Take a Break, Client 9
Born under a lame duck, for most of my living memory we’ve had only two governors in New York. Twelve years of Democrat Mario Cuomo and twelve years of Republican George Pataki. Now, in the blink of an eye, we just burned through another one. I’m not shedding any tears for Client 9, but I am somewhat dumbfounded that he was felled so quickly by something so…trivial.
At Monday’s Labor Research Association awards dinner, NYS Labor Commissioner Patricia Smith stood in for the governor-in-hiding and delivered a pretty convincing defense of his administration’s record. Hundreds of times more wage and hours claims against deadbeat employers than the previous administration. Hundreds of times more health and safety cases investigated than the previous administration. And, yes, he gave over 50,000 early childhood educators the right to organize into unions. Excepting that last one, what is really exceptional about that record? Have politics degenerated in such a way that we consider merely enforcing the law to be noteworthy and commendable?
To my mind, Elliot Spitzer was never a reliable friend of labor and David Paterson will be a welcome replacement (at last, a governor who needs us!). As good as Elliot “Ness” Spitzer’s record was as Attorney-General, after three terms of Republican misrule, voters would have voted in droves for a department store mannequin. Spitzer, like Illinois’ Rod Blagojevich and Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick, translated his lucky landslide as some kind of mandate and declared war on everyone, including his own party and unions like NYSUT when it suited his purpose. Is it any wonder that his opponents in Albany pounced on him the first time he showed an exploitable weakness?
And, boy, is this a story that can be exploited! Already, the two days it took Spitzer to decide to resign gave us time to ponder lots of questions. Questions like, what’s worse: to be Client 8 or Client 10? Why did he choose to book a hotel room under a campaign donor’s name? Because George Fox sounded cool? Well, that’s the last time that guy makes a donation to your campaign fund, Nine. Note to Elliot: next time you’re looking for an alias, do what the rest of us do – read a Dashiell Hammett story and pick the coolest name (“Yes, I’d like to reserve a room. Name: Harry Brazil”). And, finally, what kind of things does Spitzer ask a girl to do that she “might not think were safe?” I’m imagining a well-lubed baseball bat up the backside.
The simplest lesson that any of us can draw from this is that it is high time that we legalize prostitution. The illegality of sex work is the thin veneer of credibility that let the Republicans threaten impeachment and push Spitzer out the door. Applying health code standards and regulation to sex work would doubtlessly improve public health, and, hell, at a thousand dollars an hour, taxing that shit would help keep the Social Security fund solvent for generations to come (or should that be “generations to cum?”). Play safe, comrades. You’re benched, client #9. Batter up, governor #5.
An Encouraging Labor Statistic
For the first time in 25 years the percentage of U.S. workers represented by a union has increased. A report from Ben Zipperer and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research attributes the increase to large membership gains in California – over 200,000 of the 310,000 new union members were organized there – and more modest gains in northeastern states like New York and New Jersey, which were able to offset the continued decline of unionized manufacturing jobs.
The slight uptick in the unionized percentage, to 12.1% from 12.0%, was the first recorded since the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting figures in 1983, and, as the report’s authors caution, may reflect a statistical variation. The actual number of unionized workers has, after all, increased in most years since John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO on a call for a greater commitment to new organizing. However, those gains in membership could not keep pace with the new jobs added to the overall economy, causing declining percentages of union membership. But now as we slouch towards a recession, the economy is adding significantly fewer new jobs, so that union membership could actually gain as a percentage of the workforce.
But that’s only part of the story. These membership increases reflect a shift in organizing strategy to consolidate our gains in states and industries where we are relatively strong. Tens of thousands of those new union members were public sector home child care providers. Many thousands more were teachers and clerical and administrative employees in states like Kansas and New Mexico, where public sector employees recently regained the right to form unions. In the private sector, gains were made in health care and construction, where strong unions used their leverage to compel employers to recognize and deal with newly organized workers outside of the increasingly hostile and anti-union National Labor Relations Board.
This strategic shift leaves huge swaths of workers – in the South and Midwest, in private sector white collar occupations, etc. – unrepresented and with little hope of organizing. It is, however, a plan to survive and fight another day. Every newly organized workplace that wins a good contract is an object lesson to friends, family and neighbors that we can organize and win. It means more financial resources for international unions and the AFL-CIO and Change To Win to commit to organizing elsewhere. And it’s more union voters to elect a government that will reform the union-busting laws. It helps ensure that there will continue to be a union movement, for now.
Late Night Labor Wars
Thank goodness for the Hollywood unions for providing a little basic trade union education for the American public. It’s been so rare to see aggressive, proactive union activity that most people clearly don’t understand how this stuff is supposed to work. The fact that most late-night talk show hosts are crossing picket lines to return to the air without their writers, while David Letterman gets to go back with his writers and their union’s blessing is inexplicably confusing to some. Apparently even some producers don’t understand. One anonymous weasel (presumably from NBC) whined, “Regardless of who technically owns what, they are now intentionally putting us at a competitive disadvantage.” That’s how this works, sweetheart. If the striking Writers Guild was affecting everyone’s business equally, how would that compel the producers to settle?
I’ve written about “me-too” agreements before. These are contracts wherein an employer agrees in advance to the terms of an industrywide agreement and buys its way out of a labor dispute. Whatever the other guys agree to, we’ll do the same. Just please don’t strike us. That is precisely the kind of contract that Letterman’s Worldwide Pants company, independently of the major networks, has signed with the Writers Guild. The other late night guys whine that Letterman’s getting off on a technicality (Letterman negotiated to own his own show when he moved to CBS, while Leno pushed Letterman out of the way to take over Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” on NBC’s penurious terms). Do not let them obscure the fact that they planned to put Letterman at a competitive disadvantage by crossing the picket lines to return to the air, while Letterman held out for his writers.
And why? Jay Leno is retiring in a few years, and could have stood his ground, except I suspect that he secretly hates unions. Carson Daly, who enthusiastically went back on the air first, is the kind of unprincipled, talentless careerist who cynically calculated that by being the only host presenting new programs that people might finally watch his dreck. And Conan O’Brien, I can only assume, was worried that NBC might take the promised “Tonight Show” away from him if he stayed out with his writers.
If all of the late night programs had stayed in reruns, they would have maintained their audience share. Yes, I’m sure there are less viewers overall for reruns, but the proportion of viewers would remain the same, so that all of the shows would lose revenue equally, and thus, in a way, not really lose out at all. But now David Letterman gets to go back with fresh, scripted material and access to all of Hollywood’s stars, while Leno, who is painfully unfunny even with his team of writers, has to vamp and ad-lib for an hour each night with only the help of his own wit and whatever college professor or book author he can scrounge up. If it does place not only Leno and Conan, but all of NBC at a competitive disadvantage, then it places pressure on the NBC-Universal corporate ownership structure to settle the damn contract. Which is exactly the trade union purpose of a “me too” agreement.
Is It Treason to Strike Against the Government?
Is it treasonous to go on strike against your employer? Most reasonable people would say no. But, given the opportunity, most Bosses would make it illegal for their employees to strike for better wages and conditions. The government, as employer of many thousands of public sector employees, is the only employer that has the ability to outlaw strikes by its employees. Al Shanker, who led New York City’s school teachers on a number of strikes between the early 1960s and the late 1970s, grumbled that the illegality of strikes and the steep fines and penalties incurred by city unions that strike anyway were a holdover from monarchistic thinking, and that there isn’t even the slimmest pretext of arguing for public safety or welfare in making them illegal. Shanker would point out that teachers at private schools would face no penalty if they chose to strike, even though such a strike would create the same kind of disruptions for parents as a public school strike.
Shanker’s point should be made again in the case of the Transport Workers Union, who are in court trying to get their dues checkoff reinstated, after it was canceled as a part of the hefty fines and penalties that were levied against the union after its 2005 strike. Even though the MTA, the technical employer of New York’s bus and subway workers, supports the union’s efforts to return to regular operations (apparently, the union’s inability to handle a backlog of grievances is harming the Authority’s ability to run the system), the Bloomberg administration is opposing it, demanding that union leaders “once and for all time declare unequivocally that they may not, and will not, ever again engage in a strike.”
What gall! TWU was actually the first union to be recognized and sign a contract with the city of New York. That’s because the union was first organized in the 1930’s when the city’s bus and subway lines were owned and operated by private corporations. The union struck for and won greater wages and benefits back then, and the strikes were 100% legal. The New York City Transit Authority took over in the 1950’s, and the transit workers became public sector employees and lost their “right” to strike. Same workers, same job, same union, same contract. First legal, then illegal, but not because the idea of a transit strike became “unsafe” or more of a disruption, but simply because the new Boss had the ability to set the laws that made the strike illegal. Good for TWU President Roger Toussaint for refusing to submit to Mayor Bloomberg’s monarchistic thinking.