Daily Kos

After years of concessions, auto workers at Fiat Chrysler have had enough. They've voted to reject a contract recommended by UAW leadership that would have offered raises, but left in place the tier system in which some workers make significantly more than others. The Detroit Free Press reports that this is the first time since 1982 that UAW workers have voted down a national agreement. It wasn't close either: 65 percent of workers voted against the contract. Alexandra Bradbury writes at Labor Notes that:

Probably the top reason workers voted no was indignation that the agreement broke the union's longstanding promise to cap the lower-paid tier at 25 percent of the workforce this fall. Since 45 percent of Chrysler workers are in Tier 2, many expected a raise to $28 an hour. With no cap, it’s only a matter of time before there’s no first tier left.

Amplifying the anger were Chrysler’s high profits and the revelation that the company plans to move car production to Mexico.

UAW president Dennis Williams said the union would seek further discussion with Chrysler.

Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that 142,000 new jobs were created in September, 118,000 in the private sector and 24,000 in the public sector. Far below the expert consensus that the report would show 215,000 new jobs had been created. The gain nevertheless made September the 67th straight month that new private jobs have been added to the U.S. economy and the 60th month that public jobs have been added.

As noted previously by many analysts, August is the month in which the Bureau of Labor Statistics' first report on jobs is most likely to be heavily revised. But the expert consensus held August would be revised upward and it went the other way. Originally the bureau reported the August gain at 173,000 jobs. It revised that number Friday to 136,000 and revised its calculations for July from 245,000 to 223,000.

The civilian workforce fell 350,000, after having fallen 41,000 in August. The employment-population ratio fell to 59.2 percent, and the labor force participation rate fell to 62.4 percent.

One of the continuing problems in the economy if you're a worker is the lack of solid growth in wages. September didn't change that. Wages for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls fell by a cent. Wages for private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees were unchanged.

The official unemployment rate, which in BLS jargon is labeled U3, came in at 5.1 percent again. Another measure—known as U6—which estimates both unemployment and underemployment—includes people with no job at all, part-time workers who want a full-time job but can't find one, and many "discouraged" workers. U6 fell in September by 0.3 percent to 10.0 percent. The number of people officially unemployed fell slightly to 7.9 million.

The BLS notes that its "confidence level" is plus or minus 105,000. That means the "real" number of new jobs created in September was not 142,000 but rather fell in a range between 37,000 and 247,000.

The BLS also measures the job situation each month for Americans aged 25-54, people in their "prime working years." The employment-population ratio for that group reached a high point of 81.9 percent in April 2000. In December 2007, that ratio had fallen to 79.7 percent, hitting bottom at 74.8 percent in November 2010. Since then, the rate has been slowly rising. In September, however, it remained at 77.2 percent, its average for all nine months of 2015.

For more details about today's jobs report, please continue reading below the fold.

• The U.S. Department of Education, ladies and gentlemen: Ohio official who manipulated charter school data helped win federal grant to take over public schools.
• Raising the minimum wage is very popular in North Carolina.
• A step toward treating college athletes as people doing real work, or a step back from meaningful reform?
• Labor unrest at California ports continues as more subcontracted workers go on strike.
• Workers Independent News report for September 30, 2015:
  
  

With Don Blankenship, the notorious former Massey Energy CEO, about to go on trial for multiple charges stemming from the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion that killed 29 miners in 2010, Mother Jones' Tim Murphy takes an in-depth look at Blankenship's brutal business practices and consolidation of political power in West Virginia. The whole thing is worth a read, but a couple points stand out for what they say about the state of workplace safety protections in this country:

All but one of the charges he faces, a pattern of violation that the UMWA dubbed "industrial homicide," carry light sentences, adding up to a maximum of six years in prison. What threatens to put the 65-year-old away for decades are two allegedly false statements Massey submitted in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission: "We do not condone any violation of MSHA regulations," and "we strive to be in compliance with all regulations at all times," Blankenship informed investors, even as his company was allegedly outflanking the regulatory system. It's the mining equivalent of busting Al Capone for tax evasion.

"I have all the respect in hell that at least somebody was able to say, 'Wait a minute, that isn't right,'" says Bruce Stanley, who represented Caperton in his suit against Massey. "But he's up for what, a possible 30-year sentence? Well, there's only one count that puts that kind of mileage on it. That's the one that says he lied to Wall Street. When it comes to human lives, he gets maybe a year."

Time and time again, we see how little the law values workers' lives. It's startlingly rare for an executive to face charges for worker deaths, no matter how gross the negligence and contempt for human life. And the laws aren't getting stronger any time soon:

The state's signature mine safety accomplishment following Upper Big Branch was a new regulation mandating drug tests for miners, a reform favored by companies and opposed by unions. (Drug use has never been associated with the disaster.) Other reforms have since been rolled back. Federal legislation that would have made it a felony to conspire to commit mine safety violations—what Blankenship is charged with—stalled in Congress thanks to heavy lobbying from the energy industry. Even the chemical safety measure passed by the state Legislature after the Freedom Industries spill was almost immediately gutted by West Virginia lawmakers.

Our lawmakers are not seriously trying to prevent another Upper Big Branch. To do that, they'd have to take on big business and its lobbyists and campaign donors, and that's not happening. It's not just Don Blankenship, it's not just mining, it's not just West Virginia. And it's disgusting.

Four in five Americans thinks companies should be required to "offer paid leave to parents of new children and employees caring for sick family members." So trust a Republican to come up with a paid family leave policy that doesn't require anything and benefits business, not workers. Marco Rubio is the one Republican presidential candidate with any plan on this issue, and experts say it wouldn't expand paid leave to many workers who don't already have it.

Rubio would give tax credits to companies that offer paid leave. The problem is, such tax credits already exist for other things the government wants to encourage companies to do—and we know that it doesn't work very well.

The government offers tax credits to encourage companies to do other things, like hiring veterans or people with disabilities and offering on-site child care. But there is little evidence that these credits significantly change employers’ behavior. Employer-sponsored child care is still extremely rare, for instance, and a subsidy for firms that hire various disadvantaged workers has been found to have little effect on their employment.

Rubio's plan would be a nice reward for companies that are already doing the right thing by offering paid leave, but it's unlikely to mean paid leave for workers who don't already have it, and that means once again leaving low-income women in the dust. Hillary Clinton policy adviser Ann O'Leary writes that:

The companies that don’t offer [paid leave] tend to have large and mainly lower-skilled workforces. But that’s the rub — the people who need paid leave the most are the very people that Rubio’s plan ignores. While everyone should have access to paid family leave, it’s particularly vital for, say, a mother working at a low wage, because she’ll likely have less in savings. [...]

Consider this fact: In the early 1960s, just over 16 percent of women with less than a high school education had access to paid maternity leave after the birth of their first child. Today that number has not moved at all — still only 16 percent of our least educated workers have paid family leave.

But for women with a college degree or more, in the early 1960s, 14 percent had access to paid leave and today that number is over 64 percent. We have literally not moved the needle at all to help our least empowered workers have access to paid maternal leave.

We need policies that actually change this, expanding paid family leave to people who cannot afford to miss a week of pay, not policies that exist to get attention for Marco Rubio as the lone Republican talking about paid leave.

Jeb! Bush's tax plan would make inequality worse, and he thinks that's a-okay.

“The simple fact is 1 percent of people pay 40 percent of all the taxes,” Bush said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Of course, tax cuts for everybody is going to generate more for people that are paying a lot more. I mean that's just the way it is.”

Some simple facts: As of 2010, one percent of people owned 42 percent of the nation's financial wealth (that's excluding homes; including homes, they owned 35.4 percent of the nation's wealth). One percent of Americans get a 20 percent share of the income in this country, and that's been growing, as they've captured more than 86 percent of the income growth since 1979. That richest one percent got 54 percent of capital income—income coming directly from wealth.

So, yeah, it's "just the way it is" in today's America of skyrocketing economic inequality that when a President Bush hands out a tax cut, most of the benefit goes to very rich people, but that's not some immutable law of the universe. The United States once taxed rich people at much higher rates, and the economy was stronger for it, and inequality was (a lot) lower.

But that's not the United States Jeb! Bush wants to see. He wants to see himself getting a $3 million tax cut. That's just the way it is.

Republicans love to talk about how safety-net programs are bad because poverty still exists. But check out how many people are kept out of poverty by these programs:

Social Security was by far the most powerful anti-poverty program in the United States last year, keeping 25.9 million people out of poverty. Refundable tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit, kept 9.8 million people out of poverty. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka food stamps, kept 4.7 million people out of poverty, while other targeted programs (such as housing subsidies, unemployment insurance, and school lunch programs) made it possible for millions more to keep their heads above water.

Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.

“What could I do? It’s pretty tough to close a business and give employees a warning and still have employees that want to work for the evening.”

That is a direct quote from Nick Laskaris, the owner of the now closed Club Wett in the Wisconsin Dells. He also owns the Mt. Olympus resort and theme parks in the Dells. He closed his Las Vegas-themed bar, which never really fit into an area built on water parks and other family-friendly attractions, without warning his employees. One day they had a job, the next they did not.

What Mr. Laskaris did is perfectly legal in Wisconsin and in many other states, because he had less than 50 employees.

Section 109.07 of the Wisconsin Statutes and Chapter DWD 279 of the Wisconsin Administrative Code provide that, with certain exceptions, businesses employing 50 or more persons in the State of Wisconsin must provide written notice 60 days before implementing a "business (plant) closing" or "mass layoff" in the state.

So in Wisconsin, if you work for a company that has more than 50 employees, you will be given 60 days notice before you lose your job due to the business closing. Less than 50 employees, and you are out of work the next day.

There's more below.

• How to start talking about race in your union.
• In America, you can work hard, play by the rules, and still get screwed.
• A look at the life of one of the pope's "four great Americans": Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day.
• Why is college so expensive if professors are paid so little?
• The National Labor Relations Board says Teach for America teachers can unionize, but a Detroit charter school network is appealing that.
• Workers Independent News report for September 24, 2015:
  
  

• Today's domestic workers are not the first to try to organize:
  

When communists, the Women’s Trade Union League, and the Urban League all decided to organize domestic workers, they actually brought these women together in a collective space. Sometimes they reached out to them in the “slave markets,” the name that Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke gave to these street corners in New York City where African-American women waited to be hired as day workers. The Bronx Slave markets became sites of organizing. Then domestic workers and their supporters developed hiring halls where domestic workers could be protected from exploitative employers.

• Eli Broad's $490 million plan to privatize Los Angeles schools.
• Workers Independent News for September 22, 2015:
  
  

Hillary Clinton's union endorsement total has risen to six national unions with the recent endorsement of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America joining the American Federation of Teachers, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry, and the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers.

Clinton also has the endorsement of the New Hampshire branch of the National Education Association. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, has the endorsement of National Nurses United and over the weekend picked up the endorsement of the New Hampshire Postal Workers Union. But two major unions just passed up opportunities to endorse. Both the SEIU and AFSCME recently held board meetings without moving forward on an endorsement.

Although neither union had endorsed by this point in the 2008 cycle—AFSCME endorsed in late October 2007 and SEIU in February 2008 after allowing its locals to endorse earlier—according to Politico's Annie Karni, the decision not to endorse now is "a move labor insiders attribute in part to the uncertainty Vice President Joe Biden’s potential run has inserted into the Democratic primary." Activist support for Sanders and the member backlash against the AFT's early endorsement may also have been a factor, though:

[SEIU] officials said the polls so far show Clinton with the highest level of support from members, with 75 percent of members feeling favorable toward her.

But it has also faced vocal pressure from Sanders supporters to refrain from endorsing. Ahead of its September meeting, hundreds of SEIU leaders, members, retirees and staff signed a petition urging the union to hold off, arguing that an early Clinton endorsement would put the union in direct opposition to a growing movement of Sanders’ supporters fighting for progressive causes, like the Fight for $15.

Some of Sanders' labor supporters hailed the SEIU and AFSCME non-endorsements as good news. Whether the Vermont senator ultimately picks up either of those endorsements, it is a win for him to avoid labor consolidating behind Clinton.

Democratic senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders joined striking workers at the United States Capitol Tuesday morning. The low-wage workers are employed by federal contractors to provide services in federal buildings, yet they earn less than a living wage and some even face weeks without pay when Congress is on recess. The workers are trying to get the pope's attention as he arrives in Washington, DC, with a group of them writing a letter asking him to meet with them:

We want you to know that even though we serve the wealthy and the powerful in the Congress, we earn so little that we live in utter poverty.
We sleep on the streets because we cannot pay the rent.
We go to bed hungry because we can’t put food on the table.
We endure sickness because we cannot afford health care.
We earn so little that we sacrifice our dignity to support our kids.
We work such long hours that our unborn babies have died.
We may be invisible to the wealthy and powerful we serve everyday – but we know we are worthy of a more abundant life as children of God.

"In my view, when we talk about morality and when we talk about justice we have to understand that there is no justice when so few have so much, while so many have so little," Sanders said in an emailed statement. "The time has come for President Obama and the U.S. Senate to end this injustice by requiring all contract workers to be paid at least $15 an hour with the right to form a union. The time has come to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour."