Speaking of The Worker, what's old and stupid is new again at The Department of Labor

 

A fatal notion of things, half false & half stupid, began to pervade educated & semi-educated minds: "the worker" becomes the real person, the real nation, the meaning & aim of history, politics, public care ... he is made the saint, the idol, of the age.

 

The fact that all men work, and moreover that others - the inventor, the engineer, and organizer - do more, and more important, work is forgotten.

 

No one any longer dares to bring forward the class or quality of his achievement as a gauge of its value. Only work measured in hours now counts as labour. And the "worker," with all this, is the poor unfortunate one, disinherited, starving, exploited. The words "care" and "distress" are applied to him alone.

 

No one has a thought left for the countryman's less fertile strips of land, his bad harvests, his losses by hail and frost, his anxiety over the sale of his produce; or for the wretched existence of poor craftsmen in strongly industrialized areas, the tragedies of small tradesmen, fishermen on the high seas, inventors, doctors, who have to struggle amid alarms and dangers for each bite of daily bread and go down in their thousands unheeded.

 

"The worker" alone receives sympathy. He alone is supported, cared for, insured. What is more, he is made the saint, the idol, of the age. The world revolves round him. He is the focus of the economic system and the nurseling of politics.

 

Everybody's existence hinges on him; the majority of the nation are there to serve him. The dull lump of a peasant, the lazy official, the swindling tradesman, are legitimate targets for mirth, not to mention judges, officers, and heads of businesses, who are the popular objects of ill-natured jest; but no one would dare to pour the same scorn on "the working man."

 

All the rest are idlers, egoists; he is the one exception. The whole middle class swings the censer before this phantom. No matter what one's own achievements in life may be, one must fall on one's knees before him. His being stands above all criticism.

 

 

-- Oswald Spengler

 

 

 

The Detroit News: Harvest of hand-picked crops in Michigan in immediate peril due to Trump deportation program, prices set to rocket higher

 Editorial: Trump must act quickly to avert a harvest crisis

The immigration crisis at the southern border has been replaced by one in America's orchards and farm fields.

With harvest season about to begin in earnest, farmers are desperate for laborers to pick their fruit and vegetables. Already in the Pacific Northwest, much of the cherry crop was left to rot because of the shortage of agricultural workers.

The crisis will soon roll into Michigan, where apples, cherries, blueberries, asparagus and other crops are rapidly ripening. Hand-picked specialty crops are a $6.3 billion industry in Michigan, supporting 41,000 jobs.

The shortage of farm workers has been building for years, due to an aging agricultural workforce, competition from more lucrative and less grueling jobs and restrictions on immigrant labor.

This year, it is exacerbated by the Trump administration's crackdown on unauthorized immigrants and the deportation of those who have entered the country illegally.

Estimates are that 42% of farm workers are undocumented migrants. Recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on farms employing migrants have frightened away many of those workers from the fields where they had been working.

But the work they do hasn't gone away. Fruit and vegetables still need to be harvested. If they're not, it will lead to food waste, shortages and higher prices on the grocery shelves.

When asked about the worker shortage, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the solution lies in greater mechanization of farms and matching the 34 million able bodied Americans who must find jobs or lose their Medicaid benefits with farmers who need workers.

While Rollins is correct that those who can work should be expected to, it's doubtful even the risk of losing health care benefits will coax the jobless into hot, backbreaking farm work.

Her solutions will take time and large capital investments. They won't save this year's harvest.

The Trump administration must take emergency action to assure there are enough workers to bring in the crops this summer and fall.

Rather than deporting migrants willing to fill essential jobs such as harvesting, the administration should grant them seasonal visas and a no-deportation guarantee as long as they are working on farms.

Beyond that, reform is needed for the H-2A visa program that allows farmers to legally employ temporary workers from another country. The application process is too complex and time-consuming. It must be simplified; farmers need help now.

Also at issue is the federal mandatory minimum wage for H-2A visa holders, now set at $18.50 an hour. That's nearly $8 an hour higher than the state minimum wage in Michigan. When added to housing and other costs for these workers, many farmers have to limit their use of the visas.

Longer term, resources should be devoted to recruiting domestic workers for the agriculture industry. Farmers are also being encouraged to raise wages for native-born workers, add benefits and improve working conditions.

All of that is expensive and will inevitably show up in grocery prices. But so will the shortages caused by allowing crops to rot in fields.

The most sensible option for this season is to back off deportation of farm workers while solutions are pursued for either replacing them or giving them legal status.

The decline of worker hours in America

 In 1966 all the hours worked by all the full time and part time workers divided by the civilian employment level peaked at about 35.35 hours per worker per week. That's full time level work. That's prosperity.

The flood of Baby Boomers, especially Baby Boomer women under the influence of feminism and the social revolution of the 1960s, and also foreign born workers after the Immigration Act of 1965, into the labor markets after the mid-1960s reduced hours per week per worker by almost 11%, not forming a new stable bottom until the 1980s at about 31.5 hours per week.

Increased labor supply = fewer hours to go around = less prosperity.

By 1999, when peak Baby Boom had passed 40 years of age, hours per week had risen as high as 32.68 per worker per week. That was the end result of the good times kick-started by Ronald Reagan twenty years prior, which hit in four waves: 1984-85, 1989, 1995, and 1999.

But the whole subsequent period 2003-2019 inclusive fell apart.

Many, many troubles reduced hours worked per worker by almost 7% between 1999 and 2009, not the least of which were admission of China to the World Trade Organization in 2001, and the Great Recession.

Hours per week per worker have risen again as of 2022, but only to the old bottom, at around 31.57 per week.

Median real earnings per week are up just $38 since 1979.

Will that be As Good As It Gets?

 

 

 

By 2032 no more than 29% of new cars can be gas-powered, and Kamala Harris doesn't have to do anything to make it happen except get elected to protect the Biden EPA rule

 

That's one big reason why Kamala says she can't think of one thing she'd do differently than Joe Biden.

 The Environmental Protection Agency’s new greenhouse gas emissions rules require that battery-powered and plug-in hybrid vehicles make up 32% of auto maker sales in 2027. By 2032 no more than 29% of new cars can be gas-powered. Ergo, there will be only one gas-powered model for every two electric cars on dealer lots. ...

Auto makers must spend tens of billions of dollars to ramp up EV production to meet government mandates. The financial pain is growing for companies as sales of gas-powered cars decline, reducing profits available to invest in the EV “transition.” ...

A UAW study in 2019 projected that EVs would kill 35,000 jobs at its plants. “The workers who are making engines and transmissions today, their jobs will be eliminated when we make a transition to electric vehicles,” said UAW research director Jennifer Kelly.

More.

 

The New Way Forward is just another lie.

 

 

 

LOL, in article supposedly touting the Cornel West threat, clueless former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader says he prefers Biden autocracy to Trump fascism

 “I know the difference between fascism and autocracy, and I’ll take autocracy any time,” Nader said, according to the outlet. “Fascism is what the GOP is the architecture of, and autocracy is what the Democrats are practitioners of. But autocracy leaves an opening. They don’t suppress votes. They don’t suppress free speech.”

Yeah, every censored, canceled person in America agrees with that, right?

If Ralph Nader is West's friend, who are West's enemies?

The whole farcical thing is here, pretending Biden doesn't now have a record, that he won the House in 2022, and that inflation isn't crushing the worker.

CDC: Breakthrough cases in Kentucky skilled nursing facility outbreak in March reached 25%

COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with a SARS-CoV-2 R.1 Lineage Variant in a Skilled Nursing Facility After Vaccination Program — Kentucky, March 2021:

Among 83 residents and 116 HCP, 75 (90.4%) and 61 (52.6%), respectively, received 2 vaccine doses. Twenty-six residents and 20 HCP received positive test results for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, including 18 residents and four HCP who had received their second vaccine dose >14 days before the outbreak began. An R.1 lineage variant was detected with whole genome sequencing (WGS). ... 25.4% of vaccinated residents and 7.1% of vaccinated HCP were infected.

Looks like Pfizer vaccines are somewhat less effective in older people, but there is no age data given in this report. Critics of the Pfizer trial say not enough old people were part of it. This would seem to bear that out.

 

Why are 90% of the residents vaccinated but only 52% of the workers who care for them?

 

Seems like an ongoing phenomenon for people "in the industry" to be vaccine hesitant.

 

Somebody's pretty worried Peter Meijer needs help to win in MI-3 over Lynn Afendoulis

Fix Congress Now!, 1580 Lincoln Street, Suite 520, Denver, CO 80203, has sent a mailer to Michigan voters claiming Lynn Afendoulis got rich as an executive of a company which laid off Michigan workers, apparently in 2011. Or was it 2008?

It says "Michigan got screwed by Lynn Afendoulis".

Quite the hatchet job. I'm sure as an executive she made all those decisions to fire the workers and to enrich herself, herself, right?

Anyway, GREAT BIG SCREW on the cover drilling down into Grand Rapids. Unflattering photo of Lynn on the other side. Classic low brow stuff.

Billionaire kid Peter Meijer, who has nothing to do with this whatsoever, no, no way, needs this kind of help to get elected?

Just my opinion, but the guy's not much of a muchness. Otherwise we wouldn't be seeing this. Seems like kind of an admission that his unimpressive record in life so far is just that.

But, he's just the sort of person who will fit right in up there in DC, yes sir!

Nice to know someone in Colorado is working so hard to interfere in Michigan's primary election and elect Peter Meijer.

The only thing Trump has accomplished at "warp speed" is ruining the US economy because he ignored a deadly virus until it was too late

Trump, the supposed savior of US manufacturing, has presided over the utter collapse of manufacturing capacity utilization to a level in April 2020 never experienced in the post-war. The president could lawfully and easily order this unused capacity to make masks which would in fact protect everyone, and other PPE for hospital workers and care-givers to protect our front line workers, but he has not. Were he serious about re-opening the country, he would have made this JOB 2 on Feb 1, after JOB 1, which was hard-stopping all passenger air travel, the primary vector for the pandemic. Trump didn't do JOB 1, either.

Industrial production generally has imploded to levels never seen since 1919. The so-called America first president has done nothing in three years to make America strong enough to prevent this from happening. Remember Ann Coulter said long ago already that Trump was a lazy ignoramus. 

Motor vehicle production annualized has tanked 11 million units in just two months to fewer than 72,000 annualized. That's the typical monthly sales figure for a single popular car. 

Oh, I've forgotten unemployment, which also is unprecedented, though understated, at 14.7%. It's actually closer to 20%. North of 33 million not-seasonally-adjusted have made first time claims for unemployment from March 19th inclusive.

Trump's numbers are truly great, as in "you great oaf!"

Yes the government has "bailed out" the workers and the businesses, but with a Rube Goldberg machine which has been completely unfair in its results, picking winners by virtue of their established access to bankers or savvy state systems of unemployment administration. Bank or live somewhere not up to speed? Dats tuff, Anwar. You're a loser anyway.

Meanwhile coronavirus infections are set to soar again because our president is throwing a tantrum to open the country but hasn't made it safe to do so. He's had two months for that but has produced BUPKIS. If you want people to go back to work, they need masks. Where are the masks? Oh well, you were on your last legs anyway.

How anyone can vote to re-elect this level of horrific incompetence and reptilian danger is beyond me.

Robin Munro: The Tiananmen massacre was not primarily of the students, rather the workers, not in the Square but citywide in Beijing

Remembering Tiananmen Square:

Western criticisms based on a false version of the clearing of Tiananmen Square have handed the butchers of Beijing needless propaganda victories in the U.N. and elsewhere. ... By May 17, the sight of as many as 2,000 idealistic young students collapsing from heat and starvation brought more than a million ordinary Beijing citizens into the square in a moving display of human solidarity. “The students speak on behalf of all of us,” they would tell any foreigner who cared to listen. 

Having been passive spectators, the laobaixing now began to act as a bastion of active support for the students, bringing food and other supplies to the square on a round-the-clock basis. This specter of emerging cross-class solidarity led directly to the authorities’ decision to impose martial law in Beijing on May 20. ...

Action groups formed spontaneously throughout Beijing. ... The laobaixing were now in a posture of peaceful, nonviolent but direct confrontation with the government and army, and similar “turmoil”—to use the party’s term—rapidly emerged in dozens of other cities. Moreover, the laobaixing were beginning to articulate their own grievances. ...

However, the birth of the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation a few days after the abortive imposition of martial law posed a much greater threat. That is because this group, headquartered in a couple of scruffy tents in the northwest corner of Tiananmen Square, raised an issue that had been taboo in China since 1949: the right of workers to engage in independent labor organization and self-representation. Such a demand struck at the very core of the Chinese Communist state, for the party’s main claim to legitimacy is that it rules in the name and interests of the “laboring masses.” Although its active membership remained relatively small, its formal membership soared during the first few days of June, reaching a peak of more than 10,000 enrollments after three of its leaders were secretly arrested on May 29.

Autonomous workers’ groups quickly sprang up in most of China’s major cities. This was the “cancer cell” that the authorities had feared from the outset would appear if legal recognition were ever to be conferred on the student organizations. In the government’s eyes, if the statue of the Goddess of Democracy, erected in the square at the end of May, represented the arrogant defiance of the students and the symbolic intrusion of “bourgeois liberalism” and “Western subversion” into the sacred heart of Communist rule, the crude red-and-black banner of the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation, not a hundred yards away from the goddess, represented the terrifying power of the workers awakened.

Both had to be crushed, and the rapidly defecting party apparatus had to be frightened and shocked back into line.

Neel Kashkari and other Fed members seem aware at least of the nosedive in labor's share of business income, but are oblivious to its roots in globalization

Fooling around with interest rates isn't going to bring back the core manufacturing businesses which once formed the hubs of American middle class prosperity. That will be just as ineffectual as it has been throughout the Obama administration. Why should it work now all of a sudden when it hasn't worked for ten years?

Well, what else would you expect from the man tasked with implementing the useless TARP sideshow?

Neel Kashkari still hasn't got a clue, but he sure does sound like the workers' friend.

Kashkari Says Worker Bargaining Power Should Inform Fed's Stance: 

Minneapolis Fed chief links rates to labor share in interview

Kashkari’s break from Fed tradition on inequality adds to the case for keeping interest rates low. He suggested faster wage growth and low unemployment may not be putting much upward pressure on inflation because workers have lost a lot of their bargaining power in recent decades, echoing a point Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida has made. ...

Socialists have never cared about actual workers anywhere and have always viewed them as a means to an end

And "the workers" never existed, either. Socialism had to invent them.

From the point of view of total hours worked, this is the worst jobs recovery on record

Yakima Washington Herald lets the cat out of the bag: American fruit grower rich enough to buy hotel to house foreign labor complains they make too much

Growers want more, cheaper guest workers:

Rob Valicoff is relying on 270 guest workers this year to pick his 1,700 acres of apples and pears in Wapato, nearly triple the 96 guest workers he used last year.

Under the federal H-2A guest worker program, growers are required to provide workers with housing, transportation, affordable meals and pay them higher wages.

“I’m excited now, to be honest,” he said. “Even if it costs more money, I’m excited for us not to be short of labor this year.” ...

One recent afternoon, more than 300 laborers filed into the dining hall at the former FairBridge Inn and Suites on North First Street in Yakima for dinner after a day in the fields.

Valicoff bought the 800-bed hotel and in June began housing H-2A workers from Mexico there. Some of the workers are employed by other growers, with Valicoff providing housing under an agreement with them.

Housing is free for workers, and they each pay $12.26 a day for three meals. They eat breakfast and dinner at the hotel and are provided sack lunches.

Valicoff would like to see changes that would require workers to pay a little more for meals and help with the cost of utilities.

“I think they need to pay a portion of that,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be a lot, maybe $6, $7 a day.”

He’d also like to see wages lowered for H-2A workers. The minimum wage is $14.12 an hour, above the state minimum wage of $11.50 an hour.

George Herbert Walker Bush's legacy: It took only 7 years of NAFTA to destroy hours worked in the United States

Hours of all persons grew 44% during the Reagan bull market, which ended in August 2000. Since then, hours of all persons has grown just 3%.

NAFTA went into effect in January 1994, eleven years after the Reagan bull began and a little over one year after Bush inked the deal. Seven years later hours of all persons peaked.

It reminds me of Bill Clinton's innovation, the so-called Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which blew up the housing market after just 10 years.

Republicans take away your job, then Democrats come along and take away your house.

If you're living in your car, you'd better watch your back.  

Laugh of the Day: Over 100 "Day Without Immigrants" protesters fired from their jobs

From the story here:

More than 100 protesters across the country were fired from their jobs after skipping work to take part in last week's "Day Without Immigrants" demonstration. Restaurants and day cares were among the businesses in states like Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma and New York where bosses fired workers after they didn't show up for work in order to protest. ... At Ben's Kosher Delicatessen Restaurant & Caterers in Long Island, New York, 25 workers were fired Friday when they returned to work, according to Telemundo 47. Police escorted the workers from the restaurant — most of whom were undocumented and have worked there for years.

Smartest president ever says "forebearers" when he meant "forebears"

Once again, the smartest president ever hatchets the English language, but he'll continue to be portrayed as an intellectual giant in comparison to boobs like Sarah Palin. But "corpseman" lives, along with "intercontinental railroad" and other such gems. The press office transcript spells the word correctly, but of course Obama didn't pronounce it correctly.

As far as I can tell, only The Hill here accurately quoted Obama's mistake (which is on video here at about the 10:50 mark):

"We're going to have to make a decision about whether we are a people who tolerate the hypocrisy of a system where the workers who pick our fruit or make our beds never have the chance to get right with the law, or whether we're going to give them a chance, just like our forbearers had a chance, to take responsibility and give their kids a better future," he said.

Meanwhile The Hill leaves out the "e" and without a proper [sic] demonstrates it probably doesn't know it's a mistake.

The 86 Republicans who voted for TAA/the 54 who voted against TPP: Just five appear in both lists

Aderholt Barletta Barr Barton Benishek Bishop (MI) Blum Bost Boustany Brady (TX) Brooks (IN) Calvert Coffman Cole Comstock Costello (PA) Crenshaw Curbelo (FL) Davis, Rodney Dent Dold Donovan Emmer (MN) Fitzpatrick Fortenberry

Frelinghuysen Graves (MO) Grothman Guinta Guthrie Hanna Herrera Beutler Huizenga (MI) Hurt (VA) Issa Johnson (OH) Jolly Katko Kelly (PA) King (NY) Kinzinger (IL) Kline Luetkemeyer Marino McCarthy McHenry McKinley McMorris Rodgers Meehan Messer Mica Miller (MI) Moolenaar Murphy (PA) Nunes

Paulsen Pitts Reed Reichert Rigell Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rokita Roskam Royce Ryan (WI) Scalise Shimkus Shuster Simpson Stefanik Stivers Thompson (PA) Thornberry Tiberi Trott Turner Upton Valadao Wagner Walberg Walden Walters, Mimi Whitfield Wilson (SC) Young (IA)

The roll call vote for the TAA is here. John Boehner notably voted "No" with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats to defeat TAA in order to be able to say at election time that he has street-cred as a conservative. Typically the Speaker doesn't vote unless the outcome the Speaker supports is in doubt. This was obviously a throw-away vote for him.

Failing 126-302, the bill was one half of a binary bill passed by the Senate which would have provided assistance to US workers displaced by the trade agreement. Its defeat meant the whole bill including the free trade half of the bill, TPP, would not advance to the president's desk for a signature.

A symbolic vote (roll call here) for the free trade half of the bill, TPP, passed 219-211, with these 54 Republicans voting "No" (note the five in blue, who appeared in both lists and voted in this instance ostensibly for the worker and against free trade):

Aderholt Amash Brat Bridenstine Brooks (AL) Buck Burgess Clawson (FL) Collins (GA) Collins (NY) Cook Donovan Duncan (SC) Duncan (TN) Farenthold Fleming Garrett

Gibson Gohmert Gosar Griffith Harris Hunter Jenkins (WV) Jolly Jones Jordan Joyce Katko Labrador LoBiondo Lummis MacArthur Massie McKinley Meadows Mooney (WV) Mulvaney

Nugent Palmer Pearce Perry Poliquin Posey Rohrabacher Rothfus Russell Smith (NJ) Webster (FL) Westmoreland Wittman Yoho Young (AK) Zeldin

Democrats who voted for TAA and against TPP were similarly few in number, just thirteen: Bass, Carney, Clyburn, Eshoo, Foster, Heck (WA), Hoyer, Israel, Larson (CT), Perlmutter, Price (NC), Richmond, and Smith (WA).

Doug Short makes our point: Part-time surged because of the recession, not because of ObamaCare

Here:

"With regard to Obamacare and part-time employment, the surge in part-time employment was triggered by the recession, not by the Affordable Care Act, as the next chart clearly illustrates."

---------------------------------------------------------

After studying the issue since 2010 we first began to express doubts about the meme that ObamaCare part-timed the country in July of 2013, here.

In August 2013 here we realized a part-timing trend, to be real, would have to show up in the hours data and wasn't.

By September 2013 here we were calling the meme a myth, and here we identified the part-time statistics as incapable of capturing such a trend due to the high bar set by the government definition of part-time as less than 35 hours worked.

In October 2013 here we blamed the part-time explosion on the recession.

In February 2014 we noted here that The Atlantic had finally caught on.

Mish started to catch on in September 2014, here.

Now Doug Short joins the party.

Hooray.

I still want my Pulitzer.

Rate of wage growth slows by almost 44% year over year 2014 vs. 2013

Not-seasonally-adjusted, the average hourly earnings of all employees grew by 1.88% between December 2012 and December 2013, to $24.30 from $23.85.

For the latest similar period ending in December 2014, average hourly earnings grew by 1.06%, a decline in the rate of growth of almost 44%, to $24.56.

This is pretty surprising given the enormous gains made by the stocks of corporations in 2013, up nearly 30%, and in 2014, up 11%.

Obviously the gains are accruing to the stockholders, not the workers who are viewed as a cost, not an asset.

Maybe Senator Jon "Tin Ear" Kyl really wants Republicans to lose next week

Here is the former Senator from Arizona Republican Jon Kyl in The Wall Street Journal (where else?) just days before the Republicans are about to take back the Senate PUTTING HIS FOOT IN IT, complaining about the Boehner/Obama tax compromise because in his view it really penalized the middle class. It's almost as if he doesn't want Republicans to win next week:

Most workers’ pay has not kept up with inflation for at least six years. ... Why aren’t wages rising? ... [O]ne factor is often overlooked: the tax increase on “the rich” at the beginning of 2013. How could higher taxes on the top 2% or 3% hurt the middle class? ... When the government takes more, there is less to plow back into the business or invest elsewhere.

----------------------------------------------------

Weren't these tax rates the Bush tax rates? Weren't Republicans trying to get them made permanent for years, without success until Boehner came along? If they were so bad for the middle class, why did Republicans pass them in the first place?

Let's see, when we had these tax rates up through the late financial panic, including the lower capital gains tax rates, the first thing businesses did under them was fire everybody to save their sorry behinds. They didn't care about the workers then, and they sure as hell don't now. Millions have abandoned the workforce as a result and won't be returning.

Meanwhile, the all items CPI is up 8.8% over the last six years, while average hourly earnings of all private employees still working is up 12.75% over the same period. Note to Kyl: please pick a metric which makes your point without contradiction.

And then there's the tax rate he is so upset about, which affects the top 0.42% only, all single filers making in excess of $406,751 in 2014. That top tax bracket now pays a higher capital gains tax rate on long term gains at 20% instead of 15% under the compromise, but for some reason Kyl is too sheepish to mention this is a 33% tax hike. Apparently he's too embarrassed to be that specific, because in terms of individual wage earners in 2013 that might affect just barely 520,000 individuals, who are at the very top of the heap of 155.77 million wage earners.

Way to go, Kyl. Paint the Republicans as the party of the rich. The Democrats must love you because they will be more than happy to claim that wages are up because they raised taxes on the rich.