Gov’t policies caused ‘pay collapse’ for 90% of us

Bill Knight column for 5-27, 28 or 29, 2019 

U.S. households have lost almost $11,000 each since 1979 because of policies enacted by business-cozy government, according to a recent analysis of wage stagnation by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.

“Since 1979, the bottom 90 percent of the American workforce has seen their pay shrink radically as a share of all market-based income in the American economy,” said EPI’s Heidi Shierholz and Josh Bivens. “The amount of money this loss represents is staggering. Had the 1979 share held constant, the bottom 90 percent of the American workforce would have had roughly $1.35 trillion in additional labor income in 2015, or about $10,800 per household.”

That “collapse in pay for the bottom 90 percent” of wage earners in the last 40 years mostly stems from political decisions by elected officials, the researchers said.

Conceding that some wage stagnation may have been caused through the years by factors such as technological change or “free trade” agreements, Bivens and Shierholz said that that specific policy decisions like attacks on unions, the drop in value of the minimum wage, and overall monetary policies that focused on inflation instead of employment all helped tilt power away from workers and toward bosses.

That erosion in power can be seen in a consolidating economy, a market where there are few buyers of services (a “monopsony,” compared to a monopoly, where there are few sellers). Just as consumers have little power in monopoly situations, workers offering their skills in a monopsony are at a great disadvantage.

Economists’ research into monopsony power helps explain some of the wage stagnation over the past four decades, EPI reported. Many job markets are dominated by a few employers. However, over the last 40 years, wage stagnation has resulted not just in markets with few remaining employers, such as coal mines, but across the board. Wage stagnation also has occurred in low-income jobs such as restaurants and retail, which means additional causes were influential, too.

Shierholz and Bivens said that poor wage growth is less a function of increasing employer power and more a result of deliberate attempts to undermine worker power. They reported:

* Companies have made it harder for workers to organize and assert collective bargaining power, not only weakening unions, but all workers;

* the Federal Reserve has added to wage stagnation by stressing lower inflation instead of higher employment; and

* despite popular support for raising the minimum wage, legislatures in Washington and many states have been hesitant to increase the minimum wage, which would at least help entry-level and low-skilled workers.

If policymakers want to boost wages and workers’ purchasing power as consumers – which benefits the whole economy – they should work to increase the power of workers compared to employers by supporting organized labor, higher minimum wages and full employment.

“In short, the policy movement to disempower workers not only led to less equal growth, but was also associated with significantly slower growth,” they wrote. “We certainly do not mean to imply one should ignore potential policy opportunities that could erode employer power (e.g., through more robust antitrust enforcement). But the larger opportunities are likely those that lead to more labor market balance in the power between employers and workers by increasing worker power – not trying to move the labor market toward a competitive ideal that is not attainable.”

Woman photographer went ‘where no man had gone before’

Bill Knight column for 5-23, 24 or 25, 2019

Amid news of apparent temptations to intervene militarily in Iran or Venezuela, it’s somehow reassuring to remember when distant lands weren’t places to invade but to explore, and to recall one Illinois woman who against many odds became a remarkable pioneer.

Photojournalist Ruth Robertson was small but strong, with a determination that led her to become world famous, only to be nearly forgotten over the years. Born 114 years ago this week, she grew accustomed to being the first or the only: the first female photographer at the Peoria Star newspaper and on the sidelines at Wrigley Field; the only woman photographer at the 1944 national political conventions and the first American female photojournalist to get an overseas war-correspondent assignment, with the Army in Alaska during World War II.

But 70 years ago, Robertson really went “where no man had gone before”: photographing the world’s highest waterfall deep in the Venezuelan rainforest, where four expeditions (led by men) had failed.

Robertson’s parents were divorced within a year of her birth in Taylorville, Ill., and after her mother and grandmother died, she moved in with her father in Peoria, where she learned photography from him. She eventually persuaded Peoria’s morning paper to run her material (but calling her a “photo girl,” the newspaper for months didn’t provide her with equipment, give her assignments or pay her.)

“She had to prove herself,” said Scott Eisenstein, who worked on a projected documentary titled “The Forgotten Expedition: The True Story of Ruth Robertson & Angel Falls.”

The paper hired her in 1939, and she became the first female photographer there. Editors let her handle lighter features, food and fashion, and occasional columns. Eventually, the enterprising woman interviewed celebrities such as the Republic of China’s First Lady, Mademoiselle Chiang Kai-shek, pitching great Dizzy Dean, actor John Barrymore, and anthropologist Margaret Mead.

In 1942, she moved to Chicago to work for Acme Newspictures and then helped launch the independent Press Syndicate. Her stories ranged from the 1943 World Series and the Democratic and Republican political conventions in Chicago.

Sent to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, she was the only female among the journalists stationed there, and she survived a Japanese attack on a fighter plane in which she was a passenger – plus a stubborn general.

“She was met with resistance from the commanding officer of the [Army’s] Alaska Division,” said Patricia Hubbard, who’s working on a Robertson biography. “He ordered her detention for 34 days, insisting no ‘newspaperwoman’ be allowed on his base, insisting that she be recalled.

“He called the War Department — but so did she,” Hubbard continued. “The ugly spat hit the newspapers, [and] Illinois Gov. Dwight Green and then-U.S. Rep. Everett Dirksen defended her.

“The end result,” Hubbard added: “The general was recalled, and Robertson stayed.”

After the war, she worked at the New York Herald-Tribune but became bored and quit, seeking adventure in South America, commenting, “Here was a whole chunk of the northern part of this continent to be explored. The frontier countries were where the good stories were to be found.”

She heard about Angel Falls, said to be a mile high in Venezuela’s interior, and in 1947, Robertson accompanied a pilot on a flight over the jungle, saw it (“like 20 Niagaras atop each other,” travel author Dominic Hamilton wrote in 2001), and resolved to reach it at ground level, verify its size and photograph it.

She recruited an engineer to survey its height, a radio operator, filmmaker, guide and 10 natives of the region, and the 1949 trip took 19½ days enduring rain and heat, challenging physical demands and trails shared with jaguars, monkeys, tarantulas and lizards. The group’s canoes ran aground, then almost sank, forcing them to bail, portage and carry bulky gear.

After reaching and photographing the 3,230-foot wonder – Earth’s tallest uninterrupted waterfall –

Robertson made headlines around the world, published in National Geographic and then covered in Life, Newsweek, the New York Times and Glamour and even congratulated by President Harry S Truman.

For years, she freelanced from Venezuela, contributing to Time and Life magazines and editing the Daily Journal, and later the American Society Bulletin in Mexico City. She moved back to the United States in the 1960s, and in 1975 published her account of the adventure, “Churun Meru: The Tallest Angel.”

Truly, as Eisenstein said, Robertson was “a fearless persona, [with] strength, good humor and an unflappable will to succeed.”

Labor: Don’t take us for granted

Bill Knight column for 5-20, 21 or 22, 2019

Many unionists are encouraged by Democrats’ presidential field for the 2020 election, which in recent weeks expanded to include New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Vice President Joe Biden, who join Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and more than a dozen others as of press time.

At the North America’s Building Trades labor conference last month in Washington, Democratic contenders talked about outlawing “Right to Work” laws forbidding unions from charging fees to pay for the costs of negotiating and enforcing contracts. Also, the Fire Fighters became the first union to endorse, recommending Biden the day he spoke at a Pittsburgh Teamsters hall, when Biden promoted the “$15 and the union” campaign and blasted the Trump administration’s support of union-busting.

However, some labor leaders want more, asking candidates to focus more clearly on organized labor and its core issues, and saying candidates are spending too much time talking about more obscure issues such as Senate filibusters and the makeup of the Supreme Court. These voices insist candidates must pay attention to what working-class Americans feel is of prime importance: jobs.

A few other distractions appealing to progressives in general also were criticized at a Las Vegas conference in April, from Medicare for All to the Green New Deal.

Democrats are too concerned about the environment, commented Ken Broadbent, business manager of the Pittsburgh-based Steamfitters Local 449.

“Jobs is where we’ve got to keep things focused,” he said.

Ted Pappageorge, president of the Las Vegas Culinary Union, which represents tens of thousands of hotel and casino workers, added, “They’ve got to pay attention to kitchen-table economics.”

Such feedback, along with others complaining of “identity politics,” may be warning signs for Democrats. After all, many U.S. working people, including many union members, voted for Trump in 2016.

Still, the competition in the crowded field may have strengthened the clout of unions and workers’ concerns after years of being taken for granted. Another plus is reminding candidates that organized labor has significant financial resources as well as “boots on the ground” for phone-banking, get-out-the-vote efforts, etc.

Contributions to federal candidates, parties and committees from labor hit a record high in 2016: $218 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), led last year by the National Education Association and the Carpenters. (In fact, since 1990, the amount of contributions from labor increased by more than 300 percent, CRP noted.)

Almost 90 percent of contributions from labor go to Democrats, but unions also have supported moderate Republicans. CRP says that 14 percent of labor’s 2018 contributions went to GOP candidates or causes, led by the Airline Pilots Association and the National Air Traffic Controllers union. That’s twice as much as 2010’s donations

Some labor leaders, such as Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, are excited about prospects for 2020.

She said that many presidential candidates have supported strikes by teachers on the West Coast and United Food & Commercial Workers at Stop & Shop in the Northeast, and several contenders have proposed increasing taxes on the wealthy – an idea that most previous candidates were reluctant to endorse.

“It feels different than at other times,” Weingarten said. “There is far more attention and focus on working people’s economic needs.”

Other early endorsements are unlikely, in contrast to three years ago, when international unions’ leadership was criticized by the rank-and-file for backing Hillary Clinton before most primaries or debates.

“Union presidents’ apparent aversion to early endorsements [now] falls in stark contrast to their behavior before the last presidential election,” says CRP’s Camille Erickson. “Leading up to the 2016 elections, many unions threw endorsements in rapid fire at Hillary Clinton, to the dismay of some members. By late 2015, Clinton had about a dozen endorsements from unions while Sanders only had two.”