The Republican Party Wishes You a Happy Labor Day!
To mark Labor Day 2011, conservative flame-thrower Michelle Malkin offered American workers a look back at the "top 10 union thug moments of the year." As it turns out, Malkin's union-bashing hyperbole differs little from the leading lights of the Republican Party. While Sarah Palin has decried "union thugs," Mitt Romney promised to take on "union bosses" and Michele Bachmann said she's open to reducing the minimum wage and eliminating the corporate income tax, virtually the entire party leadership has propagated the myth that public employees are overpaid.
Sadly, the numbers show that incomes, working conditions, educational performance and health care are worst where union protections are weakest and Republicans poll best. More disturbing still, recent polling confirms that in the face of chronic unemployment, the GOP has largely succeeded in demonizing unions and shifting attention from creating jobs to reducing the national debt.
A new Gallup poll suggests that Republicans have been wildly successful in making "union" a four-letter word. Forty two percent of respondents said unions should have less influence, up by half from just 28 percent four years ago.
While almost 7 in 10 Republicans predictably want unions to be less influential, independents by 40 to 33 percent echoed that sentiment. Just as disappointing, Americans believe the labor groups that won them the weekend, workplace health care coverage and family leave are just in it for themselves:
When asked to assess the impact of unions on various groups or entities, Americans clearly believe unions mostly benefit workers who are members of unions, and mostly harm workers who are not union members.
As it turns out, getting Americans not to care for unions wasn't the Republicans' only propaganda success. From the moment they secured their House majority last November, the GOP also got the people and the press alike to care more about federal deficits than jobs.
This is a little surprising, given the Republicans' midterm promises.
For months, House Speaker John Boehner has insisted that "getting Americans back to work has been and will continue to be the number-one priority for our new majority." Of course, that promise wasn't just belied by Boehner's choices instead to fast-track draconian new anti-abortion legislation or his April declaration that repealing the Obama health care law was "our No. 1 priority." As the data show, the GOP has successfully transformed Americans' focus onto another issue altogether: the budget deficit.
("Reagan," Vice President Dick Cheney famously declared in 2002, "proved deficits don't matter." Unless, that is, a Democrat is in the White House. After all, while Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush doubled it again, each Republican was rewarded with a second term in office. But as the Gallup polling data show, concern over the federal deficit hasn't been this high since Democratic budget balancer Bill Clinton was in office. All of which suggest the Republicans' born-again disdain for deficits ranks among the greatest - and most successful - political double-standards in recent memory.)
The triumph of the GOP messaging machine was reflected in an April Washington Post/Pew Research poll. In just the four months since the Republican majority took control of the House, the percentage of Americans believing the budget deficit was a major problem which must be addressed now catapulted from 70% to 81%. But even more revealing is an April Gallup survey (chart below, left) which showed the deficit (17%) rivaling the unemployment (19%) and the overall state of the economy (26%). And as the National Journal revealed in May (chart below, right), the shift from jobs to deficits in American political discourse is reflected in media coverage as well.
As the National Journal explained:
Major U.S. newspapers have increasingly shifted their attention away from coverage of unemployment in recent months while greatly intensifying their focus on the deficit, a National Journal analysis shows. The analysis -- based on a measure of how often the words "unemployment" and "deficit" appear in major publications -- portrays a dramatically shifting landscape of coverage over the past two years, as the debate over how to fix the federal deficit has risen to prominence and the question of how to handle still-high unemployment has faded from the media's consciousness.
What hasn't faded from the media's consciousness is the perpetual conservative campaign to undermine workers' rights and benefits. Amplified by the NLRB's Boeing ruling and the Republican crusade against government workers in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Tennessee and other states, the blessings of union-busting measures and "Right-to-Work" laws are a fixture in business-friendly media. It's no surprise that the 2011 edition of CNBC's rankings of America's Top States for Business praised Right-to-Work states. When it came to its workforce rankings, CNBC put RTW states in 18 of the top 22 spots. Of course, that was by definition:
We rated states based on the education level of their workforce, as well as the numbers of available workers. We also considered union membership. While organized labor contends that a union workforce is a quality workforce, that argument, more often than not, doesn't resonate with business.
Workers, on the other hand, would beg to differ.
If the geography above looks familiar, it should. It not only resembles recent American electoral maps, but the atlas of union-busting as well. Within the borders of the so-called "Right to Work" states (which prohibit workers from being required to join a trade union as a condition of employment), private sector and public sector employees alike find unfriendly faces in power:
Just how unfriendly was documented six years ago by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts. The report, titled "Decent Work in America: The State-by State Work Environment Index 2005", offers an assessment of the best work environments in the United States. The top five states were Delaware, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont and Iowa, the bottom five were South Carolina, Utah, Arkansas Texas and Louisiana. (For the full data tables, analysis and methodology, see the report's technical background paper.)
As a rule of thumb, if your state voted for John McCain in 2008, workers there don't have it very good. All of the top 5 states voted for Barack for President; all 10 bottom dwellers are residents of George W. Bush's Red America.
The Work Environment Index (WEI) rates the quality of Americans' working lives by a weighting of three factors: job opportunities, job quality, and job fairness. Job Opportunities includes the statewide unemployment rates, the duration of unemployment, and the percentage of "involuntary" part-timers. Job Quality refers to average wages (importantly, adjusted for the cost of living) and the proportion of workers receiving health and pension benefits. Job Fairness measures each state's percentage of low-wage workers (an indicator of income inequality), pay differential between men and women, minimum wage levels, collective bargaining rules and importantly, whether it is a "right to work" state.
There are no surprises among the worst performing states in the Work Environment Index. Virtually all below the Mason-Dixon Line, the WEI laggards feature dismal pay and an outwardly hostile environment towards union organizing, workers' rights and collective bargaining. Red America is the home of the Right-to-Work (RTW) states. A leader in the Right-to-Work movement, Bush's home state of Texas was ranked 50th, with the percentage of workers with health and pension benefits running a full 10% below the top WEI performers.
And compensation for state and local public employees is worst among the usual suspects. As the New York Times documented two weeks ago, state workers without a college degree generally make more than their private sector counterparts ($34,000 versus $32,000, or a 6.3% gap), while college graduates make much less (a -19.9% gap). But in the reddest of states, public employees experience a pay deficit regardless of education level. In Mississippi, the pay penalty for state workers without a college degree is 11.9%; for college graduates the deficit is 16.9%.
(Click here to see full size image.)
Since the WEI was published in 2005, the data on living standards in union-bashing Republican strongholds hasn't gotten any prettier. The Census Bureau's 2011 Statistical Abstract (which is based on 2008 data), shows per capita income and median household income is worst where GOP's laissez-faire crowd finds its strongest support. And if poverty is at its highest, as Speaker Boehner might say, then so be it.
With President Obama and Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney set to unveil their respective jobs plans this week, American workers can expect to hear two very diverging views of the path forward. For his part, Mitt Romney has already offered a preview of his message to workers. As he explained in Iowa last month, "Corporations are people, my friend." And as the former venture capitalist joked with an audience of unemployed in Florida:
"I'm also unemployed."
Happy Labor Day from the Republican Party.
labor day no amigo no comrade no no
1980-2009-3 Repuglinut job Creators(?) got 99,000 net new jobs per month over 20 years
Two Great Job Creators Carter + Clinton created 222,000 net new jobs per month over 12 years.
That Greeeat Job Creator Reagan cut Carter Job Growth by 218,000 a month a record to 175,000. 11M in 4 years to 15.8M in 8 years.
1921-2009--Repuglinut Presidents got 800,000 jobs per year and Great Democratic Job Creators got 1,800,000 or twice as many.
Repug fight all things for the Middle Class and the Poor.
Want success hire a Democrat
Want recession-depression hire a Repug
Each "significant" Recession plus Depression has been under a Republican President since 1900. All. 100%.
prove me wrong with numbers not blarney baloney opinions
olduglymeanhonest political historian
Lifeaholics of America
mad mad mad mad mad at INEQUALITY in America
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