What "Right to Work" legislation gets people.
No on Prop A Moved to Aug 7th
Missouri Jobs With Justice
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Showing posts with label wages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wages. Show all posts
Friday, June 22, 2018
Monday, September 18, 2017
The American Worker Doesn't Know What He Doesn't Have---But Could
Wil Wheaton:
I was at work today for Labour Day and on TV was Good Morning America. The theme was celebrating the American worker and their accomplishments. I’ll tell you how it went down.
Kelly put on her glasses, smile wide, and pulled out a piece of paper which she read from. The paper was from an article (which I have issues with, but I will leave alone for now) by ABC news. Kelly proceeded only to read the opening of it, which reads: ‘Americans work more than anyone in the industrialized world. More than the English, more than the French, way more than the Germans or Norwegians. Even, recently, more than the Japanese. And Americans take less vacation, work longer days, and retire later, too.’
And everyone cheered.
And they kept cheering when Kelly put her paper down and smiled at everyone. (not continuing with the rest of the article which suggests that this may in fact be a problem).
And I just couldn’t BELIEVE that anyone was cheering. America. AMERICA you work more than the French, who are entitled by law to have 5 weeks off a year for vacation and can not work more than 35 hours per week. You work more than Norway, who average 33 hours per week and 44,000 dollars a year. Germany, where AGAIN, we see a shorter work week and better pay! And all of these countries have health care and better pay and free/affordable education!
WHY ARE YOU CHEERING?
I have a different interpretation of this information: the American worker is the most taken advantage of worker in the industrialized world. It’s plain and simple. You work long hours and get horrible pay. You take multiple jobs and work and work and work just to get by. Unions are disappearing, jobs are always looking for part timers and all you are doing is giving up your time for less money, less vacation, less safety and stability and less education than anyone else on the list.
Celebrate Labour day. Celebrate the accomplishments of the common worker, but don’t let these people trick you into thinking you should celebrate the theft of your time and energy, or the fruits of your labour.
They are using you. Stop cheering.
(via wilwheaton)
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Sunday, September 10, 2017
Quote of the Day -- On Labor
Brilliant woman.
“The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all...
The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.”
― Helen Keller, Rebel Lives: Helen Keller
Links:
Monday, September 4, 2017
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Walmart, Stiffing Chinese Workers, Too
From today's New York Times.
It seems Walmart's penchant for paying people low wages while demanding long hours is international.
Walmart employees in China, furious over low pay and exhausting schedules, have organized nationwide strikes and boycotts at some of the retail giant’s 400 stores.
When Walmart opened its first store in China in 1996, workers rushed to snap up jobs that paid more than those at Chinese competitors.
Now, some employees say, a Walmart job does not pay enough to comfortably support a family, with wages hovering around minimum wage, or about $300 a month. While Walmart has led a high-profile campaign in the United States to raise pay, salaries in China have remained largely stagnant, workers said, barely keeping pace with inflation.
Now, some employees say, a Walmart job does not pay enough to comfortably support a family, with wages hovering around minimum wage, or about $300 a month. While Walmart has led a high-profile campaign in the United States to raise pay, salaries in China have remained largely stagnant, workers said, barely keeping pace with inflation.
These folks down in Bentonville must love being able to pay employees $300 per month rather than, say, that amount per week as they would in the states, huh?
It seems union organizing is on the rise in China.
Fantastic.
They are getting what they deserve, Walmart. Just not quickly enough.
Sunday, November 6, 2016
More Signs Pointing to a Hillary Clinton Rout
First, these were revealed and released this week.
US Added 161000 New Jobs In October;
Wages Rise By 10 Cents
Check that out. More hired, more employed and higher wages for us workers.
And check out that price of gasoline, in the middle of Kansas City, from last evening.
Not just $2.00 per gallon, not just under $2.00/gallon but decidedly less than. Fantastic.
Then check this out. I saw this last evening.
It's all the people Trump has insulted and isolated and alienated as well as all the people Hillary has working and voting for her.
And check out that price of gasoline, in the middle of Kansas City, from last evening.
Not just $2.00 per gallon, not just under $2.00/gallon but decidedly less than. Fantastic.
Then check this out. I saw this last evening.
It's all the people Trump has insulted and isolated and alienated as well as all the people Hillary has working and voting for her.
The Biggest GOP Names Backing Hillary
Clinton—So Far
And then there's the fact that Donald Trump as president actually, rather rightly, scares plenty of Republicans and Right Wingers.
And then, keep in mind, the people with money, the people from Wall Street are also against this guy.
I tell you, folks, it's going to be an electoral slaughter.
We can't take anything for granted, of course, and we have to get out there and vote but between this kind of information and facts and the fact that Donald Trump insults so many people, including those who should be in his own base, Republicans, no less. I believe strongly we're going to see a monumental loss for Mr. Trump and his Republican Party. I think it's going to be a very Truman/Dewey election result, if not even more so.
Here's hoping.
Vote, folks! And vote blue!
Links:
Hillary Clinton Is Leading In A Greater Portion Of Polls Than Obama Was In The Last Two Elections
Florida Latinos set records in early vote numbers. They could swing the election.
Clinton Has Solid Lead in Electoral College; Trump's Winning Map Is Unclear
Trump Won't Win, But You Still Need to Vote
Monday, October 3, 2016
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Another Way Raising the Minimum Wage Only Makes Sense
It's been pointed out that raising the minimum wage would, besides helping the worker, also increase demand for goods and services in the nation, thereby helping and improving the economy. That would help companies' incomes, their profits and so, their bottom line.
Underpaying Employees Can Hurt
a Company's Bottom Line
And this is why the minimum wage needs to be raised:
For most workers, real wages have
barely budged for decades
But it has been shown that, because of an increased demand for goods and services, a higher minimum wage actually increases jobs and reduces unemployment.
2014 Job Creation Faster in States that
Raised the Minimum Wage
This Is What Raising the Minimum Wage
Did to Jobs in 11 States
You'd think that would be enough but as they used to say on "Saturday Night Live", but wait, there's more. There's now this, too:
It only makes sense.
Burgeoning research in economics and epidemiology suggests that raising the minimum wage will improve the health of many Americans, especially low-income Americans, and this improvement should help bend the cost curve for medical care.
In a paper published by the University of Chicago Press, David Meltzer and Zhou Chen analyzed the relationship between obesity rates and the minimum wage, using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) from 1984-2006. The BRFSS interviews more than 350,000 adults each year, making it the largest health survey in the world. Meltzer and Chen test whether changes in the inflation-adjusted minimum wage are associated with changes in body mass indexes of adults. They find that gradual erosion in the inflation-adjusted value of minimum wages across states explains about 10 percent of the increase in average body mass since 1970. DaeHwan Kim and I found additional evidence that low wages predict increases in obesity in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The PSID is a nationally representative sample of 5000 American families, who have been followed since 1968 by the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center.Obesity is estimated to cost $190 billion in medical bills each year. A 10 percent decrease in obesity would result in a $19 billion of savings every year.
But it is not just obesity that may be affected by increasing the minimum wage; mental health can be affected, as well. The British government increased the national minimum wage in 1999. To measure its effects on public health, Reeves et al analyzed data on 279 workers in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). Their “experimental group” consists of 63 workers directly affected by the new wage and two “control groups”: 107 workers with incomes 10 percent above the minimum who were not directly affected by the increase, and another group of 109 workers employed in firms that did not comply with the new law. All 279 persons completed short mental health questionnaires as part of the BHPS. The “experimental group” (those who received the mandated minimum wage increases) reported improvements in anxiety and depression, but neither control group experienced improvements.
And there are more, other ways, too, the article shows that the health of individuals are improved. The clear results from that for a nation, possibly for us here in the US could be both improved productivity AND reduced health costs. Each, in their own right, are huge benefits to the nation to our economy and to the lives of the individuals, the Americans that get these benefits.
With all this, it seems clear raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do and for all the right reasons. Even businesses themselves get it.
Religious organizations recognize it, too. This from U.S. Catholic:
So it's time, America. It's long past time. We need to raise the minimum wage. Let's get to it.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
On This Day, 1948, From Our Very Own President Harry Truman
This speech was given October 13, 1948 in St. Paul, Minnesota. It's sad to see we've been fighting the exact same battles for all these 70 years. I recommend reading the entire speech but here is an excerpt:
'Today the forces of liberalism face a crisis. The people of the United States must make a choice between two ways of living--a decision, which will affect us the rest of our lives and our children and our grandchildren after us.
On the other side, there is the Wall Street way of life and politics. Trust the leader! Let big business take care of prices and profits! Measure all things by money! That is the philosophy of the masters of the Republican Party.
Well, I have been studying the Republican Party for over 12 years at close hand in the Capital of the United States. And by this time, I have discovered where the Republicans stand on most of the major issues.
Since they won't tell you themselves, I am going to tell you.
They approve of the American farmer-but they are willing to help him go broke.
They stand four-square for the American home--but not for housing.
They are strong for labor--but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights.
They favor a minimum wage--the smaller the minimum the better.
They indorse educational opportunity for all--but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools.
They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine--for people who can afford them.
They approve of social security benefits-so much so that they took them away from almost a million people.
They believe in international trade--so much so that they crippled our reciprocal trade program, and killed our International Wheat Agreement.
They favor the admission of displaced persons--but only within shameful racial and religious limitations.
They consider electric power a great blessing-but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.
They say TVA is wonderful--but we ought never to try it again.
They condemn "cruelly high prices"--but fight to the death every effort to bring them down.
They think the American standard of living is a fine thing--so long as it doesn't spread to all the people.
And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.
Now, my friends, that is the Wall Street Republican way of life. But there is another way--there is another way--the Democratic way, the way of the Democratic Party.
Of course, the Democratic Party is not perfect. Nobody ever said it was. But the Democratic Party believes in the people. It believes in freedom and progress, and it is fighting for its beliefs right now.
In the Democratic Party, you won't find the kind of unity where everybody thinks what the boss tells him to think, and nothing else.
But you will find an overriding purpose to work for the good of mankind. And you will find a program--a concrete, realistic, and practical program that is worth believing in and fighting for.
Now, I call on all liberals and progressives to stand up and be counted for democracy in this great battle. I call on the old Farmer-Labor Party, the old Wisconsin Progressives, the Non-Partisan Leaguers, and the New Dealers to stand up and be counted in this fight.
This is one fight you must get in, and get in with every ounce of strength you have. After November 2d, it will be too late. It will do no good to change your mind on November 3d. The decision is right here and flow.
Against us we have the best propaganda campaign that money can buy.
But we are bound to win--and we are going to win, because we are right! I am here to tell you that in this fight, the people are with us.
With a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress, you will have the right kind of unity in this country.
We will be unified once more on the great program of social advance, which the Democratic Party pioneered in 1933.
We will be unified in support of farm cooperatives, rural electrification, and soil conservation.
We will be unified behind a housing program.
We will be unified on the question of the rights of labor and collective bargaining.
We will be unified for the expansion of social security, the improvement of our educational system, and the expansion of medical aid.
Moreover, we will be unified in our efforts to preserve our prosperity and to spread its benefits equally to all groups in the Nation.
Now, my friends, with such unity as this, we can secure the blessings of freedom for ourselves and our children.
With such unity as this, we can fulfill our God-given responsibility in leading the world to a lasting peace.'
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Karl Marx --- And the Wall Street Journal?
There is what I think to be a pretty good, if brief and fairly light article in none other than Right Wing-owned, Rupert Murdoch's own Wall Street Journal, describing where America and Americans are today, financially and socially:
Seeing it, I was pretty stunned.
It recognizes that America's middle class is struggling, shrinking, in fact, along with what got us here, where it stands in history and what we should maybe do to correct our financial, national problems. It begins with this sub-line heading:
Over the past few decades, the Western World has increasingly become a society of "have lesses," if not yet of "have nots."
They already had me right there, just with that opening, recognizing that the middle-, lower- and working-classes were being crushed with our economic system in that business-supporting rag. But then they go on to outdo themselves:
If Western countries want to disprove the dire forecasts of Karl Marx, we must think creatively about how to make the middle class more prosperous and secure.
Some of the article:
In the U.S. and Britain, the percentage of citizens owning stocks or houses is well down from the late 1980s. In Britain, the average age for buying a first home is now 31 (and many more people than before depend on “the bank of Mom and Dad” to help them do so). In the mid-’80s, it was 27. My own children, who started work in London in the last two years, earn a little less, in real terms, than I did when I began in 1979, yet house prices are 15 times higher. We have become a society of “have lesses,” if not yet of “have nots.”
The author asks an important question, an extremely important one;
And here is where the under-rated, discounted and even disregarded, if brilliant Karl Marx comes in:
Where might one find a useful analysis of what is happening today in the market democracies of the West? How about this: “The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie.”
Or this: “Modern bourgeois society…is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the power of the nether world which he has called up by his spells.”
Or this: “The productive forces no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property: on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions…[and] they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.”
The celebrated bearded communists had argued that capitalism would reduce all of society to only two classes: the prosperous bourgeoisie, who owned the capital, and the impoverished proletariat, who contributed their labor.
Who, today, is able to say this isn't precisely what's happening and what's been happening here in America? Who can honestly deny this? It's incontrovertible.
Is that not what's been happening in the last at least 30 years? I can't count the number of articles and news segments pointing out how the "people at the top", the "1%", with hedge fund managers as the best example, have been getting many more millions upon millions of dollars and wealth and riches while, again, the middle-, lower- and working classes have seen their costs escalate but wages stagnate---shrink, in fact.
And here is where the article and the Pope's visit, this week, to our shores coincidentally converge:
The relationship between money and morality, on which the middle-class order depends, has been seriously compromised over the past decade.
I'm not advocating Communism here by any means. While I think Karl Marx was correct in his writing, I also know Mr. Marx didn't take into account the human factors, especially the factor of just sheer greed, let alone the love of power. Communism would only work in a perfect world. Would that we were so lucky.
But the fact is, what we have going on in America now and what we've had doing on financially, fiscally and economically is precisely what Karl Marx and Friederich Engels described in their famous-through-the-ages "The Communist Manifesto."
The author of the article ends it very well and correctly:
...Marx did have an insight about the disproportionate power of the ownership of capital. The owner of capital decides where money goes, whereas the people who sell only their labor lack that power. This makes it hard for society to be shaped in their interests. In recent years, that disproportion has reached destructive levels, so if we don’t want to be a Marxist society, we need to put it right.
What we need to do as a nation, through our government is get our government back for the people. We have to end the Supreme Court's Citizen United ruling and end campaign contributions--both--so we can then begin to put back into place the simplest of rules to keep corporations and the already-wealthy, and the greedy and power-hungry among them, from crushing these 3 classes (middle, lower and working) with rules and government that only works for them.
We have to get the government back for the people.
Links: Believe it or not: Karl Marx is making a comeback
Who, today, is able to say this isn't precisely what's happening and what's been happening here in America? Who can honestly deny this? It's incontrovertible.
Is that not what's been happening in the last at least 30 years? I can't count the number of articles and news segments pointing out how the "people at the top", the "1%", with hedge fund managers as the best example, have been getting many more millions upon millions of dollars and wealth and riches while, again, the middle-, lower- and working classes have seen their costs escalate but wages stagnate---shrink, in fact.
And here is where the article and the Pope's visit, this week, to our shores coincidentally converge:
The relationship between money and morality, on which the middle-class order depends, has been seriously compromised over the past decade.
I'm not advocating Communism here by any means. While I think Karl Marx was correct in his writing, I also know Mr. Marx didn't take into account the human factors, especially the factor of just sheer greed, let alone the love of power. Communism would only work in a perfect world. Would that we were so lucky.
But the fact is, what we have going on in America now and what we've had doing on financially, fiscally and economically is precisely what Karl Marx and Friederich Engels described in their famous-through-the-ages "The Communist Manifesto."
The author of the article ends it very well and correctly:
...Marx did have an insight about the disproportionate power of the ownership of capital. The owner of capital decides where money goes, whereas the people who sell only their labor lack that power. This makes it hard for society to be shaped in their interests. In recent years, that disproportion has reached destructive levels, so if we don’t want to be a Marxist society, we need to put it right.
What we need to do as a nation, through our government is get our government back for the people. We have to end the Supreme Court's Citizen United ruling and end campaign contributions--both--so we can then begin to put back into place the simplest of rules to keep corporations and the already-wealthy, and the greedy and power-hungry among them, from crushing these 3 classes (middle, lower and working) with rules and government that only works for them.
We have to get the government back for the people.
Links: Believe it or not: Karl Marx is making a comeback
Marx Was Right: Five Ways Karl Marx Predicted 2014
Monday, September 14, 2015
Monday, July 13, 2015
The American Economy: How We Got To Here
What Americans need to know about our nation and economy, from an economist.
Monday, June 8, 2015
Could We Not Demonize True Socialism?
Please?
socialism
NOUN
noun: socialism
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Monday, April 6, 2015
Quote of the Day--On Where We're Headed?
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Don't You Wish You Had Control of Your Own Raise?
It's going on again down in Jefferson City:
Proposed raises for state elected officials: $1,994,336
It seems clear they decided they wanted $2000 more per year but they didn't want to be too terribly obvious.
Doesn't everyone wish they could propose and then vote on their own pay raise with all your fellow co-workers, all your pals?
And before anyone goes all nutso on this, yes, I know a state commission came up with this plan. It's just that it seems pretty cushy for them. Their pay raises get considered every 2 or 3 years and they themselves do vote on them.
The bigger question, for me, is how soon are we going to, first, get the minimum wage up to a true, "livable wage", say in the range of $15 per hour? Whose looking after the "little guys and gals" on the street? And then, second, how soon--if ever---can we get it pegged to rise with the inflation rate? It's only then that people will get and have that true, livable wage and we'll get that much closer to having better demand for goods in the nation. It would benefit all, all around.
Let's get this party started.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
What the Nation Needs to Know About Walmart, the Waltons and a True, Livable Wage
With great thanks, once again, to economist Robert Reich:
Saturday, November 1, 2014
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