Take This Bullshit Job and Pretend to Love It
The British economist Joan Robinson once remarked, “The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.” What kind of misery is it, then, if your particular form of exploitation is being asked to do nothing particularly useful? David Greaber explores this question in his thought-provoking and hilarious new book, Bullshit Jobs. Five years ago, he wrote an essay for the radical magazine Strike!, asking why people in the United States and England are not working the 15-hour weeks that John Maynard Keynes had predicted would be the result of technological advancement? In our post-scarcity society, he argued, only a tiny fraction of the population actually has to labor in order to provide for the material needs of all. “It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working,” he wrote. […]
Elon Musk’s Very Dumb Tweet
The United Auto Workers union (UAW) slapped billionaire gadfly Elon Musk with charges of violating federal labor law in a stupid tweet last week. Musk owns the unprofitable luxury electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors, which the UAW has been unsuccessfully trying to organize. Tesla has previously been scrutinized over allegations of “excessive mandatory overtime,” a lack of workplace safety and union busting. Musk’s tweet suggesting that Tesla workers would lose their stock options in the company if they voted for union representation raised eyebrows and prompted the UAW to file an Unfair Labor Practice Charge over the retaliatory threat. Speaking to Bloomberg news, former NLRB chair Wilma Liebman said, “If you threaten to take away benefits because people unionize, that’s an out-and-out violation of the labor law.” The dumb tweet was fired off in the middle of a surreal “It’s 2018 and, yes, this is actually happening” social media meltdown […]
What Is Janus and Why Does It Matter?
Half of the labor movement could go “right-to-work” depending on the outcome of a pending Supreme Court decision. In Janus v. AFSCME, the justices are weighing whether union shop contract clauses that compel represented workers to join or pay a representation fee should be illegal in the public sector. With 7.2 million union members’ participation at stake, the case represents the latest in the unrelenting corporate assault on union power and financial resources. Part of what the right wing is exploiting in this case is that for public sector workers, their employer is, in some sense, “the government.” That makes their union contracts more vulnerable to challenges from outsiders. Indeed, public sector workers won the right to negotiate for the same union shop clause that private sector unions have enjoyed for over a century in a 1978 Supreme Court case called Abood v. Detroit. That long-settled precedent has been under […]
After Janus, Should Unions Abandon Exclusive Representation?
The Supreme Court is set to issue a ruling on Janus vs. AFSCME, which could have far-reaching consequences for the future of public-sector unions in the United States. The case has sparked a wide-ranging debate within the labor movement about how to deal with the “free-rider problem” of union members who benefit from collective bargaining agreements but opt-out of paying dues. We asked three labor experts to discuss what’s at stake in the case and how they each think unions should respond. Kate Bronfenbrenner is director of labor education research at Cornell University, Chris Brooks is a staff writer and organizer with Labor Notes and Shaun Richman is a former organizing director at the American Federation of Teachers. Chris Brooks: The way I see it, right-to-work presents two interlocking problems for unions. The first is that unions are legally required to represent all workers in a bargaining unit that the […]
Supreme Court Guts Workers’ Rights in Murphy Oil
With their decision Monday, May 21, 2018 in Murphy Oil, the Supreme Court has just gutted workers’ rights to act collectively to battle wage theft and discrimination. Murphy Oil is a gift to corporations, allowing them to force their workers to sign a class action waiver as a condition of employment. Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the 5-4 decision that might as well have read, “Because we have the votes.” A class action waiver is when a worker waives – that is, gives away – their right to band together with other workers, access the courts, and force their employer to stop doing something discriminatory, dangerous, or otherwise wrong. Class action lawsuits had been one of the most powerful ways for workers to win back-pay awards for employer misconduct. Arbitration, which takes place outside of the courts, is far more favorable to employers. That is doubly true when a worker must […]
Drop all the bridge tolls, tax the billionaires
The toll on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is too damn high. I realize that it’s a time-honored tradition for Staten Islanders to beat our breasts and complain about how “forgotten” and taken for granted we are. Don’t let me steal your birthright from ya, but there are hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who have to go over the river and through the woods and across two expensive bridges to get to Grandma’s house in New Jersey. They feel your pain. A $17 bridge toll, a free ride for tourists on the ferry and $2.75 for a subway train that’s as likely to break down as get you to work on time is an inequitable system for all parties involved. Writing in these pages, columnist Tom Wrobleski points to the toll-free East River bridges and notes, “They’re one of the few examples of government totally overlooking a revenue source.” He suggests […]
Republicans Are Hard at Work to Turn Staten Island Blue
Is Donald Trump an albatross around the neck of congressional Republicans? By appealing to his base and embracing the polarizing strategies that he has brought to new heights, will they cost themselves the last few swing districts in Trump-abhorring blue states? We New Yorkers might have the best view of the GOP’s struggle to stay afloat in America’s big cities right here on Staten Island. Republican Dan Donovan, who has represented New York’s 11th Congressional District for all of a term and a half, is in the fight of his political life in the June 26 GOP primary. Our ex-con ex-Congressman, Republican Michael Grimm—fresh out of jail—is running against Donovan to reclaim his old job. Grimm has gone full fascist in order to win the backing of former White House consigliere Stephen Bannon, as part of Bannon’s effort to destroy what’s left of the Republican establishment. Grimm gushed over Bannon’s […]
Good job! New York State shows climate work can be union work
What if we could take bold steps to create thousands of good union jobs that also help save the environment? That’s the proposal of a New York State coalition of unions and environmentalists. Building trades, energy and transport workers unions have banded together to address the dual problems of inequality and climate change across New York State – and they’re winning. Without public policy that protects workers’ livelihoods as part of protecting the environment, many workers have to choose between good jobs or a healthy environment – a growing concern in New York State, and elsewhere. Climate change has hit New York hard. There was Super Storm Sandy as well as Hurricane Irene, unprecedented snowstorms, and more recently, Lake Ontario flooding, all of which have devastated communities across the state. To ensure cleanup and prevention jobs are good ones, Climate Jobs NY (CJNY) is a union-driven campaign to implement a […]
This job is killing me: Not a metaphor
You are more likely to be killed at work than in a terrorist attack or plane crash. On average, thirteen workers die on the job every day. Most of these deaths are completely preventable. And yet the complex web of state and federal agencies and insurance programs meant to protect worker’ssafety and incomes are persistently under-funded and under attack. Two new books shed light on the dangers we face at workand the laws that are letting us down. Jonathan D. Karmel’s Dying to Work: Death and Injury in the American Workplace (Cornel University Press) is a compelling call for action on a national health crisis that’s hiding in plain sight. The conventional narrative is that coalmine disasters and factory fires have been extinguished through reform laws. And also that efforts to pass new regulations are “red tape” that threatens jobs. At the center of those somewhat conflicting arguments is the […]
Company Towns Are Still with Us
On a May morning in 1920, a train pulled into town on the Kentucky–West Virginia border. Its passengers included a small army of armed private security guards, who had been dispatched to evict the families of striking workers at a nearby coal mine. Meeting them at the station were the local police chief—a Hatfield of the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud—and several out-of-work miners with guns. The private dicks and the local militia produced competing court orders. The street erupted in gunfire. When the smoke cleared, ten men lay dead—including two striking miners, the town mayor, and seven of the hired guns. The striking miners had worked for the Stone Mountain Coal Company, in mines located outside the city limits of Matewan. There, they rented homes that were owned by their employer, shopped at a general store that was owned by their employer, and paid in a company-generated form of “cash” that […]