A reminder of how Trump’s hurt everyday Americans -- especially working people – for decades

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research says 43% of union households voted for Donald Trump in 2016; 40% of us cast ballots for him in 2020. That may mean it’s time for a refresher for the damage Trump’s done in business and politics his whole life.

 

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain said, “Trump has been a player in the class war against the working class for decades, whether screwing workers and small businesses in his dealings, exploiting workers at his Mar a Lago estate and properties, blaming workers for the Great Recession, or giving tax breaks to the rich.

 

“He is a con man who has been directly part of the problem we have seen over the past 40 years,” he added.

 

Indeed, in 2014, President Obama instituted a rule to record federal contractors who violated the Davis-Bacon Act that provides Prevailing Wages, plus other worker protections – all to discourage lawbreakers and encourage compliance. Trump repealed the rule.

 

The Communications Workers of America analyzed the Trump administration (2017-20) when the Republican packed the U.S. Supreme Court with “anti-labor judges,” cut the budget and number of inspectors at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and “lowered standards meant to protect workers from getting sick at work and given employers a free pass if they fail to follow even those minimal requirements,” appointed the union-busting corporate attorney Eugene Scalia as U.S. Secretary of Labor, and engineered an anti-worker National Labor Relations Board that made it easier to avoid paying overtime and to retaliate against employees exercising labor rights ranging from protected “concerted activity” or unionizing.

 

The Economic Policy Institute compiled a reminder of some of the anti-union actions the Trump administration took. His NLRB: 

 

* overturned the agency’s own precedent in more than a dozen cases, “weakening workers’ rights,”

* made “it far more difficult for employees and union organizers to talk with employees at the workplace,”

* manipulated its own standard “for what constitutes an ‘appropriate’ bargaining unit, giving employers even greater ability to thwart workers who wish to form a union,”

* upended a 70-year-old policy that prohibited employers “from making unilateral changes to wages, hours or working conditions, giving them greater leeway to make unilateral changes,”

* created a new rule making employers legally permitted to withdraw [union] recognition at the conclusion of the collective bargaining agreement if they have evidence that the union does not have majority support. If the union wants to get its status back, it must file a petition for a new election and prevail in that election,”

* overruled one of its own Administrative Law Judge’s decision about misclassifying employment status, saying that improperly calling an actual employee a “assistant manager” or “independent contractor” would not violate the National Labor Relations Act, plus other harmful actions.

 

“The Trump NLRB systematically rolled back workers’ rights under the NLRA,” the EPI showed. “The Trump Board and General Counsel [favorably] acted on 10 out of 10 of the Chamber of Commerce’s wish-list items and have gone even further to narrow the NLRA’s protections for working people while granting employers new powers under the Act.”

 

It’s all part of a long pattern.

 

Before Trump ran for the White House, the businessman mostly hired non-union labor, according to a study by the IBEW, which said, “According to analysis of lawsuits filed against him and his companies, when union contractors were hired, Trump developed a reputation for stiffing some, delaying payment to others, and shorting workers on overtime and even minimum wage.”

 

Also, the union tracked more than 60 lawsuits for Trump not paying his bills on time, dozens of violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and when building Trump Tower in New York City, hiring Polish immigrants, who he exploited.

 

In a lawsuit against Trump that lasted almost 20 years, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York concluded that Trump “knew the Polish workers were working 'off the books,' that they were doing demolition work, that they were non-union, that they were paid substandard wages with no overtime pay and that they were paid irregularly if at all.”

 

Union households may harbor resentments – which Trump exploits – but supporting him rather than President Biden lets corporations and the 1% escape responsibility. 

 

Brandeis University professor and author Robert Kuttner concisely explains the party differences that affect everyday Americans: “Democrats try to use the government to help working people,” Kuttner writes. “Republican legislators, judges and presidents work to help corporate America evade or overturn those laws, at the expense of workers.”

News analysis: 32-hour workweek addresses worker safety

There’s an old saying that touches on workers’ real need for activities beyond occupations: “Work is more than a job; life is more than work.”

This month, we mark Workers’ Memorial Day, which is more than reverently reflecting on those killed, injured or sickened on the job. The somber occasion also remembers that employers must be held accountable, and that society must prevent unsafe and unhealthy workplaces.

Last month, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bill addressing one aspect: achieving a work-life balance by setting a 32-hour workweek with no loss of pay.

Each day, the U.S. economy sees 340 workers die on the job, and 6,000 other made ill due to preventable working conditions, says the AFL-CIO, and many more suffer stress. Workplace stress is real, and damaging, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which notes that workplace stress reportedly causes 120,000 deaths in the U.S. each year; about 65% of U.S. workers surveyed characterized work as being a very significant or somewhat significant source of stress in each year from 2019-2021; 83% of U.S. workers suffer from work-related stress; 54% of workers report that work stress affects their home life; almost one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness – and or every $1 spent on ordinary mental-health concerns, employers see a $4 return in productivity gains.

“Stress can be harmful to our health,” OSHA says. “While there are many things in life that induce stress, work can be one of those factors.”

Introducing his proposal, Sanders said, “we find workers working longer hours. We find workers working deep into their 60s, 70s, even 80s. We find the associated deaths of despair from addiction and suicide, of people who don’t feel a life of endless, hopeless work is a life worth living.

“It is time to reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life,” he added. “It is time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay.”

The “Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act” is “not radical,” Sanders said.

And it’s not new.

Cutting hours has been debated since the 1800s, when the struggle was to cut weekly hours to 40 and workers’ cry was, “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what you will.”

Conservative industrialist Henry Ford in 1926 on his own shortened his company’s workweeks to five eight-hour days, and in 1933 a 30-hour workweek passed the U.S. Senate, but corporate America defeated it in the House. However, progressive President Franklin D. Roosevelt took up the fight in the 1930s, and in 1938 got the ground-breaking Fair Labor Standards Act passed, setting the basic workweek at 44 hours, after which overtime pay kicked in. (Likewise, Sanders’ measure wouldn’t exactly limit workweeks to 32 hours; it would just mandate time-and-a-half pay for hours above 32.)

The last time federal law reduced the workweek was in 1940 when the FLSA was amended to drop the threshold of hours after which workers qualify for overtime pay from 44 to 40. Then: nothing.

A four-day workweek was proposed in 1956 – by Richard Nixon, the Republican then-Vice President.

“These are not dreams or idle boasts. They are simple projections of the gains we have made in the last four years,” said Nixon (who’d drop the idea before running for the White House in 1960).

Iin recent years, there have been pilot programs and studies worldwide – in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and elsewhere – showing that four-day workweeks can boost workers’ productivity and happiness.

:Our research suggests that the four-day, 32-hour week is not only feasible; it's better for workers and employers,” according to Boston College sociology professor Juliet Schor, who has led a team studying four-day workweek trials across the globe, quoted in Common Dreams.

"Of more than 100 companies with thousands of workers around the world, nearly 70% experienced reduced rates of burnout,” she said. “Stress fell. Reported physical and mental health improved. People felt less anxious and fatigued, exercised more, and slept better. Their life satisfaction rose, and conflicts among work, family, and life plummeted.”

Sarah Jaffe in In These Times magazine wrote, “The COVID crisis put the issue of working time back on the table. Many ‘essential’ workers -- including a wide swath of manufacturing employees – worked forced overtime and risked their lives and health. Across the country and the world, they decided enough was enough.”

That got labor leaders such as UAW President Shawn Fain thinking about a long-term strategy for reviving the issue.

“It really made people reflect on what’s important in life,” said Fain – who unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a 32-hour workweek with the auto industry’s Big 3.

“I really felt it was imperative to get the dialogue going again,” he said, “to try to fight for a shorter workweek and get the public thinking along those lines.”

Testifying before the Senate Labor Committee, Fain said a lack of appreciation for how much workers toil exposes a class difference.

“There is an epidemic in this country of people who don’t want to work,” he told the committee, “ – people who can’t be bothered to get up every day and contribute to our society, but instead want to freeload off the labor of others. 

“But those aren’t the blue-collar people,” he continued. “Those aren’t the working-class people. It’s a group of people who are never talked about for how little they actually work, and how little they actually contribute to humanity. The people I’m talking about are the Wall Street freeloaders, the masters of passive income.”

Through their productivity alone, American workers have earned the right to a 32-hour workweek.

In the last 40 years, productivity has increased significantly, yet little has improved in terms of hours – much less wages.

“Today, American workers are more than 400% more productive than they were in the 1940s,” according to Sanders and Fain, co-writing a Washington Post commentary. “Despite this fact, millions of our people are working longer hours for lower wages. In fact, 28.5 million Americans now work over 60 hours a week, and more than half of full-time employees work more than 40 hours a week.

“Think about all the incredible advancements in technology — computers, robotics, artificial intelligence — and the huge increase in worker productivity that has been achieved,” they continued. “What have been the results of these changes for working people? Almost all the economic gains have gone straight to the top, while wages for workers are stagnant or worse.”

An obstacle to relevant reform has been Big Business and its handmaidens in the GOP weakening organized labor, which has less influence in Congress than past decades.

“The rise of globalization and other factors ended up leading to the reduction in the size of the labor movement and its power,” said University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis, a labor historian.

Fain challenges organized labor, Congress and the American public to take up the cause again.

“With technology, we can do more with less,” Frain said. “It is the mantra we hear from management every day, and yet it never benefits the worker. So, who is going to act to fix this epidemic of lives dominated by work? Will the employers act? Will Congress act? How can working class people take back their lives, and take back their time?”

Post Office workers, supporters confront Postmaster DeJoy

Nine days after an Illinois state demonstration against U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and his 10-year “Delivering for America” plan, the Post Office defied objections heard there and countless “listening sessions” and announced that a Quad Cities distribution center will be closed and the work moved to Des Moines.

Although the Quad Cities facility will still process mail, 42 jobs will be lost.

Besides lost jobs, DeJoy’s “reorganization” plan will delay first-class mail, closure of hundreds of postal sorting centers nationwide, and even delay mailed-in ballots in November’s election – enough of a delay that local election authorities will have to throw them out, uncounted, according to Illinois State Letter Carriers Association President Luis Rivas Jr.

“When people don’t get the services they expect from the USPS, that’ll drive people away and we’ll lose even more,” he said. “Our rates are going up and our service is going down.”

Organized by Illinois Letter Carriers, the March 25 informational picket line in front of a hotel where DeJoy spoke in the Chicago suburb saw some 70 demonstrators turn out in a light rain and rally. In addition to Rivas and Central Illinois unionists, other labor and Democratic political leaders lent their voices, from U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Congressmen Sean Casten, Bill Foster and Raja Krishnamoorthi, to Illinois AFL-CIO President Tim Drea and activists from the American Postal Workers Union.

Inside the Double Tree Hotel, DeJoy touted his plan to a friendly audience. Outside, the crowd heard speakers criticize the Trump-appointed DeJoy, a major GOP campaign contributor and former CEO of non-union XPO Logistics, a package delivery firm.

DeJoy’s plan has an “insidious agenda of downsizing processing facilities, deliberately slowing down mail delivery, and unjustifiably inflating prices,” Durbin told the crowd. “It undermines the fundamental principle of universal access to reliable postal services for all Americans.

“DeJoy’s actions threaten to unravel the fabric of our communities, particularly those in rural and underserved areas, where timely mail is a lifeline for essential goods, services, and communication. We must send a clear message this scheme, with its blatant disregard for the public good, should be marked ‘return to sender’.”

Protestors said the $40 billion plan will hurt the most vulnerable residents who rely on USPS to vote by mail, receive medication, make and receive payments, and need time-sensitive communications.

 

"If you shut down the postal processing facility in Downers Grove to save money, well, what happens to your postal worker when they're going to show up in the morning? They can't go to Downers Grove to pick up the mail. They have to get up earlier, and maybe they got to drive all the way to Lombard, to Lisle, maybe to Joliet,” said Casten. “This is how you break the postal service. It's not how you deliver the service that we all need.”

 

Despite USPS proceeding with the plan, the word is spreading that service is threatened, commented Peoria letter carrier Vic Murrie, NLAC Assistant Legislative Director for Illinois.

 

“I believe the public is starting to realize the enormity of the situation and how consolidation will cause delivery delays in the future,” he told the Labor Paper. “All the speakers are against consolidation and the DeJoy 10-year plan.”

Central Illinois’ public radio aims for everyday people

On the west side of Bradley University’s campus, the elevator is broken in Morgan Hall, where WCBU-FM 89.9 was moved five years ago. Navigating the four floors to the public radio station’s newsroom and offices is nowhere near the climb the operation faced in 2018. Then, there was a real possibility that the station would go silent as the university was planning to raze its former site in Jobst Hall after former BU President Gary Roberts announced that it was seeking a new partnership for WCBU, citing financial concerns.

On the air since 1970, WCBU faced uncertain financial support from Bradley and a home. Seeing the uncertainty and appreciating public radio, Illinois State University asked if they could help. An agreement was reached – five years ago this month, when Bradley and ISU arranged for WCBU to continue as a joint service between WCBU and ISU’s WGLT-FM 89.1

R.C. McBride helped craft the agreement.

Executive director/general manager at WCBU and also WGLT-FM 89.1 in Bloomington-Normal, McBride, 50, brought experience to the table.

He started in radio at Danville’s WDAN/WDNL in 1990 as a high school student. In 1997 he started at Bloomington’s WJBC-AM 1230 as reporter/anchor, play-by-play broadcaster, and talk-show host. McBride won a national Edward R. Murrow Award for best radio newscast in 2002, the year he became WJBC Program Director, where he stayed until 2012, when he went to WGLT

“The adjustment wasn’t that hard. I went from commercial radio that demanded 40 or 50% profit to public radio, which still has to be smart and cautious in spending, but doesn’t require that kind of return. In some ways, it was a leap of faith,” McBride says. But “we believe in the mission.”

Indeed, he’s on National Public Radio’s Board of Directors

The arrangement had WGLT’s leadership manage and operate WCBU, but under the ultimate control of Bradley as licensee. The priority in 2019 was to boost local content and cut expenses. WGLT relinquished its Peoria broadcast translator 103.5 to let WCBU-HD2 continue its classical-music programming there; the station moved and hired staff; community support was sustained.

Also, WCBU has had to continually prove itself as a professional, independent news source. Underwriters and listeners wondered change. Also, though WCBU has always been separate from WTVP-TV 47 (which went on the air a year after WCBU), Channel 47’s previous leadership openly coveted taking over the radio station.

The radio station remains a strong, standalone operation, McBride says.

And independent, adds News Director Tim Shelley, who says neither WGLT nor NPR dictates story assignments, content emphasis or perspectives.

Shelley, 33, is from East Peoria, where he attended Illinois Central College before going to Bradley. After editing weekly newspapers in Tazewell and Woodford counties, he moved to broadcast, becoming assignment editor and later social-media and digital-content manager at WEEK-TV 25 from 2015-2019.

Now, Shelley says he notices a connection with the audience: the public.

“We feel a real engagement with the community,” he says. “People do care.”

The station has an active community advisory board that advocates for listeners and offers ideas and suggestions, Shelley says.

Like most public broadcasting operations, WCBU is non-profit balancing public service and staying in business, so a key is listener membership and underwriting. Fundraising is handled with WGLT, but accounts are separate. And the station tries to focus on its everyday listeners.

“I’d say our [fundraising] philosophy is more grassroots than targeting big spenders,” McBride says. “We hope listeners start out by giving $5 and grow. It’s not fast; it takes time, but they tend to feel some ‘ownership’ in the station.”

Besides Shelley, WCBU’s newsroom staff includes three full-time journalists (employed by ISU), five part-time correspondents such as ex-Journal Star reporter Steve Tarter and Peoria Chronicle ag writer Tim Alexander, and four student interns, all working on material about Peoria, Tazewell and Woodford counties, which Illinois Public Radio and National Public Radio can use.

The news staff shouldn’t be dismissed as “scrappy” as much as punching above its weight. Arguably, its newsroom is the most reliable news source for central Illinois. Other broadcast newsrooms have cut staff, as has the Journal Star, and the Community Word covers overlooked subjects but comes out monthly. [Full disclosure: the Community Word and WCBU partner on some contents.]

“Some days are super-heavy, requiring an immediacy,” Shelley says. “Other days we may do something else, something lighter but still substantive. We’re not going to do a story on a minor fender-bender.”

Recognizing that stories about public affairs – government, courts, safety, business, etc. – are covered so much less than recent years that the area is becoming a “news desert,” WCBU is increasing coverage outside Peoria, first concentrating on Pekin and Washington but looking at doing more from counties it reaches: Bureau, Knox, Marshall, Mason and Stark.

As with all media, delivery changed, too. Radio isn’t just available from a living-room cabinet, backyard transistor, kitchen counter unit or a car dashboard, with reports limited to the top of the hour. So WCBU has adopted a “digital-first” approach, giving listeners more ways to access content: on phones or computers via Alexa, Spotify, etc.

“We have a good team; we hope everybody stays. But there aren’t as many ‘lifers’ – in all media,” Shelley says. “People go to bigger cities, get different pay, look for bigger opportunities.”

For now, WCBU’s newsroom talents contributed to honors from the Associated Press and the Illinois News Broadcasters Association, the Public Media Journalists Association and the Radio Television Digital News Association, plus back-to-back recognition from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which in 2022 and 2023 awarded WCBU the Edward R. Murrow Award for overall excellence in small market radio in Region 7, which includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. 

“What we have is special,” Shelley says.

And a new joint-service agreement lasting through June of 2029 reportedly has been finalized, with Bradley’s formal announcement imminent.

In his office on Morgan Hall’s 4^th floor, McBride adds, “We hope the partnership has been a net positive for everybody. I think the public service has improved [and] both stations are able to offer more than they were.”