Social Security: The attacks keep coming but the system remains strong

President Biden is winning praise for his State of the Union defense of social security.  But while he correctly called out Republicans for their machinations, it was not so long ago that Democratic Party leaders—for example, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—appeared willing to support plans for weakening the program.  Thus, we need to be vigilant and always prepared to defend the program, especially since, as the economist Paul Krugman commented:

I’ve seen numerous declarations from mainstream media that of course Medicare and Social Security can’t be sustained in their present form. And not just in the opinion pages: There’s been at least some reversion to the early 2010s practice of including anti-social-insurance editorializing in what are supposed to be straight news reports, with highly disputable claims about these programs’ futures presented as simple facts.

Don’t let the critics fool you. Our Social Security system remains sound.  Moreover, there are simple steps we can take to expand its benefits.

U.S. Economic Planning in the Second World War and the Planetary Crisis

The February 2023 issue of Monthly Review includes an article of mine, “U.S. Economic Planning in the Second World War and the Planetary Crisis,” which is a revised version of a past blog post.  

The following is from the article’s introduction:

Not surprisingly, the consensus from those studying the wartime conversion experience is that a rapid and successful transformation requires aggressive state planning and direction of economic activity. This is indeed an important lesson for our movement to learn. But there is another lesson to be learned from that period, one that deserves more attention than it currently receives. It is that in a capitalist economy, capital’s ownership position greatly enhances its ability to mold state structures and their policies in ways favorable to its interests and to the detriment of workers. In other words, the planning process is a contested terrain, and one not usually favorable to working people.

I will show that, during the war years, corporate leaders were able to rebuff Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) planning proposals and successfully marginalize the participation of unions in the mobilization agencies that were formed, ensuring that labor would be forced into a defensive and ever weaker position relative to capital as the war progressed. Thus, if our aim is not simply a transformation to a somewhat less carbon consuming economy, but a complete and just transformation, we must prepare ourselves, and the movement that we hope to build, for an ongoing and complex struggle to overcome capital’s structural advantages. It is my hope that this article, which focuses on the class dynamics shaping the Second World War mobilization process, can help that preparation. The history it describes offers a useful primer on how the other side conducts its class war.

In the US you can be fired for any or no reason—it doesn’t have to be this way

The United States is an employment “at-will” country.  That means, absent a union contract, a boss can fire a worker for almost any, or even no reason, and without advance notice.  Well—with the exception of Montana.  As the state’s employment division explains: “Montana is not an ‘at-will’ state. . . generally, once an employee has completed the established probationary period, the employer needs to have good cause for termination.”  

While Montana is the exception in the United States, the United States is the exception among developed capitalist economies.  In those other countries, most workers can only be dismissed for “just cause,” with just cause statutorily or judicially defined.  For example, German workers employed for more than six months by a company with more than ten workers cannot simply be dismissed.  The company must have a valid business or personal conduct reason.  Moreover, the company is also required to notify the employee in advance, and in writing, of their termination.  Many employees also receive severance pay proportional to their length of employment.

So, how big a deal is employment at-will in the United States? According to the results of a recent survey by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), carried out by YouGov, more than two out of three workers who have been discharged received no reason or an unfair reason for their termination. Almost three out of four received no warning before discharge.

Recession alert: we need a new unemployment insurance system

With the Federal Reserve pushing up interest rates, we appear headed for a new recession.  Sadly, our unemployment insurance system remains broken: too few unemployed receive benefits and the benefits are far too low.  As a result, the next recession, when it comes, will again bring unnecessary suffering to millions of workers and their families.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Federal action during the recent pandemic crisis shows how our unemployment system can be dramatically improved. The problem is that many business and political leaders are content with the system as it is now.  That means it is up to us to start agitating for reform, and the sooner the better.

System change, class war, and the WW2 economic conversion experience

The climate crisis has driven our planet into uncharted territory. We are close to breaching critical environmental thresholds, setting in motion destabilizing changes to our global climate system that could well make the earth unlivable for humans and countless other species.  We must decrease carbon emissions as rapidly as possible and there is no way to do that without significantly changing the operation and aims of our economy.  But not just any change will do.  It must be one that also promotes worker empowerment and solidarity, community well-being and security, and democracy.

Slip slidin’ away—the disappearing practice of overtime pay

Slip slidin’ away—that is what tends to happen to pro-worker reforms in our economic system.  Things are structured so that without constant vigilance and struggle on our part, gains are gradually undone.  A case in point: overtime pay.

It wasn’t that long ago that most workers in the US were eligible for time and half pay for every hour worked beyond a 40-hour work week.  Employers didn’t agree to overtime pay out of the goodness of their hearts.  They did it because worker organizing and activism pressured Congress to pass a labor law requiring, although with some important exceptions, the payment of overtime wages.  Now, a significant number of workers no longer have the right to overtime pay. For example, in 1975 more than 60 percent of salaried workers automatically qualified for time and half pay.  That share fell to a low of 4 percent in 2000 before slowly rising to 15 percent in 2020.

Labor law failings, workplace organizing challenges, and possibilities for union renewal

If you follow the news it must seem like joining a union is a step outside the norms of US law.  Afterall, the media is full of stories about how big companies like Starbucks and Amazon threaten their pro-union workers with dismissal, spy on their employees and deny them the right to meet and share information during legally mandated break and meal times, require their workers to participate in 1-on-1 and group meetings with managers where they are routinely told lies about what unions do and the consequences of unionization, find ways to delay promised union elections, and refuse to negotiate a contract even after workers have successfully voted for unionization. 

Yet, the National Labor Relations Act, which is the foundational statute governing private sector labor law, boldly asserts that workers should be able to freely organize to improve the conditions of their employment.  As the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) states:

The National Labor Relations Act forbids employers from interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of rights relating to organizing, forming, joining or assisting a labor organization for collective bargaining purposes, or from working together to improve terms and conditions of employment, or refraining from any such activity.

So, one might reasonably ask, how do businesses get away with the kind of behavior highlighted above?  One answer is that a series of Supreme Court decisions and NLRB rulings have reinterpreted the country’s labor laws in ways that have given employers a free pass to engage in a variety of anti-worker actions.  Another is that Congress has refused to adequately fund the NLRB, leaving the organization unable to hire sufficient staff to do the needed investigations of worker complaints and oversee elections even during the rare periods when the NLRB has actively sought to protect worker rights.

It’s past time for a $15 federal minimum wage

President Biden’s 2022 State of the Union Address included a call for a $15 federal minimum wage.  According to an Economic Policy Institute study, a phased increase to a $15 federal minimum wage by 2025 would raise the earnings of 32 million workers—21 percent of the workforce, no small thing. 

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25.  The federal minimum wage was established in 1938, as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act.  Congress has voted to raise it 9 times since then, the last time in 2007.  That last vote included a mandated three step increase that brought it to its current level in July 2009. 

It has been 13 years since the last increase in the federal minimum wage, the longest period since its establishment without an increase.  Taking inflation into account, workers paid the federal minimum wage in 2021 earned 21 percent less than what their counterparts earned in 2009, and prices keep rising.  Outrageously, this eroding federal minimum wage continues to set the wage floor in 20 states. Where is the justice in that?

Making the Green New Deal real: lessons from the World War II conversion experience

The Green New Deal has become a rallying cry for activists seeking to build a mass movement capable of addressing our ever worsening, and increasingly interrelated, climate and social crises.  Building such a movement is no simple task, but I believe that our organizing efforts can greatly benefit from a careful study of the rapid transformation of the US economy from civilian to military production during World War II. 

In two recent publications, with links below, I describe and evaluate the planning process responsible for the wartime transformation and offer my thoughts on some of the key lessons to be learned. In what follows I highlight some of the reasons why I believe Green New Deal advocates would benefit from careful study of the wartime experience.

Pandemic economic woes continue, but so do deep structural problems, especially the long-term growth in the share of low wage jobs

Many are understandably alarmed about what the September 4^th termination of several special federal pandemic unemployment insurance programs will mean for millions of workers.  Twenty-five states ended their programs months earlier, with government and business leaders claiming that their termination would spur employment and economic activity.  However, several studies have disproved their claims.

One study, based on the experience of 19 of these states, found that for every 8 workers that lost benefits, only one found a new job.  Consumer spending in those states fell by $2 billion, with every lost $1 of benefits leading to a fall in spending of 52 cents.   It is hard to see how anything good can come from the federal government’s willingness to allow these programs to expire nationwide.