The Labor Thread

Greed · Jul 20, 2014

This Way Up: Mobility in America

This Way Up: Mobility in America
Economic mobility is alive and well for Americans who pursue technical or practical training
By TAMAR JACOBY
July 18, 2014 3:13 p.m. ET

Dakota Blazier had made a big decision. Friendly and fresh-faced, from a small town north of Indianapolis, he'd made up his mind: He wasn't going to college.

"I discovered a long time ago," he explained, "I'm not book smart. I don't like sitting still, and I learn better when the problem is practical." But he didn't feel this limited his options—to the contrary. And he was executing a plan as purposeful as that of any of his high-school peers.

It started in his junior year with release time from high school to take a course in basic construction skills at a craft training center run by the Associated Builders and Contractors. The next step was an internship with a local contractor, Gaylor Electric.

This summer, he's at Gaylor full time, earning $10 an hour plus credits he can apply at the ABC training center, where he intends to return this fall for a four-year apprenticeship. Mr. Blazier, 18, beamed as he explained his plan. This was no fallback, no desperate Hail Mary pass. It was a thoughtful choice—and he was as proud and excited as if he were heading off to the Ivy League.

College-educated Americans tend to know mostly other college-educated Americans and to think that is the norm, if not universal. In fact, just three in 10 Americans age 25 or older have bachelor's degrees. Another 8% are high-school dropouts, leaving the overwhelming majority—more than 60%—in circumstances something like Mr. Blazier's.

The questions that keep him up at night aren't about inequality: How rich am I, or, how rich is my neighbor ? What he worries about is the kinds of opportunities open to him. Can he get an education that equips him for a job he wants? Can he find that job and build on it to make a career? His concern is economic mobility.

The changing economy isn't encouraging. New technologies and globalization are driving deep-seated change—and no one knows for sure what it will mean for most Americans. But one thing is certain: The future will put a premium on technical skill. Educators and employers agree: High school is no longer enough.

Americans have a host of postsecondary options other than a four-year degree—associate degrees, occupational certificates, industry certifications, apprenticeships. Many economists are bullish about the prospects of what they call "middle-skilled" workers. In coming years, according to some, at least a third and perhaps closer to half of all U.S. jobs will require more than high school but less than four years of college—and most will involve some sort of technical or practical training.

Will these be just jobs—or real careers? Is the system preparing enough Americans to fill them? Are there adequate opportunities for training? Do we do enough to steer young people toward technical training?

As Mr. Blazier knows, there are plenty of opportunities for people like him to get ahead. Despite our digital-age prejudices against practical skills, Americans are quietly reinventing upward mobility. Consider three often overlooked paths: welder, nurse and franchise manager.

The first requirement of any upward path is entry ramps at the ground level. The Craft Training Center of the Coastal Bend, in Corpus Christi, Texas, teaches welding to 200 high-school students, mostly at-risk youth. When Anthony Solis first heard about the program, he was close to dropping out. He didn't know what welding was but decided to give it a try—at least it would get him out of class a few days a week.

Unlike his father, who didn't need even a high-school diploma to make a decent living on an oil rig, Mr. Solis, now 19, knew he needed some kind of qualification. He found that he liked the hands-on aspect of the training program. Suddenly, math came more easily—he needed it to calculate weight and volumes.

Welding itself was harder, but he learned that he could do well if he tried—something he'd rarely experienced in a classroom. Soon, he was attending not just his for-credit class but also an adult program in the evening, and he returned to the center that summer for a career-prep course—all of it subsidized by his high school and a local employer group.

The second requirement of any good upward path is for training to lead to a job. Mr. Solis's big break came last August, when he and 20 other Coastal Bend students auditioned for JV Industrial, which does high-risk, high-paying maintenance work in oil refineries. JV had never recruited at the Corpus Christi center, and Mr. Solis was so nervous that he was almost ill on the day of the hands-on test. Still, he made the grade and headed off to Houston for more free training—with the possibility of a big job if he finished.

A third requirement of a good career path is that it must be aligned with economic needs. This is where employers like JV can make all the difference. Many high schools and community colleges teach job skills, but too many of them use outmoded techniques and equipment or steer young people to industries that aren't growing. The best way to stay current is to partner with an employer, who can offer advice about what's in demand, help design curricula, lend equipment, even—like JV—provide training.

It isn't always easy to find an industry partner: Training is expensive, and some firms fear that competitors will poach the workers whom they train. But a growing number of farsighted companies—often bigger firms in growing fields such as construction, manufacturing or IT—grasp the mutual benefit. What better way, after all, to attract and retain good employees?

This is especially true in a trade like welding, where demand can sometimes seem insatiable. The average age in the field is 54, and the American Welding Institute predicts openings for more than 400,000 workers by 2024—welders and others who need welding skills, such as pipe fitters, plumbers and boilermakers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the average wage at $36,300 a year, but anecdotal evidence suggests that is the low end of what's possible. JV Industrial says that it pays more like $75,000, with some employees earning more than $100,000. In the burgeoning shale industry, in Texas and Appalachia, welders can earn as much as $7,000 a week.

Like construction, nursing is a time-tested path to the middle class, and it has many of the same hallmarks: easy on-ramps, goal-oriented job training and a series of ascending steps, with industry-certified credentials to guide the way.

The profession is already growing robustly. From 2000 to 2010, the number of registered nurses increased by 24%. But the aging of the baby-boom generation will sharpen demand even as it reduces supply: Roughly a third of today's nurses are more than 50 years old.

Consider one microcosm: Orlando, Fla., where there are many different ways into the nursing profession. The University of Central Florida trains only bachelor-degree nurses. You need an outstanding high-school record, there's a long waiting list, and tuition is $14,000 for in-state students—and more than three times that if you're not from Florida. Two well-equipped, award-winning community colleges—Seminole State and Valencia State—offer associate-degree RN programs, where tuition is $7,500. Then there is Orlando Tech, a county-run career center, located in an old building in an industrial area near downtown, which trains licensed practical nurses for about $5,000.

It sounds insidious—a quintessentially inequitable, tracked system, with RNs earning some $65,000 year and many licensed practical nurses, or LPNs, starting below $40,000. But appearances can be deceptive. Alongside the three tiers, there are myriad ways that different kinds of students can tap into the programs and transfer among them, building their own upward paths, sometimes over the course of a lifetime.

The streamlined route starts in high school: a "dual enrollment" magnet program that allows focused, able students to earn college credit and professional certifications, including as a nursing assistant. Participants who enroll within two years at Seminole or Valencia get advanced placement credit, saving as much as $1,250. And those who are really in a hurry can matriculate simultaneously at UCF, earning "concurrent" credit for advanced courses taken at community-college prices, then graduate in just three years with a UCF bachelor's degree.

More often, though, the path up through the system is slow—an intermittent process with many phases. When Stephanie Rabello, 41, graduated from high school in the early 1990s, all she could think about was getting into the nursing profession—the sooner, the better—and she enrolled in a 10-month LPN program at a local career center.

Her LPN license opened several doors: She worked in an elementary school, a nursing home, a rehab hospital, often two jobs at once. But after nearly 20 years as a practical nurse, she decided that she wanted more respect and better compensation. So in 2012, she went back to school at Seminole State, enrolling in a yearlong LPN-to-RN "bridge" program with online classes and convenient clinical rotations that allowed her to continue working while she upgraded.

Sherry Harris, 33, who followed a similar path from LPN to RN, calls it "step-by-step" professional training—the "working-class way in." Ms. Harris is now taking the next step: an RN-to-BSN program for a bachelor of science degree in nursing.

Ms. Rabello also wants a bachelor's degree and is hoping to enroll next spring at UCF. But for now, she's happy where she is. "I used to be a floor nurse," she said. "When I graduated as an RN, the facility promoted me to unit manager. That's exactly where I want to be—getting some respect and moving up the ladder."

At first blush, franchising seems very different from welding and nursing—no technical skills, no required training, no earned industry certifications. But in many ways, it is a looser, market-driven version of the same upward path: Young people start at the bottom of a practical trade and learn by doing.

Looking back, Shana Gonzales, 41, says that she always wanted to be an entrepreneur. She came from a family of modest means: Her father was a coal-miner in Arizona. Her first franchise job, in the early 1990s, was at a Taco Bell, where she worked as a part-time cashier while attending community college.

More than 20 years later, she owns and operates four fast-food restaurants in Atlanta that generate $3.5 million in annual revenue.

It wasn't an easy path, but it isn't uncommon in the franchise industry. At McDonald's, MCD +0.63% some 60% of what the company calls "owner/operators" started as hourly employees, as did 63% of the chain's two dozen U.S. regional managers.

Ms. Gonzales's first break came after nine months on the job. She was focused on her college classes and working just to earn some extra cash. But the store manager noticed her: She was responsible, took initiative and seemed curious about how the restaurant operated. Ms. Gonzales agreed to undergo training, then spent 12 weeks studying a textbook and shadowing an assistant manager. This qualified her as a shift manager.

She didn't expect the next promotion either, or the one after that, although by then she'd been working in fast-food outlets for nearly four years. Except for those first 12 weeks, everything she knew about the restaurant business was self-taught. But the third promotion was a big job: general manager, running her own store, with a regular salary and 15 direct reports.

It was then that Ms. Gonzales started to see that the franchise business might be more than just a job—there might be a career in it. By this time, she was working for the Rally's Hamburgers brand, which was purchased that year by a bigger company with a more corporate culture. Ms. Gonzales and other midlevel managers were brought to Tampa periodically for presentations and networking. She still remembers how eye-opening it was. "The others had all started behind the counter too," she recalls. "But this was the first time I had ever met other people like me—people with the same desire to work hard and give everything they had to the company." By 2003, when she left what was then Checkers Rally's, she was manager of operations for Arizona and California, earning more than $100,000 a year in salary and bonuses.

Ms. Gonzales's next boss, Aziz Hashim, has his own rags-to-riches story. He started out in what he calls a "lower middle-class" immigrant family in Los Angeles and earned a prestigious degree as an electrical engineer—then quit abruptly to go into the franchise business. Today, his company, NRD Holdings, owns more than 50 franchise outlets, and he is seen as a rising star in the industry.

Still, he explains, neither he nor Ms. Gonzales is an anomaly. "If you work hard in this business," he says, "you can't help but rise. We owners have no choice but to hire from within and train our own managers. No one comes out of school knowing how to run a fast-food restaurant."

The hardest step up the franchising ladder is from management to ownership. Franchising is the safest way to start a small business. Though lesser-known brands can pose risks, most outlets open with a popular product and a proven way of doing business. But it isn't cheap to get started: The initial purchase fee is rarely less than $100,000 and usually several times that.

Mr. Hashim's parents lent him their life savings. His company has a program called "Own It!" to help his top managers make the transition. Ms. Gonzales used his help to buy four Checkers outlets and just this summer finished paying off her loan. Her goal is to buy 10 more stores in the next five years.

Today's conventional wisdom about economic mobility in the U.S. is gloomy and growing gloomier. We're told that good jobs are disappearing, that less educated workers have bad work habits, that the U.S. is falling behind other countries.

What's strange is that this isn't what you hear from many people who are working toward the middle class: people training, saving and in other ways striving to make it, who invariably see more dynamism and possibility. Ms. Gonzales described her path as "opportunity after opportunity. Every time I think about getting out of the business," she says, "something exciting happens—a promotion or a new direction that keeps me engaged."

Who's right? Surely, the answer is up to us—and not just the strivers alone. One place to start would be by showing some respect for practical training. As millions of Americans know, even in a knowledge economy, countless valuable career skills can be learned outside a college classroom.

Ms. Jacoby is the president of Opportunity America, a Washington-based nonprofit group working to promote economic mobility. She is the author of "Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration" and the editor of "Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American."

http://online.wsj.com/articles/this-way-up-mobility-in-america-1405710779?mod=trending_now_1

Greed · Aug 4, 2014

What it takes to get a good manufacturing job now

What it takes to get a good manufacturing job now
By Rick Newman
July 31, 2014 11:30 AM

We build things in America again. But not just anything.

The U.S. manufacturing sector, once a vast network of assembly lines churning out every imaginable product, has evolved into a specialized and highly efficient industry focused on goods that can’t be built cheaper or better someplace else. There are good jobs in manufacturing — the kind able to finance a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. But there are far fewer than there used to be, and many workers who might have been qualified to man an assembly line 25 years ago lack the skills manufacturers require today.

A recent survey of manufacturing firms by Accenture (ACN) found there’s a “severe shortage of manufacturing skills in the United States.” Only about 20% of manufacturing jobs now are unskilled positions any able-bodied worker can fill. The rest require vocational training, an associate’s degree or certifications that can take years to acquire. Accenture and other analysts say there’s a particular shortage of welders, electricians, machinists, press operators and metalworkers, which means people in those fields enjoy something unusual in today’s economy: strong job security and the ability to command decent pay.

The shortage of skilled manufacturing workers is partly due to the sharp decline in U.S. manufacturing during the past 15 years. That led many high schools to axe vocational programs, while teenagers and their parents began to see college as the only likely pathway to a middle-class lifestyle. But manufacturing has begun to bounce back since total employment bottomed out in 2010. There are now about 12.1 million manufacturing workers in the United States, with some forecasters expecting a broader resurgence due to low U.S. energy costs, rising labor rates in other countries and the higher skill levels required to work with robots and computers. “You don’t need to go to college to make a lot of money,” says Vicki Holt, CEO of Proto Labs (PRLB), which specializes in the rapid production of parts for other manufacturers’ prototypes. “You can go to a two-year school and be making $80,000 by the time you’re 21.”

That’s no cakewalk, however. Here are six things required to get a good manufacturing job these days:

Ability to pass a drug test. America must be Stoner Nation, because this seemingly simple requirement eliminates half of all applicants for manufacturing jobs, by some estimates. Manufacturing often entails work with dangerous equipment in a demanding factory setting, which is why failing a drug test can be grounds for dismissal. That includes marijuana, even in Colorado and Washington, where it’s legal. Manufacturing firms are also unlikely to tolerate slackers who slow down the workflow. And the decline of unions means there are fewer protections when a company wants to get rid of an undesirable worker.

Twelfth grade math and English capability. Working with the computerized equipment in many factories requires an understanding of algebra and the ability to do basic computations. Manufacturing workers increasingly operate as teams, making it important to communicate effectively. “These skills aren’t super difficult for somebody going through college or technical school, but they’re not always being mastered at the high school level,” says Art Wheaton of the Worker Institute at Cornell University. That’s one reason manufacturers prefer a high school diploma over a GED certificate — performing well in high school matters more than simply graduating. Workers who performed poorly in high school — or failed to graduate — might want to look for a job in construction, which tends to have more room for lower-skilled workers than manufacturing does these days.

Dependability. The ability to show up for work on time — every day — is another quality that’s surprisingly uncommon. That’s why a low-paying job flipping burgers or manning a cash register can help land a better job in manufacturing. “Working at McDonald’s may actually prove you can work with other people and show up every day,” Wheaton says. “For the employer, that’s better than getting people who will work for a few paychecks and say, ‘This isn’t fun, I want to go somewhere else.’”

Vocational training or better. A dependable, drug-free high-school grad might earn $10 to $15 per hour at an entry-level manufacturing job, with pay rising along with more experience and on-the-job training. But pay will obviously be higher still for workers who show up with specialized training or certifications. The trick is figuring out what training to get, since most technical schools don’t guarantee a job after charging hundreds or thousands of dollars in tuition. (Of course, most colleges don’t either.)

Some big companies, such as General Electric (GE), Siemens and Caterpillar (CAT), partner with specific training programs or trade schools to keep a supply of needed workers flowing. “The skills you learn may not be directly transferable, but they show you’ve learned,” says Hal Sirkin of the Boston Consulting Group, which predicts a surge in U.S. manufacturing by 2020.

The Georgia Trade School in Kennesaw charges $8,000 for a four-month welding program and often places grads with employers such as Caterpillar and shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls (HII), where pay can start at $20 per hour or so; some workers start with a $1,500 relocation bonus. Good employers usually offer additional training that can push pay to $40 per hour or more within five years. Welders willing to go where demand is highest — such as Houston or North Dakota — can earn more than $100,000 per year.

Familiarity with manufacturing. As with any profession, workers interested in a manufacturing career should research what they’re getting themselves into. Ryan Blythe, executive director of the Georgia Trade School, says the school encourages every applicant to thoroughly research welding before plunking down a tuition check: “Understand you’re going to be working outside a lot of the time. Not many shops are air conditioned. It’s very hard work. If you want to make big money, you’ll probably have to travel or relocate.”

Manufacturing may also offer opportunities talented workers are unaware of, since the sector is often neglected by guidance counselors and others steering young workers toward trendier professions such as tech and healthcare. Holt of Proto Labs, for instance, says her firm is aggressively hiring software engineers to help with computerized protoyping — white-collar jobs that might appeal to college grads who enjoy building things and don’t want to get caught up in Silicon Valley’s egomania.

A willingness to forgo college. The types of high school students likely to do well in manufacturing — strong performers with a good work ethic — also tend to be good candidates for college. Yet a recent decline in college enrollments suggests more young people are balking at the high cost of college, the heavy debt load that can last for years and the uncertain prospects all that money buys. For determined workers, manufacturing may once again be a worthwhile alternative to college. America will be building things for a while.

http://news.yahoo.com/what-it-takes-to-get-a-good-manufacturing-job-these-days-171712072.html

thoughtone · Aug 30, 2014

—Speech to the state convention of the Illinois AFL-CIO, Oct. 7, 1965

http://www.aft.org/yourwork/tools4teachers/bhm/mlktalks.cfm

thoughtone · Aug 30, 2014

source: Reuters

UAW says union membership near majority at VW Tennessee plant

The United Auto Workers, which lost a controversial organizing vote in February at a Volkswagen AG plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has nearly enough members in its newly formed local for the automaker to recognize it as exclusive bargaining agent for the plant, a top union official said on Friday.

If the union is able to prove to Volkswagen that it has support from a majority of the plant's approximately 1,500 hourly workers, VW can select it as the exclusive bargaining agent for all of them, despite the loss to UAW foes in the vote.

Gary Casteel, UAW secretary-treasurer, would not say how many VW workers are now UAW Local 42 members, but said there are enough to have won the February election. The UAW lost by a 712-626 count, which means that Local 42 has at least 670 members, which Casteel confirmed.

UAW Local 42 was established five weeks ago.

A VW Chattanooga spokesman on Friday said he could not comment on whether the company will recognize the UAW as exclusive bargaining agent if the union can prove that it has support of most workers.

Casteel that while VW and the UAW "have a consensus" that the company will recognize the new union local, he cannot say whether VW will name the union exclusive bargaining agent if it can prove majority support at the plant.

"I would never attempt to speak for them as others have," he said, in a jab at Tennessee U.S. Senator Bob Corker, a UAW foe.

Corker said during the February vote that VW would not give the plant a job-creating new model to build if the UAW was voted in. But last month, VW announced that it would create 2,000 jobs at the plant to build a mid-sized SUV. {ID:nL2N0PP0FA]

The UAW contends that Corker's statements unfairly influenced the February vote, but Corker said he was only offering pertinent information to workers.

The UAW is in need of a win at Chattanooga to bolster its membership and show that it can organize a foreign-owned auto plant. In a rarity, VW is not opposed to the union, though officially, it has maintained neutrality.

Mike Burton, a leading anti-union VW worker, said on Friday that VW would be going against the wishes of most workers if it recognizes the UAW. He said the company and union have drawn closer since his side won the February vote.

"Volkswagen is ignoring the majority opinion as expressed in a democratic election," said Burton. "We feel cheated out of our victory by the way Volkswagen is aligning with the UAW."

In order for VW to establish a German-style works council, which typically includes both blue- and white-collar employees, in Chattanooga it must have a U.S.-based union to represent workers on wages and benefits, most labor experts say. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Dan Grebler)

thoughtone · Aug 30, 2014

source: Reuters

Anti-UAW workers seek to form union at Volkswagen plant

Employees at the Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, are attempting to form a union that will include hourly and salaried workers as a counter to the United Auto Workers Local 42 established last month, a leading anti-UAW worker said on Tuesday.

Mike Burton, who helped anti-UAW workers defeat the UAW's effort to represent VW Chattanooga hourly workers six months ago, told Reuters he hopes the new union will force VW to hold another vote to determine which one is favored by hourly employees.

Burton said the proposed union local at Chattanooga will be the first chapter of what will be called the American Council of Employees. The new union will operate differently than the UAW, which he says hurts the competitiveness of unionized U.S. automakers.

Burton claims that since the February vote when the UAW lost by a 712-626 count, Volkswagen has drawn closer to that union, which is one of the main reasons he wants to create an alternative.

Burton said attorneys who helped him with an anti-UAW worker group called Southern Momentum during the February election at Chattanooga might help him with the ACE, but he did not elaborate.

Gary Casteel, secretary-treasurer of the UAW, told Reuters on Tuesday he does not see how Burton's union stands much of a chance because VW and the UAW "have a consensus" that the company will recognize Local 42.

Casteel said it is up to VW whether it will recognize the new union if Burton is successful in creating one at the VW plant, which has about 1,500 hourly workers.

Casteel said Local 42 continues to gain support and now has "substantially more than 700 members, so there are not many workers left for the anti-union union to pick up."

He would not say whether Local 42 has more than 750 members, which would be a majority of hourly workers.

The UAW normally faces stiff opposition from companies when it tries to organize workers, but is not being opposed by VW at the Chattanooga plant. The UAW wants to use this unique situation among non-unionized auto plants in the United States to establish a foothold among foreign-owned factories in the south of the country.

VW has often said it wants to have Chattanooga representation on its global works council. Works council representation is in place at every major VW plant in the world except Chattanooga. In order for the Chattanooga workers to have works council representation, they must first be represented by a U.S. union, most labor law experts say.

Burton said that he and co-workers collected 108 signatures on Monday for a petition supporting the ACE. He hopes to get enough signatures to show VW that his union has widespread support in the plant.

VW plant officials were not immediately available.

thoughtone · Sep 1, 2014

source: Salon

Why white men hate unions: The South, the new workforce and the GOP war on your self-interest

Labor & white men once stood united. Now they're across a political divide thanks to decades-long war of confusion

In mid-August, the Chicago Tribune published a poll showing that Karen Lewis, the outspoken president of the Chicago Teachers Union, was leading Rahm Emanuel, 43 percent to 39 percent, in a hypothetical 2015 mayoral race.

Lewis led a 2012 strike after Emanuel tried to impose longer school days with no pay increases (she got her teachers a raise), and vociferously opposed the closing of 50 schools, which were mostly in black neighborhoods. During a pre-strike rally, she called the mayor “a liar and a bully.” Emanuel returned her contempt, shouting “Fuck you, Lewis!” during a tense private meeting. Lewis recently filed papers to raise money for a possible run against the man she labeled “the murder mayor,” because of Chicago’s high crime rate, and she has a pledge of $1 million from the American Federation of Teachers.

If Lewis wins, or even mounts a credible campaign, she will become the most prominent labor leader in America. In that role, she’ll be an appropriate successor to John L. Lewis, Jimmy Hoffa and Walter Reuther, those crusty avatars of mining, trucking and manufacturing. As an African-American, a woman and a professional (she has a sociology degree from Dartmouth), Lewis is the face of the 21st century unionism, which has been transformed from a movement devoted to protecting the safety and livelihoods of blue-collar workers to a stronghold of white-collar liberalism.

Over the past 30 years, labor has been feminized, professionalized, politicized and regionalized. In the 1970s, Archie Bunker, a loading dock foreman, was a staunch unionist. Today, his son-in-law, grad student Mike Stivic, would be the union member.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the most unionized job category is “education, training and library occupations” at 35.4 percent. That’s a field dominated by women, many with master’s degrees. (In fact, the Center for Economic and Policy Research predicts that by 2020, a majority of union members will be women.) Meanwhile, in manufacturing, the macho vocation that gave birth to the modern labor movement, the unionization rate has plummeted from 30 percent in 1983, around the time the term “Rust Belt” entered the popular consciousness, to 9.4 percent today. Workers in manufacturing are now less likely to be unionized than the workforce as a whole. During those three decades of deindustrialization, the United Auto Workers’ membership dropped from 1.2 million to 390,000. That’s mainly due to robots replacing line workers, and the loss of market share to foreign manufacturers. Because when those foreign manufacturers build plants in the United States, they build in the South, a region hostile to unionism.

Earlier this year, the UAW tried to organize a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Despite the tacit support of the company, which needed an independent union to form a European-style works council, the UAW lost the election, 712-626. Before the vote, the anti-union faction, which called itself Southern Momentum, invoked cultural, regional, racial and political resentments to persuade the conservative white men working in the plant that a union was a threat not only to their livelihoods, but to their way of life. Billboards labeled the Democratic-leaning union the United Obama Workers and presented ruin porn images of the derelict Packard Motors plant alongside the slogan, “Detroit: Brought to you by the UAW.” A pamphlet distributed to workers compared the Northern union’s campaign to a campaign by the Union Army in the Civil War: “One hundred and fifty years ago … the people of Tennessee routed such a force in the Battle of Chickamauga.”

(When I heard a Sheet Metal Workers business agent from Syracuse theorize that Southerners dislike unions because “the name reminds them of the Union Army,” I thought he was nuts. Since Chattanooga, I think he may have been on to something. The man’s own local lost most of its members when the Carrier Corp. moved its air-conditioner manufacturing plants to Georgia and Tennessee — and told union employees they weren’t welcome to follow their jobs. Bottom line: If you buy a BMW built in Alabama, or a Toyota built in Mississippi, you’re not helping the American labor movement.)

Contrast that with the UAW’s campaign to organize graduate employees at New York University — exactly the kind of job Mike Stivic would have held. The union won that vote 620-10. It was a gimme. The UAW was dealing with teachers in the most heavily unionized state in the nation. In New York, 23.2 percent of workers belong to a union. In Tennessee, 4.8 percent do. (Only Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina are less unionized.)

In post-industrial, politically polarized America, it’s easier to organize Northern academics than Southern factory workers. Union membership used to be a matter of economic self-interest, divorced from political or cultural concerns. In the 1960s, union members — who were disproportionately Roman Catholic — could support the New Deal welfare state, while also backing the Vietnam War, racially restrictive housing covenants and bans on abortion and birth control. Richard Nixon — who used to call his ideal voter “a 47-year-old machinist’s wife outside Dayton” — won his 1972 landslide with a “blue-collar strategy” that attracted the support of white male unionists. Many were voting Republican for the first time, out of disgust for the counterculture represented by Nixon’s opponent, George McGovern. They were personified by Archie Bunker, with his strident admiration for “Richard E. Nixon.”

That election was the beginning of a realignment that found the labor movement on the opposite side of a political divide from the white men who once formed the backbone of its membership. Now, support for labor is just another blue state trait, like support for gun control or Obamacare. In states won by Barack Obama in 2012, 13.1 percent of workers belong to a union. In states won by Mitt Romney: 7.2. Collective bargaining is inimical to the conservative ideal of individualism. Unions are “socialist.” In 1983, over half of union members were white men. Now, a little over a third are. In New York City, site of the famous Hard Hat Riot, in which union construction workers attacked students protesting the Kent State shootings, less than a quarter of union members are white men.

It used to be that belonging to a labor union made you a Democrat. Now, being a Democrat is more likely to make you a union member. Blacks are more likely to be unionized than whites. College-educated whites are more likely to be unionized than non-college whites. Public sector employees are more likely to belong to unions than private sector employees. Teachers and librarians vote overwhelmingly Democratic, not because they’re union members, but because the combination of low pay and intellectual inquiry in those professions attracts liberals. And since most union members now work in the public sector, the war on unions has become a front in the larger conservative war on government. (The one exception: cops and firefighters, who have a 34 percent unionization rate. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker left them out of his ban on collective bargaining by public employees, because they tend to be white and conservative. Cops and firefighters can’t strike, though, and are more likely to belong to benevolent associations than full-fledged unions.)

Rahm Emanuel has never been a friend of the labor movement. Bill Clinton’s point man on shepherding the North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress, he was a key figure in the Democrats’ realignment from a party of working people to a party of Wall Street, encouraging the party to responded to labor’s weakness by shifting its donor base from unions to socially liberal financiers. Told as White House chief of staff, that tens of thousands of autoworkers could lose their jobs if General Motors and Chrysler didn’t receive a federal bailout, he responded: “Fuck the UAW.”

Emanuel helped vanquish Old Labor as a force in American politics. Now he’s facing the political fight of his life, against a representative of the New Labor that’s taking its place.

Greed · Sep 7, 2014

Summer Jobs Are Slowly Disappearing

Summer Jobs Are Slowly Disappearing
By BEN CASSELMAN
AUG 13, 2014

Maurice Brown has spent the summer doing something that’s increasingly unusual for American teenagers: going to work.

Brown, 17, works 25 hours a week as a fry cook at a McDonald’s down the street from where he lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts. While classmates were at the beach or the mall, Brown was learning life skills — how to behave in a professional workplace, how to multitask when the lunch rush started, how not to talk back when his managers criticized him. He said he hopes the experience will help him get a job after college. And though the pay was low, he was able to buy his own school clothes and save some money toward a car.

“I was tired of having to wait for my mom and ask her for things,” Brown said.

Research has shown that teenagers — and especially teenage boys — who work are more likely to graduate high school, more likely to go to college and less likely to get into trouble with the law. They also gain valuable work experience that can make it easier to get a job and get promoted more quickly in adulthood. But for a variety of reasons — fewer job opportunities, more emphasis on schooling, changing societal expectations — fewer young people are getting summer jobs.

In the 1970s, more than half of teens ages 16 to 19 — and nearly two-thirds of boys in that age range — worked in the summer, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2014, less than a third did so. The drop has been even more dramatic for 16- and 17-year-olds: Just 20 percent of them worked this summer, down from about 45 percent in the 1970s.1

“If kids don’t work when they’re young, a lot of the behavioral traits that are important just don’t get developed down the road,” said Paul Harrington, an economist at Drexel University in Philadelphia who has studied the youth labor market. “These are the ages when you’re making these huge decisions about where you’re going to end up in life.”

New data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday showed that somewhat more young people worked this summer than last, but their recovery remains slow. Employers are reluctant to hire teens even in the best of times. With unemployment still elevated and plenty of more experienced workers available for hire, companies see little reason to turn to inexperienced and at times unreliable high schoolers.

But the decline in youth employment long predates the recession. Harrington said longer-term forces are also at work, such as the disappearance of many low-skilled jobs that were once the core of the youth job market. Reduced high school dropout rates, increased college attendance and an increased focus on student testing have also likely played a role in pushing down teen employment, particularly during the school year. And Harrington said that as more Americans work into their 60s and beyond, there are fewer opportunities for younger workers to get in on the ground floor.2

The decline in employment has cut across demographic and socioeconomic groups. But low-income and minority teens like Brown, who is black, are especially unlikely to work. Black teens ages 16 and 17 were barely half as likely as whites to work this summer, 11.5 percent compared to 23 percent. And only 11 percent of teens from families earning less than $30,000 a year worked this summer, compared to 21 percent of those from families earning between $30,000 and $75,000, and 26 percent of those from families earning $75,000 or more.3

The decline in employment among low-income and minority teens is particularly worrisome to economists because these are the ones who benefit most from early work experience. Teens from more affluent backgrounds might be able to make up for a thin resume with family connections, extracurricular experiences or the ability to accept an unpaid internship. Teens from low-income backgrounds rarely have those advantages.

But for similar reasons, low-income teens often face additional barriers to finding work. Jobs are scarce in many poor communities, and simply getting to work can pose a major challenge. In Los Angeles, for example, city officials said a food manufacturer recently had more than 100 entry-level jobs available for local teens, but at a facility that was inaccessible by public transit. The city ended up working with the company to provide a free shuttle bus.

Other hurdles aren’t so readily overcome. Low-income teens are less likely to have parents who can help them find jobs or navigate the working world once they get them. Nancy Snyder, president of Commonwealth Corporation, a Massachusetts nonprofit that runs workforce development programs for low-income youth, said employers are often reluctant to hire young people without a recommendation.

“For low-income teens, this issue of how do you create someone who can help them connect to the labor market and vouch for them becomes really important,” Snyder said. “They’re probably much less likely to have the connections and network that you use to find a job.”

Commonwealth Corporation has tried to help close that gap, not just by placing teens in jobs but by running training programs on interviewing, resume writing, workplace behavior and other skills to help teens find and keep jobs.

Brown was one of about 5,000 Massachusetts youths who got a job through the program this year. An aspiring architect who hopes to go to Virginia Tech when he graduates from high school next year, he said he’d been looking for a job since the day he turned 17 without success. Now that he has a job, he plans to keep working during the school year in part because his mother will give up her low-wage job to return to school in the fall. Besides the income, Brown said the job has helped him learn to communicate with adults and manage his emotions, even when he thinks he’s being criticized unfairly. It’s helped his organizational skills, too, he said.

“Working at McDonald’s, because it’s so busy, I was able to multitask and actually get things done,” he said.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/summer-jobs-are-slowly-disappearing/

thoughtone · Sep 7, 2014

source: Washington Post

Raising the minimum wage without raising havoc

In July 2013, hotelier Scott Ostrander stood before the city council in SeaTac, Wash., pleading with the town not to adopt a $15 minimum wage.

“I am shaking here tonight because I am going to be forced to lay people off,” he said, according to an account in the Washington State Wire. “I’m going to take away their livelihood. That hurts. It really, really hurts. . . . And what I am going to have to do on Jan. 1 is to eliminate jobs, reduce hours — and as soon as hours are reduced, benefits are reduced.”

SeaTac, a community around Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, went ahead with its plan, becoming, on Jan. 1, the first jurisdiction in the nation to set a $15 minimum wage, according to the labor movement. And Ostrander’s hotel, the Cedarbrook Lodge? It went ahead with a $16 million expansion that adds 63 rooms, a spa — and jobs.

Ostrander, then Cedarbrook’s general manager, told Seattle’s KIRO-TV as the new wage law took effect that it was proceeding with the expansion “to try to recoup significant expenses that will be incurred as a result” of the higher wage. So the minimum-wage hike forced the hotel to add rooms, revenues and workers. The horror!

As fast-food workers demonstrate nationwide for a $15 hourly wage, and congressional Republicans fight off a $10 federal minimum, little SeaTac has something to offer the debate. Its neighbor, Seattle, was the first big city to approve a $15 wage, this spring, but that doesn’t start phasing in until next year. SeaTac did it all at once. And, though there’s nothing definitive, this much is clear: The sky did not fall.

“SeaTac is proving trickle-down economics wrong,” says David Rolf, the Service Employees International Union official who helped lead the $15 effort in SeaTac and Seattle, “because when workers prosper, so do communities and businesses.”

Those who opposed the $15 wage in SeaTac and Seattle admit there has been no calamity so far. Paul Guppy, vice president for research at the free-market Washington Policy Center, said SeaTac is a “boutique” case because of its size. Airport workers have been left out for now because of a lawsuit, and union workplaces are exempt, so only about 1,600 got raises.

Seattle will be a truer test case, Guppy said — but it will be seven years before the $15 wage is fully in place. So far, at least, “you do not see prices up or jobs going away,” he acknowledged. “Seattle is having a construction boom so there’s a feeling of prosperity.”

In Seattle last week, I stopped in at the jammed Palace Kitchen, flagship of Seattle restaurateur Tom Douglas, who runs upward of 15 establishments. He warned in April that the $15 wage could “be the most serious threat to our ability to compete,” and he predicted that “we would lose maybe a quarter of the restaurants in town.” Yet Douglas has opened, or announced, five new restaurants this year.

Likewise, the International Franchise Association has sued to block implementation of the law, arguing that nobody “in their right mind” would become a franchisee in Seattle. Yet Togo’s sandwiches, a franchise chain, is expanding into Seattle, saying the $15 wage isn’t a deterrent.

And a spokesman for Weyerhaeuser, the venerable wood and paper company, says the $15 wage didn’t factor into its decision, announced last month, to move its headquarters and 800 employees to Seattle from outside Tacoma.

Such early indications aren’t conclusive, of course. As my colleague Catherine Rampell pointed out, the ultimate effects of the $15 wage in Seattle are unknowable. But the effects are a bit more knowable in SeaTac, because the $15 minimum has already been implemented. Nine months in, there have been rumors of employers cutting back on retirement benefits and paid vacations to offset the wage increases. Cedarbrook Lodge has said it may cut back on benefits such as free meals and free parking. But there is no significant disruption.

Before the wage took effect, SeaTac *parking-lot operator MasterPark said it might respond by replacing some workers with automation. Instead, MasterPark implemented a 99-cent-per-day “Living Wage Surcharge.” The company’s managing partner told the Seattle Times that layoffs in favor of automation would be “foolish” and that his employees are “happy campers.”

SeaTac-based Alaska Airlines, likewise, spent heavily to defeat the minimum wage, saying that it would harm competitiveness. Though the $15 wage for airport workers remains in court, Alaska Airlines, the dominant SeaTac carrier, apparently isn’t worried: Last month, the port authority moved forward with airport construction that could reach nearly $1 billion — to be paid for by the airlines.

thoughtone · Sep 9, 2014

source: Huffington Post

America's 'Job Creators' Would Rather Do Anything But Create Jobs: Survey

America's capitalists take every chance they get to remind us that they are our "job creators," but it turns out that their least-favorite thing on earth to do is create jobs.

Most U.S. business leaders would rather build robots, outsource work or use part-time employees than hire workers full-time, according to a new Harvard Business School survey. Here's a nice infuriating graphic from the smarty-pantses at Harvard Business School, who are educating all of our future non-job-creators in the art of not creating jobs:

As you can see from the chart, 46 percent of our job creators would rather spend money on technology than employ humans, compared with a sad 26 percent who prefer people to robots, and another 29 percent who were confused or indifferent about the question or fell asleep while the survey taker was talking. Forty-nine percent would rather outsource than hire, compared with 30 percent who'd rather hire.

Ever notice how the stock market and corporate profits are at all-time highs, while our wages are flat and roughly half of us still think the economy is in recession? This chart helps explain it, and helps explain why workers' share of those corporate profits is near its lowest since the Truman administration.

This is also bad news for the future of the economy because it means fewer workers are getting the training they need for our super-awesome, high-tech, no-job economy, Harvard pointed out:

"Firms invest most deeply in full-time employees, so preferences for automation, outsourcing, and part-time hires are likely to lead to less skills development," the study authors wrote.

This will give business leaders, who already think we lack the necessary skills for their precious jobs, even less reason to hire us in the future.

Hooray.

thoughtone · Nov 13, 2014

Greed said:
thoughtone, I'm sorry for your loss.

source: New York Times

VW to Allow Labor Groups to Represent Workers at Chattanooga Plant

Volkswagen announced a new policy on Wednesday that was likely to allow several labor groups, including the United Automobile Workers, to represent employees at the company’s Chattanooga, Tenn., plant.

The U.A.W. applauded the move because it would mean partial recognition of the union and regular discussions between management and the U.A.W., and perhaps other labor groups as well. For years, the union has been straining to get a foothold in any of the foreign-owned auto plants in the South.

But VW’s new policy stops short of the U.A.W.’s ultimate goal of being the exclusive union and bargaining agent for the plant’s workers.

Volkswagen has been under intense pressure from its powerful labor union in Germany, IG Metall, to grant recognition to the U.A.W. in Chattanooga. The union’s push for recognition was hurt when the plant’s workers voted 712-626 in February against U.A.W. representation.

Under VW’s new policy, employee groups will be able to use company space for meetings, post information and announcements, and have regular meetings with representatives of Volkswagen’s management. Groups that have the support of more than 15 percent of members can meet monthly with VW’s human resource officials, while those with more than 45 percent support can meet once every two weeks with Volkswagen Chattanooga’s executive committee.

“We recognize and accept that many of our employees are interested in external representation, and we are putting this policy in place so that a constructive dialogue is possible and available for everyone,” said Sebastian Patta, executive vice president for human resources at Volkswagen Chattanooga. “Volkswagen has a long tradition of positive employee engagement at our plants around the world, and we welcome this in our company.”

A group of employees that opposes U.A.W. representation, the American Council of Employees, has also said that it hopes to represent VW workers in Chattanooga.

Gary Casteel, the U.A.W.’s secretary-treasurer, said in a statement that the union appreciated VW’s new policy and that a majority of the plant’s workers had signed up as members of the U.A.W. He said he expected VW to make good on what he said was a commitment to recognize the U.A.W. as the representative of its members.

He stopped short of saying the U.A.W. would seek to be the exclusive bargaining agent for all the plant’s employees.

Saying that the Chattanooga plant is VW’s only facility worldwide without a works council — a group of managers and workers who formulate policy — Mr. Casteel said, “Volkswagen’s employees in Tennessee now can join their fellow team members from around the world in securing a voice in the workplace.”

Maury Nicely, a lawyer who represents the American Council of Employees that is opposed to the U.A.W., called VW’s new policy a positive development.

“It’s VW saying we want to talk to all groups,” he said.

Daniel Cornfield, a labor expert at Vanderbilt University, called VW’s policy innovative, saying that granting unions more frequent meetings with management as they hit the 15 percent, 30 percent and 45 percent thresholds would create a competition in which various labor groups pushed to mobilize and attract members.

Volkswagen’s new policy says it may not be used “by any group or organization to claim or request recognition as the exclusive representative of any group of employees for the purposes of collective bargaining.” The policy adds that any group requesting to be exclusive bargaining agent must comply with the requirements of federal labor law.

Ryan Rose, VW’s general manager for human resource operations, said, “Of course, any employee can approach Volkswagen at any time with an idea or a concern. But we wanted to extend these additional opportunities to groups of employees who want to talk with Volkswagen about issues of common interest.”

thoughtone · Dec 19, 2014

source: Think Progress

Government Labor Board Brings Hammer Down On McDonald’s

On Friday afternoon, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a formal charge against McDonald’s, alleging that it has violated workers’ rights in a variety of ways, including by threatening retribution against employees who participate in strikes.

The complaint targets both individual McDonald’s franchises and the multi-billion-dollar corporate parent company itself, thus lending official weight to a previous finding that franchise agreements do not let McDonald’s USA, LLC off the hook for misbehavior by franchisees. The NLRB has found that 86 out 291 separate worker charges against McDonald’s filed in the past two years have legal merit. Friday’s charges target McDonald’s stores in 13 different cities from New Orleans to Detroit and from Manhattan to Los Angeles.

Lobbyists and store owners from the International Franchise Association have been urging Congress to pre-empt the NLRB actions in recent months. The trade group flew in hundreds of its members for a lobbying day in September, arguing that the NLRB’s finding that McDonald’s is responsible for franchisee behavior “would essentially take away their autonomy to run their own business.” Actual autonomy is hard to come by, though, since store owners are bound by a laundry list of stringent rules set by the corporate parent. The agency’s decision to charge McDonald’s and its franchisees jointly was based in large part on those rules and on a company-provided computer system that monitors labor costs and allegedly facilitates wage theft. It offers support for a separate series of private lawsuits brought on behalf of workers that also seek to challenge the corporate indemnity that franchise agreements have traditionally offered.

The ultimate fate of the franchise business model remains uncertain, but Friday’s formal government charges are a significant advance in the campaign to force fast food companies to reckon with their underpaid workers’ demands. “The federal government’s complaint makes clear that fast-food companies like McDonald’s can’t have it both ways — it can’t exercise such pervasive control over a workplace and effectively dictate wages and working conditions while still saying that it’s not the employer,” Catherine Fisk, a labor and employment law expert at the UC Irvine School of Law, said in a press release.

thoughtone · Dec 23, 2014

thoughtone · Dec 25, 2014

thoughtone · Jan 3, 2015

thoughtone · Jan 4, 2015

thoughtone · Jan 4, 2015

Is this Obama's fault?

source: The Atlantic

While many other states are recovering, Georgia's unemployment rate has risen. Some blame the state's laissez-faire approach to policy.

GRIFFIN, Ga.—Throughout the economic downturn and subsequent recovery, there have been some usual suspects when it comes to the most pitiful state in monthly unemployment figures.

For awhile, Michigan took the prize for highest unemployment rate in the country, until Nevada knocked it off its perch in May of 2010. Nevada then held the title for most of the next three years, sometimes sharing the honor with California, until it ceded the top (more accurately, the bottom) spot to Rhode Island in December 2013.

But now, as the economy picks up steam, and consumer sentiment rises to its highest levels since 2007, a new state keeps appearing at the top of the unemployment list. Georgia, home to Fortune 500 heavyweights such as Home Depot, UPS, and Coca-Cola, had the highest unemployment rate in the nation in August, September, and October. With a November rate of 7.2 percent, the state was narrowly edged out by Mississippi’s 7.3 percent (December statistics won’t come out until mid-January).

This may seem surprising, since Georgia was named the best state to do business in both 2014 and 2013 by Site Selection magazine, largely because of its workforce-training program and low tax rates. Nathan Deal, the state’s GOP governor, handily won reelection in November against Jimmy Carter’s grandson by speaking about Georgia as a job magnet.

But those who follow the state’s economy say the state’s troubling economic figures are directly related to Georgia’s attempts to paint itself as a good state for corporations.

“This is what a state looks like when you have a hands-off, laissez-faire approach to the economy,” said Michael Wald, a former Bureau of Labor Statistics economist in Atlanta. “Georgia is basically a low-wage, low-tax, low-service state, that’s the approach they’ve been taking for a very long time.”

The nation's unemployment rate in November, by contrast, was 5.8 percent, which was also the November jobless rate of Georgia's neighbor and occasional rival, North Carolina.

<hr><figure>

<figcaption class="caption">The unemployment rate in Georgia has risen, while in other once-troubled states, it continues to fall. (Data from BLS)</figcaption></figure><hr>
Governor Deal has emphasized time and again that he believes it is the role of government to get out of the way and let the private sector stimulate the economy. Georgia was among the first states to cut back the duration of unemployment benefits available to its residents to 18 weeks from 26. The state has slashed $8.3 billion from public-school funding since 2003 and passed eligibility requirements for a state financial-aid program that caused a dramatic decline in the number of students in technical colleges (some of those requirements have since been rolled back).

The state also passed a sweeping tax-reform bill in 2012 that eliminated some sales taxes and broadened exemptions for the agricultural industry that small towns and counties say have wreaked havoc on their revenues. Some counties are seeing unemployment rates that indicate the recession is far from over, including Chattahoochee, with an unemployment rate of 14.4 percent and Telfair, with a jobless rate of 13.3 percent.

Areas surrounding Atlanta are faring better, with Fulton County, where Atlanta is located, posting an unemployment rate of 7.3 percent, and DeKalb seeing joblessness drop to 6.8 percent.

But even some areas not far from the city are still struggling. They include the town of Griffin, located in Spalding County, a one-time, textile- manufacturing hub where the unemployment rate in October was 9 percent. Now, workers are tearing down the old factories and shopping plazas along the road from Atlanta are empty, with no trace of the stores once located there.

Griffin residents such as Richard Joiner say they haven't seen much improvement in the economy. Joiner, 46, worked for two decades as a machine operator in the field of plastic extrusion. When he got laid off during the recession, he found a job packing ready-made salads, but then work there slowed down too. Joiner did what economists say workers like him need to do to get ahead in this economy—he went back to school for video and film production, aware that shows such as the Walking Dead were increasingly filming and producing in towns like his. But then the state changed the rules for unemployment benefits and Joiner lost his source of income, so he was forced to drop out of school and seek work.

Without any money or prospects, he was evicted from his apartment, so he was forced to move in with his mother. His grown children had to find somewhere else to live. He has no car, so he walks three miles to the Griffin Career Center to search for a job on the computers there.

Joiner still owes $13,000 in student loans, and hasn’t been able to find any sort of work.

“This may be a good place for companies, but not for people actually looking for work,” he told me, sitting in the waiting room of the Career Center. “Companies may come here for the tax breaks, but they’re not actually bringing jobs for the people who live here.”

What’s frustrating about Joiner’s situation is that he’s doing everything right—going back to school, trying a new industry, looking for work wherever he can find it. But without the resources that have long been in place for people like him, he’s struggling.

Many other students in Georgia have dropped out of school after changes to funding for higher education, according to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. Changes to the lottery-funded HOPE grant program in 2011 led to a decline of 38,000 students enrolled at the state’s technical schools, said Alan Essig, the institute’s director (John Oliver has recently explored the folly of using the state lotteries to pay for education). Even without scholarships, higher education in Georgia is getting more expensive. Tuition and fees at Georgia public universities have increased 67 percent since 2008; at technical colleges, they’ve increased 65 percent, according to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.

The decline in education funding may already be directly impacting the state's economy. In December, the state High Demand Career Initiative released a report finding that some employers, including Home Depot, weren't able to find enough high-skilled workers to fill available jobs. They were forced to hire out of state, the report found.

Only about 42 percent of Georgia's young adults have earned a college credential, although more than 60 percent of jobs in the state will require a college certificate or degree.

“It’s a misconception that these so-called business-friendly policies are closely related to stronger economic growth,” said Wesley Tharpe, an analyst with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. “A state’s economy depends on an educated workforce, transportation infrastructure, public safety, reliable street cleaning, and snow removal.”

Transportation is a problem in Georgia, too. The state ranks 49th in the nation in per capita transportation funding, and Atlanta’s commutes are famously terrible. The state could have borrowed funds for transportation improvements, said Wald, but instead decided in 2012 to ask voters to pass an increase in sales tax to fund transportation projects. It was defeated handily at the ballot box.
<figure>

<figcaption class="caption">An abandoned mall in Griffin, Georgia </figcaption></figure>Georgia isn’t the only state to find that lowering taxes in an effort to jumpstart the economy can backfire. Indeed, one of the biggest issues dividing Democrats and Republicans during the recession was whether the Keynesian approach of increasing government spending in a recession best stimulates the economy, or whether governments should get out of the way and allow businesses to do the work.

Kansas passed sweeping tax cuts in 2012, only to see protests over its low levels of education funding and a debt downgrade to boot. Ohio did away with its estate tax and scaled back income taxes, forcing many local governments to reduce services. Tax cuts heralded by Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin have led to budget shortfalls that have even some Republican legislators worried.

“Sometimes ideological experiments bring unintended outcomes," Oklahoma Treasurer Ken Miller told the Wall Street Journal in June, about Kansas’s experiment.

In Georgia, those unintended outcomes have reverberated through small, rural towns that traditionally support conservative fiscal policies.

“We’re desperately awaiting recovery—we’re still not back to 2008 revenue levels,” said Chris Hobby, the city manager of Bainbridge, right on the Florida border. “We were climbing back towards those levels, and then in 2013, when these tax exemptions went into place, you can see our revenue just fall off the cliff.”

The exemptions he’s talking about were part of H.B. 386, passed by the state legislature in 2012. The law replaced an annual car tax with a one-time title tax, which is paid when a car is bought. It also eliminated sales tax on energy used in manufacturing, and expanded a program that allowed the agriculture industry to avoid paying sales tax on a variety of products.

Bainbridge has had to put aside repairs to a 60-year-old elementary school. The city employs just 141 people, as opposed to 185 in 2008 and collected fewer taxes last year than it did in 2010. It was forced to raise property taxes for the first time in 30 years, and has narrowed its focus to pothole repair rather than road repaving.

“I think the tax reform was made with all the best intentions,” Hobby said. “But it has really created a crisis in the rural parts of the state.”
<figure>

<figcaption class="caption">Empty stores along South Hill Street in Griffin
</figcaption></figure>The story is the same in many other rural areas: Washington, Georgia, disbanded its police force earlier this year because of budget issues, and in June, Valdosta raised property taxes for the first time since 1992, after cutting 5 percent of its workforce and reducing spending on transportation.

“In many rural areas, this is going to prolong coming out of the recession,” said Amy Henderson, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Municipal Association, which calculated that some rural counties in the south had seen sales-tax decreases of more than 15 percent between 2012 and 2013.

To be sure, there are some positive pieces to the Georgia economy. The state has gained 93,900 jobs since the beginning of the year, not that many fewer than the 110,700 added by rival North Carolina, which has only a slightly smaller population. Industries such as retail, logistics, and hospitality are adding jobs at a rapid clip. And some of the movement in the unemployment rate can be attributed to the state's growing labor force. Georgia had 4.8 million people in its labor force in June, an all-time high, though that number has shrunk in recent months as some people gave up looking for work.

And many industries are still struggling. Georgia was hit hard by the housing bust: The state employs 30 percent fewer construction workers than it did during the peak and 20 percent fewer manufacturing workers than it did a decade ago. The state government continues to shed jobs: down 2,400 from a year ago, and down 14,700 from the peak in 2008.

So while some industries are adding positions, they aren’t growing quickly enough to make up for industries that have disappeared.

A few years back, I visited a company in Griffin that was going to benefit from a $50 billion pledge made by Walmart to buy more products manufactured in the United States. The company, 1888 Mills, had won a contract to supply their Georgia-made towels to 1,200 Walmart stores. But the factory the company showed me was mostly machines, with a few people to run them. The Walmart contract created only about 35 jobs, if that, at 1888 Mills. Even if manufacturing does come back to Georgia, and to Griffin, it won’t create many jobs.

The company illustrates the one-two punch Georgia is facing. The economy has lost industries, like manufacturing and construction that may never return the way they once were. But programs that could help retrain workers or send them back to school have been scaled back. Counties still figuring out how to make up for that lost tax revenue are facing even more revenue declines.
<figure>

<figcaption class="caption">Candy Swopes in the Griffin Career Center
</figcaption></figure>Candy Swopes, 47, has wanted to go back to school for as long as she can remember. But things kept coming up. After she had her daughter, she found work for a company that manufactured audio equipment for cars. When the company moved to Mexico, though, she lost her job. She found work to pay the bills: as a housekeeper at a Super 8, packing boxes for Toys R Us, helping manufacture plastic wrap. But eventually her employer would tell her that things had slowed down and that they didn’t need her anymore.

She finally scraped together enough money to go back to school to study electrical technology, but then her financial aid ran out, so she went to a temp agency to find a job. Now, she’s trying to find enough money to complete her schooling and to send her 20-year-old daughter to culinary school.

Both have heard stories of people saddled by student-loan debt, and don't want to take out big loans. But Swopes still can’t find a steady job so they haven't come up with tuition money yet. She’s looking though.

“I told her, ‘You have to go to school, no ifs, ands or buts about it,’” Swopes told me in the quiet of the Griffin Career Center. “I don’t want her to struggle like I’m struggling.”

On Griffin’s main thoroughfare, others seem to be in a similar bind.

The street is dotted with bright signs advertising “Space for Lease.” Lori Bean, who owns a jam company, said sales in Georgia this year have been half of what they were last year.

“We’ve learned to live with it,” said Burt Crapo, the founder of Agape Computers, one of the businesses doing well in Griffin. But Crapo’s wife works for the county in community development, and hasn’t gotten a raise for years. Her health-insurance premiums are going up, and every now and then, she hears rumors about impending furloughs.

People in Griffin are still cautious about spending, said Tony Sharp, who owns a jewelry store in town, even though gas prices are low.

"There's not a single thing in here that people have to have," he said, gesturing along the long rows of jewelry in his store. "Things are better, but they're not exactly as they were."

Crapo knows it might be a long time before things get back to normal in Georgia. A few restaurants may be doing well on the street, but he knows too well that many others aren’t. Next to him, a framing store recently closed up shop. A handwritten sign lurks in the door, starting to fade: “Gone Out of Business."

thoughtone · Jan 4, 2015

QueEx · Jan 8, 2015

thoughtone · Jan 14, 2015

thoughtone · Feb 3, 2015

source: Detroit Free Press

Heart and sole: Detroiter walks 21 miles in work commute
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James Robertson, 56, of Detroit, walks toward Woodward Ave. in Detroit to catch his morning bus to Somerset Collection in Troy before walking to his job at Schain Mold & Engineering in Rochester Hills on Thursday January 29, 2015. James walks 21 miles daily round trip to his job.Robertson's roundtrip commute requires a bus ride each direction as well as nearly 21-miles of walking consuming 22 hours of his day before beginning again throughout the work week. (Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)

"I set our attendance standard by this man," says Todd Wilson, plant manager at Schain Mold & Engineering. "I say, if this man can get here, walking all those miles through snow and rain, well I'll tell you, I have people in Pontiac 10 minutes away and they say they can't get here — bull!"

As he speaks of his loyal employee, Wilson leans over his desk for emphasis, in a sparse office with a view of the factory floor. Before starting his shift, Robertson stops by the office every day to talk sports, usually baseball. And during dinnertime each day, Wilson treats him to fine Southern cooking, compliments of the plant manager's wife.

"Oh, yes, she takes care of James. And he's a personal favorite of the owners because of his attendance record. He's never missed. I've seen him come in here wringing wet," says Wilson, 53, of Metamora Township.

With a full-time job and marathon commutes, Robertson is clearly sleep deprived, but powers himself by downing 2-liter bottles of Mountain Dew and cans of Coke.

"I sleep a lot on the weekend, yes I do," he says, sounding a little amazed at his schedule. He also catches zzz's on his bus rides. Whatever it takes to get to his job, Robertson does it.

"I can't imagine not working," he says.

'Lord, keep me safe'

The sheer time and effort of getting to work has ruled Robertson's life for more than a decade, ever since his car broke down. He didn't replace it because, he says, "I haven't had a chance to save for it." His job pays $10.55 an hour, well above Michigan's minimum wage of $8.15 an hour but not enough for him to buy, maintain and insure a car in Detroit.

As hard as Robertson's morning commute is, the trip home is even harder.

At the end of his 2-10 p.m. shift as an injection molder at Schain Mold's squeaky-clean factory just south of M-59, and when his coworkers are climbing into their cars, Robertson sets off, on foot — in the dark — for the 23-mile trip to his home off Woodward near Holbrook. None of his coworkers lives anywhere near him, so catching a ride almost never happens.

Instead, he reverses the 7-mile walk he took earlier that day, a stretch between the factory and a bus stop behind Troy's Somerset Collection shopping mall.
"I keep a rhythm in my head," he says of his seemingly mechanical-like pace to the mall.

At Somerset, he catches the last SMART bus of the day, just before 1 a.m. He rides it into Detroit as far it goes, getting off at the State Fairgrounds on Woodward, just south of 8 Mile. By that time, the last inbound Woodward bus has left. So Robertson foots it the rest of the way — about 5 miles — in the cold or rain or the mild summer nights, to the home he shares with his girlfriend.

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Buy PhotoThe daily route of "the incredible commuter" James Robertson, 56, of Detroit. (Photo: Detroit Free Press)
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"I have to go through Highland Park, and you never know what you're going to run into," Robertson says. "It's pretty dangerous. Really, it is (dangerous) from 8 Mile on down. They're not the type of people you want to run into.

"But I've never had any trouble," he says. Actually, he did get mugged several years ago — "some punks tuned him up pretty good," says Wilson, the plant manager. Robertson chooses not to talk about that.

So, what gets him past dangerous streets, and through the cold and gloom of night and winter winds?

"One word — faith," Robertson says. "I'm not saying I'm a member of some church. But just before I get home, every night, I say, 'Lord, keep me safe.' "

The next day, Robertson adds, "I should've told you there's another thing: determination."

A land of no buses

Robertson's 23-mile commute from home takes four hours. It's so time-consuming because he must traverse the no-bus land of rolling Rochester Hills. It's one of scores of tri-county communities (nearly 40 in Oakland County alone) where voters opted not to pay the SMART transit millage. So it has no fixed-route bus service.

Once he gets to Troy and Detroit, Robertson is back in bus country. But even there, the bus schedules are thin in a region that is relentlessly auto-centric.

"The last five years been really tough because the buses cut back," Robertson says. Both SMART and DDOT have curtailed service over the last half decade, "and with SMART, it really affected service into Detroit," said Megan Owens, executive director of Transportation Riders United.

Detroit's director of transportation said there is a service Robertson may be able to use that's designed to help low-income workers. Job Access and Reverse Commute, paid for in part with federal dollars, provides door-to-door transportation to low-income workers, but at a cost. Robertson said he was not aware of the program.

Still, metro Detroit's lack of accessible mass transit hasn't stopped Robertson from hoofing it along sidewalks — often snow-covered — to get to a job.

At home at work

Robertson is proud of all the miles he covers each day. But it's taking a toll, and he's not getting any younger.

"He comes in here looking real tired — his legs, his knees," says coworker Janet Vallardo, 59, of Auburn Hills.

But there's a lot more than a paycheck luring him to make his weekday treks. Robertson looks forward to being around his coworkers, saying, "We're like a family." He also looks forward to the homemade dinners the plant manager's wife whips up for him each day.

"I look at her food, I always say, 'Excellent. No, not excellent. Phenomenal,' " he says, with Wilson sitting across from him, nodding and smiling with affirmation.

Although Robertson eats in a factory lunchroom, his menus sound like something from a Southern café: Turnip greens with smoked pork neck bones, black-eyed peas and carrots in a brown sugar glaze, baby-back ribs, cornbread made from scratch, pinto beans, fried taters, cheesy biscuits. They're the kind of meal that can fuel his daunting commutes back home.

Though his job is clearly part of his social life, when it's time to work this graduate of Northern High School is methodical. He runs an injection-molding machine the size of a small garage, carefully slicing and drilling away waste after removing each finished part, and noting his production in detail on a clipboard.

Strangers crossing paths

Robertson has walked the walk so often that drivers wonder: Who is that guy? UBS banker Blake Pollock, 47, of Rochester, wondered. About a year ago, he found out.

Pollock tools up and down Crooks each day in his shiny black 2014 Chrysler 300.

"I saw him so many times, climbing through snow banks. I saw him at all different places on Crooks," Pollock recalls.

Last year, Pollock had just parked at his office space in Troy as Robertson passed. The banker in a suit couldn't keep from asking the factory guy in sweats, what the heck are you doing, walking out here every day? They talked a bit. Robertson walked off and Pollock ruminated.

From then on, Pollock began watching for the factory guy. At first, he'd pick him up occasionally, when he could swing the time. But the generosity became more frequent as winter swept in. Lately, it's several times a week, especially when metro Detroit sees single-digit temperatures and windchills.

"Knowing what I know, I can't drive past him now. I'm in my car with the heat blasting and even then my feet are cold," Pollock says.

Other times, it's 10:30 or 11 p.m., even after midnight, when Pollock, who is divorced, is sitting at home alone or rolling home from a night out, and wondering how the man he knows only as "James" is doing in the frigid darkness.

On those nights, Pollock runs Robertson all the way to his house in Detroit.

"I asked him, why don't you move closer" to work. "He said his girlfriend inherited their house so it's easy to stay there," Pollock said.

On a recent night run, Pollock got his passenger home at 11 p.m. They sat together in the car for a minute, outside Robertson's house.

"So, normally you'd be getting here at 4 o'clock (in the morning), right?" the banker asks. "Yeah," Robertson replies. Pollock flashes a wry smile. "So, you're pretty early, aren't you?" he says. Robertson catches the drift.

"Oh, I'm grateful for the time, believe me," Robertson says, then adds in a voice rising with anticipation: "I'm going to take me a bath!"

After the door shuts and Pollock pulls away, he admits that Robertson mystifies him, yet leaves him stunned with admiration for the man's uncanny work ethic and determination.

"I always say to my friends, I'm not a nice guy. But I find myself helping James," Pollock says with a sheepish laugh. He said he's picked up Robertson several dozen times this winter alone.

Has a routine

At the plant, coworkers feel odd seeing one of their team numbers always walking, says Charlie Hollis, 63, of Pontiac. "I keep telling him to get him a nice little car," says Hollis, also a machine operator.

Echoes the plant manager Wilson, "We are very much trying to get James a vehicle." But Robertson has a routine now, and he seems to like it, his coworkers say.

"If I can get away, I'll pick him up. But James won't get in just anybody's car. He likes his independence," Wilson says.

Robertson has simple words for why he is what he is, and does what he does. He speaks with pride of his parents, including his father's military service.

"I just get it from my family. It's a lot of walking, I know."

thoughtone · Feb 4, 2015

QueEx · Feb 5, 2015

thoughtone · Mar 24, 2015

thoughtone · Apr 20, 2015

source: NBC News

Alabama Auto Parts Plant Slapped with Federal Restraining Order

A federal judge in Alabama issued a temporary restraining order Thursday against auto parts manufacturer Lear Corp. after the Labor Department accused the company of illegally harassing its workers and obstructing a federal safety investigation.

The Labor Department on Wednesday asked a federal district court to issue the restraining order against Lear that would force it to drop a lawsuit against a worker it fired after she made public statements about unsafe workplace conditions at the company.

"It appears employees spoke openly about the health and safety conditions where they worked, and [Lear] subsequently transferred or terminated them for doing so," wrote Judge Callie V. S. Granade, for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

Lear, a multinational auto parts manufacturer, has come under scrutiny in recent months over claims about worker safety in its Selma, Alabama, Renosol plant. The plant employs more than 80 workers on an assembly line that makes car-seat and headrest foam cushions exclusively for Hyundai vehicles.

The federal suit came the same day that a former Lear employee, Kimberly King, 50, appeared in a Montgomery County, Alabama court over a separate lawsuit Lear filed against her last month. The company had fired King and sued her after she complained publicly about unsafe conditions in the plant. A judge had slapped her with a restraining order banning her from discussing the case publicly.

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Kim King works at the Renosol factory and says that she's developed "a cough that I can't get rid of." She spends $100 per month on inhalers and other medications for respiratory problems that she says come from working at the plant.

The Labor Department suit asked the court to intervene and to force the company to drop its lawsuit against King, re-hire her, and desist from otherwise intimidating workers.

"The litigation commenced by [Lear] against former employee Kimberly King is meritless and designed with the intent to create a chilling effect within [Lear's] employee ranks," the Labor Department wrote.

The Department asked the federal court to stop Lear from "terminating, suspending, harassing, suing, threatening, intimidating, or taking any other discriminatory/retaliatory action against any current and/or former employee" who engages with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or speaks publicly about workplace concerns.

A hearing is scheduled for April 29 when the court will decide whether to impose an injunction on Lear. Until then, the court has issued a temporary restraining order.

King was one of the subjects of a July NBC News investigation about workers who said they'd become sick from exposure to a chemical called TDI used to make foam for car interiors. A Yale University clinic tested worker blood samples and concluded that King and others had been sensitized to TDI, which can lead to permanent respiratory illness.

In previous comments, Lear told NBC that it had not seen the Yale doctor's tests.

In November, OSHA cited and fined the company for failing to adequately protect workers from exposure to the chemicals. OSHA says that its examination of worker medical records shows that employees were likely made sick from chemical exposure.

Lear said as recently as last week that there is no evidence of unsafe conditions. Lear fired and sued King after she refused to sign a statement admitting to lying about conditions at the plant. The company had also temporarily suspended another worker. A Montgomery County, Alabama judge issued a temporary restraining order against King, which effectively barred her from speaking publicly about Lear.

"We deny all the allegations by the DOL (Department of Labor) -- they simply are not true," wrote Lear vice president Mel Stephens in response to NBC News' questions about the suit. "We look forward to presenting our side of the facts in this matter in court."

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The Renosol plant, which makes foam seats for Hyundai, near Selma, Alabama.

King appeared in court yesterday in the earlier case, which is ongoing. But the Labor Department's federal lawsuit, filed Wednesday, asked a federal judge to, in effect, override Lear's suit against King.

Lear's "entire goal in seeking a [Temporary Restraining Order] is to silence Ms. King from continuing to speak out, in other words, to stop her from engaging in protected activities," the Labor Department wrote in a memorandum attached to the suit.

The Department said the Lear suit exposes a "disparity in power" between the Fortune 500 Company and King, who earned $12.20 an hour.

OSHA has been engaged for months in a federal whistleblower investigation over concerns that the company has retaliated against workers who speak to the press or to federal health and safety authorities. The federal complaint filed yesterday alleges that the company has intimated workers, which OSHA says obstructs the agency's ability to investigate worker safety.

In the federal court order issued Thursday Judge Granade wrote that Lear is prohibited from "dissuading and attempting to prevent employees from initiating discussions with the Secretary of Labor and others about their work environment. This chilling effect also limits [Labor Department's] ability to investigate related claims."

In filings, OSHA also said that during the health and safety investigation that it conducted last year, which Lear attempted to halt through legal action, the company filmed workers who participated in TDI tests. The government suit also asks that the company be barred from any efforts to interfere further with the OSHA investigations.

thoughtone · Apr 20, 2015

source: USA Today

Tesla plans to pay $25 an hour at Gigafactory

Tesla Motors plans to pay an average hourly wage of $25 at its huge battery factory under construction near Reno, Nev., the head of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada said.

That is higher than nearly all automakers in the U.S. are paying new hires and nearly double what most parts suppliers pay. It's also above the $17 starting hourly wage of Tesla workers who assemble its Model S sedan in Fremont, Calif., near San Jose.

Electric-car maker Tesla is building a massive battery plant called the Gigafactory in the desert east of Reno, and is planning to hire 6,500 workers over the next eight years.

In the Sunday edition of the Reno Gazette-Journal, Mike Kazmierski, CEO of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada, said Tesla's pay scale is driving up what existing and new employers in the area are paying.

"Three years ago, a support call center paid $10, $11, $12 an hour," Kazmierski said. "We're basically saying, if you're not paying $12 to $15 an hour, you probably will go somewhere else. That's part of the reason why we talk retention of workforce as a priority for us."

Last October, the Reno newspaper reported that the majority of Tesla workers -- about 4,750 -- will start at $22.79, while about 820 equipment and quality technicians will start at $27.88 an hour. Engineers and senior staff will be paid $41.83 per hour

An artist's rendering of what Tesla's Gigafactory for making electric car batteries would look like.

J.E.T.S · Apr 20, 2015

Where's the application for that reno plant? [emoji38]

Sent from Clayton County Department of Corrections using Pay Phone

thoughtone · Jul 17, 2015

thoughtone · Jul 17, 2015

thoughtone · Jul 26, 2015

thoughtone · Aug 10, 2015

thoughtone · Oct 11, 2015

thoughtone · Oct 11, 2015

source: Communications Workers of America

10 Ways the TPP Would Hurt U.S. Working Families

1. Call center and other service sector jobs would be at risk. The TPP will include both investment rules (making it safer to invest overseas) and service sector rules (guaranteeing access for cross border services here) that will further promote the off shoring of jobs in call centers, computer programming, engineering, accounting, medical diagnostics and more.

2. Manufacturing jobs would be at risk. The TPP is slated to include NAFTA-style terms that give special benefits to firms that relocate investment and jobs — and this deal includes Vietnam, the low-cost off-shoring alternative to China. These new rights would reduce the risks and costs usually associated with off-shoring to a low wage country. Moreover, there may be problems with “rules of origin.” For example, the Korea trade agreement only required that 35% of the products coming into the United States duty free originate in Korea — the other 65% could come from parts made in China. Thus, the TPP could be used as another backdoor way for Chinese products to come into the U.S. duty free.

3. The TPP would be forever. The TPP is not really about trade, but a mechanism to make the world “safe” for corporate investment and mobility. Once the TPP is signed, unlike domestic laws, it would have no expiration date and could only be altered by a consensus of all signatories — locking in failed, extreme policies. Also, the TPP is intended as a “docking agreement” so that other Pacific Rim countries could join over time if accepted by the signatory countries. Canada and Mexico joined in December 2012. And Japan joined shortly thereafter.

4. Foreign firms in more countries would be given equal access to U.S. federal government contracts. Firms operating in any TPP signatory country would be given equal access to the vast majority of U.S. federal procurement contracts — rather than allowing us to recycle our tax dollars here to create American jobs. Specifications like “buy America”, “renewable/ recycled” or “sweat free” and obligations for firms to meet prevailing wages could be challenged. Companies could not be barred because of the horrible human rights conditions of their home countries or their own record.

5. Private corporations would be able to challenge domestic laws and regulations including those dealing with telecom, health and the environment. The TPP creates a special dispute resolution process that corporations can use to challenge domestic laws and regulations. Corporations could directly sue our government to demand taxpayer compensation if they think our laws limit their “expected future profits.”

6. The Call Center Bill and other pro-worker legislation could be challenged. The U.S. is demanding a provision in the TPP that would limit the ability of a country to prohibit or regulate cross-border data processing and other services. These and other provisions could be used to undermine pro-worker/pro consumer legislation like our call center bill.

7. Wages, benefits and collective bargaining rights would be eroded. We know that trade agreements have helped drive down wages and benefits and increasingly erode our collective bargaining rights. The TPP will exacerbate this race to the bottom because it further empowers companies by expanding their rights, reducing the ability of U.S. workers to exercise their rights and including countries like Vietnam which is the low-cost, no labor rights alternative to China.

8. Medicine prices would increase, access to life saving drugs would decrease and the profits of big pharmaceutical companies would expand. Big pharmaceutical companies are working hard to insure that the TPP extends their patent based monopolies. This would expand their profits, keep drug prices artificially high and leave millions of people without access to life saving drugs.

9. Wall Street would benefit at the expense of workers and productive domestic investment. Governments would be restricted from using “capital controls” to avoid future financial crises by forestalling floods of hot money speculation. This deal would continue to give a free ride to the financial firms that wrecked our economy.

10. Food Safety standards, rules and regulations could be challenged by foreign governments. The TPP would subject our food standards, labeling programs and specific-pesticide regulations to challenge by foreign governments.

Read more at: http://www.cwa-union.org/pages/10_ways_the_tpp_would_hurt_cwa_represented_workers

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