programs cited by Schmidt are mostly used by CEOs to displace American professionals with inexperienced, cheap, and controllable foreign graduates from very low-grade Indian universities.
In 2022, Schmidt pushed the claim that an uncapped inflow of foreign graduates is needed for national security jobs, such as cyber-security or for manufacturing computer chips. That plan was added to an anti-China technology bill by Democratic leaders in the House, but it has been rejected by GOP Senators — principally, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) — partly because the Schmidt plan would sideline many professionals in their Midwestern states.
This July, Schmidt is pushing two new claims via the London-based Financial Times.
The first claim is that the foreign scientists will help launch a new industry in the United States:
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, became one of the wealthiest people in the US by specialising in software engineering. Yet, if he was starting out again today, Schmidt says he would not be targeting bits and bytes alone. The 67-year-old thinks the next big thing is the “bioeconomy”, not the internet.
…
One [problem] is the science has advanced more slowly than many hoped. Another is government regulation. There’s a more fundamental problem too: whereas a couple of teenage computer nerds can build an internet company out of a garage, creating a bioscience business requires lots of expertise, specialised talent, manufacturing-plant capacity and time. These are not things that the US venture capital industry that funded the tech revolution is widely used to handling.
However, there is no shortage of trained U.S. college graduates with Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math (STEM) degrees. A 2021 study by the Census Bureau reported that most work in non-tech jobs:
The vast majority (62%) of college-educated workers who majored in a STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] field were employed in non-STEM fields such as non-STEM management, law, education, social work, accounting or counseling. In addition, 10% of STEM college graduates worked in STEM-related occupations such as health care.
The path to STEM jobs for [American] non-STEM majors was narrow. Only a few STEM-related majors (7%) and non-STEM majors (6%) ultimately ended up in STEM occupations.
“Between 1982 and 2011, American universities awarded 800,000 Ph.D. degrees in science and engineering,” Lynn told Breitbart News, adding:
But there were only 100,000 tenured job openings. This tells you there is a surplus of advanced STEM degree holders in the U.S. As a result, approximately one-in-five STEM Ph.D.s work in non-STEM, non-academic fields. The joblessness rate among STEM Ph.D.s is only going to increase if immigration provisions ensure that anyone with a STEM degree could come to the United States and get pushed to the front of the line
But many U.S. technology graduates are pushed out of jobs by CEOs’ preference for visa workers.
CEOs prefer visa workers because their low salaries maximize stock prices and bonuses. For example, a Brookings study said President Donald Trump’s temporary 2020 curbs on visa workers cut $100 billion from the Fortune 500’s stock value.
But those salary cuts caused by the employment of at least 1.5 million visa workers in the United States radiate into many other professional sectors. “Most college graduates have actually seen their real incomes stagnate or even decline” since 2000, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote in April 2022.
Executives also prefer visa workers because the foreign graduates cannot emulate the ability of U.S. professionals to form their own innovative companies that spur competition in the tech sector. The visa workers cannot even quit — not even complain about work hours or abuse — because they need the CEOs to approve green-card applications. “It’s imperative for policy-makers to understand that foreign STEM PhD holders will not spur innovation,” said a June 9 letter by U.S. Tech Workers. “Instead, they’ll keep innovation within the range of the status quo.”
The executives also use the visa workers to subordinate demands by U.S. professionals that some company revenues be allocated to public priorities, such as basic research, information security, crisis reliability, and compliance with federal laws. Unsurprisingly, companies that subordinate U.S. professionals tend to have more public disasters — for example, Intel, Boeing, Theranos, and Ernst & Young.
Faced with these congressional rejections, Schmidt and his lobbyists are also dangling the promise of high-tech jobs to skeptical Midwestern Senators. He told the July 6 Financial Times:
“It’s the new industrial age applied to the rural parts of America,” he told me, noting that unlike current tech innovation “these jobs are not in Silicon Valley and they’re not in the north-east… they’re in… the Republican States. They’re in the states with an awful lot of farming.” He hopes that the fact that these rural, agricultural states tend to be red not blue gives his pitch bipartisan appeal, since it will get Republican politicians involved.
But top Democrats aligned with President Joe Biden’s East Coast network openly oppose the displacement of U.S. graduates. For example, Commerce Secretary Gine Raimondo again spoke out fended off the pro-migration push in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd., “With respect to immigration, you know, that’s an issue for Congress to take up,” she said on July 10.
Schmidt and his fellow investors prefer to import foreign workers than to hire foreign graduates in their home countries, regardless of the damage to U.S. professionals. In general, U.S. operations are less threatened by technology theft, local rivals, security failures, and government regulations.
Thes white-collar migration amendments are more nails “in the coffin of the professionals in the United States,” said Lynn.
Legislators and corporate lobbyists are “stripping out that bottom rung [in the career ladder] and preventing Americans from having careers in STEM,” he said.
“They know this is going on, but the financial opportunities are just too great to not take advantage,” Lynn said, adding, “they’re not rewarded by market share and productivity — they’re rewarded by earnings per share.”
Extraction Migration
Since at least 1990, the D.C. establishment has extracted tens of millions of migrants and visa workers from poor countries to serve as legal or illegal workers, temporary workers, consumers, and renters for various U.S. investors and CEOs.
This federal economic policy of Extraction Migration has skewed the free market in the United States by inflating the labor supply for the benefit of employers.
The inflationary policy hurts ordinary Americans because makes it difficult for them to get married, advance in their careers, raise families, or buy homes.
Extraction migration has also slowed innovation and shrunk Americans’ productivity, partly because it allows employers to boost stock prices by using cheap stoop labor instead of productivity-boosting technology. Migration undermines employees’ workplace rights, and it widens the regional wealth gaps between the Democrats’ big coastal states and the Republicans’ heartland and southern states. The flood of cheap labor tilts the economy towards low-productivity jobs and has shoved at least ten million American men out of the labor force.
No comments:
Post a Comment