A recent article in the Washington Post from January 14, 2016 wants to know if working-class whites are the GOP keys to the White House? Reporters Philip Rucker and Robert Costa ventured to New Hampshire to find out how the GOP will try to persuade many more white working class Americans to vote Republican. Ted Cruz campaign manager, Jeff Roe said, “Some of them have never voted.” … “If they can be convinced to come out and vote, we win.”
For some decades now the GOP has pushed one policy: cut taxes and spending and everyone will prosper. During the same decades the Democrats have pushed one policy: get education. Go to college and everyone will prosper. Maybe the working class doesn’t vote because they recognize both Republicans and Democrats ignore them with useless slogans?
Campaign Manager Roe is right though, the working class vote could determine an election because they are the biggest voting block of any voting block. Census data shows 65 percent of the working age adult population does not have college degrees, which suggests the Republicans and Democrats have ignored the economic circumstance of at least 65 percent of the working class.
The Democrats lost the working class in the 1980’s when Ronald Reagan got their vote talking patriotism and a selection of social issues like abortion and gun control, along with lower taxes and union busting. President Obama has done next to nothing to get them back. He finally endorsed a higher minimum wage and a tiny improvement in overtime rules, while stagnant wages and the union busting going on around him.
Over the past thirty years the Republicans have done a good job getting the working class worked up and angry with someone, or something, while getting them to forget the low wages they earn from private sector employers. Now though Rucker and Costa assure their readers Republican see the need for new strategies. They quoted Roe again, he told them “The Republican argument can no longer be just about taxes and spending. It’s got to speak to the working poor and the culture.”
Trump told voters in New Hampshire “You people know better than anybody about jobs leaving an area. Look at what happened to you?” He is the bluntest of all the candidates with his opposition to immigration and the shift of jobs abroad. His campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said “People don’t feel like these jobs have disappeared, they’ve been stolen, and they don’t mind if someone is speaking forcefully about taking them back for blue-collar America.”
When Cruz and Trump pitch trade protection and limits to immigration and foreign investment they speak to the working class, but not to business and corporate America. That part of the Republican party wants all the immigration they can get to keep their supply of cheap labor flowing. That part of the Republican Party expects to roam the world looking for investment opportunities in countries with cheap labor. That part of the Republican party ignores decades of $400 and $500 billion dollar trade deficits, and ignores how much U.S. debt and deficit spending supports employment abroad. But then again the Democrats ignore it too.
The idea that Trump and Cruz will take over the Republican Party to impose policies business does not want sounds too far fetched to consider in spite of the polls that show them leading. I find it ironic that Donald Trump would have a television show, the Apprentice, where he casts an imperious eye around the board room table and fires one person on each episode of the show.
Trump knows that Americans work at will, a euphemistic term for getting fired at any time, and for any reason, at the whim of an employer. Could there be anyone who likes to be the boss more than Donald Trump?
The only way to have job rights in the United States is to negotiate an employment contract. Big time athletes and their coaches have them. Movie stars and celebrities get them. Unions negotiate them, but the Republicans work hard to bust organized labor while the Democrats look on, mostly in silence. Private sector unions have sunk to six or seven percent of private sector jobs. Few of the remaining millions who work at will seem to realize unions are the only means available to negotiate job rights or protect their declining standard of living.
The Democrats know that and so do the Republicans. Unions are dead; long live unions.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association
Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association et al.
In Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association ten teachers filed suit because they claim that many union stances taken in collective bargaining are bad for public schoolteachers and bad for the children they teach. They want the Court to rule that individuals have a right to choose whether or not they join a union. California and twenty-two other states require them to pay agency fees in lieu of union dues to support collective bargaining.
In all states that have adopted the option of a right-to-work as specified by the Taft-Hartley Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act the matter in question is irrelevant. Those states have already banned unions from collecting agency fees. California is not a right to work state and so anti-union groups like the Center for Individual Rights keep encouraging lawsuits hoping to bust unions.
On the Center for Individual Rights web site, Plaintiffs make a number of statements and claims that ignore two important previous Supreme Court cases: Abood v. Detroit Board of Education from 1977 and Harris v. Quinn from 2014. The new suit repeats the same claims just finished in Harris v. Quinn.
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education
In the case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education some public school teachers objected to the requirement in the Detroit Public School's collective bargaining agreement that required non-union members to pay a service charge in lieu of union dues. The Supreme Court allowed the requirement as payment for a non-member's "fair share" as long as the union used the non-member funds only for contract negotiations, contract administration and grievance procedures rather than for political or ideological activities.
Section 9(a) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 as amended and administered by the National Labor Relations Board requires the union to represent all employees in the bargaining unit not just its members following a majority vote in a democratic election to establish a union. Because United States labor law forces a certified union to represent all employees the Supreme Court declared a compulsory surcharge fairly distributes "the cost of the union among those who benefit" and "counter acts the incentive that employees might otherwise have to become 'free riders.' "
The court acknowledged in its Abood opinion that such a "fair share" provision has an impact on public employee first amendment rights of free speech, which is why they did not allow an agency fee to include any union dues that support lobbying or political expenses. The Supreme Court requires a partial refund of agency fees equal to the percentage of a union budget that goes for political uses. Plaintiffs in the new Friedrich v. CTA suit acknowledge the refund. I also note that corporate shareholders confront the same free speech issues when corporate boards pay to lobby, but without compensation where profits become a lobbying expense.
Harris v. Quinn
In the case of Harris v. Quinn concluded in 2014 the state of Illinois used federal funds for a Medicaid Rehabilitation Program. The Rehabilitation program provides federal funds for states to pay personal assistants chosen from a state approved pool of personal assistants who provide the in-home care. Three personal assistants in a bargaining unit of the Service Employees International Union petitioned a federal court for an injunction to end the non-union agency fee as a violation of their rights to free speech under the constitution. Petitioners wanted the court to abandon the doctrine established in the Abood case.
The Court voted 5 to 4 that the agency fee could apply to “full fledged” employees, only not to the special case of Illinois personal assistants. The majority opinion included a discussion of objections to the Abood opinion, but the majority decided not to overturn it.
In their written opinion the majority admitted “the wages and benefits of personal assistants have been substantially improved; orientation and training programs, background checks, and a program to deal with lost and erroneous paychecks have been instituted; and a procedure was established to resolve grievances arising under the collective-bargaining agreement . . . and we will assume that this is correct.”
Justice Kagen wrote a 25 page dissent that supported the Abood doctrine because “The only point in dispute is whether it matters that the personal assistants here are employees not only of the State but also of the disabled persons for whom they care.” A final point in the minority opinion suggested the majority found it too difficult to write a legal justification to throw out compulsory fees for labor unions when the court has relied on “fair share” rules in deciding cases involving compulsory fees outside the labor context.
Fredrichs v. California Teachers Association et al
In the present case of Friedrichs v. CTA anti union groups refuse to accept Harris v. Quinn when they can develop another claim that might destroy the agency shop in all the states. In Friedrichs v. CTA plaintiffs claim that collective bargaining amounts to a political act even though they admit those in the bargaining unit can get a refund for their part of the agency fee. In this way they want the Supreme Court to agree that contract negotiations, contract administration and grievance procedures are politics, which require a 100 percent refund of agency fees.
The court will have to overrule itself after just two years, since the Harris v. Quinn decision came June 30, 2014. Since both plaintiff and defendant alike know the court acts as a divided political body, the decision could go either way. However, the anti union groups have taken a few liberties in their public statements about their case.
The Center for Individual Rights writes on its web site that in collective bargaining the union claims to speak for all teachers. Instead Federal labor law requires the union to represent all employees in a bargaining unit of a certified union. The claim made by the Center for Individual Rights contradicts Section 9(a) of the Taft-Hartley Act. Section 9(a) reads “Representatives designated or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes, shall be the exclusive representatives of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment, or other conditions of employment: …”
The labor movement has endured free speech attacks for over a hundred years, nothing is new in Friedrich v. CTA. A hundred years ago business owners blamed strikes on outside agitators. Outsiders would come in and stir up the benevolent owner's happy and contented employees and cause a strike, but he was not going to speak with any labor agitators because he intended to faithfully defend and protect the liberty and free speech for his loyal employees who did not want to join a union.
If employees in a union can be free to drop out as part of a right to work and free speech, then the Supreme Court ought to end the compulsory legal requirement for unions to represent free riders, or really freeloaders. A lawsuit that ends the agency shop but not the “exclusive representatives of all the employees” requires the Supreme Court to deny free speech and free association to unions and their members.
But There’s More
There’s more because one of the plaintiffs in the Friedrich v. CTA suit, a teacher named Harlan Elrich made a variety of personal complaints about unions in an op-ed piece in the January 3 Wall Street Journal. He complains because his “union spends resources pushing for ever-higher teacher salaries.” He favors “decent salaries” but claims teachers are “already well paid compared with everyone else in the Central Valley.”
He complains because the union negotiates policies for “discipline, grievances and seniority” when he knows many of his colleagues are incompetent and the union represents them anyway. It does not seem to occur to him that the union has negotiated a procedure for internal due process to prevent arbitrary firings without cause and that given their legal obligation to represent all employees imposed on them by Federal labor law the union has no choice but to defend all members of the union.
He doesn’t like seniority either because he thinks younger teachers can be better than older teachers, but he ignores that younger teachers are also cheaper teachers and management may find advantage firing higher paid older teachers to replace with lower paid younger teachers, or replace them with even lower paid substitute teachers.
Mr. Elrich adopts each and every point of the upper class attack on teacher unions. His op-ed piece reads like a check list of points supplied by the staff at the Center for Individual Rights or the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Unions would do better getting their members more involved and lowering their dues, but organized labor will always have to confront divisive people like Mr. Elrich who can’t accept he’s just one of millions in the exploited working class, something he will always be. He seems not to know the wealthy upper class howl with laughter at fools like him.
In Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association ten teachers filed suit because they claim that many union stances taken in collective bargaining are bad for public schoolteachers and bad for the children they teach. They want the Court to rule that individuals have a right to choose whether or not they join a union. California and twenty-two other states require them to pay agency fees in lieu of union dues to support collective bargaining.
In all states that have adopted the option of a right-to-work as specified by the Taft-Hartley Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act the matter in question is irrelevant. Those states have already banned unions from collecting agency fees. California is not a right to work state and so anti-union groups like the Center for Individual Rights keep encouraging lawsuits hoping to bust unions.
On the Center for Individual Rights web site, Plaintiffs make a number of statements and claims that ignore two important previous Supreme Court cases: Abood v. Detroit Board of Education from 1977 and Harris v. Quinn from 2014. The new suit repeats the same claims just finished in Harris v. Quinn.
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education
In the case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education some public school teachers objected to the requirement in the Detroit Public School's collective bargaining agreement that required non-union members to pay a service charge in lieu of union dues. The Supreme Court allowed the requirement as payment for a non-member's "fair share" as long as the union used the non-member funds only for contract negotiations, contract administration and grievance procedures rather than for political or ideological activities.
Section 9(a) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 as amended and administered by the National Labor Relations Board requires the union to represent all employees in the bargaining unit not just its members following a majority vote in a democratic election to establish a union. Because United States labor law forces a certified union to represent all employees the Supreme Court declared a compulsory surcharge fairly distributes "the cost of the union among those who benefit" and "counter acts the incentive that employees might otherwise have to become 'free riders.' "
The court acknowledged in its Abood opinion that such a "fair share" provision has an impact on public employee first amendment rights of free speech, which is why they did not allow an agency fee to include any union dues that support lobbying or political expenses. The Supreme Court requires a partial refund of agency fees equal to the percentage of a union budget that goes for political uses. Plaintiffs in the new Friedrich v. CTA suit acknowledge the refund. I also note that corporate shareholders confront the same free speech issues when corporate boards pay to lobby, but without compensation where profits become a lobbying expense.
Harris v. Quinn
In the case of Harris v. Quinn concluded in 2014 the state of Illinois used federal funds for a Medicaid Rehabilitation Program. The Rehabilitation program provides federal funds for states to pay personal assistants chosen from a state approved pool of personal assistants who provide the in-home care. Three personal assistants in a bargaining unit of the Service Employees International Union petitioned a federal court for an injunction to end the non-union agency fee as a violation of their rights to free speech under the constitution. Petitioners wanted the court to abandon the doctrine established in the Abood case.
The Court voted 5 to 4 that the agency fee could apply to “full fledged” employees, only not to the special case of Illinois personal assistants. The majority opinion included a discussion of objections to the Abood opinion, but the majority decided not to overturn it.
In their written opinion the majority admitted “the wages and benefits of personal assistants have been substantially improved; orientation and training programs, background checks, and a program to deal with lost and erroneous paychecks have been instituted; and a procedure was established to resolve grievances arising under the collective-bargaining agreement . . . and we will assume that this is correct.”
Justice Kagen wrote a 25 page dissent that supported the Abood doctrine because “The only point in dispute is whether it matters that the personal assistants here are employees not only of the State but also of the disabled persons for whom they care.” A final point in the minority opinion suggested the majority found it too difficult to write a legal justification to throw out compulsory fees for labor unions when the court has relied on “fair share” rules in deciding cases involving compulsory fees outside the labor context.
Fredrichs v. California Teachers Association et al
In the present case of Friedrichs v. CTA anti union groups refuse to accept Harris v. Quinn when they can develop another claim that might destroy the agency shop in all the states. In Friedrichs v. CTA plaintiffs claim that collective bargaining amounts to a political act even though they admit those in the bargaining unit can get a refund for their part of the agency fee. In this way they want the Supreme Court to agree that contract negotiations, contract administration and grievance procedures are politics, which require a 100 percent refund of agency fees.
The court will have to overrule itself after just two years, since the Harris v. Quinn decision came June 30, 2014. Since both plaintiff and defendant alike know the court acts as a divided political body, the decision could go either way. However, the anti union groups have taken a few liberties in their public statements about their case.
The Center for Individual Rights writes on its web site that in collective bargaining the union claims to speak for all teachers. Instead Federal labor law requires the union to represent all employees in a bargaining unit of a certified union. The claim made by the Center for Individual Rights contradicts Section 9(a) of the Taft-Hartley Act. Section 9(a) reads “Representatives designated or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes, shall be the exclusive representatives of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment, or other conditions of employment: …”
The labor movement has endured free speech attacks for over a hundred years, nothing is new in Friedrich v. CTA. A hundred years ago business owners blamed strikes on outside agitators. Outsiders would come in and stir up the benevolent owner's happy and contented employees and cause a strike, but he was not going to speak with any labor agitators because he intended to faithfully defend and protect the liberty and free speech for his loyal employees who did not want to join a union.
If employees in a union can be free to drop out as part of a right to work and free speech, then the Supreme Court ought to end the compulsory legal requirement for unions to represent free riders, or really freeloaders. A lawsuit that ends the agency shop but not the “exclusive representatives of all the employees” requires the Supreme Court to deny free speech and free association to unions and their members.
But There’s More
There’s more because one of the plaintiffs in the Friedrich v. CTA suit, a teacher named Harlan Elrich made a variety of personal complaints about unions in an op-ed piece in the January 3 Wall Street Journal. He complains because his “union spends resources pushing for ever-higher teacher salaries.” He favors “decent salaries” but claims teachers are “already well paid compared with everyone else in the Central Valley.”
He complains because the union negotiates policies for “discipline, grievances and seniority” when he knows many of his colleagues are incompetent and the union represents them anyway. It does not seem to occur to him that the union has negotiated a procedure for internal due process to prevent arbitrary firings without cause and that given their legal obligation to represent all employees imposed on them by Federal labor law the union has no choice but to defend all members of the union.
He doesn’t like seniority either because he thinks younger teachers can be better than older teachers, but he ignores that younger teachers are also cheaper teachers and management may find advantage firing higher paid older teachers to replace with lower paid younger teachers, or replace them with even lower paid substitute teachers.
Mr. Elrich adopts each and every point of the upper class attack on teacher unions. His op-ed piece reads like a check list of points supplied by the staff at the Center for Individual Rights or the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Unions would do better getting their members more involved and lowering their dues, but organized labor will always have to confront divisive people like Mr. Elrich who can’t accept he’s just one of millions in the exploited working class, something he will always be. He seems not to know the wealthy upper class howl with laughter at fools like him.
Friday, October 30, 2015
Jobs for Epidemiologists
Occupation
Standard Occupational Classification #19-1041 Epidemiologists
SOC Definition- Epidemiologists #19-1041 - Investigate and describe the determinants and distribution of disease, disability, and other health outcomes and develop the means for prevention and control.
Epidemiology studies the causes, and effects of disease in defined populations to identify trends that can improve public health by identifying the risks of disease. Epidemiologists work in the field to discover the causes of disease or injury, who is at risk, and how to lower or end the incidence of known dangers and diseases. They monitor demographic and social trends and account for a variety of hereditary, behavioral, environmental and health care variables that require interdisciplinary work in statistics, biology including biochemistry and molecular biology and clinical research practices.
Epidemiologists are classified as life science occupations in the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifications with the majority working in the state and local government. For Epidemiologists 54 percent work in government, 17.8 percent in health care, mostly at hospitals, 11.8 percent in scientific research and management consulting, 9 percent in colleges and universities doing teaching and research and almost five percent in the pharmaceutical industry as part of manufacturing.
National employment as Epidemiologists was 5,420 in 2014. Jobs are up since 2000 when jobs were 2,480. The average annual job increase equals 214 per year since 2000 at a growth rate of 5.74 percent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is forecasting job growth for Epidemiologists at 50 per year through 2022 with a growth rate of 1.12 percent a year.
Job openings make a better measure of new hiring than job growth. Job openings are job growth and the number of net replacements. Net replacements are people who permanently leave an occupation for another occupation or retirement and must be replaced before there can be job growth. Job openings for Epidemiologists are forecast to be 160 a year through 2022.
The recently updated BLS Education and Training Classification assignments lists MA degree skills as necessary for entry into jobs as Epidemiologists. However, percentages from survey data are published for Epidemiologists showing an educational distribution where 5.8 percent have a BA degree, 92.9 percent have advanced degrees with 64 percent holding doctorates, only .6 percent have some college, but no degree, and .4 percent have an associate’s degree. Less than one percent have high school skills only. Previous experience is considered unnecessary, but moderate on-the-job training is expected to be necessary for new hires.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports degree data for America’s colleges and universities that can be compared with job growth and openings. There was 1 BA degrees granted in 1 program in June 2012, the last year of complete degree data. There were also 881 MA degrees granted in 1 program in Biology and Biomedical Sciences and 268 PhD degrees. However, many work in epidemiology with doctorates in public health, clinical practice or with MD degrees. Degrees are up in 2012 from previous years. The ratio of relevant BA degree to openings equals 7.18, or 1,149/160, assuring 7 qualified candidates to fill each job opening.
The basic wage data from the BLS occupational employment survey includes a wage distribution. Averages are not used much in wage data. A few high wages pull up the average and make it unrepresentative. Instead a distribution range of wages is published with the 10th, 25th, median, 75th, and 90th percentiles of wages. A 10th percentile wage means 10 percent working in this job have wages equal to or less than the 10th percentile wage and so on. Annual wages are converted to hourly wages by dividing annual wages by 2080
The entry wage for the national market in the 10th percentile for Epidemiologists is reported as $43,530 in 2014. The 25th percentile wage equals $53,070. The median wage is $067,420, the 75th percentile wage equals $000 and the 90th percentile wage is $112,360.
The wages of epidemiologists have kept up with inflation for the last decade. For example, to have the buying power of the 2006 median wage of $56,670 in 2014, the epidemiologist’s wage would need to be $66,546.67. Instead it was $67,420, a 1.31 percent increase in the real wage for those eight years.
Standard Occupational Classification #19-1041 Epidemiologists
SOC Definition- Epidemiologists #19-1041 - Investigate and describe the determinants and distribution of disease, disability, and other health outcomes and develop the means for prevention and control.
Epidemiology studies the causes, and effects of disease in defined populations to identify trends that can improve public health by identifying the risks of disease. Epidemiologists work in the field to discover the causes of disease or injury, who is at risk, and how to lower or end the incidence of known dangers and diseases. They monitor demographic and social trends and account for a variety of hereditary, behavioral, environmental and health care variables that require interdisciplinary work in statistics, biology including biochemistry and molecular biology and clinical research practices.
Epidemiologists are classified as life science occupations in the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifications with the majority working in the state and local government. For Epidemiologists 54 percent work in government, 17.8 percent in health care, mostly at hospitals, 11.8 percent in scientific research and management consulting, 9 percent in colleges and universities doing teaching and research and almost five percent in the pharmaceutical industry as part of manufacturing.
National employment as Epidemiologists was 5,420 in 2014. Jobs are up since 2000 when jobs were 2,480. The average annual job increase equals 214 per year since 2000 at a growth rate of 5.74 percent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is forecasting job growth for Epidemiologists at 50 per year through 2022 with a growth rate of 1.12 percent a year.
Job openings make a better measure of new hiring than job growth. Job openings are job growth and the number of net replacements. Net replacements are people who permanently leave an occupation for another occupation or retirement and must be replaced before there can be job growth. Job openings for Epidemiologists are forecast to be 160 a year through 2022.
The recently updated BLS Education and Training Classification assignments lists MA degree skills as necessary for entry into jobs as Epidemiologists. However, percentages from survey data are published for Epidemiologists showing an educational distribution where 5.8 percent have a BA degree, 92.9 percent have advanced degrees with 64 percent holding doctorates, only .6 percent have some college, but no degree, and .4 percent have an associate’s degree. Less than one percent have high school skills only. Previous experience is considered unnecessary, but moderate on-the-job training is expected to be necessary for new hires.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports degree data for America’s colleges and universities that can be compared with job growth and openings. There was 1 BA degrees granted in 1 program in June 2012, the last year of complete degree data. There were also 881 MA degrees granted in 1 program in Biology and Biomedical Sciences and 268 PhD degrees. However, many work in epidemiology with doctorates in public health, clinical practice or with MD degrees. Degrees are up in 2012 from previous years. The ratio of relevant BA degree to openings equals 7.18, or 1,149/160, assuring 7 qualified candidates to fill each job opening.
The basic wage data from the BLS occupational employment survey includes a wage distribution. Averages are not used much in wage data. A few high wages pull up the average and make it unrepresentative. Instead a distribution range of wages is published with the 10th, 25th, median, 75th, and 90th percentiles of wages. A 10th percentile wage means 10 percent working in this job have wages equal to or less than the 10th percentile wage and so on. Annual wages are converted to hourly wages by dividing annual wages by 2080
The entry wage for the national market in the 10th percentile for Epidemiologists is reported as $43,530 in 2014. The 25th percentile wage equals $53,070. The median wage is $067,420, the 75th percentile wage equals $000 and the 90th percentile wage is $112,360.
The wages of epidemiologists have kept up with inflation for the last decade. For example, to have the buying power of the 2006 median wage of $56,670 in 2014, the epidemiologist’s wage would need to be $66,546.67. Instead it was $67,420, a 1.31 percent increase in the real wage for those eight years.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
UAW Members Accept Revised Fiat Chrysler Contract
UAW Members Accept Revised Fiat Chrysler Contract with 77 percent majority
The rank and file of the United Auto Workers union voted down the contract with Fiat-Chrysler, the elected leadership confirmed October 1, 2015. The No votes were 65 percent; the first contract voted down in thirty years. UAW president Dennis Williams tried to put a good face on the rejection. He said “We don’t consider this a setback; we consider the membership vote a part of the process we respect.”
The press accounts clarify the most important problem with the contract for the rank and file: a dual wage system. Back on October 29, 2007, the UAW agreed to have newly hired assembly workers be paid at a lower wage than established workers. A dual wage system gives the incentive to replace high wage workers with low wage workers. It is also cynical and anti-union for labor leaders to divide the membership and disrupt solidarity.
While there are other issues the rank and file wanted addressed, labor leaders failed to eliminate dual wages or include a proposal to cap low wage entry workers at 25 percent as some disgruntled members wanted. The new revised Memorandum of Understanding for employees hired after October 29, 2007 posted on the union website, uaw.org, sets up two headings under Non-Skilled wage scales for Team Member Rates. One heading is for those hired after October 29, 2007 until ratification of the newly negotiated contract and the second heading is for those hired after ratification of the contract. There is no percentage limit to lower wage new hires that I can find.
The section in the Memorandum of Understanding has a revised wage scale of Team Member Rates for those hired in one of the eight years beginning October 29, 2007. Those with less than a year of service have to wait eight years to reach the maximum wage for workers hired before October 29, 2007. Those with one year of service wait seven years and so on until those with eight years of service reach the maximum upon ratification of the new contract. The final maximum rate for non-axle operations comes to $29.94 an hour for assembly workers.
The next sub-section in the Memorandum of Understanding proposes a revised wage scale of Team Member Rates for those hired on or after the effective date of contract ratification. This second section identifies two sub sections in non-axle operations where new hires start at the same wage of $17.00 an hour, but fall behind in the out years and reach a lower cap than for those hired before ratification of the contract. The maximum for all non-MOPAR and non-axle operations is $22.50; for MOPAR operations the maximum is $25.00.
Team Assemblers
The Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains staffing percentages with wage and employment data for American industries including the auto industry. There are 1.2 million in an occupation defined as Team Assemblers working in all U.S. industries. A few Team Assemblers work in wholesale and retail trade, and a few more in publishing, but almost all work in manufacturing. More Team Assemblers work in the auto industry than any other industry, 245.9 thousand.
Team Assemblers work in three auto sub-industries. First, there is motor vehicle manufacturing where 96 thousand work as Team Assemblers and have 50.8 percent of the staffing with a median wage of $24.81. Second, in motor vehicle body and trailer manufacturing the 39.8 thousand that work as Team Assemblers hold 28.6 percent of the jobs with a median wage of $14.61. Third in motor vehicle parts manufacturing the 110.1 thousand that work as Team Assemblers hold 20.6 percent of the jobs with a median wage of $14.36.
Median hourly wages for Team Assemblers in the motor vehicle manufacturing industry contrasts with wages in other industries in several ways that suggests the compromises union leaders make in negotiations and perhaps when they get too friendly with management. First, the median hourly wage of $24.81 for Team assemblers in motor vehicle manufacturing is the highest median wage out of 122 industries that have jobs as Team Assemblers. Second the $24.81 median wage exceeds the mean wage, which is only $22.77. It is typical that high wages in a distribution of occupational wages will raise the mean above the median wage. Out of 122 industries using Team Assemblers only eight other industries have a median wage above the mean wage and except for one other industry the median exceeds the mean by only pennies.
To have the median wage more than $2.00 above the mean wage assures many below the median are far below it. Some team assemblers working in the auto industry work for over $25.00 an hour while others work for under $15.00. The difference suggests UAW negotiators will accept dividing their membership to get an agreement.
Continuing Dual Wages
Labor law grants union members a measure of democracy, which makes it risky for labor leaders that ignore a growing share of its membership earning low wages. The 65 percent no votes suggest a majority was unhappy paying union dues to a union that negotiates them into lower wages. Revolts do occur occasionally as happened at Boeing ten years ago.
In the present dispute UAW leaders made a revised proposal for motor vehicle manufacturing that closes the wage gap for those hired in the last eight years. The contract has benefits for those hired in the last eight years in a sliding scale based on their seniority up to eight years. However, new hires that come after ratification start at $17.00 an hour, but that will be less than everyone hired before them. In addition the published wage scales diverge in the out years with new hire wages capped at a lower wage after contract ratification. The combination assures new hires will earn less than more senior employees during the duration of the contract. Management can readily accept the contract because it continues to allow them to hire new people at lower wages than higher paid senior employees.
Negotiators modified the explicit dual wage system, but did not remove it. In effect union leaders have worked out a disguised system where seniority gets rewarded with a pay step type of increase in a job everyone agrees can be learned by all in 90 days or less. It appears to be a calculated scheme to get enough benefit for those hired after October 29, 2007 to get them to change their vote and ratify the modified contract. That worked very well as the switch from 35 percent yes votes to 77 percent yes votes demonstrates. However, union officials had to keep their future membership divided to get an agreement with management and to get the votes they needed to ratify it. Remember though everyone has to pay union dues to support the union, which should help explain why some members of unions feel left out and hostile to organized labor. So much for solidarity.
The rank and file of the United Auto Workers union voted down the contract with Fiat-Chrysler, the elected leadership confirmed October 1, 2015. The No votes were 65 percent; the first contract voted down in thirty years. UAW president Dennis Williams tried to put a good face on the rejection. He said “We don’t consider this a setback; we consider the membership vote a part of the process we respect.”
The press accounts clarify the most important problem with the contract for the rank and file: a dual wage system. Back on October 29, 2007, the UAW agreed to have newly hired assembly workers be paid at a lower wage than established workers. A dual wage system gives the incentive to replace high wage workers with low wage workers. It is also cynical and anti-union for labor leaders to divide the membership and disrupt solidarity.
While there are other issues the rank and file wanted addressed, labor leaders failed to eliminate dual wages or include a proposal to cap low wage entry workers at 25 percent as some disgruntled members wanted. The new revised Memorandum of Understanding for employees hired after October 29, 2007 posted on the union website, uaw.org, sets up two headings under Non-Skilled wage scales for Team Member Rates. One heading is for those hired after October 29, 2007 until ratification of the newly negotiated contract and the second heading is for those hired after ratification of the contract. There is no percentage limit to lower wage new hires that I can find.
The section in the Memorandum of Understanding has a revised wage scale of Team Member Rates for those hired in one of the eight years beginning October 29, 2007. Those with less than a year of service have to wait eight years to reach the maximum wage for workers hired before October 29, 2007. Those with one year of service wait seven years and so on until those with eight years of service reach the maximum upon ratification of the new contract. The final maximum rate for non-axle operations comes to $29.94 an hour for assembly workers.
The next sub-section in the Memorandum of Understanding proposes a revised wage scale of Team Member Rates for those hired on or after the effective date of contract ratification. This second section identifies two sub sections in non-axle operations where new hires start at the same wage of $17.00 an hour, but fall behind in the out years and reach a lower cap than for those hired before ratification of the contract. The maximum for all non-MOPAR and non-axle operations is $22.50; for MOPAR operations the maximum is $25.00.
Team Assemblers
The Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains staffing percentages with wage and employment data for American industries including the auto industry. There are 1.2 million in an occupation defined as Team Assemblers working in all U.S. industries. A few Team Assemblers work in wholesale and retail trade, and a few more in publishing, but almost all work in manufacturing. More Team Assemblers work in the auto industry than any other industry, 245.9 thousand.
Team Assemblers work in three auto sub-industries. First, there is motor vehicle manufacturing where 96 thousand work as Team Assemblers and have 50.8 percent of the staffing with a median wage of $24.81. Second, in motor vehicle body and trailer manufacturing the 39.8 thousand that work as Team Assemblers hold 28.6 percent of the jobs with a median wage of $14.61. Third in motor vehicle parts manufacturing the 110.1 thousand that work as Team Assemblers hold 20.6 percent of the jobs with a median wage of $14.36.
Median hourly wages for Team Assemblers in the motor vehicle manufacturing industry contrasts with wages in other industries in several ways that suggests the compromises union leaders make in negotiations and perhaps when they get too friendly with management. First, the median hourly wage of $24.81 for Team assemblers in motor vehicle manufacturing is the highest median wage out of 122 industries that have jobs as Team Assemblers. Second the $24.81 median wage exceeds the mean wage, which is only $22.77. It is typical that high wages in a distribution of occupational wages will raise the mean above the median wage. Out of 122 industries using Team Assemblers only eight other industries have a median wage above the mean wage and except for one other industry the median exceeds the mean by only pennies.
To have the median wage more than $2.00 above the mean wage assures many below the median are far below it. Some team assemblers working in the auto industry work for over $25.00 an hour while others work for under $15.00. The difference suggests UAW negotiators will accept dividing their membership to get an agreement.
Continuing Dual Wages
Labor law grants union members a measure of democracy, which makes it risky for labor leaders that ignore a growing share of its membership earning low wages. The 65 percent no votes suggest a majority was unhappy paying union dues to a union that negotiates them into lower wages. Revolts do occur occasionally as happened at Boeing ten years ago.
In the present dispute UAW leaders made a revised proposal for motor vehicle manufacturing that closes the wage gap for those hired in the last eight years. The contract has benefits for those hired in the last eight years in a sliding scale based on their seniority up to eight years. However, new hires that come after ratification start at $17.00 an hour, but that will be less than everyone hired before them. In addition the published wage scales diverge in the out years with new hire wages capped at a lower wage after contract ratification. The combination assures new hires will earn less than more senior employees during the duration of the contract. Management can readily accept the contract because it continues to allow them to hire new people at lower wages than higher paid senior employees.
Negotiators modified the explicit dual wage system, but did not remove it. In effect union leaders have worked out a disguised system where seniority gets rewarded with a pay step type of increase in a job everyone agrees can be learned by all in 90 days or less. It appears to be a calculated scheme to get enough benefit for those hired after October 29, 2007 to get them to change their vote and ratify the modified contract. That worked very well as the switch from 35 percent yes votes to 77 percent yes votes demonstrates. However, union officials had to keep their future membership divided to get an agreement with management and to get the votes they needed to ratify it. Remember though everyone has to pay union dues to support the union, which should help explain why some members of unions feel left out and hostile to organized labor. So much for solidarity.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Jobs for Chemists
Chemists
Standard Occupational Classification #19-2031 Chemist
SOC definition Chemist #19-2031 - Conduct qualitative and quantitative chemical analyses or chemical experiments in laboratories for quality or process control or to develop new products or knowledge. Chemists are also known as inorganic chemists or chemical analyst. A Chemist is a separate occupation from other occupations that use chemistry skills such as Chemical engineer, #17-2041 and biochemists, #19-1021.
Chemists are classified as physical science occupations with the largest share working in the manufacturing industry. Almost all manufacturing firms hire a few chemists and 37.9 percent of those employed as chemists work in manufacturing. The Chemical manufacturing industry employs the highest share of chemists, at 31.7 percent, leaving only 6.2 percent of chemists working in other manufacturing industries. Over half of chemists working in chemical manufacturing work for pharmaceutical firms or firms manufacturing medicine, 18.1 percent actually.
Just over 12.6 percent of chemists work for engineering firms, mostly in testing labs and another 18.9 percent are employed in scientific research and development. About 5 percent teach, mostly at colleges and universities. The federal, state, and local government employs 13.4 percent. The remainder are quite scattered with nearly one percent working in waste management and remediation.
National employment as chemists was 85,970 in 2014. Jobs are up since 2000 when 82,320 worked as chemists. The annual average job increase equals 231 per year since 2000 at a growth rate of .31 percent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is forecasting job growth for chemists at 560 per year through 2022 at a growth rate of .55 percent a year.
Job openings make a better measure of new hiring than job growth. Job openings are job growth and the number of net replacements. Net replacements are people who permanently leave an occupation for another occupation or retirement and must be replaced before there can be job growth. Job openings for chemists are forecast to be 2,780 a year through 2022.
The recently updated Bureau of Labor Statistics Education and Training Classification assignments lists BA degree skills as necessary for entry into jobs as Chemists. However, percentages from survey data are published for chemists showing an educational distribution where 52.5 percent have a BA degree, 40 percent have advanced degrees, 4.2 percent some college, but no degree. Almost 3 percent have an associate’s degree. High school skills were sufficient for .1 percent that work here and .1 percent have less than a high school degree. Previous experience and on-the-job training are considered unnecessary for entry.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports degree data for America’s colleges and universities that can be compared with job growth and openings. There were 13,416 BA degrees granted in 7 programs in June 2012, the last year of complete degree data. There were also 2,434 MA degrees granted in 7 programs in chemistry and 2,532 Ph.D. degrees granted in Chemistry. BA degrees are up by 790 from the previous year. The ratio of relevant BA degrees to openings equals 4.82, or 13,416/2,780, assuring plenty of qualified candidates to fill job openings.
The basic wage data from the BLS occupational employment survey includes a wage distribution. Averages are not used much in wage data. A few high wages pull up the average and make it unrepresentative. Instead a distribution range of wages is published with the 10th, 25th, median, 75th, and 90th percentiles of wages. A 10th percentile wage means 10 percent working in this occupation have wages equal to or less than the 10th percentile wage and so on. Annual wages are converted to hourly wages by dividing annual wages by 2080
The entry wage for the national market in the 10th percentile for chemists is reported as $41,560 in 2014. The 25th percentile wage equals $53,420. The median wage is $73,480, the 75th percentile wage equals $99,360 and the 90th percentile wage is $126,220.
The wages of chemists have kept up with inflation for the last decade. For example, to have the buying power of the 2006 median wage of $59,870 in 2014, the chemist wage would need to be $70,304.49. In stead it was $73,480, a 4.52 percent increase in the real wage for those eight years.
Standard Occupational Classification #19-2031 Chemist
SOC definition Chemist #19-2031 - Conduct qualitative and quantitative chemical analyses or chemical experiments in laboratories for quality or process control or to develop new products or knowledge. Chemists are also known as inorganic chemists or chemical analyst. A Chemist is a separate occupation from other occupations that use chemistry skills such as Chemical engineer, #17-2041 and biochemists, #19-1021.
Chemists are classified as physical science occupations with the largest share working in the manufacturing industry. Almost all manufacturing firms hire a few chemists and 37.9 percent of those employed as chemists work in manufacturing. The Chemical manufacturing industry employs the highest share of chemists, at 31.7 percent, leaving only 6.2 percent of chemists working in other manufacturing industries. Over half of chemists working in chemical manufacturing work for pharmaceutical firms or firms manufacturing medicine, 18.1 percent actually.
Just over 12.6 percent of chemists work for engineering firms, mostly in testing labs and another 18.9 percent are employed in scientific research and development. About 5 percent teach, mostly at colleges and universities. The federal, state, and local government employs 13.4 percent. The remainder are quite scattered with nearly one percent working in waste management and remediation.
National employment as chemists was 85,970 in 2014. Jobs are up since 2000 when 82,320 worked as chemists. The annual average job increase equals 231 per year since 2000 at a growth rate of .31 percent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is forecasting job growth for chemists at 560 per year through 2022 at a growth rate of .55 percent a year.
Job openings make a better measure of new hiring than job growth. Job openings are job growth and the number of net replacements. Net replacements are people who permanently leave an occupation for another occupation or retirement and must be replaced before there can be job growth. Job openings for chemists are forecast to be 2,780 a year through 2022.
The recently updated Bureau of Labor Statistics Education and Training Classification assignments lists BA degree skills as necessary for entry into jobs as Chemists. However, percentages from survey data are published for chemists showing an educational distribution where 52.5 percent have a BA degree, 40 percent have advanced degrees, 4.2 percent some college, but no degree. Almost 3 percent have an associate’s degree. High school skills were sufficient for .1 percent that work here and .1 percent have less than a high school degree. Previous experience and on-the-job training are considered unnecessary for entry.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports degree data for America’s colleges and universities that can be compared with job growth and openings. There were 13,416 BA degrees granted in 7 programs in June 2012, the last year of complete degree data. There were also 2,434 MA degrees granted in 7 programs in chemistry and 2,532 Ph.D. degrees granted in Chemistry. BA degrees are up by 790 from the previous year. The ratio of relevant BA degrees to openings equals 4.82, or 13,416/2,780, assuring plenty of qualified candidates to fill job openings.
The basic wage data from the BLS occupational employment survey includes a wage distribution. Averages are not used much in wage data. A few high wages pull up the average and make it unrepresentative. Instead a distribution range of wages is published with the 10th, 25th, median, 75th, and 90th percentiles of wages. A 10th percentile wage means 10 percent working in this occupation have wages equal to or less than the 10th percentile wage and so on. Annual wages are converted to hourly wages by dividing annual wages by 2080
The entry wage for the national market in the 10th percentile for chemists is reported as $41,560 in 2014. The 25th percentile wage equals $53,420. The median wage is $73,480, the 75th percentile wage equals $99,360 and the 90th percentile wage is $126,220.
The wages of chemists have kept up with inflation for the last decade. For example, to have the buying power of the 2006 median wage of $59,870 in 2014, the chemist wage would need to be $70,304.49. In stead it was $73,480, a 4.52 percent increase in the real wage for those eight years.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Millennials Weary from Overwork
Millennials Weary from Overwork
A recent article in the Washington Post reports on a Global Generations Research Survey by Ernst and Young. [Millennials want a work-life balance. Their bosses don't understand why, WP, 5-6-15] The report finds many work long hours. As a consequence they delay having children, discontinue education and struggle to pay tuition for their children. The article contrasts Millennials with older generations where the young expect technology to free them to work productively from anywhere, but the older bosses are “afraid people who don’t come to the office won’t work as hard.”
The article does not mention a prime source of overwork: unpaid overtime. The demand to have employees around warming up a chair to meet the expectations of the boss has a special hypocrisy since it is common now for business to issue laptop computers, cell phones, and Blackberry’s to employees for use away from the office. Using new technology makes staff available for overtime on evening, weekends, or the middle of the night. Few reports suggest business treat these additional hours of work as paid work much less time and a half for overtime required by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Back in 2003 the Bush Administration quietly rewrote the overtime rules in the Fair Labor Standards Act. In theory working more than forty hours a week is entitled to pay at time and half the regular pay rate. The Fair Labor Standards Act rules start out with the time and half rule, but they are followed with pages and pages of exceptions that make it easy for management to avoid overtime pay whenever they want.
Three people working forty hours a week equal two people working sixty hours a week, but management pays less for the two when overtime rules allow unpaid overtime. The abuse violates more than the overtime rules because the Fair Labor Standards Act requires at least regular pay for time worked in all cases. Overtime rules exempt millions of America’s executive, administrative, professional, computer, outside sales employees, motion picture employees, and other more narrowly defined occupations from overtime pay, but quite often they work overtime hours for free. Millions confront regular pressure to donate hours of work to their employers while others looking for work find that difficult to do with others working for nothing.
The Code of Federal Regulations sections known as 29 CFR 541 governs overtime rules. The rules run over 15 thousand words after the Bush Administration revisions. The revisions make it possible to avoid overtime pay for almost any office and professional work as long as an employee receives a salary equal to or greater than $455 a week, or $23,660 on an annual basis. Notice that any employer has authority to pay by the week or pay by the hour to fit the regulations as they choose. In practice it turns out weekly, monthly or annual pay makes it easy to forget the total of hours worked.
The long detailed wording in the regulations allows an employer to define or adjust duties to meet the regulations. The wording for administrative employees explains that any employee employed in a bona fide administrative capacity who is “compensated on a salary or fee basis at a rate of not less than $455 per week, exclusive of board, lodging or other facilities, whose primary duty is the performance of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer's customers, and whose primary duty includes the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance” can be exempt from overtime pay.
The regulations describe ways that discretion, independent judgement, and matters of significance might occur and then by changed by higher ups in order to exempt an employer from overtime pay. The regulations read “The exercise of discretion and independent judgment implies that the employee has authority to make an independent choice, free from immediate direction or supervision. However, employees can exercise discretion and independent judgment even if their decisions or recommendations are reviewed at a higher level. Thus, the term ‘discretion and independent judgment’ does not require that the decisions made by an employee have a finality that goes with unlimited authority and a complete absence of review.”
The Obama Administration, now well into a second term, has finally proposed amendments to the overtime rules. They want to raise the salary cap for overtime exemption from $23,660 to $52,000. Business opponents of the change worry and fret to Congress that the new law will cause more lawsuits.
Jamie Richardson, vice president of White Castle Restaurants, told Congress “The new regulations will only result in more complicated laws, and eventually more lawsuits.” He means that raising the threshold for exemption will give financial incentive for more people and groups to challenge the vague terminology used to avoid paying overtime since the Bush Administration amendments went into effect in 2004.
Lawsuits are already on the rise the government’s GAO (General Accounting Office) reports because more employees are tired of employers who expect them to be available to answer emails and cell phones out of business hours on weekends and evenings.
Some like Ryan Shaw, quoted in the Millennial article above, have taken the work hours issue one step further. If they can be expected to work part of the time away from the office then why not all of the time. Since his work was over the Internet and on computers he demanded to leave his employer’s home base in Los Angeles and move to Florida and do his work from there based on a salary disconnected from work hours. Now his work depends only on what he does and not how he does it. Some employers have a hard time recognizing work for what it is; they want control over time.
It’s hard to defend rules that keep employees at work for free. As the Obama Administration moves into its final years, it is about time they did something for working Americans. The proposed rule changes make changes in the right direction; the only question is why so little, so late.
A recent article in the Washington Post reports on a Global Generations Research Survey by Ernst and Young. [Millennials want a work-life balance. Their bosses don't understand why, WP, 5-6-15] The report finds many work long hours. As a consequence they delay having children, discontinue education and struggle to pay tuition for their children. The article contrasts Millennials with older generations where the young expect technology to free them to work productively from anywhere, but the older bosses are “afraid people who don’t come to the office won’t work as hard.”
The article does not mention a prime source of overwork: unpaid overtime. The demand to have employees around warming up a chair to meet the expectations of the boss has a special hypocrisy since it is common now for business to issue laptop computers, cell phones, and Blackberry’s to employees for use away from the office. Using new technology makes staff available for overtime on evening, weekends, or the middle of the night. Few reports suggest business treat these additional hours of work as paid work much less time and a half for overtime required by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Back in 2003 the Bush Administration quietly rewrote the overtime rules in the Fair Labor Standards Act. In theory working more than forty hours a week is entitled to pay at time and half the regular pay rate. The Fair Labor Standards Act rules start out with the time and half rule, but they are followed with pages and pages of exceptions that make it easy for management to avoid overtime pay whenever they want.
Three people working forty hours a week equal two people working sixty hours a week, but management pays less for the two when overtime rules allow unpaid overtime. The abuse violates more than the overtime rules because the Fair Labor Standards Act requires at least regular pay for time worked in all cases. Overtime rules exempt millions of America’s executive, administrative, professional, computer, outside sales employees, motion picture employees, and other more narrowly defined occupations from overtime pay, but quite often they work overtime hours for free. Millions confront regular pressure to donate hours of work to their employers while others looking for work find that difficult to do with others working for nothing.
The Code of Federal Regulations sections known as 29 CFR 541 governs overtime rules. The rules run over 15 thousand words after the Bush Administration revisions. The revisions make it possible to avoid overtime pay for almost any office and professional work as long as an employee receives a salary equal to or greater than $455 a week, or $23,660 on an annual basis. Notice that any employer has authority to pay by the week or pay by the hour to fit the regulations as they choose. In practice it turns out weekly, monthly or annual pay makes it easy to forget the total of hours worked.
The long detailed wording in the regulations allows an employer to define or adjust duties to meet the regulations. The wording for administrative employees explains that any employee employed in a bona fide administrative capacity who is “compensated on a salary or fee basis at a rate of not less than $455 per week, exclusive of board, lodging or other facilities, whose primary duty is the performance of office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer's customers, and whose primary duty includes the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance” can be exempt from overtime pay.
The regulations describe ways that discretion, independent judgement, and matters of significance might occur and then by changed by higher ups in order to exempt an employer from overtime pay. The regulations read “The exercise of discretion and independent judgment implies that the employee has authority to make an independent choice, free from immediate direction or supervision. However, employees can exercise discretion and independent judgment even if their decisions or recommendations are reviewed at a higher level. Thus, the term ‘discretion and independent judgment’ does not require that the decisions made by an employee have a finality that goes with unlimited authority and a complete absence of review.”
The Obama Administration, now well into a second term, has finally proposed amendments to the overtime rules. They want to raise the salary cap for overtime exemption from $23,660 to $52,000. Business opponents of the change worry and fret to Congress that the new law will cause more lawsuits.
Jamie Richardson, vice president of White Castle Restaurants, told Congress “The new regulations will only result in more complicated laws, and eventually more lawsuits.” He means that raising the threshold for exemption will give financial incentive for more people and groups to challenge the vague terminology used to avoid paying overtime since the Bush Administration amendments went into effect in 2004.
Lawsuits are already on the rise the government’s GAO (General Accounting Office) reports because more employees are tired of employers who expect them to be available to answer emails and cell phones out of business hours on weekends and evenings.
Some like Ryan Shaw, quoted in the Millennial article above, have taken the work hours issue one step further. If they can be expected to work part of the time away from the office then why not all of the time. Since his work was over the Internet and on computers he demanded to leave his employer’s home base in Los Angeles and move to Florida and do his work from there based on a salary disconnected from work hours. Now his work depends only on what he does and not how he does it. Some employers have a hard time recognizing work for what it is; they want control over time.
It’s hard to defend rules that keep employees at work for free. As the Obama Administration moves into its final years, it is about time they did something for working Americans. The proposed rule changes make changes in the right direction; the only question is why so little, so late.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
City of Scoundrels
Gary Krist, City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago, (New York, NY: Crown Publishers, 2012), 273 pages.
Students and scholars of American history will remember how 1919 turned into a post war nightmare of bombings, strikes, riots and violence. The year started with the Seattle general strike. Random bombings started in February and continued around the country. There were the summer race riots, the worst one in Chicago, the fall strikes of the Boston police, steel workers and coal miners. The first raids of A. Mitchell Palmer’s red scare took place in November.
In City of Scoundrels, Gary Krist narrates the 1919 life and troubles for Chicago with special emphasis on twelve days from July 21 to August 1, 1919. The opening prologue narrates a burning exploding Goodyear blimp, the Wingfoot Express, that fell into the central court of the Illinois Trust bank in downtown Chicago on July 21. Bank employees were finishing their workday when the flaming mass dropped literally onto their heads, killing twelve and wounding many more.
Part I follows with eight chapters of background history and events of Chicago from January 1, 1919 until the July 21, 1919 crash of the blimp, which Krist assures readers was a miner mishap compared to what was coming. Chicago politics dominate these early chapters with a detailed account of Mayor Big Bill Thompson’s 1919 campaign for a second term and his rivalry with Illinois Governor Frank Lowden.
Krist mentions events and careers of a number of famous or notorious people with Chicago connections like attorney Clarence Darrow, journalist Ring Lardner, poet and journalist Carl Sandberg, black activist Ida Wells-Barnett, and the new Chicago White Sox manager, “Kid” Gleason.
Discussion includes the newspaper rivalries of the Chicago Tribune and its editor Robert McCormack with the Chicago Daily News and its editor Victor Lawson. Bombings in black neighborhoods and the death of Ernestine Ellis foreshadow the race riots to come. Krist had access to several diaries, which helped him give readers a feel for the Chicago social life of the era that includes discussion of the 1919 new years’ eve celebration and the onset of prohibition.
Krist titles part II, Crisis. It narrates four crisis sprinkled through ten chapters, one chapter for each day starting with Tuesday, July 22 and so on until August 1. Part II picks up the aftermath of the blimp crash, the abduction and murder of a young girl named Janet Wilkinson, a citywide transit strike, and south side race riot.
The Blimp crash brought hearings with charges and counter charges that open part II. The best quote for me came from a Chicago Evening Post editorial. The crash “is due, as so many other disasters are due, to the American habit of taking no preventive action till the disaster as occurred.” Still true I would say.
The blimp crash and its aftermath are one thread through recurring narrative of the four crisis. Krist covers the Janet Wilkinson case in great detail: the disappearance, suspects, arrests, interrogation, a confession, the trial, and execution by hanging, but over half of the 100 plus pages of part II narrate the riots and transit strike which occur on the same July days.
Readers confront the extraordinary violence and bitterness of the riots and the determination of the black community to fight back. Many in the black community served in the armed forces and fought in France during World War I. Narrative highlights the role of white youth gangs in the violence. Like the St. Louis riots before it arson wiped out whole neighborhoods and spread to downtown areas.
Readers will have to evaluate the political and personal rivalry of Mayor Thompson and Illinois Governor Frank Lowden, who acted as competitors rather than allies in spite of the riot. Narrative describes how Mayor Thompson succeeded in keeping Governor Lowden from calling out the National Guard until the Mayor decided it was time on the fourth day, after most of the 23 blacks and 15 whites killed in the riots, were already dead.
Four chapters and an epilogue cover the post riot period from August 1, 1919 through the end of 1920. Much of it recounts the continuing rivalry of the Mayor and the Governor. The Mayor was determined to sabotage the governor’s plan to end the transit strike. The 1920 Republican National Convention was in Chicago and Mayor Thompson had control of key Illinois delegates he used against one of the presidential front runners: Illinois
Governor Frank Lowden. The epilogue follows the major characters in the narrative with a “where they are now” wrap up.
It should be no surprise journalist Krist writes smooth journalistic narrative. The book makes easy reading with sources well documented and a useful and varied bibliography. There are also some fun black and white pictures of the people we meet in the book.
The title of the book, City of Scoundrels, fits for a book length account of grimy Chicago politics and berserk violence, but the sub title, the 12 days of disaster that gave birth to modern Chicago, doesn’t fit as well for me. It could be he means modern Chicago still lives by the me-first principles of “Big Bill" Thompson. I took the mention of the 17 year old Richard J. Daley as a member of one of the white street gangs to be a hint in that direction, but Krist doesn’t follow up too well with what he means by modern Chicago. After you finish this book you might feel better if you just think about Chicago as the windy city!
Students and scholars of American history will remember how 1919 turned into a post war nightmare of bombings, strikes, riots and violence. The year started with the Seattle general strike. Random bombings started in February and continued around the country. There were the summer race riots, the worst one in Chicago, the fall strikes of the Boston police, steel workers and coal miners. The first raids of A. Mitchell Palmer’s red scare took place in November.
In City of Scoundrels, Gary Krist narrates the 1919 life and troubles for Chicago with special emphasis on twelve days from July 21 to August 1, 1919. The opening prologue narrates a burning exploding Goodyear blimp, the Wingfoot Express, that fell into the central court of the Illinois Trust bank in downtown Chicago on July 21. Bank employees were finishing their workday when the flaming mass dropped literally onto their heads, killing twelve and wounding many more.
Part I follows with eight chapters of background history and events of Chicago from January 1, 1919 until the July 21, 1919 crash of the blimp, which Krist assures readers was a miner mishap compared to what was coming. Chicago politics dominate these early chapters with a detailed account of Mayor Big Bill Thompson’s 1919 campaign for a second term and his rivalry with Illinois Governor Frank Lowden.
Krist mentions events and careers of a number of famous or notorious people with Chicago connections like attorney Clarence Darrow, journalist Ring Lardner, poet and journalist Carl Sandberg, black activist Ida Wells-Barnett, and the new Chicago White Sox manager, “Kid” Gleason.
Discussion includes the newspaper rivalries of the Chicago Tribune and its editor Robert McCormack with the Chicago Daily News and its editor Victor Lawson. Bombings in black neighborhoods and the death of Ernestine Ellis foreshadow the race riots to come. Krist had access to several diaries, which helped him give readers a feel for the Chicago social life of the era that includes discussion of the 1919 new years’ eve celebration and the onset of prohibition.
Krist titles part II, Crisis. It narrates four crisis sprinkled through ten chapters, one chapter for each day starting with Tuesday, July 22 and so on until August 1. Part II picks up the aftermath of the blimp crash, the abduction and murder of a young girl named Janet Wilkinson, a citywide transit strike, and south side race riot.
The Blimp crash brought hearings with charges and counter charges that open part II. The best quote for me came from a Chicago Evening Post editorial. The crash “is due, as so many other disasters are due, to the American habit of taking no preventive action till the disaster as occurred.” Still true I would say.
The blimp crash and its aftermath are one thread through recurring narrative of the four crisis. Krist covers the Janet Wilkinson case in great detail: the disappearance, suspects, arrests, interrogation, a confession, the trial, and execution by hanging, but over half of the 100 plus pages of part II narrate the riots and transit strike which occur on the same July days.
Readers confront the extraordinary violence and bitterness of the riots and the determination of the black community to fight back. Many in the black community served in the armed forces and fought in France during World War I. Narrative highlights the role of white youth gangs in the violence. Like the St. Louis riots before it arson wiped out whole neighborhoods and spread to downtown areas.
Readers will have to evaluate the political and personal rivalry of Mayor Thompson and Illinois Governor Frank Lowden, who acted as competitors rather than allies in spite of the riot. Narrative describes how Mayor Thompson succeeded in keeping Governor Lowden from calling out the National Guard until the Mayor decided it was time on the fourth day, after most of the 23 blacks and 15 whites killed in the riots, were already dead.
Four chapters and an epilogue cover the post riot period from August 1, 1919 through the end of 1920. Much of it recounts the continuing rivalry of the Mayor and the Governor. The Mayor was determined to sabotage the governor’s plan to end the transit strike. The 1920 Republican National Convention was in Chicago and Mayor Thompson had control of key Illinois delegates he used against one of the presidential front runners: Illinois
Governor Frank Lowden. The epilogue follows the major characters in the narrative with a “where they are now” wrap up.
It should be no surprise journalist Krist writes smooth journalistic narrative. The book makes easy reading with sources well documented and a useful and varied bibliography. There are also some fun black and white pictures of the people we meet in the book.
The title of the book, City of Scoundrels, fits for a book length account of grimy Chicago politics and berserk violence, but the sub title, the 12 days of disaster that gave birth to modern Chicago, doesn’t fit as well for me. It could be he means modern Chicago still lives by the me-first principles of “Big Bill" Thompson. I took the mention of the 17 year old Richard J. Daley as a member of one of the white street gangs to be a hint in that direction, but Krist doesn’t follow up too well with what he means by modern Chicago. After you finish this book you might feel better if you just think about Chicago as the windy city!
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