Happy Sunday!
You may have noticed this newsletter came out on Sunday rather than Saturday. That’s deliberate. I want to see how a Sunday publication effects readership. More people seem to engage with the news on Sunday (probably in no small part thanks to the Sunday shows). Let’s see if sending this on Sunday makes any discernable difference.
If you have strong opinions either way, feel free to get in touch.
I don’t have a whole lot to add in this opening section. I took Jack (the puppy in the “picture of a puppy” section) on his first walk “uptown” in La Follette this week. He did not like it. He’s a country pup, and the hustle and bustle of town was too much for him. We’ll stick to the park from now on.
That was the most exciting development. We’re getting into what the British press dubs the “silly season,” when Parliament is adjourned and there aren’t many serious political stories to break. If there’s a term for August in the US, I don’t know it, but the situation is similar here as Congress goes on summer recess. That will not affect this newsletter, though. I’ll always find something to write about.
That does mean work may slow down for me, though. If you want to help me make some money in the meantime, you can become a Patron for as little as $3 a month, make a one-time donation using PayPal, or buy me a book to help with my research. All contributions are greatly appreciated, no matter how big or how small!
But as always, none are expected. This newsletter will always be free.
Which kind of brings me to our subject this week. I don’t believe anyone should work for free, nor for a pittance. Work should be justly rewarded for the value it creates. I’m an old-fashioned Marxist like that. But as much as our economy ever respected the labor theory of value, it has certainly ceased to respect it over the past 40 years. The workers who make America and Britain run have seen wages stagnate, cost of living rise, and employment conditions worsen as the bosses line their pockets with pounds and dollars. It is obscene.
So, the first bit of this newsletter is dedicated to a strike in Kansas. The second bit of this newsletter is dedicated to a billionaire pissing contest. Both are topics which fill me with rage at the ruling capitalist class. Only one is an important news story. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one that is, and which one got the most coverage in the mainstream media. (Spoilers: it’s not the one that should have been covered.)
Right. Let’s get on with it.
On unions…
This is a story about striking workers in Kansas.
This is a story about the importance of unions.
This is a story that got rejected by three different editors.
This is a story about how working people are fun props and caricatures in media narratives about - depending on their skin color - “inner city violence” and “generational poverty” and “welfare queens” or the “forgotten America” and “white working class” who cling to their guns and their God and their religion and who put Donald Trump in office and then violently tried to keep him there.
This is a story about how when those same people stand up for their rights, it is “too niche,” or “done before,” or not worthy of a response.
This is a story about striking workers in Kansas.
This is a story about the importance of unions.
This is a story that began last month, when Frito-Lay workers at a Kansas plant went on strike. They have a list of grievances that would shock even Upton Sinclair. They are complaining about “suicide shifts,” which see workers working 12-hour days, often with only eight hours between shifts. When one employee died on the line, workers were forced to move the body and continue working. Another worker suffered an amputation due to a workplace injury. And despite raking in billions in profit during the pandemic, workers at the Topeka plant have not received a meaningful raise in more than a decade.
I write this newsletter on Fridays. At that time, the strike was still on. Yesterday, the strike ended. PespiCo met the workers’ demands. No more “suicide shifts.” A guaranteed day off. A 4% wage increase.
Things our ancestors striked for 100 years ago. Things our comrades never should have needed to strike for. Not in 2021.
But they succeeded. The strike worked. The workers had their say, and the bosses listened.
This is a story about striking workers in Kansas.
This is a story about the importance of unions.
Like the children and grandchildren of so many Appalachian migrants to Southwest Ohio and elsewhere in the Midwest, I grew up in a union household. My grandfather was hired by the Chrysler Corporation in the 1960s, retiring with a full pension and benefits in the mid-90s. One of my earliest memories is a union-sponsored indoor picnic he took me too, where the children of workers ran around with Big Bird and other Sesame Street characters while the adults mingled over punch and cold cut sandwiches.
Papaw has long extolled the virtues of the union. And seeing what he was able to achieve because of the union – nearly 30 years of retirement, secure with that pension, enjoying the fruits of his labor in old age – is a live demonstration of the value of organized labor. That it has become so unusual – nowadays, unless you’re a teacher or another public sector worker, you probably aren’t unionized and almost certainly won’t get a pension – is a failure of an economy never designed to work for working people.
“Ronald Reagan” might as well be a curse word in our family. He is to me what Margaret Thatcher is to my British comrades – the single worst thing to happen to working people in my lifetime. The Reagan Revolution saw an end to the Keynesian consensus that underscored economic policy from the New Deal to the end of the Carter administration. In its place, we reverted to the sort of laissez-faire capitalism endemic in the Gilded Age, the kind that the aforementioned Sinclair wrote damning indictments of, and those progressives of the early 20th century fought tirelessly to curtail.
Since the 1980s, however, a new neoliberal consensus has emerged. Both Republicans and Democrats have largely abandoned organized labor, reducing the power of unions. Last year, nearly 428,000 union jobs were lost in the private sector. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 allowed right-to-work laws at the state level, diminishing the power of unions by allowing non-union employees to be hired and scabs to be brought in when a strike was called.
Though it is illegal to fire workers for union organizing, the penalties are so low that many do so anyway. And according to one poll, only 1 in 10 workers even knows how to form a union, the process being so legally cumbersome. Still others, such as independent contractors, agriculture workers, and domestic and caretaking workers, lack the legal right to unionize.
Yet unions remain the best recourse for workers. Non-union workers make 81 cents to every dollar a union worker makes. Unionized workers are nearly 25% more likely to have health insurance benefits. They have more job security than their nonunionized peers. They have the security that comes with collective bargaining. In an economy which favors capital and those who own the means of production, unions give workers a recourse to the abuses of management.
This is a story about striking workers in Kansas.
This is a story about the importance of unions.
This is a story that I was told was “too niche” at one publication and that had been “done before” at another. That thing is that there is a bill currently in Congress which would radically strengthen the bargaining powers of unions, if only Senate Democrats would get off their asses and pass it. Senate Democrats being unwilling or unable to get their shit together enough to pass needed legislation is a bit of a recurring theme this Congress, as I wrote about in The Independent this week. More on that later. Right now, let us concern ourselves with this bill, this bill that could drastically improve the lot of American workers.
The Protecting the Right to Organize – or PRO – Act passed the House of Representatives in March. Stalled in the Senate, the bill’s future remains cloudy. Yet, should it pass, it would be the biggest expansion of labor protections in decades, possibly since the New Deal.
To begin with, The PRO Act would allow unions to override right to work laws. “Right to work” feels like a bit a of a misnomer to me, because it does not actually guarantee anyone a job or any modicum of security once they have a job. In fact, it does the opposite. “Right to work” simply means that an employee has can be hired without joining a union. While some smug sons of assholes (class traitors) think that’s fine – why should they be forced to pay union dues? – the rest of us see them for what they are: moochers and hangers-on.
Employees who aren’t in the union still benefit from union negotiations. The PRO Act would allow unions to collect dues from these employees, who currently refuse to contribute their fair share. Because of this, it would strengthen the bargaining position of unions, as no employees would be outside the union (meaning that the bosses would be compelled to negotiate fairer terms with the unions, having no recourse to non-union workers).
There are other things this law does, too. Good things. It would prohibit employer interference and influence in union elections – something that hinders the ability of unions to elect pro-labor slates and progressive candidates by unfairly allowing capital influence. We saw this most recently in the attempts by Amazon workers in Alabama to unionize. Bosses there engaged in “captive audience” meetings to spread misleading pro-corporate propaganda while also stonewalling the unionization effort, stalling for time to continue their misinformation operation. The PRO Act will also open the doors for mediation and arbitration and establish stricter financial penalties for companies violating labor laws.
Democrats like to pretend they give a damn. Joe Biden, with roots in Scranton, still tries to position himself as the champion of the American labor force. He often tells of his father explaining to him that he lost his job, and what that meant. Bill Clinton famously said “I feel your pain.” But when it’s time to put their money where their mouth is, they take capital’s money and shut up every single time.
But there was a time, not so long ago, when Democrats were the party of working people insomuch as any capitalist party will ever be the party of the working people. I walk my dog in a state park built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. My grandparents survive in part on Social Security. I have electricity thanks to the TVA. I was raised to think of Franklin Roosevelt like most people think of Abraham Lincoln, or George Washington. He remains my favorite president, the best I think we ever had.
But something changed. In 1997, Tony Blair – after dragging the UK Labour Party to the right – won a landslide election. In doing so, he returned the party to power for the first time in 18 years. It was a remarkable feat. But it was not his alone.
This is a story about striking workers in Kansas.
This is a story about the importance of unions.
This is the story about how the left abandoned both. You see, Blair was following a playbook written by Bill Clinton, James Carville, and Paul Begala. Clinton looked at 12 years of Republican – more accurately, Reagan – control and saw that for Democrats to win, they would need to follow the GOP to the right. This meant accepting the end of the postwar New Deal order rather than railing against it and embracing neoliberalism in all its capitalistic gore. Clinton did, and he won.
Then he signed NAFTA, which in no small part accelerated the outsourcing of American manufacturing jobs, crucially, with no replacement or plan for retraining the millions of Americans who lost those jobs. Then welfare reform, which gutted the already precarious social safety net. Then repeal of Glass-Steagall, allowing for the reconvergence of commercial and investment banking. Then, and then, and then.
The Democrats were never socialists the way the Labour Party was and to some degree still is. The closest we came was FDR, and then maybe LBJ who tried, God love him. But they were, at least, better than the alternative. Yet the 1990s saw a full-scale abandonment of New Deal economic principals and class solidarity with Democratic elected officials (save a few rare exceptions) and the working class. Instead, the parameters of American political life shifted away from economics and towards bourgeois culture wars.
Sometimes you have to fight a culture war. I’m a gay man who spent much of his 20s fighting for his right to marry, so I understand that. But you also have to fight a class war. I’m a gay man in his 30s who has never married, but who sure as hell could benefit from healthcare that was free at the point of access. So, I understand that too.
I give you this brief history lesson so that you understand why three Democratic Senators are holding out on the PRO Act, and shockingly, none are named Joe Manchin. One of them – Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – will not surprise you. She is a perennial thorn in the side of progressives, famously voting against raising the minimum wage with a dramatic thumbs down. But two others – her fellow Arizonan Mark Kelly and another Mark, this one Warner of Virginia – also oppose the PRO Act.
But… why? Hell if I know. I suspect it has to do with the fact that each of them have corporate donors that would proverbially skin their hides if they dared to vote for anything that empowered workers to organize for their own interests which are intrinsically opposed to the interests of capital. But that’s just a guess. You can call and ask yourself:
Mark Kelly can be reached at (202) 224-2235
Kyrsten Sinema can be reached at (202) 224-4521
Mark Warner can be reached at (202) 224-2023
This is a story about striking workers in Kansas.
This is a story about the importance of unions.
This is a story about how Democrats abdicated their responsibility. For if Democrats can’t protect the working women and men of this country, what good are they? Absolutely none. Say it again.
The best thing you can do to help workers is to call these three Senators and demand they support the PRO Act. Especially if you live in Arizona or Virginia, I encourage you to reach out. You can click the senator’s name to go to their website, where you can also e-mail them. There are also numbers for field offices in their respective states. Put pressure on these Democrats to do support the working people who voted for them, not the robber barons who seem to own them.
This is a story about striking workers in Kansas.
This is a story about the importance of unions.
This is a story I wish this had been published on a larger platform. My editors are fantastic and I’m sure their reasons were sincere, but it is infinitely frustrating to me that such an important story is being relegated to “local interest” rather than being trumpeted on the front pages of every major newspaper in the nation as it should be. Especially since Jeff Bezos blasting himself into space was front page news.
For this is not just a story about striking workers in Kansas. This is a story about the declining power of American labor, of 40 years of betrayal and deliberate sabotage, and of a bill that could help change that. It is the story of you and of me and of every working-class American who dreams either of making America great again or building back better. Because capital doesn’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. It will happily exploit you all the same.
So, I ask that you share this newsletter. Forward it to friends. Post it on Facebook. Tweet it. I have a small but loyal readership here, and I’m content with that. I love writing for those of you who like reading my work. But this issue is one where we can make a difference, perhaps not directly in the lives of the Frito-Lay workers, but in the lives of workers who might one day follow in their footsteps and demand a fairer bargain with their bosses.
This is a story about striking workers in Kansas.
This is a story about the importance of unions.
This is a story about all of us.
We can make a difference. We can pass the PRO Act.
I stand in solidarity with Frito-Lay workers. I urge my fellow workers to do the same. The abuses they have been subjected to are straight out of the Gilded Age. The workers at the Topeka plant – and all workers across this nation – deserve decent working conditions and a fair share of the fruits of their labor. They saw they weren’t getting that, so they walked out. I applaud their courage, and I offer my support to any workers anywhere who are thinking of doing the same.
For in the words of the old labor hymn, “solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong.”
On the billionaire space race…
Jeff Bezos came back to Earth, but he still lives in the clouds. The Amazon founder is the second billionaire in as many weeks to make a space flight, following Richard Branson in the new space race. Elon Musk is nipping at their heels.
Only, instead of pitting countries against one another in the fight for scientific and technological dominance, this is a pissing contest between rich people with so much money they’ve literally run out of ways to spend money on Earth. Meanwhile, their workers languish in abysmal conditions making a pittance as they try and fail to organize for better conditions. It’s a damning indictment of our new Gilded Age.
To be clear, I am not against space exploration. Humans are a migratory species; space is the next frontier – all these cliches are cliché because they’re true. I wasn’t alive during the Space Race, but the stories of those who were, filled with awe as they watched man step on the moon, are inspiring.
There is something very wrong, though, when two individual men can afford to do what was, not so long ago, the purview of only the world’s sole two superpowers. How is it that these men have become so inordinately wealthy that they can not only afford to blast themselves into space, but were so bored with their lives on Earth they took a notion to do so?
The answer is laissez-faire capitalism. We are in a new gilded age where oligarchs are rushing towards the stars. The capitalist space race will undoubtedly open the exploitation of other planets’ resources to the global oligarchy because they’ve acquired their ill-gotten wealth by doing that right here on Earth. “Virulently anti-union” Musk forced workers back to work during the height of the pandemic, causing many to fall ill with COVID-19. Bezos famously forced workers to urinate in bottles and work while injured, and some of his employees made so little they were on food stamps.
Even Branson, who once called for “enlightened capitalism” and has a lot of cache on the neoliberal left for such meaningless gestures as offering unlimited vacation to his employees, lives on a private island to avoid paying UK taxes, avoiding paying his fair share to help the working class and poor through the NHS and the welfare state. Yet he had the audacity to ask the UK government for a bailout for Virgin Atlantic last year. (This Tory government was only too happy to oblige.) Meanwhile, Branson complained he couldn’t afford to pay his workers during the pandemic and asked employees to take eight weeks unpaid leave. Meanwhile, Tesla and Amazon have been listed among the most dangerous places to work while complaining of long hours and low pay.
This gross spectacle of privilege is not something to celebrate. Rather, is indicates everything rotten in our capitalist system. Forgive me for thinking we’d be better off if all these men went to space and stayed there, leaving their unfathomable wealth in the hands of those whose labor they exploited to get it.
What I’ve been up to…
I wrote this piece for The Independent on how Democrats need to stop pissing around and actually pass the For the People Act. I’m sick of excuses. We have the numbers if we repeal the filibuster, and there is no good reason not to do that. Speaking at a CNN Town Hall on Wednesday, President Biden said he didn’t want to throw Congress into disarray by repealing the filibuster, but I don’t buy that. I’m sick of his excuses. I’m sick of Manchin and Sinema. Pass the damn bill now. For again, if Democrats can’t even protect our democracy and our right to vote, what good are they?
For the Watercooler, I wrote about the potential primetime revival of All My Children. This article actually is niche, as if you aren’t a fan of American soap operas you may have never heard of AMC. It was my favorite American soap, though, and I was gutted when it was cancelled in 2011. This article is part love letter, part me finally venting publicly my utter frustration at and contempt for Brian Frons, who may be the single worst thing to happen to American television since the advent of Fox News. His name is a swear word in my presence.
What I’ve been reading…
On the heels of finishing Hillbilly Elegy (which I plan on writing about at some point), I read Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy. It is a collection of essays, poems, and photographs interrogating, critiquing, defending, and responding to J.D. Vance’s polemic. One of the editors, Tony Harkins, is a professor at my alma mater of Western Kentucky University. I know Dr. Harkins, though I never took a class with him, and he is someone for whom I have immense respect. If you read Hillbilly Elegy and want an alternative perspective on life in the hills and hollows, this is the book for you.
Like the rest of the chattering class, I read Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s harrowing account of the final year of the Trump presidency, I Alone Can Fix It. Leonnig and Rucker are terrific reporters with a depth of knowledge and breadth of contact most journalists could only dream of. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in how the pandemic was allowed to get so wildly out of control, Donald Trump’s psyche throughout the 2020 election, and crucially, how the insurrection came to bear. Unlike many, I was not particularly shocked by anything I read, but only because my expectations were already unfathomably low. Donald Trump is an insane ghoul. Who among us is surprised by this?
This will only be of interest to a small percentage of my readers, but here is the report from the Naming and Symbols Task Force at WKU, which recommended that the names of Potter and Ogden Colleges as well as Van Meter Hall be changed because their namesakes were slaveowners. WKU President Tim Caboni has decided not to rename these buildings because of the cost, causing me to wonder what the point of this committee was in the first place. My own feelings on renaming Potter, Ogden, and Van Meter were “meh,” if I’m being honest. Most students never give a thought to who these buildings are named for (none of these men have gone down in history) and I fail to see how this materially advanced the interests of Black Hilltoppers. It felt to me more like a meaningless gesture that gives the university cover on more systemic issues, such as retention and recruitment. Nevertheless, I support the committee’s recommendations and as a proud WKU alumnus, I urge the university to act on its findings.
Nadine White had a great piece in The Independent on the horrific treatment of Jess Brammar by various unsavory elements of the British right. I wrote several pieces for Huff Post UK while Brammar was an editor, though we never worked together, and I do not know her. Still, I have immense respect for her as a journalist and an editor. The BBC would be lucky to have her. It is astounding to me that after years of Andrew Neil being the face of BBC News while also publishing the Spectator that anyone on the right would dare mention Brammar’s politics, but then, the right never ceases to amaze me. And by amaze, I mean disgust.
This piece at Alabama.com on a doctor who had to tell patients it was too late to get the vaccine as she intubated them is heartbreaking. The sudden conservative reversal on vaccines – Sean Hannity, the guy at Newsmax, now Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama – has been as sudden as it is surprising. I don’t know what caused this, or whether it’s a Damascene conversion or a political calculation, but I welcome it. This delta variant is no joke, so if you have not been vaccinated, please make that appointment today. The life you save may be your own.
A picture of the puppy…