← Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
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Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives. Jobs, debts, incomes, those for our kids and those looming down the road. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been an economist, a professor of economics all my adult life, and I believe that has prepared me to present to you the kinds of economic analyses and updates that this program specializes in. So let's jump right to it. For seven years now, the citizens of California have been battling over the identification of who is contributing to political campaigns. There are those who believe that it is an infringement on the freedom to donate and use your money to be forced to disclose who you are to the voting public when you give money to a candidate. And there are those at least as upset if you like, who believe that it is everyone's right to know who's funding whom as part of what you need to know when deciding how to cast your ballot. Very recently, the legislature in California, by a supermajority more than two thirds, passed the California Disclose act, which is now awaiting the governor's signature to become law. If the governor doesn't sign it, it will not become law unless and until the legislature might override his not doing so. So the people of California, in a sense, are reaching the culmination of a struggle, a dispute, a debate over disclosing campaign finances. My position here is not to urge you one way or the other. That's up to you and whatever decision you have to make. But I do urge you to take this vote seriously, to take this whole situation seriously in terms of your support for one or another candidate, for one or another group, not only because however this comes out will affect the politics of California, but as has happened before, as California goes so well may much of the rest of the country. The implications are national. And because of the importance of who is paying whom in our political system, the impact is global. So much depends on what is happening now. You can find out what you need to know by going to various government websites that inform you about these issues. There's also a website called cadisclose.org of those who want the governor to sign this legislation. There are groups opposed. This information is readily available. And again, as a citizen of the world, of the United States and of the state of California, it's a very important issue and I hope you will cast an informed ballot one way or the other. Let's jump into the updates for today, and the one I want to start with is one that I think is of enormous importance to the American economy. And hasn't got anywhere near the attention it should have gotten. Let me start with the most arresting statistic of all. The number of retail stores scheduled to be closed during calendar year 2017 in the United States is 6400 stores. That is a cataclysmic closing of the retail sector of, of the American economy. It means enormous losses in wealth. Think of the thousands of empty stores. Think of the hundreds of malls that are now effectively defunct or will soon be. Malls with enormous investments in buildings, parking lots, roadway schedules, traffic patterns, all of this law. Think of the tens of thousands of jobs, retail jobs lost to people who no longer go to work in a store that isn't open. Think about the lost opportunities. What else could have been done with these malls? If we had known, if we had had some economic foresight, which many people did, if we had done some economic planning, which very few did, we might have been able to anticipate how to make good community use to, of an abandoned mall, a mall that could no longer function as a store in the lives of the people, the workers, the customers, and so on. I want to drive home what some of these closings are and give you the names because it will affect you and you need to know. And the coverage, as I suggested, is woefully inadequate. The biggest single closing scheduled for this year, Radio Shack plans to close 1,430 stores. Next, the Payless Group. 808 store closings, the Asina Retail Group. Now, of course, some of these names don't mean much to you, so let me tell you what Asina is, is the owner of. Well, I'll mention only two, so you get the idea. Ann Taylor, Lane Bryant, those are parts of the Asina group. They're closing 667 of those stores. The Limited, a major clothing outlet, is closing. 250. Family Christian, closing 240. Kmart, 230. J.C. penney, 138. And I could go on and on and on. Your life, those of your friends and relatives are all going to be affected by the lost tax revenue of the communities you live in. As these stores close by the law, state tax, sales tax revenues as they are not anymore paying sales tax, since people either now don't buy or buy through Internet distributors, who can escape many of these taxes, et cetera, et cetera, the impact will be everywhere. And I'm not even talking about the visual impact of driving your child to school, passing an empty abandoned mall with weeds growing up through the cracks in the pavement of the parking lot. This is a catastrophe, economically speaking. It should have been planned for, it should have been developed over time. It should have been made easier for the people immediately affected. We live in an economic system that doesn't do the planning, the preparation. It just lets the chips fall where they may. And please remember, every corporation that made the decision to close these stores explained that their profit and loss situation required this decision. That's what they said. Profit drives the decision. Profit calculations, whether they're right or wrong is really no one's business and we'll probably never know. But profit calculations by a tiny group of people led to the decision to close 6400400 retail outlets in the United States in 2017. Let me turn next to another important story. Economic update of this week. Housing starts fell 8.8% this last month. It's a second monthly drop in housing starts. Why is this important? It's important because when we start a house, when a builder begins to build a house, a whole set of economic transactions is set in motion. It's not just the people hired to build a house. Important as that is, it's not all the jobs for people who are bringing building materials to the building site from wherever they're manufactured. Lots of people. And it's not only the immediately affected nearby communities. What's also set in motion are demands for furniture. Because that house will be built in a certain number of months and then it will be sold and then it will be occupied and whoever the new occupants are will be buying new furniture. Probably the house being builder or those people will be buying appliances. An enormous industrial boost is given when housing starts proliferating. That's why it's really bad news when for two months we not only don't get rapid growth, we get a decline in housing starts. So I looked into it in order to be able to offer you an explanation for why at a time when the government boasts that unemployment is shrinking, more people have jobs, we're supposed to think, oh, this is a turnaround economy. And then we get this statistic, housing starts drop. Also, here's the explanation which the housing industry is perfectly willing to offer and I'm just passing it on to you. The vast majority of people getting jobs are getting jobs that have little pay, few benefits and no security. Guess what? They're not going to buy a house. They're not going to go in on the loans. And the risks of home ownership, with the income situation as precarious for them as modern jobs of the sort that we're giving people actually are so it turns out that what the building industry is doing is building fewer houses, but much more expensive houses. The housing industry is going where the economy is. And in the economy it's a shrinking number of very wealthy people who are buying houses because they can, and a growing number of the mass of Americans with or without a job, who cannot do that, who cannot buy a home, who cannot raise the down payment, who cannot take the risk of, of a 20 year mortgage, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's another sign that when you allow the inequality of income to reach the dimensions it now has in the United States, there are consequences down the line from doing that. And one of them is this bad news from the housing market, which is in turn a reflection of the inequality of income and, and will have effects making that inequality worse. And now another. This economic update puts me in the position of even coming close to celebrating something done by people like Walmart or Pepsi Cola or Viacom or Tarjay. You can't say Target, Tarjay. Here's what they did. These corporations I just named are among 800 major American corporations who wrote and signed a letter to the Trump administration urging the Trump administration to reverse its decisions about the DACA young people, the D, A, C A, those people who were brought into the United States illegally as children, young children and who have grown up as American children and many of them have jobs now and so on. And they are threatened with being pushed out by what the Trump administration and the Republican Party at least has talked about. It's being fought over inside Congress right now as to what exactly will be done. They were Interestingly joined, these 800 corporations, by Colin Kaepernick, who donated $25,000 of his own money to help the DACA project of getting those people allowed to stay here in the United States. It's an interesting coalition between these corporate leaders and others who feel strongly about it. I wanted to offer an explanation. Immigrants, like those children, or the children of immigrants, have been historically shown to have a very profound ability, or let's put it differently, a willingness to work at wages and under conditions less attractive than those Native Americans normally insist on. In other words, Walmart, Tarjay, the others, they know something. They know that the children of immigrants have modest expectations, are willing to accept standards of living that others might not. They're also, as the children of immigrants have, have traditionally been very eager to be successful in the new country, driven by their parents to be successful, to learn English really well, and to succeed and to make a really good start in the new country to which they have come, often under very difficult circumstances. In other words, highly motivated and not expensive from a corporate point of view. And it's interesting that they would want to go against the Trump administration, although admittedly doing that is now a popular activity for most Americans one way or another. Before I go on to my next update, I want to remind you that we maintain two websites that are available for you 24 7, no charge ever, where you can partner with us in a variety of ways. You can read more materials of the sorts that we cover in this program that we upload onto these two websites every day. You can communicate to us what you like and don't like, what you would like to see us cover. We read every single communication you choose to make, and both websites provide you with a way of doing that. Likewise, both websites allow you to follow us with a click of your mouse or on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which we invite you to do. So these two websites are the rdwolff with two f's.com and democracyatwork.info that's all one word, democracyatwork.info use them when you like, where you like, how you like, but they're there to enable you to work with us to get this program's messages to to the largest possible number of people. And by the way, if you would like to participate in this program, to see this program as a video event rather than or alongside of a radio event, please know that you can see the video version, the TV version at patreon.com that's P A T R E O-N patreon.com for the TV version, the video version of this program. Let's return. A week ago, the Census Department here in the United States issued a report that got a lot of publicity because it pointed out that over the last two years, the level of poverty in the United States has gone down, even though for the last 20 or 30 years it hasn't had that kind of experience, that we have had a rise in the average or median income level of American families. Again, noteworthy because the previous 30 or 40 years have seen stagnation at best and decline at worst. And I even made a comment a week or so ago where I said it is remarkable that you get a lot of attention when the numbers go up a little bit, and you never got that kind of attention over the long decades when it was going down. But I want to highlight another part of the Census Bureau's report because of what it says about the American economy today and where it points into the future. This has to do with children in poverty, because while the poverty rate went down a little bit for most, but not all Americans, the child poverty rates in this country are so extreme that they need to be understood, and the implications of them need to be understood. So let's go for white Americans. The percentage of children, white children living in poverty. And let's remember, poverty is a strange idea in this country. The government keeps a record. Roughly, if you're a family of four and you earn less than $24,000 a year, you're considered to be in poverty. Of course, if you make $25,000 a year and you live in most American cities and you're a family of four, you've got a hard row to hoe. But you're not considered in poverty. So keep that in mind. We're talking about in poverty, meaning living in a family where a typical family of four is earning 24,000 and it's reduced, of course, if it's a family of three or two and so on. White Americans, 11% of our children, one in nine white children, is living in a family defined as in poverty. Asian Americans, 11% same and Asian Americans and white Americans. Now let's turn to Native Americans, Black African Americans and Hispanic Americans. Let's start with Native Americans. Children, 34%, are living in poverty, more than three times the rate of white and Asian Americans. Blacks, 31%, Hispanic, 27%. Besides these numbers showing a disparity between the poverty endured by children of color, excepting Asian Americans and whites, besides the jarring implications of all of this for racial justice, for equality, for any notion of justice, let's remember I'm talking here, and I did this deliberately about children. So the option of blaming the child for the poverty it lives in is really not available since the children didn't choose where to be born, to whom to be born, under what conditions to be born, children were born into poverty, and massively more so among African American, Hispanic American and Native Americans. Every study that I know indicates that the prospects for those kids doing well in school, doing well in their social adjustments, getting the motivation, getting the time, having the safety, having the supports to make it in life, the odds are much lower because of the poverty into which they are born through no fault of their own. And if you wanted an indicator that we're going to have trouble in the years ahead, if you condemn the children of this society to these kinds of conditions, you are guaranteeing problems galore in the years ahead. This kind of an inequality and this kind of a level of poverty demand a massive intervention of resources and people to once and for all break this pattern. Otherwise, we will continue to see the results of an inequality this stark imposed from the earliest years of a human being's life in the United States. It is just this side of criminal to have such a situation and to have a government these days, and unfortunately for quite a while that either doesn't recognize this, doesn't want to face it, or at least does not want to raise and apply the resources needed to do something about this. We're way beyond small measures, piecemeal measures, little reforms. This kind of an imbalance of an inequality and of a level of denial to innocent children is something that has to be addressed massively or else you don't solve it. The next update I tried to think of a proper heading for it. I came up with only in Trump's America, for lack of a better one, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. You may never have heard this. It's a well established commission of the United States government in Washington. One of its activities is to supervise the financial markets, that is the markets in derivatives and other fancy but very important mechanisms of the financial world, the world of banks, what banks do, how they trade with one another, what risks they take for what kinds of returns, what products they develop in their offices, and so on. And on the 25th of September this last week, it was announced by them, by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, that they were changing their policy. They were going to change the policy inherited from the Obama administration to make it suitable for the new Trump administration. And before I tell you what they've done, because it will be right up there in the you can't be serious category before I tell you it's an important example, I guess that's the word I want an example of what is happening mostly below the radar. In other words, we have a president who makes a spectacular speech or a spectacular tweet and gets a lot of attention and hoopla and people yelling and screaming for him, against him and all the rest of the but meanwhile, most of the business of government isn't that. It's what is done in these commissions and offices and departments of this or that part of the government, changing the rules, applying them in a different way. That's what's really shifting America. And in a way that has more impact on people than what the particular head of the government might be saying or yelling or tweeting, etc. As going on everywhere. I want to give you one example. So let's get back. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission. It announced it is now going to rely less on directly supervising the banking industry. And I'm now going to quote, it's going to put more reliance on banks. Here comes the quote. Self reporting of their own misdeeds. I have to say that again because probably you don't believe what I just said, so I want to say it again. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission, in the words of its chair, is changing its policy to rely more on banks self reporting of their own misdeeds. He gave a speech the director did in which he said there are a lot of incentives for the banks to be open and transparent about what they do. Folks, you know from this program, if you've been listening, that I have tried to catalog for you over the last several years the extraordinary misdeeds carried out by the large banks in this country. Money laundering for which they have been found guilty and paid huge fines. Manipulating global interest rates. The so called Libor scandal for which they have been found guilty and paid fines. Overcharging all kinds of fees from bounced checks to everything else for which they have been found guilty and have paid fines for having misbehaved in the whole mortgage Crisis back in 2007, 8 and 9, for which they have been found guilty and they've paid heavy. We have seen money exchange the foreign exchange markets, they manipulated those. Everything the major banks have done, they have behaved badly, unethically and or illegally paid huge fines, failed to self report for the government. Now to say we're going to rely on self reporting. It boggles the mind if I wish I could come up with a better phrase, but it tells you something fundamental, that after all the hoopla is done, this government is doing something for its friends and if you don't notice it doing much for you, draw your own conclusions. We've come to the end of the first half of this program. Please stay with us. After a very short intermission we will be right back.
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The night we met I knew I needed you so. And if I had the chance I never let you go. So won't you say you love me? I'll make you so proud of me. We'll make them turn their head every place we go. So won't you please? I'll make you happy, baby, just wait and see. For every kiss you give me, I'll give, feel free. Oh, since the day I saw you, I have been waiting for you. You know I will for you till eternity. So won't you. Savy now.
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Welcome back, friends, to the second half of of Economic Update for today. I am very proud and pleased to have back on our microphones with us a guest who's been here before. His name is Bob Henley, and I'm going to introduce him by looking right at him with you. So, Bob, thanks for having me. Welcome. Let me say to you what you already know, but for the audience to hear. Bob is an investigative reporter of the old school, the guy who spends a lot of time tracking down what's really important and separating it from the fluff. It's easier to write fluff. It takes longer and it's harder to write the real stuff. And that's why Bob's here, because he does the real work. He's a reporter for the Chief Leader, which has been covering public employee issues since 1897. He's also national reporter for WBGO, which is the NPR affiliate in Newark, New Jersey. He has a long history in public radio, especially in the greater New York area. And so this is both an expert in the media and an expert on labor, which is what we're going to be talking about today. So, Bob, get us into it by telling us about the strike that you have been covering here in New York City. Tell us first about what immediately is going on and then let's talk about the implications.
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What we have here is that Local 3, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, has been on strike coming on six months now, and they have been locked into a bitter battle with Charter Spectrum, which is a relatively new name. Charter by itself went bankrupt back in 2000, but under Tom Rutledge, who's its CEO, has become a behemoth almost overnight by buying Time Warner, by buying Bright House, and now is in 41 states, 25 million households. And he just recently got $100 million payday, mostly in stock options, but still he's the largest paid CEO.
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So it is correct that he pays, he earns more than you do?
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Oh, absolutely. Exponentially so and probably like, you know, quite a few more Bob Henley's and we can throw in some Richard Wolffs.
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Yes.
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One of the things that's happened here is that historically, you know, this why would this be a national issue? Well, for decades, the members of Local 3, you know, made a living wage, had fringe benefits, sent their kids to college and made money for the cable provider. Then all of a sudden this new breed of cable company which is, you know, very it's equivalent to the Standard Oil trust of the 19th century in terms of its power, because we know today Just as oil was the thing that powered society information. And access to the Internet is critical. Well over the protestations of groups like MoveOn.org, free Press Media alliance, all these nonprofits and community groups that are concerned about this kind of concentration of media power. The FCC approved this merger and they did it with over 60 billion in debt, which means it's something like $1,400 per customer that they got. So one of the things that's been happening in the cable industry is the prices have been going up dramatically. And we're finding, according to the Pew center, that people on the margins, people who are struggling, the very people we want to be having access to the Internet, are dropping off because they can't afford it. So that's the context within which this strike is happening.
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So let me just pick up on a couple of points you made. If you borrow 60 plus billion dollars in order to buy other companies and merge them with this borrowed money, then it isn't bizarre that you have an enormous interest cost and you have to raise the prices, which the monopolization by buying companies allows you to do, to pay off the interest on it. So in a sense, the FCC's approval to the merger is equivalent to the approval of the borrowing to achieve the merger is therefore necessarily the approval of jacking up the prices to pay for all of this.
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Exactly. And moreover, of greater concern is we know that we need to invest in broadband, particularly in rural areas and in underserved communities. So it means that the company is going to be under capitalized in terms of expanding, and it's going to put tremendous pressure on them in terms of race, as you say. And then also they have about 90,000 workers nationally, only 2,500 are represented by a union. So clearly the union looks at this like this is something they're just going to break this union because it's an anomaly they can't afford. And what's at stake here is that New York City was really the center of the labor movement since the Triangle fire. We were the epicenter for the labor movement. And if they can break a skilled union like the electricians here in New York City, well then they're going to be running the table in a significant way across the country. Right.
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Okay. Let's look at some of the larger implications. The first one I pick up from the very thing you just said, if this country's economy is in trouble, which almost every reasonable person understands it, is when you break a union, when you impose a strike the last six months and all the rest, if you're a multi billion dollar corporation and you're dealing with 1,300 workers out of a workforce of 90,000, so obviously this is not an ability to pay problem for the union, for the company, then all that you're really doing is making a bit more money for the company by squeezing these 1,300 people, making each of them less able to buy in a store, less able to send their kid to school. So in a sense, for the profit of a debt ridden monopoly type company, you are further damaging the larger economy. There's no way out of this. Right.
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And then also the number's a little higher, it's 1800. But what we're getting reports of these households, these union households are many of them in foreclosure and eviction. So the economic dislocation is considerable and moreover, it's being funded in another way too. They're carrying on their books the billions of dollars of bad bets they made in the past as an asset. This is something we saw with Trump. So they have $11 billion in losses which they're carrying as an asset where they figure they'll get like $4 billion a ton tax relief. So this is the definition of vulture capitalism. We have it here. We just really missed those cartoons of the 19th century that depicted so well the relationship of the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers. So the American people got it. They understood that they were oppressed directly and substantially by these vulture capitalists. Today what we get is dewy eyed discussions of billionaires, philanthropy, how they, they're so large and yet they take time to be with us and to share their, you know, beneficence. And so that's why it's so important here. This is really ground zero for the labor movement in the United States right now. And it's, it's odd that it would happen in New York City.
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Unions have been declining in the United States for 50 years. Right. The statistic that you know as well as I do that less than 7%, I believe it's 6.4, the latest number. Private sector, of the private sector are represented by or members of a union. That means 93 plus percent of people in the private sector have no union, are not protected by a union, do not benefit from a union. For 50 years. Unions have declined. So we have this number for the same 50 years. Roughly the standard of living, the wages a worker can get have either been stagnant or declining. What's the relationship between these two similarly moving statistics.
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There was a break point I Mean, back in the 50s, we were looking at 35% of the workforce being unionized in the 70s. And you've written about this a lot. There was this disconnect where productivity continued to go up, but workers did not experience the increase in the economic well being of their families and the decline started. One of the bright spots in that period of time was the organization of the public sector. So while the private sector went into those numbers you described, they got upwards of 35% of the public sector. That's down a little bit now, particularly after what Scott Walker did, the governor of Wisconsin, where he basically with a series of restrictive laws against collective bargaining like over reduced AFSCME's role by 70% almost overnight, the teachers by 50%. But still, what's happened here is that the public unions are really the last vestige where there's any kind of footprint that matters in terms of politics. And they are facing some serious issues right now. One is a Janus decision or the court case which involves the decision may result in the Supreme Court striking down the ability of public unions to collect dues, which would really kneecap them. And then also we have this upsurge of right to work across the country. So now in 28 states, including labor friendly places, previously labor friendly places like Michigan, we have right to work laws. And this isn't just below the Mason Dixon line. And then of course, we had what happened with the election of President Trump where the union leadership wasn't able to even deliver its rank and file. So that you had Secretary Clinton getting 10% less than President Obama did. We know about those 200 counties in Michigan, Pennsylvania that went for Obama twice and then flipped for Trump. So this is really a turning point for the labor movement in terms of some kind of revival. And it's curious because polls show public support is still strong for unions and among young people is even increasing.
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Well, let's explore that. The Republicans explain often that their venomous hostility and criticism of unions has something to do with an evenhandedness that we face an economy with big corporations on the one hand and big labor on the other. And these Republicans are busily combating the big on both sides. From what you say, the notion that there's a big labor, if it was ever true, has long since disappeared. Which leads me to wonder, what then is the Republican motivation?
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They don't have to worry about accelerating concentration of wealth. I mean, I think that's what we're seeing. I mean, that's why the push for the demise of the affordable Health care act to bring all shiny objects to the top 1%, who are their paymasters? I mean, that's really. It's that simple. I would like to say it's more elaborate, but it's not.
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So it's simply saving them for taxes, saving them, giving them more and more of the wealth. And the argument about big labor, big corporations is just so much noise, right?
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I mean, we've seen one of the things that's happened is there's a grassroots movement around, for instance, the movement for $15 an hour that's caught the national imagination, but that's actually much bigger in terms of social media phenomenon than the actual labor movement itself. And so we're at a key turning point in terms of succession. Is the labor movement going to be able to translate to a new generation the challenge of standing up for oneself? And that's difficult because we're in a culture where people are. It's not natural for people to act outside of their own self interest. And so that's the process of succession planning that the unions have to really focus on.
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Let me ask you a question. If the polls, as you say, show that majority of Americans believe in a union, want there to be unions, see that the unions in some sense lift everybody's financial situation, who's a working person, then how do you explain 50 years of decline of the labor movement in the face of that? What's missing here?
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I can say one movie on the Waterfront and you're of a certain generation, we're around the same age. There's no doubt that to some degree the labor movement was an enemy of itself historically. You can't ignore what happened with the Teamsters, the corruption that was inherent and in some places in the country still is an issue. And so while the concept of labor movement and labor unions is strong, it's been the actual execution of it that's been wanting. And so I think we do see, however, a new generation stepping forward. I was very impressed. For instance, if you look at the Communication Workers of America, had a very tough strike with Verizon recently and emerged successful in that, which is unusual because they were fighting a global campaign. What do I mean? Well, it turned out that there were workers who were doing back office work, I believe it was in the Philippines that was being shifted from union work because they were on strike. And those workers in the Philippines had a conviction, a sense of solidarity. They refused to do the work. And CWA was in the Philippines ready to take advantage of this. And so there was solidarity. And so they had tens of thousands of people around the United States who weren't involved in the CWA who got involved in supporting that strike. So that's the moment we're at now, is that we need people like what happened with Pittsburgh in 1989 and 1990, a broader community of people who see the interest of labor even though they're not members and put something at risk and get involved.
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All right, I want to ask you a question, but before I do, I want to read a statement that was made by Pat Lynch. He is, I believe, the president of the New York City's Police Benevolent association, which is the union effectively of the the police force here in New York City. Let me read it to you because he spoke at a rally in support of the 1800 workers that are on strike. Here's what Pat lynch had to Management practices, their techniques on every worker. They try to say to these workers in the cable industry, give back your pension and give back your health care to get a raise. Today he said. And continuing, Mr. Lynch said we should be able to feed our family today and tomorrow after we move to retirement. The city does the same thing to us. So we have to stand together as unions to stop it here because they will use it at my doorstep tomorrow. And then he went on to say something even more impressive. So bear with me as I read it to you. You will look here at this strike line. You'll see our members in uniform are on one side of the barrier and the workers on the other. But our hearts are with the workers. We have a job to do, but we know their fight is our fight. So we will fight right along with you. Let me interject. These are the police talking. What you will see. I'm quoting now again from Mr. Lynch. What you will see is the brothers and sisters in uniform high fiving the strikers as they march across the bridge. Regardless of whether we wear a uniform or hard hat or an eight point cap, it is all the same fight and we are here to join it. In my long history, the police departments in America and their unions have not been generally this solidaristic. This forthcoming is something happening that we need to understand going beyond this particular strike and touching something about solidarity.
- [46:11]
C
Well, you've been describing and chronicling for a long time now the unprecedented accumulation of wealth at the top. This has been something that's been going on for years and is accelerating even now, even under President Obama. And something happened. The right got too greedy in the sense that Scott Walker went into Wisconsin and tried to play the police and Fire unions off of the other public employees. And they also tried to play private unions off of public employees by saying, you private union member, you're a taxpayer. These people are clearly parasites who are working for the unions. You don't have sick days like they do. And so we've been through this long twilight struggle where after the recession there wasn't a recovery. These officers are looking around, their kids have gone to four year colleges that they struggled and worked overtime to get the tuition. The kids aren't working. They haven't found the jobs. They're going to pay for that. So you have this sense that there's something profoundly wrong about what's happening with really the hijacking of the American dream. And so I think they understand that the only strength that's left is through coalition, particularly when it comes to something as basic as your basic union rights. And so in the same piece, you'll see the Uniformed Firefighters association actually writing a letter to Mr. Rutledge from Charter Spectrum saying, if you don't settle with dignity with these workers, we're going to tell our 8,000 members to look somewhere else for cable and Internet services. So this really is an opportunity to go national. I think what we're seeing is this is a referendum, because if Charter Spectrum can do this in New York City, a union town, they can do it anywhere. And so the pushback starts here. Why not talk about organizing the 90,000 charter spectrum workers that aren't without representation?
- [48:07]
A
How do you think it plays in the broader American community as folks find out that these people are being asked to give back while the head of the company that's asking made $100 million for a single individual in a year? You know, I want to take a step back, almost scratch my head and say, how's this possible? Why does this not explode into the resentment and bitterness that it has every right to excite in people?
- [48:46]
C
I will say that, you know, I've been at this for a while. And so the protest that had in Brooklyn, it was so large, had thousands of people in Brooklyn, then across the east river in Foley Square, thousands more. So it really was all of lower Manhattan picked up with this energy. And I think the problem here is America's ambivalence about great wealth. And this is something that we've seen where, case in point, the New York Times will spend so much space talking about and chronicling the ravages of the inequity of this economy and the acceleration of the accumulation of wealth at the top and spend all the time Catering to those tastes in the real estate section and in the travel section. Similarly, individuals in America have always been. Their imagination's been captured by the thought that I could be that person to make the hundred million dollars. And so there's this idea that individual initiative matters. And if you are sitting in your garage and create some widget that is going to transform society, well, then you should be able to benefit from the wealth generated by that. But on the other side of that now is a few generations where people have not been doing better. And I think that that's what's finally starting to move the politics. And I think we see it all over the country in terms of this move for 15 that has really caught people's imagination.
- [50:07]
A
If you were the head of a union and you've been close to unions all your life, including in the businesses where you work, and now the realities you cover, what would you urge the labor movement to do? What is a way forward that can at least arrest the decline and maybe pick up on what you just said as a changing mood? What should the unions do? You know, they can't control the enemies they have.
- [50:37]
C
Right.
- [50:37]
A
What they can control is their own strategy. Right. What should they change?
- [50:41]
C
Well, one of the things is that when I say succession planning, that is really something that you have to think about often when you look at the building trades, for instance, we're starting to see in New York City, after years of effort, where women are getting some kind of traction in it, it's important to raise young people up into leadership and do it now, not wait. And that's the problem is that, you know, white guys, no offense, no offense, but we really hold on to power. And so. And you're starting to see some signs of this with SEIU Service Employees International Union, where you're seeing the union begin to reflect the rank and file. And then also we really start. We need to make sure that we're doing labor education. One of the problems is that most American schools, public education, is missing this piece about the labor movement. A lot of young people are getting that first job and enjoying eight hours and time and a half and even the structure of a 40 hour workweek. And they think that's because, well, that's just the way it's been. They don't understand that people died literally to get those benefits. So we have to work on two fronts internally to make the union more responsive and relate to people's daily life, not just when it's contract time, but really to pull these organizations together. And I'll tell you, when you're around a union that has that energy, it works, change in people's lives beyond the job. And it's aspirational. I mean, DC 37, the biggest municipal union, second biggest here in the city, has an opportunity where you can decide where do I want to be in five years in terms of education and to reinvest. Instead of big salaries for the leadership, reinvest in the education of your members so that they're developing a skill set so they can be competitive and feel like they have a long term plan. So you have to move internally and then externally to the broader community by being present with each other in solidarity in a way we haven't been in the past.
- [52:38]
A
You know, you're reminding me of the need to teach the history. I feel as though I shouldn't repeat it all the time, but it is so desperately needed. I know that when I go around the country and I'd like your reaction and I explain to people that it was the leadership of the CIO in the depths of the Depression when the government had no money because everybody was unemployed. It was, et cetera, that because the union mobilized millions of people, it got Social Security for Americans, which they never had before, unemployment compensation, which they never had before, a minimum wage, which they never had before, and public jobs for millions of people. It's unbelievable what the union movement could get when it was mobilized and strong. If you taught that, it might dawn on a good number of leaders in rank and file that this is their task, to mobilize again so they can make those changes. And to go to a population which you just said is more ready than it has been in a long time because it has been suffering generations of decline, more ready than it has been since the Great Depression. To hear that message. Do you agree with this?
- [53:52]
C
Yeah, I think one of the things that's happened here is, is that the labor movement in terms of electoral politics got its clock cleaned. And so this is almost like a physics exercise, you know, in terms of things moving back and forth. The pendulum went so far in one direction and it's going to start coming back in the other direction. I already see signs of that with the fact that you saw this massive outpouring in Manhattan where public unions, the pba, all the, basically every union in the city found common ground in time to come out and support Local 3. And so this is critical because one of the things we know that's in the midterm and is happening right now is the very problem we're having with Employment in general, with the scarcity of jobs and what's coming down the line in terms of automation, this is the big struggle. And the notion that people have an inherent right to health care and employment opportunities that are fulfilling and meaningful will become the central critical social question. And that's the place that unions need to step up big and champion unemployed young people and say we're wasting a generation. They have to be the friends of young people who are dispossessed at this point. As you know, there's a growing army of them.
- [55:06]
A
Yes. And if this future wave of technology, the one that makes driverless cars the norm and wipes out the job of truck driver, because we'll have driverless trucks and all the rest of it. If you can get the population to understand that, like with every other technical change, it's an open question whether it is used to make profits for a few or to give leisure freedom from work to the many, that was always the choice. But if the unions aren't strong, if the working class doesn't or eye that debt and demand its interpretation of what ought to be done, it'll get more of the rich becoming even richer and the rest of them facing a jobless future. It's a. It' sit really is. Fisher cut bait time.
- [55:55]
C
Yeah, 21st century feudalism. We're here.
- [55:59]
A
So what do you think is going to happen?
- [56:00]
C
Well, I think that one of the things is the unions are starting to get social media and that's a key thing. The CWA success at having a global reach and getting tens of thousands of young people that were aligned with Bernie Sanders, for instance, like they went out to support their local Verizon worker, those are the kind of creative coalitions that are getting traction. I will say also that the repeated drill that we've had around trying to hold onto the Affordable Healthcare act, which has many problems, there's no doubt singer payers that have happened yesterday. But they have gotten to a point where every time the Republicans do this, it's like they're drilling people. And so I see even in my own community the ability for that cohesion to spring up even quicker like the equivalent of a progressive minuteman. I mean, that's what you're seeing like, oh, here we go again.
- [56:51]
A
Bob Henney, thanks, investigative reporter. That's what investigative reporting should be and what sometimes we try try to do as well. Thank you, Bob. And thank all of you. Let me close as I often do, inviting you to be a partner of economic update. Make use of everything we do. Join with Truthout.org, that independent source of news and analysis that has been our partner for so long, share with us the project of bringing these insights and this information to the widest possible audience. I look forward to speaking with you again next week.
- [57:50]
B
Sam. Sa.