Gallup: Support For Unions Up, Young People Most Supportive

Interesting findings:

After falling to an all-time low in 2009, Americans’ support for labor unions has been inching up, according to Gallup, the consulting and polling company.

“Americans’ approval of labor unions has jumped five percentage points to 58 percent over the past year, and is now at its highest point since 2008, when 59 percent approved,” a report issued by Gallup said.

The low, at 48 percent, was in 2009.

“Perhaps most positive for the future of unions is the finding that young adults, those aged 18 to 34, are the most supportive of all age groups,” Gallup said.

Support for unions was at 55% when Gallup asked the question in 1979, so 58% support, bouncing back from the 2008 low, brings support back to recent historical levels.

But here's some cause for optimism in the future:

66% of people aged 18-34 approve of unions, while 53% aged 35-54 approve of unions and 58% of those aged 55 or older approve of unions.

It looks like younger people, seeing how badly they're getting screwed by globalization and other economic forces that are squeezing them on all ends are more open to unions than their elders - especially their Gen X elders.

De Blasio Says Some Nice Things About Labor Unions

In a Politicker article reporting that Bill de Blasio says he will try and do some retroactive pay for municpal employees working years without contracts under Bloomberg but cannot give full retro to workers, we learn that he said this:

Standing behind a wooden podium on the fifth floor of the Alhabrama Ballroom, he said would play a far more active role in helping labor recruit new members and protect their benefits and wages. He also disputed the notion that labor represented a "special interest" and said, rather, they reflect "the public interest."

"Our mission is to restore the middle class, which has been not just slipping away gently" but "is in danger of disappearing altogether" de Blasio said at the breakfast. "The American labor movement created the middle class in this country."

He went on to say there has been "a relentless assault on labor in the last few decades" and "then you see the middle class in sharp decline, the dumbing down of wages and benefits. That math isn't hard to do. The attack on labor has reduced the economic stability of American families, greatly." He added:

"And some out there will say labor is a 'special interest' and I will say it is in the public interest for people to be unionized so" so a family's breadwinner "gets good wages and benefits, the family is stable and strong economically. That is in the taxpayer's interest. That is in the society's interest.

"So, I look forward to doing all I can, not only to respect and work with public sector labor but to help build the private sector labor movement. New orgazing, supporting carwash workers, supporting security workers, support fast-food workers, this is the work of our times."

I can remember a candidate named Obama saying some very nice things about labor unions and union members during the '08 campaign, something about getting some comfortable shoes and walking picket lines if he needed to in order to support labor, and that candidate, once he became president, turning his back on labor (especially during the assault in Wisconsin.)

So words don't mean as much to me as actions and I'll wait to see how de Blasio handles contract negotiations and DOE policy as it relates to the treatment of teachers before I render judgment on him.

Nonetheless, it is nice to have a mayoral candidate say these kinds of words - I respect public sector labor, I want to expand private sector labor, labor unions are not special interests, they are in the public interest.

These are not words you would have heard from Chris Quinn.

These are not words you have ever heard from Mike Bloomberg.

You certainly won't hear them from Joe Lhota.

Or Andrew Cuomo.

Just like you won't hear nice words like these that de Blasio said about teachers the other day from any of those other politicians:

"I just want to say humanly, personally, Charlaine and I have just the deepest appreciation for the dozens and dozens of teachers who took Chiara and Dante by the hand over the last 14 years and supported them, uplifted them, were there for them in so many ways," he said at the union's headquarters near City Hall. "We have had an extraordinary experience as parents seeing just how good the teachers of this city are."

Again, I'll reserve judgment until I see Bill de Blasio put some actions behind these nice words.

Let's see what these contract negotiations look like in a few months.

Let's see what he does to change the tenor, tone and policies from Tweed.

Still, we're doing a lot better than we were in July when it looked like Anthony Weiner and Christine Quinn were going to be locked in a runoff to take on the labor-bashing Joe Lhota in the general election in November.

More Predictions Of Doom If Municipal Unions Are Given Raises

It seems being a municipal union worker with an expired contract who expects to have a raise makes you a bad person.

In fact, the NY Times editorial board says you just might cause the apocalypse with that kind of attitude.

You know, Mayor Bloomberg, the self-described fiscal genius,was the guy who let every municipal union contract expire so that all of them now have to be negotiated at the same time.

Bloomberg did it on purpose - he despises government workers and union workers - and he didn't want to give out any raises or compensation increases.

In addition, he wanted to set up an environment, post-Bloomberg, where the next mayor would have a tougher time handing out raises because all the contracts are up at the same time.

In other words, this "apocalypse" was Bloomberg-created and Bloomberg-approved.

He knew exactly what he was doing when he let all the contracts expire at the same time.

Why is it that the editorial boards, full of very serious men and a token very serious woman or two, cannot acknowledge that this so-called fiscal crisis is not the fault of unionized workers?

Why can they not admit that we aren't looking to cause fiscal apocalypse?

Hell, as a teacher, I just want the 8% raise all the other unions got in the last pattern bargaining, plus  whatever the new pattern is going to be for the current negotiations.

Teachers haven't had raises since May 19, 2008.

By the time we get a new contract negotiated, that will be almost six years without a raise.

They keep saying how they want to attract good people to be teachers, to remain teachers.

Well, one way is to pay them and give them raises more than once a decade.

In the end, the money paid to New York City teachers often goes right back to the city in some way - in taxes, in Metro Cards, in rent, in spending on food, clothes and other items, on our children, etc.

It's not as if most of us are going to take the money and stash it in the Cayman Islands in a tax shelter (the way Mr. Bloomberg does with his some of his money, btw!)

So end some of the no-bid contracts Bloomberg signed with outside consultants located in Australia and elsewhere, end the contracts to Pearson, end the tax breaks to the real estate industry, end the corporate largesse and negotiate a fair contract with municipal workers.

It's the right thing to do.

Scary Labor Day Thought

From Dean Baker:

Ezra Klein gives us some terrifying news in a Bloomberg column today. President Obama’s economic team think they are doing a great job, hence the desire to bring back former teammate Larry Summers as Fed chair. This is terrifying because the economy this Labor Day is described by a set of statistics that can only be described as horrible.

We are almost 9 million jobs below the trend level of employment. The number of people involuntarily working part-time is still up by almost 4 million from its pre-recession level. Wages have been stagnant for a decade and show no signs of increasing any time soon. And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the economy is still operating more than $1 trillion (6 percent) below its potential. Oh, and by the way, the financial sector is more concentrated than ever, with top honchos drawing the same sort of paychecks they did before the crisis.

I could go on but what’s the point? This is an economy that under other circumstances we would all say is awful. The Obama team can pat themselves on the back for saying its better than a second Great Depression, but that’s a bit like saying that the 1962 Mets didn’t lose all their games. Horrible is horrible.

Your progressive president in action.

The Walmarting of America - "Hey, we're doing a swell job!"

How about some more of those part time, minimum wage service jobs you guys are so good at creating?

Well, I guess bombing Syria for no good reason will create, let's see, uh, a couple of p.r. jobs...

A Giant Of A Labor Leader

They don't make them any bigger or better than Marvin Miller:

Marvin Miller, an economist and labor leader who became one of the most important figures in baseball history by building the major league players union into a force that revolutionized the game, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 95. 

His death was announced by the Major League Baseball Players Association. 

When Mr. Miller was named executive director of the association in 1966, club owners ruled much as they had since the 19th century. The reserve clause bound players to their teams for as long as the owners wanted them, leaving them with little bargaining power. Come contract time, a player could expect an ultimatum but not much more. The minimum salary was $6,000 and had barely budged for two decades. The average salary was $19,000. The pension plan was feeble, and player grievances could be heard only by the commissioner, who worked for the owners. 

By the time Mr. Miller retired at the end of 1982, he had secured his place on baseball’s Mount Rushmore by forging one of the strongest unions in America, creating a model for those in basketball, football and hockey. 

Never had the dugout been so professionalized. The average player salary had reached $241,000, the pension plan had become generous, and players had won free agency and were hiring agents to issue their own demands. If they had a grievance, they could turn to an arbitrator. Peter Seitz, the impartial arbitrator who invalidated the reserve clause and created free agency in 1975, called Mr. Miller “the Moses who had led Baseball’s Children of Israel out of the land of bondage.” 

But not only them. If Mr. Miller had one overarching achievement, it was to persuade professional athletes to cast aside the paternalism of the owners and to emerge as economic forces in their own right, armed with often immense bargaining power. The transformations he wrought in baseball rippled through all of professional sports, and it could be said that he, more than anyone else, was responsible for the professional athlete of today, a kind of pop culture star able to command astronomical salaries and move from one team of choice to another.

I wish that my teachers union had a labor leader with the intelligence, foresight, strategic mind, tenacity and integrity of Marvin Miller:

 Mr. Miller advised the union as a consultant through his 80s. He spoke out against contractual givebacks and changes in baseball’s economic structure that might weaken the union. While in his 90s, he criticized the union’s acceptance of mandatory drug testing, saying that it could hurt union solidarity and that “it was clear that the government was going to get involved, and when the government gets involved they will pick out targets and the media just goes along with it.”

...

In his mid-90s, Mr. Miller expressed satisfaction over more than the huge salary gains and freedom of movement his members enjoy, and he ultimately came to believe that the players finally appreciated what unionism meant. 

“Succeeding generations of players know so much more about trade unionism, solidarity and what it can produce than their predecessors did,” he told Sports Illustrated in 2011. “I’m proudest of the fact that I’ve been retired for almost 29 years at this point and there are knowledgeable observers who say that this might still be the strongest union in the country. I think that’s a great legacy.”

 Rest in Peace, Mr. Miller.

You were a great man and it is to the shame of the Baseball Hall of Fame that you have not been inducted into that institution.