Peter Dreier of Occidental College explains how the Occupy Wall Street movement started a momentum that changed Seattle:
Friends,
An idea that only a year ago appeared both radical and impractical has become a reality. On Monday, Seattle struck a blow against rising inequality when its City Council unanimously adopted a city wide minimum wage of $15 an hour — the highest in the nation.
In my new article in The American Prospect, “How Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Victory Began in New York City’s Zuccotti Park,” I explain that this dramatic change in public policy is partly the result of changes brought about by last November’s Seattle municipal elections. But it is also the consequence of changing social conditions beyond Seattle, shifts in public opinion about business, government, and the poor, and years of effective grassroots activism around the country.
We can trace Seattle’s remarkable victory to the wave of local “living wage” campaigns in the 1990s, growing public outrage about corporate abuse and widening inequality, the explosion of anger that became Occupy Wall Street, and the rising protest movement of low-wage workers in the past two years.
Seattle’s union and community organizers, and their allies in government, did not wait for the time to be “ripe.” They helped ripen the time — seizing new opportunities and building on past successes.
Now that Seattle has established a new standard, the pace of change is likely to accelerate quickly as activists and politicians elsewhere seek to capture the new mood. Many other cities and states are now looking to follow in Seattle’s footsteps. The momentum for raising the minimum wage will not only improve living conditions for millions of Americans. It will also spark a new wave of organizing, by revealing how the combination of inside politics and outside protest can bring about progressive change.
Five years from now, Americans may look back at this remarkable victory in Seattle and wonder what all the fuss was about.
Feel free to circulate and repost.
Peter
——————————————————————
Peter Dreier
Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics
Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Department
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA 90041
Phone: (323) 259-2913
FAX: (323) 259-2734
Website: http://employees.oxy.edu/dreier
New book: The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books) — published July 2012
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality” – Dante
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am reminded here of the oft-repeated definition of insanity… “Living wage” laws will perhaps help a few, but they will hurt many more. Companies will do anything they can to avoid hiring new workers, and existing workers will be required to do more work for the same pay. As prices go up (and they must in order to cover higher labor costs), consumption will decrease as more people choose to eat out less, buy less stuff, etc. This will decrease economic activity and lead to fewer jobs. In the fast-food industry, this will only speed up the process of converting stores to fully-automated shops where two employees are on hand to make sure the robots making your double-cheeseburger are well-lubed.
Efforts to rig the system always backfire. The proponents of such “reforms” obviously never took Econ 101.
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All of that has been debunked many times, sorry. Employers hire the workers they need regardless of wages. Yes, prices might go up a bit, but not very much. I think the studies have found, for example, that a Big Mac might cost about 20 cents more.
Apparently you need to take Econ 102.
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The Big Mac claim had to be withdrawn because it was garbage. Money does not magically appear from nowhere — costs must be covered.
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It’s not like my reading on this subject has been exhaustive, but I have never seen any economist claim that minimum wage increases do not lead to the loss of some jobs in an economy of any significant scale. I’ve read arguments that such job losses would not lead to a *net* loss of jobs, because they would be more than offset by job gains created from increases in spending by the workers who benefit from the higher wage. Is that actually how it would always play out in the real world? I have no idea, and I can’t imagine how anyone else does, either, given all the variables (including the size of the wage increase and the makeup of the local economy).
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I suspect that you will see employers substituting capital for labor. Waitstaff at restaurants will be replaced by ipads, checkout staff replaced by self scanning by customers, etc.
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TE – maybe, but I suspect consumers are fed-up with machine “service”, which essentially amounts to self-service. I know at the grocery stores I go to there are usually lines for the human operated cashier lanes while the self-service stations are standing empty. But then, maybe after we’ve raised a generation completely plugged into technology from birth onward, perhaps the preference for human contact will disappear.
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That is not the way my grocery store looks. The selfservice section is pretty busy, and of course the skilled checkout clerks of my youth have been replaced by high school students who simply have to scan barcodes rather than know prices and enter them quickly in an adding machine.
My guess is that Seattle will see the first widespread use of this technology or something like it: http://www.today.com/id/5462556/ns/today-today_food/t/we-check-out-latest-supermarket-smart-cart/#.U5h0Zo1dVuA
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Actually, in fact, there will be an *increase* in economic activity because lower income people will have more money to spend, which will create demand which is what drives the economy, contrary to the ridiculous notion that the rich “job creators” drive the economy.
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Ah yes, the “broken windows” fallacy in different clothing.
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??? I’d ask you to try making sense, but I know that’s difficult when you’re arguing a losing position.
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Maybe you should look up the broken windows fallacy — one of the more famous economic illustrations — before attacking someone for not making sense.
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Where your argument loses all sense is the ridiculous idea that spending money on labor precludes spending money on other things. Businesses, especially large corporations, are sitting on piles of money that are not being spent. It’s absurd to think that paying a living wage would preclude buying, say, deep fryers.
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There might be an increase in economic activity, but will it go to labor intensive industries or capital intensive industries? I suspect that it will tend to be spent on goods with relatively low labor costs because those goods will be less expensive than goods with high labor costs.
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Funny, they’ve been saying that since WA State upped the minimum wage several years ago (we’re now up to $9.32/hr). Many stories of gloom and doom, impact on small businesses, etc. Wonder why our economy and unemployment rates are better than the majority of the country…..
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Weill since it’s all goodness, why not raise the minimum wage to $100/hour? Hell, $200/hour even. I mean, pretty soon we’ll all be rich. There’s no end to the wonders such laws could produce!
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That’s all you could come up with?
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Yeah, it’s called “logic.”
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That’s your version of logic?
Economy is based on theory and can’t possibly account for all factors. Reality is where economic theory comes into play and often gets proved wrong, as in the theory that raising minimum wage is bad for business. Economists often underestimate the costs of rapid turnover when employees are poorly paid and always looking for a new job. Employers who don’t have to worry about constantly replacing workers can focus on better training, resulting in better productivity. Look at the studies on the WA/ID border. We have a $9+ minimum wage, while ID has a $7 minimum wage, but businesses aren’t all jumping to the ID side, nor are they ailing.
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I think Jack’s question is an excellent question, because (I think) it shows that the people arguing on this comment thread agree on a fundamental point: that there is some threshold beyond which a minimum wage increase would lead to net job losses. If you think his question is ridiculous, that’s likely because you think that a minimum wage of $100 is ridiculous. And if you think a minimum wage of $100 is ridiculous, that’s likely because you think it’s so far beyond the actual “net job loss” threshold that it’s a waste of time to discuss it. This may all seem obvious, but sometimes establishing what we agree on helps clarify what we disagree about.
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K Quinn,
Perhaps it would be better to explain why increasing the minimum wage to $100 an hour would be a bad thing, if you think it would be a bad thing.
If Dienne is right and the general equilibrium impact of an increase in the minimum wage will end up increasing the demand for labor sufficiently to make up for the decrease in quantity demanded due to the wage increase, poster J. Talbot’s suggestion would be reasonable. If you want to argue that there is a wage increase where the increased demand for labor will not make up for the decreased quantity demanded, you might want to state a number and explain why that is the highest minimum wage that is consistant with expansion (or at least minimal contraction) of the number of jobs.
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K Quinn — Washington currently enjoys the financial benefits of the high-tech industry in Seattle. Wealthy states can afford to be stupid, to a degree and for a while, and “get away with it”… again, for a while. California was wealthy for a long time and got away with all kinds of high taxation and regulation without much apparent ill effect, but it’s biting them in the butt now, big time.
The negative impacts of Washington’s higher minimum wage have been blunted somewhat not only by the state’s wealth (the impact would be much greater in poorer states), but by the fact that most retailers already pay more than the minimum wage due to market forces. One place it has been felt, though, is in youth unemployment, which is 33% higher in Washington than the national average.
But once you bump the minimum up to $15/hour, now you are exceeding what most retailers currently pay, and you start impacting more businesses. In the end, reality will assert itself.
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Oh look – we even ave an article… http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/14/smallbusiness/minimum-wage-washington-jobs/
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Jack, I hope you’re not a free market fundamentalist –one who holds the simplistic faith that the unfettered free market always yields the best outcome. Like Christian, Muslim and Jewish fundamentalists, a free market fundamentalist cannot tolerate ambiguity or complexity, and faith becomes unshakable, impervious to contrary evidence or arguments. Fundamentalism is a comforting position to hold, but it’s fundamentally irresponsible and dishonest.
Have you heard of Ricardo’s Iron Law of Wages –given a large enough supply of unemployed labor, wages will sink to the subsistence level (or below). Think Walmart. Raising the minimum wage may cost some jobs, but why should we as a society allow our fellow citizens to flounder at the subsistence level? Raise the minimum wage and raise taxes on the richest to fund unemployment benefits for the ones cast out of the market. Surely there’s a few pennies in the Walton Family bank account that the government could tax for this purpose. What’s so evil about that?
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Fundamentalism has nothing to do with it. It’s a matter of what works and what doesn’t. Many of the “reforms” put in place in Venezuela and Argentina “make sense” to those on the economic left, as well, and look where those economies are headed.
What you are advocating is a situation where we would accept a permanent (and growing) unemployed class of people who would live on transfer payments. We already have this to a certain extent, but why encourage more of it? Long term, this is unsustainable, and to borrow your analogy, it requires a certain type of ideological fundamentalism to believe otherwise. As Thatcher once said, eventually you run out of other people’s money.
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Jack, your premise is that unemployment is caused by low motivation to work. Unemployment is caused by lack of jobs. Should the economy start to grow robustly and many $25,000/ year jobs open up, do you really think many folks on a $15,000/yr. dole will prefer that to a job?
Interesting piece in a recent New Republic about Thatcher. She wanted to restore 50’s era middle class values and lifestyle to Britain, but her pro-market, anti-regulation reforms ended up eviscerating the middle class. She, like many Republicans, was blind to the fact that the halcyon days of the middle class were the fruit of pro-union policies, monopoly busting, and other activist government policies.
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No, that is not my premise, and I’m not sure where you got that from. Unemployment is the product of many factors, although lack of jobs and low motivation are high on the list.
That said, I find your question very interesting. A person taking a $25k/year job will have payroll taxes and other expenses (travel to and from work, clothing for work) to deal with. If those costs lower the net pay to, say, $20k/year then a reasonable person might very well determine that $15k with lots of free time looks better than $20k that comes with the hassle of having a job.
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Living wage laws will perhaps help a few, but will hurt many more… buzz, whirr, click… Will decrease economic activity… buzz, whirr, click… Fewer jobs… buzz, whir, click…
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Hey Jack, I agree with you that automation WILL replace as many workers as possible, as quickly as possible, but you’re naive to think that if we kept the wages for this jobs at poverty levels, that doing so would someone keep your little poverty wage job safe and protected by the Big Bad Wolf of Technology.
The move to automation is inevitable. If companies become convinced that they will witness a net gain—even a small one—in cost reduction, and ultimately, profit, they’re going to do it, no matter if their workers cost 10 cents an hour. Okay?
So does this mean that our workforce should sit passively and demand NOTHING in the interim? Even at $15 per hour, these fast food workers and the like will only make $30K annually, in 2014, when a decent one bedroom apartment in Seattle will cost a minimum of $1100 per month.
Who can live on $30K a year? Are you able to? If so, please tell us who or what is supplementing your living costs—trust fund, family, small town location, living in mom’s basement, etc? What is it?
Some Thoughts To Leave You With:
1) The $15 a hour wage is mostly hype, anyway: It won’t go into full effect for seven years. By that point, assuming no runaway inflation, it will then be worth about $11.00 or so in today’s wages.
2) There are the substantive reasons—the monetary reasons—for this movement. It WILL help people AND stimulate the economy in many areas. It helps almost everyone and those it hurts can absorb those hurts the most easily.
3) But there are also the symbolic reasons—teaching the public about the struggles of so many of their fellow citizens. Teaching the low wage workers that they ARE human beings and that they deserve the respect and the dignity that all human beings are entitled to, and that no money or no power is EVER surrendered without a fight. And that good things CAN happen when people band together to help each other and MAKE them happen.
And for that reason alone, this campaign was worth it.
4) ALL jobs are soon going to be threatened by automation. Are you one of those 20th century mentalities who actually believe the nonsense that only “those uneducated ditch digger types” need fear automation?
If so…you’ve got another thing coming. Soon, virtually all of the STEM jobs that supposedly EVERY child can qualify for—if they did then those jobs would ALSO pay minimum wage—will soon fall to automation as well. Already we have software that is designed to program software. Think for a minute about the implications of THAT! Software that can program software will only become increasingly sophisticated…it won’t need a (GASP) pension; won’t need vacation pay; won’t need time off for family; won’t need “more pay”; won’t need health care; won’t lose time due to distractions, emotional upsets, drug or alcohol use, or even sleeping or eating. It will work 24/7 with no “whining” about inhumane conditions, or anything else. And, undoubtedly it will be more efficient and effective than your very best genius of today.
Recently, a computer scientist was asked about this trend and if the computers of the future, will soon be smarter and more capable than the Summa Cum Laude graduates of MIT and Stanford. His response was, “Well, do you think you’re smarter than your dog?” He went on to say that a mere 5 years after that, the question will then become “Are you smarter than your average mosquito?”
So…what makes you think that accountants, pharmacists, dentists, lawyers and airline pilots aren’t far behind. Think hard about the work each of these highly educated people do and honestly tell me if you think that technology “couldn’t ever replace them”!
We’re soon going to be facing a much bigger question, much sooner than most of us realize: What happens when we need virtually no workers in the future, in almost any field, and the ownerships of the economy is as concentrated—or even more concentrated—than it is today? What THEN for the 99%; will we just toss out the old cliche about “they need to just work harder” or will we revert to the even older “Let them eat cake!”
When education—of any sort, in any field—loses virtually all connection to an increasingly smaller job market where “No humans need apply” what will people like you then tell the rest of us to do, in order to improve our lives?
And what makes YOU think you’re somehow going to be able to escape from it?
FYI…I was an economics major at one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the country. You appear to have taken “Microeconomics 101” only. Next time, if you have the discipline to handle the rigor, consider taking “Macroeconomics 101” as well.
If you do so, you just might learn something of additional value.
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PSP,
You might think a little bit about the elasticity of substitution and how it differs from industry to industry. Higher wages will cause firms to substitute between capital and labor.
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Actually, I did take macro, as well, even though my engineering degree didn’t require it.
As for the concerns you lay out, they are, indeed, valid. We’re headed toward a Hunger Games world. But what does raising the minimum wage now matter in the face of that?
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What is dollar value of public assistance at minimum wage which pays for food, health, and housing, that the paycheck doesn’t? To me it seems like work pays to paltry relative to expenses. This decreases the value of work and incentive to work more.
I think half of public assistance should be shifted to matching work funds.
Accrue government funds for food, housing, and health through work at an additional $10 to $15/hour, on top of employer pay. I think that would produce a more rational and robust economy.
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The earned income tax credit functions much like this, though because it is after taxes, this has no impact on the measure poverty rate in the country. It does, however, reduce actual poverty.
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Thanks, good point. I’m all for less public assistance and more earned income credit for housing, food, health, college? Less than half of teens work during the summer? That tells me to end all college aid in the form of grants, and provide only ‘earned income credit’ matching money for an hour worked.
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Yes, I have read about these call centers across the world taking fast food orders. Horrific.
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Why horrific? It frees up people to do other things than sit in a little box waiting for a car to pull up. Sitting in that box waiting is a waste of human time and talent.
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Well, we certainly have had a lot of people “freed up” in this country.
We are just brimming with newly “freed up” people. Why, it’s a new birth of freedom!
What utter tripe.
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Robert,
This is the story of prosperity: producing more with fewer resources. The goal is not to use as many resources as possible to do a thing, it is to use as few as possible. We could outlaw all the technology that has increased individual productivity, but we would be worse off.
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Ah, now I understand. And BTW, TE, could you explain to me how one ties shoelaces?
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A big study was done of the effects of a minimum wage increase on jobs in the fast food industry in New Jersey. The result? No decrease in the number of jobs. Jack repeats the hackneyed notion that if people took Econ 101, they would realize that minimum wage increases decrease the number of jobs. But that’s just the problem: the sorts of simplistic models that are taught in Econ 101 turn out not to work out so well in the real world. Low-wage workers typically spend everything earn right away, thus increasing local demand. Jack’s comment about raising the minimum wage to $100 an hour is also wrong-headed. It’s probably the case that there is some threshold over which a minimum wage increase would negatively affect jobs, but it’s also doubtless the case that the point at which that would happen is higher than current minimum wages and lower than that $100 an hour. LOL.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” –Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism”
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Robert,
The Card study is certainly interesting. No doubt there is a wage that will reduce hiring so significantly that even advocates of a minimum wage would object. Somewhere between the current minimum wage and $100 an hour is probably right. Do you think it is $15 an hour? If not, why not?
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When I was 16, I managed a fast-food restaurant (It happened to be the largest root-beer restaurant in the country). A little secret: Whatever the prevailing wage, I had to have a certain number of waiters, cooks, car hops (yes, we had car hops), dishwashers, on duty at all times. So, faced with having to increase cooks’ wages from, say, $10 to $!5, we would have had to maintain the same staffing levels and would probably have passed the increased costs of doing our business onto our customers as slight across-the-board increases in our prices. So, the yuppie would have to pay an addition $0.20 for his root-beer float so that the children of the cook or dishwasher would be able to eat at all.
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Do you think that restaurant has as many employees now as they had then? Why no car hops anymore?
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Actually, we have a thriving chain of fast-food restaurants with car hops here in Florida.
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What about the place you used to manage?
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That’s what I said, TE. I visited this place about three years ago. Looked pretty much the same. I was surprised by this, but there it was.
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The same size staff? Same skill levels of the employees?
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Same old, TE. This is not rocket science. Cooks make hamburgers and hotdogs. Waiters and car hops bring those to the customers. I would have hoped there would by now have been a veggie burger on the menu. Alas, no.
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Waiters will no longer be taking orders, you will do that on an Ipad at your table. Any thoughts about how long it will be before a robot delivers the food? Whatever time frame you think it might be, it will be faster if you make labor more expensive. Firms that can substitute capital for labor will do it. Firms that cant substitute labor for capital will try to figure out how they can.
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We have had the capability of doing that automation of delivery of food to stations forever, TE. Hell, we had food automats back in the freaking 1950s.
NO ONE LIKED THEM.
But keep it up. Keep leaning on workers. Do away with all their productions. Reduce them to desperation. Then see what happens.
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No one liked pumping their own gas until they saw the price difference between the pump your own stations and the full service stations.
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US businesses have leaned heavily, in the past few decades, on workers. Vast increases in productivity from automation (e.g., “customer self-service portals”) and outsourcing.
And now they wonder why we are in a long-term slump in growth in consumer spending. Idiots. The short-term interests of all these individual businesses–improving profitability this quarter–turn out to be very bad for those businesses collectively over the long term.
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And higher wages accelerate the process.
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Higher minimum wages do not.
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Higher minimum wages do accelerate the trend. It is the low wage worker that is typically doing the kind of work that is most easily done by the customer (pumping gas, scanning barcodes, packing grocery bags) or machinery (digging holes, taking inventory, writing down orders). They will be the first replaced.
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That is the issue.
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I like very much your idea, TE, of expanding the earned income tax credit. I also think that we need tax the highest incomes more to create substistance-level public infrastructure jobs as employers of last resort for the chronically unemployed and underemployed. It seems to me that no one who wants to work should go without when there is so much to be done that is not being done–roads in need of repair, for example.
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I wonder how many former workers we can put in for-profit prisons? Our very own Bastllles!
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I happened to visit this place a few years ago, and indeed, it looked pretty much the same.
But keep it up, TE. Keep poking at and undermining arguments for a living wage. Join the great chorus there from Republicans and Neoliberal Dimocrats in the United States. Let’s let wealth and income inequality continue to soar in the United States. And then, one fine day the neo-Feudal society thus created will be rocked to its foundations. Our country is increasingly lookng like France before the Revolution, and our leaders are clueless about this because they live out their lives in isolated enclaves and echo chambers.
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Robert,
I am just suggesting that if you want more people to be hired you should not make it more difficult for firms to hire them. A much better idea would be expansion of the EITC. Let folks get the job they can get and have tax revenues top it off to whatever level you want. I might even end up not pumping my own gas if that happened.
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So, having managed a fast-food restaurant, I could have told those folks what the outcome of their study in New Jersey would be. Most of these low-wage employers are already running at their minimum staffing levels. Decreasing that staffing would affect their business MUCH MORE STRONGLY than would spreading the increased cost of their labor over the prices of their products. And typically, the small increases in price are absorbed without a great decrease in demand. AND, one thing that is almost NEVER discussed here is the ENORMOUS cost of not paying people a living wage–the cost in crime, prisons, etc. In the U.S. today, 2.9 % of the adult population is in jail, in prison, or on parole!!!!! It’s the highest rate in the world, and that’s very, very expensive, and what’s the root? Well, poverty, of course.
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Interesting story, Bob, but I find it amusing how often these devolve into a class warfare thing. All of your customers were yuppies? Really? So no hard-working families came in to enjoy a rare meal out at one of the few restaurants they could afford?
You say that you had to have a “certain number of people” no matter what. But is that really true? If you had to raise your prices (and if your labor costs go up by 50%, it will be more than just “a few cents”), that means a family of four would pay a few bucks extra for their root beers and burgers. For some families, that price increase would be enough for them to reduce their weekly patronage of your restaurant to only a couple of times a month. Or maybe they stop coming at all and grill at home.
If you have fewer customers, do you really still need the same number of employees? I think the question answers itself.
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Oh, and do you think that when you press the button you are talking to someone actually inside the fast food restaurant you are ordering from? Nope.
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I think I heard that the current minimum wage has the buying power of a 1970s dollar. Given that labor costs have not risen in 40 years, shouldn’t there be some room for an increase? Was not that increase calculated to be at somewhere around $15.00? I do wonder, though, how people will feel about raising the minimum wage public worker that high especially if people are considering that as a minimum no matter what the local circumstances. I worry about local businesses that have managed to compete against big boxes up until now. The maximum starting wage may not be the same depending on the type of business. I really am hoping for a resurgence of small businesses; big business seems to have no interest in sustaining local economies, and their power has allowed them to push an agenda that is not necessarily to the benefit of anybody but their stock holders. It’s seems like they are trying to see how far they can push policy without collapsing the consumer economy. I am totally unqualified to support and or debate these speculations, so feel free to point out the naivete of my thoughts.
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The real value of the minimum wage peaked in 1968 at about $10.69 an hour (of course the exact number depends on how you account for changes in the price level. The $10.69 an hour is converted using the CPI-W to November 2013 prices. It is very reasonable to use CPI-W instead of the more widely quoted CPI-U measure for this kind of calculation.)
Real hourly earnings for production, non-supervisory, non-farm employees in the private sector peaked in 1979 at $20.78, declined to $18.00 in 1996, and increased to $20.31 in November 2013. Again the conversion to current value was done with the CPI-W.
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In layman’s terms , please explain the difference between CPI-U and CPI-W and why it is reasonable to use CPI-W to compare wages over time.
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The CPI measures the cost to a consumer of buying a typical bundle of goods. Obviously what is typical bundle of goods depends on a variety of things, including income level and location. The CPI-U is a bundle of goods purchased by a typical urban consumer. The CPI-W is a bundle of goods purchased by a urban wage and clerical workers. The two indexes give slightly different weights to different goods. The CPI-U is the one most commonly used.
For more about the CPI and how it is computed, you can look here: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpifaq.htm
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You are right to be concerned about the impact on small business. Large corporations can more easily accommodate higher wages using automation and contracting. Small businesses generally do not have that luxury.
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The forces of reaction have reason to be afraid of what just happened in Seattle. It’s a model for the rest of the country. Workers can band together and effect change. We need a rebirth of the union movement in this country, and a whole lot more taking it to the streets.
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I agree we have to revitalize unions. I think it has to begin with internal education amongst the corps of union members. The union needs to re-educate its own members to enable them to see the righteousness of their cause and the threat posed by the plutocrats. Remedial education is hard to do, maybe impossible –there’s a lot to “get ’em while they’re young” –but I think it’s our best hope.
Walmart “educates” its employees about its “righteousness” with mandatory lessons and videos. Unions need to do the same with their members.
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People respond to social sanction and under the strong influence of the availability heuristic. What we need are more public, high-profile demonstrations, strikes, actions of all kinds. When people realize that they can take it to the streets, things will change.
Years ago, when I was a kid, Nixon invaded Cambodia. The students in my school–just a bunch of kids!!!–organized a walkout one day at 10:00 A.M. And at that time, we all did. We got up and walked out of our classes and went to a central courtyard and sat and sang songs and had a great time. And there was nothing that our teachers and administrators could do about this except stand and watch democracy in action. This was a powerful piece of learning that we all did, sitting there, that day.
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Kids walking out of school was powerful? How much do want to bet that even the pro-war kids were more than happy to take the day off from classes?
BTW, it occurs to me that many on here calling for protests in the streets and massive strikes would not find it all so romantic if, say, the public did this to protest ObamaCare or taxes.
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Jack, if current trends continue, there is going to be massive job dislocation, an elimination of the middle class, and enormous social unrest. It’s not going to be pretty. I think that the wealthy in the U.S. live very isolated lives, these days, in their enclaves and echo chambers. They have no notion the extent of the unrest. I do not want to see my country torn apart.
Be careful what you ask for.
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I didn’t ask for anything — you did. I was simply pointing out that all this talk of the glories of “democracy in the streets” assumes that such action is being taken in support of the “correct” ideological goals. You probably wouldn’t like it so much if that kind of “democracy” was employed by causes you don’t support.
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If we could turn back the clock, the Republican U.S. Supreme Court would not have decided that workers on strike, could be permanently replaced, overturning precedent set by the NLRB.
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So unions should be able to permanently hold company’s hostage? Yeah, no thanks. If the workers are so unreasonable that firing them all is preferable to giving them what they are demanding, that’s a pretty powerful indictment of what the unions are demanding. Firing and replacing workers is really expensive and disruptive, so it only happens in extreme cases.
What so many workers don’t seem to understand is that the union leaders don’t really care about them. Witness what happened in Wisconsin where the public sector unions rushed to negotiate new contracts with counties before Gov. Walker’s reforms could go into effect — the workers got shafted, but the unions ensured they would get five more years of dues, so they didn’t care.
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Jack, what makes you assume that I am a supporter of Obamacare? In fact, I am not.
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Bob — Let me guess: You oppose ObamaCare because you support single-payer. Am I right?
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Jack,
A family’s breadwinner, receiving no paycheck while on strike, has a strong inducement to settle. He/she doesn’t have to miss many paychecks before any gain he receives in the contract, is lost, which a striker understands.
In contrast to your assumption, an employer’s demand for something like a 75% part-time workforce to replace full-time workers may be rejected by a union. Then, the workers are replaced because Republicans interpreted a law, written to protect labor, as allowing it.
It’s not good for American families nor the strength of the nation.
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Yep, that’ll show ’em.
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I guess that looks pretty darned silly from your lofty perch, huh, Jack?
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Hmmm… yeah, I’m not so lofty. Dollars to doughnuts your net worth is greater than mine. But yeah, hippy stuff is pretty silly.
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If things continue along current trendlines, Jack, in no time at all people will not be thinking of any of this as silly. Not at all. There is an ominous mood growing.
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Jack, I have noticed something interesting over the past few years. It’s anecdotal, but I trust my radar on this. I know a lot of blue collar, patriotic folk–tear in the eye as the flag goes by types–and what I have noticed is a dramatic shift in their attitudes. Anger. Frustration. Belief that the fix is in. Hatred of their government. And all of this is related to the economic downturn and to chronic underemployment. Most of these people have lost their homes and thus any equity they had for the future. Not pretty.
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I agree with you, Bob, because I have seen the same thing. I never said concern was silly — I was merely commenting on the hippy-ness of the particular protest video you posted.
Yes, there is a lot of anger. Some at corporations. Some at government. Some at institutions in general. For conservatives who think corporations are awesome, this should give them pause. But the same is true for progressives who love big government.
We are in uncharted waters here, and none of us can really say we know where this is headed.
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Republicans won’t let the workers experiment with higher wages, because they’re afraid jobs won’t be lost. Their desperation shows in the disingenuous argument, “We’re concerned about employment for lowly paid workers.”
Name one policy, aimed at benefitting workers, that conservatives enacted.
Name one court decision, that conservative judges rendered, to benefit workers.
Not raising the minimum wage is an experiment that has been tried for years. Workers want to take the risk of higher wages. Let them try. And, Republicans, stop whining.
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Well, we HAVE “experimented with higher wages.” The place where this mainly happened is these days called the Rust Belt. Most of the companies that so experimented are now out of business, due at least in part to the fact that their labor costs made them uncompetative.
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Jack,
The rust belt will get great-paying jobs back, when their students score well on the Common Core tests!
Republicans didn’t so much as whisper when American jobs were outsourced to make businesses competitive, as you observed
So why are they, now, shouting about the loss of coal jobs? The question is rhetorical and republicans are disingenuous.
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