News & Articles

How’s this for irony? Ronald Reagan – who is worshipped as the supreme deity by small-government, anti-spending zealots – not only has a government office building in Washington named for him, but it’s the biggest and costliest one ever built.The only face-saving factor in this sardonic incongruity is that managers of the Reagan Building have embraced a right-wing, laissez-faire concept that the Gipper enthusiastically championed: Privatization of government jobs. However, that hasn’t worked out to be a positive for his legacy, since Reagan’s edifice now stands as a model of private profiteering on the backs of workers. In effect, corporate contractors are using privatization and our tax dollars to transform America into a low-wage nation of gross inequality.

The building is public property, but its food concessions have been turned over to such multibillion-dollar fast-food chains as Subway. Not only do they pay low wages with no benefits, but they’re also being charged with “serious, willful, and chronic” wage theft. In particular, workers in the food court have filed formal complaints with the Labor Department, documenting that while workweeks of 60, 70, and even 80 hours are common, they’re “never paid overtime.” Not only is this a rank violation of our Fair Labor laws, but the practice also means they are being paid less than minimum wage.

Come on – even Reagan favored at least a minimal level of decency, fairness, and respect for workers. Where’s the morality in CEOs grabbing tax dollars to help subsidize their lavish executive pay packages, then turning around and stiffing their own workers in our name? To help counter this despicable corporate conversion of government into a force for poverty jobs, contact Good Jobs Nation at www.GoodJobsNation.org.

“The Government as a Low-Wage Employer,” The New York Times, August 13, 2013.

Wall Street magicians make reform disappear

What amazing alchemist Wall Street bankers are! They can turn failure into gold and reform into business as usual. These sorcerers have pulled off both tricks right in front of us since their 2007 collapse. They turned that gross failure into an ongoing multitrillion-dollar bailout by us taxpayers to restore them to even-grosser profit levels. Then, while the public howled for lawmakers to shackle their greed, these bewitching bankers reached into their magic hat and pulled out the massive Dodd-Frank reform law that – hocus pocus! – adds up to the status quo. And, as a West Texas farmer once told me, status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.”

Wall Street’s greatest deception is the claim that they’re brave risk takers who put their money into enterprises that create America’s economic growth. Bovine excrement. One, as we’ve seen, they’re not investing in enterprises; they’re frittering away America’s investment funds on ridiculous, get-rich-quick gambling schemes. Second, they’re not risking their money or that of their shareholders, but ours. When we deposit money with Chase, Bank of America, etc., we make a practically-zero-interest loan to them that they take to global gambling tables. Of the $2.4 trillion held by JPMorgan Chase, for example, $2.2 trillion is borrowed from us. It’s our cash they’re risking. And when their convoluted gambles fail, as in 2007, everything collapses... and they’ll run to Washington again demanding a bailout.

So the reform that matters is to make them put, say, half of their own money into each roll of the dice, rather than piling 90 percent of each risk on our backs. But does the Dodd-Frank “reform” law do that? No – it allows these “too-big-to-fail” banks to stack 95 percent of their risks on us. That is Wall Street’s dirtiest trick yet. “We are still Hostages to the Big Banks,” The New York Times, August 26, 2013.

Corporate greed is making us sick

The failure of our corporate and political leaders to make sure every worker gets good health care is causing some unpleasant consequences – not just for them, but for all of us. Consequences like stomach flu.
Ill workers often spread illness. This is because millions of employees who deal directly with the public, as well as with co-workers, are not covered by paid sick leave policies. So, when they come down with something like stomach flu, they still tend to drag themselves to work rather than going to bed until they recover, for staying home means a loss of pay… or even loss of their jobs.

Low-wage workers, such as those in the restaurant industry, are particularly vulnerable and, since they handle food, particularly threatening. Nearly 80 percent of America’s food service workers receive no paid sick leave, and researchers have found that about half of them go to work ill, because they fear losing their jobs if they don’t. As a result, a study by the Centers for Disease Control finds that ill workers are causing as much as 80 percent of America’s stomach flu outbreaks, which is one reason that CDC officials have declared our country’s lack of paid sick leave to be a major public health threat.

You’d think the industry itself would be horrified enough by this endangerment of its workforce and customers that it would either take the obvious curative step of providing the leave or of pushing, in the name of public safety, for a public sick-leave program. But, au contraire amigos, such huge and hugely profitable chains as McDonald’s, Red Lobster, and Taco Bell not only fail to provide such sensible care for their employees, but have lobbied furiously against city and state efforts to require paid sick days. All the top corporate executives, who never touch the food their chains serve, get paid sick leave. For them to deny it to workers is idiotic, shortsighted, and even more sickening than stomach flu.