The IRS and Ted Cruz
Recently the Washington Post ran an editorial by Catherine Rampell discussing the Ted Cruz proposal to get rid of the IRS. [Cruz’s Anti-IRS illogic Washington Post, 3/24/15] “Imagine abolishing the IRS” he tells his audience, where they “have more words in the IRS code than there are words in the bible.”
Congress makes the tax law, which is so complicated the collection process generates additional problems unrelated to the taxes Congress expects us to pay. Since the IRS only operates with forms Americans are forced to pay their taxes by filling out forms filled with details that often require additional forms and sub-forms all governed by thousands of pages of tax law.
The process is error prone and not only by taxpayers. The IRS computers get confused and generate false accusations and hostile demands for incorrect tax payments, penalty and interest. The computer and IRS force taxpayers to answer and prove their innocence, not the other way around that we are innocent until proven guilty, like it says in the constitution. The process generates a hatred for the IRS quite apart from actual tax payments.
In the Rampell piece she worries someone has to collect the taxes and she can’t quite decide if Cruz wants to “zero out” the IRS or just make it simpler so we could have a “postcard” size tax return.
I can think of ways to eliminate the IRS in personal income tax collection. One alternative recognizes the current tax law has created categories of income to be taxed in different ways and at different rates. Wages are taxed one way and dividends and capital gains in another and so on. As well, the IRS requires withholding of wage income from each paycheck but not interest, dividends or capital gains.
It is therefore possible, and reasonable, to have all categories of income withheld, the tax paid by the source of the transaction and to have the annual tax rates converted to weeks, months or quarters as appropriate. There is absolutely no reason why tax rates have to be by the year. A 12 percent annual tax rate applied each month generates the same tax at one percent a month. Any and all exemptions and deductions can easily be converted to the same weeks, months or quarters to match income earning transactions.
Collecting income taxes at the source eliminates the IRS from the personal income tax; the IRS will be left to enforce the tax laws through business account audits: a tiny job by comparison. Individuals with tax disputes will settle them with the businesses that compute them.
Ted Cruz is a media star who knows how to huff and puff in indignation at our complicated tax system and get press attention, but he knows perfectly well the vested interests that benefit from the IRS and have the power and the will to make it more complicated, not less. Rampell reports there are 4,100 changes in the tax code since 2004, or more than one per day.
Too many people make too much money from the tax system, either directly with accounting jobs and legal services, or with one of the cottage industries like printing, software, books, courts, the Post Office and advice, in addition to those in a position to exploit its complicated features.
The tax law Congress creates reflects the American mania for competition and a money making contest. In tax matters fighting favors the wealthy who can afford attorneys and accountants who help write the law and know how to exploit it. I have read there are 65 thousand pages in the tax code. Over the years I have read less than 100, but I do know what the other 64,900 pages are intended to do. So does Ted Cruz.
Friday, April 24, 2015
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Unions, the Supreme Court and the Ruling in Harris v. Quinn
In the Supreme Court Case of Harris v. Quinn the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union group, financed a challenge to the common law doctrine in labor law established in the case of Abood v. Detroit Board of Education [431 U. S. 209] from 1977. In the Abood case 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.
The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 as amended and administered by the National Labor Relations Board requires a majority vote in a democratic election to establish a union, and requires the union to represent all employees in the bargaining unit not just its members. 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; employees might object to policies adopted by the union in its role of exclusive representative.
Service Employees International Union
In the case of Harris v. Quinn concluded in 2014 Illinois used federal funds for a Medicaid Rehabilitation Program designed for Americans unable to live in their own homes without assistance but unable to afford the expense of in-home care. 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.
In the 1980’s a majority of Illinois personal assistants voted to have Service Employees International Union represent them as their exclusive bargaining agent. SEIU petitioned the Illinois Labor Relations Board for permission to represent the Personal Assistants as their union, which at first the Board declined to allow. After some delay and discussion the Illinois legislature amended the state’s Public Labor Relations Act by declaring personal assistants working in the Medicaid program to be public employees for purposes of collective bargaining. The Public Labor Relations Act specifically permits a collective bargaining agreement whereby non-union members in the bargaining unit pay an agency fee as their fair share.
In 2010 three personal assistants in the bargaining unit 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 common law doctrine established in the Abood case. The District Court and the seventh court of appeals dismissed the petition, but the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
Labor and Free Speech
The labor movement has endured 150 years of free speech attacks; nothing is new in Harris v. Quinn. 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. Instead he would faithfully defend and protect the liberty and free speech for his loyal employees who did not want to join a union.
There is suspicion that U.S. Courts treat free speech rights for labor unions differently than other free speech rights. A union under U.S. labor law needs a majority vote of employees in a union representation election. It is a democratic vote in a democratic society that elects representatives by majority vote to serve in legislative bodies that in turn make decisions by majority vote. If the U.S. Congress votes to declare war as they sometimes do, not everyone agrees with the vote to go to war. If Courts worried about free speech for the minority who oppose war in the same way Courts worry about free speech for those who oppose unions, then those who oppose war, or other matters of government, could withhold a percentage of their taxes in proportion to federal budget expenditures on a war.
Full-Fledged Employment
In Harris v. Quinn the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to strike down the “fair share” fee for SEIU, but only for the Rehabilitation Program. The majority of five included a long discussion ridiculing the Abood opinion of the 1977 Supreme Court majority, but they decided not to overturn it. Instead they decided to restrict the “fair share” rules to what they called “full-fledged” employees. To have the “fair share” rules apply to personal assistants, they wrote, “. . . asks us to approve a very substantial expansion of Abood’s reach.” Such an expansion has “important practical consequences” which “would invite problems.”
The mention of practical consequences and problems came on page 20 of the 39 page majority opinion. Much of the remaining 19 pages described the conditions of employment as full-fledged employees and how they differed from those of personal assistants they claimed to be partial public employees, but additional discussion infers problems. The majority wrote “Suppose, for example that a customer fires a personal assistant because the customer wrongly believes that the assistant stole a fork. Or suppose that a personal assistant is discharged because the assistant shows no interest in the customer’s favorite daytime soaps. Can the union file a grievance on behalf of the assistant? The answer is no.”
The majority worried that requiring a “fair share” fee for personal assistants in Illinois could bring an expansion beyond full-fledged employees to “individuals who follow a common calling and benefit from advocacy or lobbying conducted by a group to which they do not belong and pay no dues.”
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.” But the majority added that “the agency-fee provision cannot be sustained unless the cited benefits for personal assistants could not have been achieved if the union had been required to depend for funding on the dues paid by those personal assistants who chose to join.” The majority did not reference a previous case for their authority or give an example application for their assertion.
A blunt dissent of 25 pages written for the minority by Justice Kagen treats the majority opinion as a ramble of irrelevant excuses. Kagen would apply the Abood ruling as common law 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.” . . . Yet “Illinois sets all the workforce-wide terms of employment. Most notably, the State determines and pays the employees’ wages and benefits, including health insurance (while also withholding taxes).”
Justice Kagan argues that Supreme Court “decisions have long afforded government entities broad latitude to manage their workforces, even when that affects speech they could not regulate in other contexts. . . . The “deci¬sion also enables the government to advance its interests in operating effectively—by bargaining, if it so chooses, with a single employee representative and preventing free riding on that union’s efforts.”
In a more blunt point, the minority argued, the majority declined to overrule the Abood doctrines as requested by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation because it has been used for so long the Supreme Court has come to apply the rule as “a general First Amendment principle.” As such the court has relied on “fair share” rules in deciding cases involving compulsory fees outside the labor context, although not for wars.
Maybe the majority decided it would be too difficult to write a legal justification to throw out compulsory fees just for labor unions, but needless to say they did not write that in their opinion. Ultimately they did accept when a federal law requires a union to provide union services, the government can make a collective bargaining contract to allow the union to be re¬imbursed for their required services. Five justices needed some excuses why it should only apply to “full fledged” employees. It is worth noting that four Supreme Court justices, one district judge and at least two appeals court justices make a majority of federal judges voting to uphold the Abood ruling. However five Supreme Court Justices made up a little bit of law to help their anti-union constituents; just politics as usual.
The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 as amended and administered by the National Labor Relations Board requires a majority vote in a democratic election to establish a union, and requires the union to represent all employees in the bargaining unit not just its members. 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; employees might object to policies adopted by the union in its role of exclusive representative.
Service Employees International Union
In the case of Harris v. Quinn concluded in 2014 Illinois used federal funds for a Medicaid Rehabilitation Program designed for Americans unable to live in their own homes without assistance but unable to afford the expense of in-home care. 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.
In the 1980’s a majority of Illinois personal assistants voted to have Service Employees International Union represent them as their exclusive bargaining agent. SEIU petitioned the Illinois Labor Relations Board for permission to represent the Personal Assistants as their union, which at first the Board declined to allow. After some delay and discussion the Illinois legislature amended the state’s Public Labor Relations Act by declaring personal assistants working in the Medicaid program to be public employees for purposes of collective bargaining. The Public Labor Relations Act specifically permits a collective bargaining agreement whereby non-union members in the bargaining unit pay an agency fee as their fair share.
In 2010 three personal assistants in the bargaining unit 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 common law doctrine established in the Abood case. The District Court and the seventh court of appeals dismissed the petition, but the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
Labor and Free Speech
The labor movement has endured 150 years of free speech attacks; nothing is new in Harris v. Quinn. 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. Instead he would faithfully defend and protect the liberty and free speech for his loyal employees who did not want to join a union.
There is suspicion that U.S. Courts treat free speech rights for labor unions differently than other free speech rights. A union under U.S. labor law needs a majority vote of employees in a union representation election. It is a democratic vote in a democratic society that elects representatives by majority vote to serve in legislative bodies that in turn make decisions by majority vote. If the U.S. Congress votes to declare war as they sometimes do, not everyone agrees with the vote to go to war. If Courts worried about free speech for the minority who oppose war in the same way Courts worry about free speech for those who oppose unions, then those who oppose war, or other matters of government, could withhold a percentage of their taxes in proportion to federal budget expenditures on a war.
Full-Fledged Employment
In Harris v. Quinn the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to strike down the “fair share” fee for SEIU, but only for the Rehabilitation Program. The majority of five included a long discussion ridiculing the Abood opinion of the 1977 Supreme Court majority, but they decided not to overturn it. Instead they decided to restrict the “fair share” rules to what they called “full-fledged” employees. To have the “fair share” rules apply to personal assistants, they wrote, “. . . asks us to approve a very substantial expansion of Abood’s reach.” Such an expansion has “important practical consequences” which “would invite problems.”
The mention of practical consequences and problems came on page 20 of the 39 page majority opinion. Much of the remaining 19 pages described the conditions of employment as full-fledged employees and how they differed from those of personal assistants they claimed to be partial public employees, but additional discussion infers problems. The majority wrote “Suppose, for example that a customer fires a personal assistant because the customer wrongly believes that the assistant stole a fork. Or suppose that a personal assistant is discharged because the assistant shows no interest in the customer’s favorite daytime soaps. Can the union file a grievance on behalf of the assistant? The answer is no.”
The majority worried that requiring a “fair share” fee for personal assistants in Illinois could bring an expansion beyond full-fledged employees to “individuals who follow a common calling and benefit from advocacy or lobbying conducted by a group to which they do not belong and pay no dues.”
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.” But the majority added that “the agency-fee provision cannot be sustained unless the cited benefits for personal assistants could not have been achieved if the union had been required to depend for funding on the dues paid by those personal assistants who chose to join.” The majority did not reference a previous case for their authority or give an example application for their assertion.
A blunt dissent of 25 pages written for the minority by Justice Kagen treats the majority opinion as a ramble of irrelevant excuses. Kagen would apply the Abood ruling as common law 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.” . . . Yet “Illinois sets all the workforce-wide terms of employment. Most notably, the State determines and pays the employees’ wages and benefits, including health insurance (while also withholding taxes).”
Justice Kagan argues that Supreme Court “decisions have long afforded government entities broad latitude to manage their workforces, even when that affects speech they could not regulate in other contexts. . . . The “deci¬sion also enables the government to advance its interests in operating effectively—by bargaining, if it so chooses, with a single employee representative and preventing free riding on that union’s efforts.”
In a more blunt point, the minority argued, the majority declined to overrule the Abood doctrines as requested by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation because it has been used for so long the Supreme Court has come to apply the rule as “a general First Amendment principle.” As such the court has relied on “fair share” rules in deciding cases involving compulsory fees outside the labor context, although not for wars.
Maybe the majority decided it would be too difficult to write a legal justification to throw out compulsory fees just for labor unions, but needless to say they did not write that in their opinion. Ultimately they did accept when a federal law requires a union to provide union services, the government can make a collective bargaining contract to allow the union to be re¬imbursed for their required services. Five justices needed some excuses why it should only apply to “full fledged” employees. It is worth noting that four Supreme Court justices, one district judge and at least two appeals court justices make a majority of federal judges voting to uphold the Abood ruling. However five Supreme Court Justices made up a little bit of law to help their anti-union constituents; just politics as usual.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Fighting Chance
Elizabeth Warren, A Fighting Chance, (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt & Co. 2014), 277 pages, $28.00
Elizabeth Warren’s latest book, Fighting Chance, has the label Political Science on the back cover, but librarians catalog it in biography. It is a little of both, but more the politics of banking and finance and her two-decade role in it. The first chapter does chronicle her growing up in Oklahoma in typical fashion for a biography. It includes education, marriages, children, divorce, college, law school, teaching, and early interest in bankruptcy as a professor of law. Narrative is sprinkled with some personal stories and anecdotes.
One story occurred when her young son Alex attended a law school class at the University of Texas. Walking out with Alex, Mom asked “What did you think?” Alex answered, “Mom you’re not that funny.” “But they all laughed,” she defended. “They had to, Mom.” We can figure Mom has a sense of humor, but obviously Alex knows the truth. Trust me, all teachers learn that eventually.
The rest of the book explores national finance issues beginning in the mid-1990’s with a few more family stories and biographical asides thrown in to the narrative. Mostly though the remaining five chapters are serious politics beginning with Chapter 2 that covers her early career as a professor writing about bankruptcy law and practice.
The move from professor into politics came when Warren was invited to join the National Bankruptcy Review Commission in 1995 at the age of 46: a non-partisan commission appointed by Bill Clinton to review the bankruptcy law over 2 years and write a review and recommendations. Readers learn about her life on the commission and then afterward when she meets Senator Kennedy and gets to participate on work to draft and pass a new bankruptcy law.
From the late 1990’s until the 2008 financial collapse Warren was a professor who gained notoriety outside academia by authoring and co-authoring books and articles as part of an on-going analysis of bankruptcy, especially the book the Two Income Trap. She also appeared on talk shows to describe the family and personal hardships of bankruptcy. This part of the story has a bad ending when President Bush signed a new Bankruptcy law in 2005, gutting many protections for personal bankruptcy.
Another big change and chance for Warren occurs in Chapter 3. After the financial meltdown and crisis of 2008 Warren was invited by Senator Reid to be on a Congressional Oversight Panel, COP, intended to monitor and report on the congressional recovery plan known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Here readers get more into the grimy character of politics and the personal tussles that go with it. On page 96 Warren writes “Yes, the crisis involved complicated financial dealings, but a lot of the supposed complication was nothing more than BS designed to cover up what was going on.” We visit meetings and discussions with President Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and economist Larry Summers. In a lunch meeting with Summers he tells Warren that only insiders have influence if they follow the rule for insiders: They don’t criticize other insiders. Touche.
Chapter 4 begins discussion of Warren’s vision for an independent Consumer Protection Agency but there is more on negotiations for the financial reform bill known as the Dodd-Frank Act signed into law July 21, 2010. The new law included a Consumer Protection Agency, but another whole chapter describes the trials of getting it going. The bankers did not want Warren named to head the agency out of fear she would make it work.
Warren details a succession of meetings with President Obama who would praise her work but would not appoint her to run agency, once telling her “ . . .for some reason you are like a red hot poker in the eye of the Republicans.” We see the cautious side of Obama who would only offer her an interim position to get the agency going, which she finally accepted. She worked until July 18, 2011; the date someone else was nominated to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she organized. From there it was onto to chapter 6 and her run for the Senate from Massachusetts and her eventual victory over incumbent Scott Brown.
Senator Warren uses an easy to read conversational style with many personal asides intended for a broad audience. Many of her human interest stories read like things the voters of Massachusetts might like to know about their Senator. Even though she is an academic she leaves out academic jargon and virtually all of the technical details of the financial topics and legislation she covers in a general way. Except for biographical material the book covers political negotiations and gives feelings and impressions of the many people who took part in national financial problems and crisis over the last twenty years.
The book has 57 pages of footnotes, some of them quite long and in small print. The notes have some of the technical legal and financial material left out of the narrative. We can almost hear the discussion with her editor of her target audience. That’s too technical for a general audience; put it in a footnote. She did.
By the end of the book I am comfortable that Elizabeth Warren will never be the cynical politician, or for that matter, the cynical Democrat, who talks a good game and sells out behind closed doors. She might lose a fight but not her work to have what is ethical and fair minded, and to end what is not.
One of her stories was about a congressman who spoke to Warren about some of his constituents who got swindled by the rogues and scoundrels sprinkled around the financial world. Then he said “if he stood up for the families who’d been hurt, he could find himself sidelined in Congress by the leadership of his own party.” Well, that will not happen with Senator Warren.
Elizabeth Warren’s latest book, Fighting Chance, has the label Political Science on the back cover, but librarians catalog it in biography. It is a little of both, but more the politics of banking and finance and her two-decade role in it. The first chapter does chronicle her growing up in Oklahoma in typical fashion for a biography. It includes education, marriages, children, divorce, college, law school, teaching, and early interest in bankruptcy as a professor of law. Narrative is sprinkled with some personal stories and anecdotes.
One story occurred when her young son Alex attended a law school class at the University of Texas. Walking out with Alex, Mom asked “What did you think?” Alex answered, “Mom you’re not that funny.” “But they all laughed,” she defended. “They had to, Mom.” We can figure Mom has a sense of humor, but obviously Alex knows the truth. Trust me, all teachers learn that eventually.
The rest of the book explores national finance issues beginning in the mid-1990’s with a few more family stories and biographical asides thrown in to the narrative. Mostly though the remaining five chapters are serious politics beginning with Chapter 2 that covers her early career as a professor writing about bankruptcy law and practice.
The move from professor into politics came when Warren was invited to join the National Bankruptcy Review Commission in 1995 at the age of 46: a non-partisan commission appointed by Bill Clinton to review the bankruptcy law over 2 years and write a review and recommendations. Readers learn about her life on the commission and then afterward when she meets Senator Kennedy and gets to participate on work to draft and pass a new bankruptcy law.
From the late 1990’s until the 2008 financial collapse Warren was a professor who gained notoriety outside academia by authoring and co-authoring books and articles as part of an on-going analysis of bankruptcy, especially the book the Two Income Trap. She also appeared on talk shows to describe the family and personal hardships of bankruptcy. This part of the story has a bad ending when President Bush signed a new Bankruptcy law in 2005, gutting many protections for personal bankruptcy.
Another big change and chance for Warren occurs in Chapter 3. After the financial meltdown and crisis of 2008 Warren was invited by Senator Reid to be on a Congressional Oversight Panel, COP, intended to monitor and report on the congressional recovery plan known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Here readers get more into the grimy character of politics and the personal tussles that go with it. On page 96 Warren writes “Yes, the crisis involved complicated financial dealings, but a lot of the supposed complication was nothing more than BS designed to cover up what was going on.” We visit meetings and discussions with President Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and economist Larry Summers. In a lunch meeting with Summers he tells Warren that only insiders have influence if they follow the rule for insiders: They don’t criticize other insiders. Touche.
Chapter 4 begins discussion of Warren’s vision for an independent Consumer Protection Agency but there is more on negotiations for the financial reform bill known as the Dodd-Frank Act signed into law July 21, 2010. The new law included a Consumer Protection Agency, but another whole chapter describes the trials of getting it going. The bankers did not want Warren named to head the agency out of fear she would make it work.
Warren details a succession of meetings with President Obama who would praise her work but would not appoint her to run agency, once telling her “ . . .for some reason you are like a red hot poker in the eye of the Republicans.” We see the cautious side of Obama who would only offer her an interim position to get the agency going, which she finally accepted. She worked until July 18, 2011; the date someone else was nominated to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she organized. From there it was onto to chapter 6 and her run for the Senate from Massachusetts and her eventual victory over incumbent Scott Brown.
Senator Warren uses an easy to read conversational style with many personal asides intended for a broad audience. Many of her human interest stories read like things the voters of Massachusetts might like to know about their Senator. Even though she is an academic she leaves out academic jargon and virtually all of the technical details of the financial topics and legislation she covers in a general way. Except for biographical material the book covers political negotiations and gives feelings and impressions of the many people who took part in national financial problems and crisis over the last twenty years.
The book has 57 pages of footnotes, some of them quite long and in small print. The notes have some of the technical legal and financial material left out of the narrative. We can almost hear the discussion with her editor of her target audience. That’s too technical for a general audience; put it in a footnote. She did.
By the end of the book I am comfortable that Elizabeth Warren will never be the cynical politician, or for that matter, the cynical Democrat, who talks a good game and sells out behind closed doors. She might lose a fight but not her work to have what is ethical and fair minded, and to end what is not.
One of her stories was about a congressman who spoke to Warren about some of his constituents who got swindled by the rogues and scoundrels sprinkled around the financial world. Then he said “if he stood up for the families who’d been hurt, he could find himself sidelined in Congress by the leadership of his own party.” Well, that will not happen with Senator Warren.
Monday, February 9, 2015
The Healthy Families Act
President Obama and the Healthy Families Act
President Obama called on Congress to approve the Healthy Families Act, which would guarantee seven days of paid sick leave. He also announced a “Modernizing Federal Leave Policies for Childbirth, Adoption and Foster Care to Recruit and Retain Talent and Improve Productivity.” A brief discussion in the Washington Post [“Federal Workers Get Expanded Sick Leave”, WP, 1/16/2015] called that borrowing sick leave earned from the future. Apparently Federal supervisors can allow that already but now they cannot turn it down.
Sick Leave
The United States is the only country among developed countries that does not guarantee any paid sick days. American workers can be fired for absence from work for illness, whether its something as simple as the flu or whether it’s something that goes on for months. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act requires an employer to allow unpaid leave, but only those employers with more than 50 employees and only for the employees who have worked more than half time for the last twelve months. Allow really means unpaid time off without being subject to dismissal at the whim of their employer.
Not having paid sick leave pressures the sick to be at work where they can spread their germs around. Sick restaurant workers cough on your dinner or sick children spread contagious diseases around the daycare when parents cannot afford to take leave. Sick people are less productive. Some countries require employers to cover salaries when people are out sick while others have social insurance where the government pays fixed or sick leave salaries determined by formula. Some have a combination.
The Center for Economic Policy Research reported sick leave for 21 developed countries in Europe and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Sick leave in these countries is national policy with sick pay financing, maximum amounts, and waiting periods set for all employers. A number of countries guarantee sick pay for long periods. Norway guarantees 52 weeks at full pay, Luxembourg 11 weeks, Austria 8 weeks, Germany 6 weeks, Denmark 4 weeks, Switzerland 3 weeks, Greece 2 weeks. None of these countries have waiting periods to start benefits.
Finland has 9 days of sick leave at full pay financed by the employer, but in a continued illness employees get 300 days of additional sick pay over a two year period at a rate of pay figured as 70 percent of earnings divided by 300. The rate is adjusted for high earners to be 40 percent and the whole expense is 100 percent funded by social insurance.
Germany has 6 weeks of sick leave at full pay financed by the employer funds, but in a continued illness employees get 78 weeks of additional sick pay over a three year period up to a maximum of 90 percent of regular pay. It is 70 percent funded through social insurance.
The United States has nothing, although a few states and cities have paid sick leave requirements. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that Connecticut was the first state to require private sector employers to provide paid sick leave to their employees, with a law enacted in 2011. California was next and Massachusetts third.
Common conditions in these statutes require a dollar of paid sick leave for every thirty hours of work with payment that begins on the eighth day of illness in California. Connecticut and Massachusetts use forty hours. San Francisco and Oakland, California, Washington, DC, Seattle, Washington, Portland and Eugene, Oregon, New York City, and Newark and six other New Jersey towns have some paid sick leave. Wisconsin does not require paid sick leave and reports are that Governor Scott Walker signed a bill to prevent cities from adopting their own paid sick leave proposals.
Family Leave Policies
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, already mentioned, also applies for a spouse, natural or adopted child or a parent, but still as an unpaid requirement. Since both partners in a marriage are eligible their combined leave could be 24 weeks. As with unpaid sick leave the law applies to those in their current employment for at least one year and who work at an establishment with at least 50 employees.
The National Conference of State Legislatures reports twelve states with there own unpaid family leave laws but only three states – California, Connecticut, Massachusetts – have paid family leave statutes. All three states fund their programs through employee-paid payroll taxes with administration through their respective disability programs. The California program was first to take effect July 1, 2004. Recent review shows nearly 90 percent of benefits go to new mothers who take time to be with newborn children.
Holiday and Vacation Policies
The United States remains unique among developed countries by refusing to guarantee any paid holidays or any paid vacation. Austria and Portugal lead with 13 paid holidays, Spain has 12, Italy has 11, Germany, Belgium, New Zealand have 10, Canada and Ireland 9, Australia 8, but the United States has none. There are currently ten Federal holidays for Federal workers, but private employers can do as they please.
The Center for Economic Policy Research reports France is the leader in paid vacation with 30 days guaranteed. Great Britain is next with 28 days followed by Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden with 25. Germany guarantees 24, Austria, Portugal, Spain guarantees 22. Eight countries guarantee 20 days: Italy, Belgium, New Zealand, Ireland, Austria, Greece, Netherlands, Switzerland. Canada and Japan guarantee 10 days, but the United States has none. Private employers can do as they please.
The U.S. Private Sector
The United States primarily relies on private business to decide employee benefits where other countries regard them as a national decision to be decided through the political process. Without a Congressional or legislative mandate sick leave, family leave, holiday and vacation pay become part of an employers job offer and a source of labor market strategy and competition.
The 2012 results from the Bureau of Labor Statistics National Compensation Survey report 61 percent of private sector employers have paid sick leave and 11 percent offer paid family leave to take care of a spouse, parents or children. Of the 61 percent with paid sick leave 76 percent have between 1 and 9 days, lower than most of the countries reported above.
However, paid sick leave and paid family leave drop off for part time employees. Only 23 percent have paid sick leave and 4 percent paid family leave. Paid sick leave and family leave also varies by industry. The leisure and hospitality industry with arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodations and food service establishments has the lowest paid sick and family leave coverage among United States industries. The National Compensation Survey reports only 27 percent have paid sick leave and 3 percent paid family leave.
Paid sick leave and family leave also vary by firm size. Only 50 percent of firms with 1 to 49 employees have paid sick leave while 82 percent of firms with more than 500 employees have paid sick leave. Only 7 percent of firms with 1 to 49 employees have paid family leave while 20 percent of firms with more than 500 employees have paid family leave.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a similar pattern for paid holidays and vacation time, but with higher percentages. The National Compensation Survey report 77 percent have some paid holidays and 77 percent have some paid vacation. Only 42 percent of firms allow all 10 federal holidays.
However, paid holidays and paid vacation also drop off for part time employees. Only 40 percent have paid holidays and 35 percent paid vacation. Paid holidays and vacations also vary by industry. The leisure and hospitality industry with arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodations and food service establishments has the lowest paid holiday and vacation coverage among United States industries. The National Compensation Survey reports only 38 percent have paid holidays and 46 percent paid vacation.
Only 69 percent of firms with 1 to 49 employees have paid holidays while 91 percent of firms with more than 500 employees have paid holidays. Only 67 percent of firms with 1 to 49 employees have paid vacation while 90 percent of firms with more than 500 employees have paid vacation.
The varied employment benefits offered in the private sector suggests they are high or low depending on the same market conditions that affect wages. For example, the food service industry, mostly restaurants, pays among the lowest wages and also has the lowest benefits. Part time work does not often pay as well as full time work and it also has substantially lower benefits. Unequal benefits contribute further to inequality of income and wealth.
Company benefits make it harder to compare pay packages between firms and may allow firms with better benefits to keep employees from leaving for higher wage offers. Company benefits can also be adjusted to improve with years of service. Vacations often work this way. The National Compensation Survey reports that only 20 percent of private sector firms have 3 weeks or more of vacation after one year of service while 76 percent have 3 weeks or more after 10 years of service. Moving to another job will be less attractive if it is necessary to start over in vacation days.
President Obama’s proposal comes after six years in office and compared to other countries it is very modest. The Healthy Families Act he supports only applies to employers with more than 15 employers where paid sick days accumulate by 1 day for each 30 days on the job up to a maximum of 56 hours.
There is another proposed law not mentioned in the Washington Post article: the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, sometimes called the Family Act. It would allow up to 12 weeks of leave with partial income payment of 66 percent of monthly wages capped at a maximum amount. Payments would be financed with a payroll charge of twenty cents per $100 of wages. It is also a modest proposal.
These new proposals come at a time when new forms of competition pressure firms to reduce or eliminate employment benefits, especially for the service industry. The higher productivity that is possible using smart phones and GPS communications pressures companies with older traditional forms of employment to imitate or go broke. For example, companies like Uber offer taxi services through Uber’s centralized communications network, but drivers provide their own car and manage their own work and time as independent entrepreneurs. The new business model eliminates key conditions that define employment or to apply the requirement for employers to pay social security payroll taxes. Similar service arrangements are spreading to short term rental housing like Airbnb, or home repairs like Taskrabbit and home services like Homejoy.
The Health Families Act is a start, but it looks too much like too little too late.
President Obama called on Congress to approve the Healthy Families Act, which would guarantee seven days of paid sick leave. He also announced a “Modernizing Federal Leave Policies for Childbirth, Adoption and Foster Care to Recruit and Retain Talent and Improve Productivity.” A brief discussion in the Washington Post [“Federal Workers Get Expanded Sick Leave”, WP, 1/16/2015] called that borrowing sick leave earned from the future. Apparently Federal supervisors can allow that already but now they cannot turn it down.
Sick Leave
The United States is the only country among developed countries that does not guarantee any paid sick days. American workers can be fired for absence from work for illness, whether its something as simple as the flu or whether it’s something that goes on for months. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act requires an employer to allow unpaid leave, but only those employers with more than 50 employees and only for the employees who have worked more than half time for the last twelve months. Allow really means unpaid time off without being subject to dismissal at the whim of their employer.
Not having paid sick leave pressures the sick to be at work where they can spread their germs around. Sick restaurant workers cough on your dinner or sick children spread contagious diseases around the daycare when parents cannot afford to take leave. Sick people are less productive. Some countries require employers to cover salaries when people are out sick while others have social insurance where the government pays fixed or sick leave salaries determined by formula. Some have a combination.
The Center for Economic Policy Research reported sick leave for 21 developed countries in Europe and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Sick leave in these countries is national policy with sick pay financing, maximum amounts, and waiting periods set for all employers. A number of countries guarantee sick pay for long periods. Norway guarantees 52 weeks at full pay, Luxembourg 11 weeks, Austria 8 weeks, Germany 6 weeks, Denmark 4 weeks, Switzerland 3 weeks, Greece 2 weeks. None of these countries have waiting periods to start benefits.
Finland has 9 days of sick leave at full pay financed by the employer, but in a continued illness employees get 300 days of additional sick pay over a two year period at a rate of pay figured as 70 percent of earnings divided by 300. The rate is adjusted for high earners to be 40 percent and the whole expense is 100 percent funded by social insurance.
Germany has 6 weeks of sick leave at full pay financed by the employer funds, but in a continued illness employees get 78 weeks of additional sick pay over a three year period up to a maximum of 90 percent of regular pay. It is 70 percent funded through social insurance.
The United States has nothing, although a few states and cities have paid sick leave requirements. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that Connecticut was the first state to require private sector employers to provide paid sick leave to their employees, with a law enacted in 2011. California was next and Massachusetts third.
Common conditions in these statutes require a dollar of paid sick leave for every thirty hours of work with payment that begins on the eighth day of illness in California. Connecticut and Massachusetts use forty hours. San Francisco and Oakland, California, Washington, DC, Seattle, Washington, Portland and Eugene, Oregon, New York City, and Newark and six other New Jersey towns have some paid sick leave. Wisconsin does not require paid sick leave and reports are that Governor Scott Walker signed a bill to prevent cities from adopting their own paid sick leave proposals.
Family Leave Policies
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, already mentioned, also applies for a spouse, natural or adopted child or a parent, but still as an unpaid requirement. Since both partners in a marriage are eligible their combined leave could be 24 weeks. As with unpaid sick leave the law applies to those in their current employment for at least one year and who work at an establishment with at least 50 employees.
The National Conference of State Legislatures reports twelve states with there own unpaid family leave laws but only three states – California, Connecticut, Massachusetts – have paid family leave statutes. All three states fund their programs through employee-paid payroll taxes with administration through their respective disability programs. The California program was first to take effect July 1, 2004. Recent review shows nearly 90 percent of benefits go to new mothers who take time to be with newborn children.
Holiday and Vacation Policies
The United States remains unique among developed countries by refusing to guarantee any paid holidays or any paid vacation. Austria and Portugal lead with 13 paid holidays, Spain has 12, Italy has 11, Germany, Belgium, New Zealand have 10, Canada and Ireland 9, Australia 8, but the United States has none. There are currently ten Federal holidays for Federal workers, but private employers can do as they please.
The Center for Economic Policy Research reports France is the leader in paid vacation with 30 days guaranteed. Great Britain is next with 28 days followed by Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden with 25. Germany guarantees 24, Austria, Portugal, Spain guarantees 22. Eight countries guarantee 20 days: Italy, Belgium, New Zealand, Ireland, Austria, Greece, Netherlands, Switzerland. Canada and Japan guarantee 10 days, but the United States has none. Private employers can do as they please.
The U.S. Private Sector
The United States primarily relies on private business to decide employee benefits where other countries regard them as a national decision to be decided through the political process. Without a Congressional or legislative mandate sick leave, family leave, holiday and vacation pay become part of an employers job offer and a source of labor market strategy and competition.
The 2012 results from the Bureau of Labor Statistics National Compensation Survey report 61 percent of private sector employers have paid sick leave and 11 percent offer paid family leave to take care of a spouse, parents or children. Of the 61 percent with paid sick leave 76 percent have between 1 and 9 days, lower than most of the countries reported above.
However, paid sick leave and paid family leave drop off for part time employees. Only 23 percent have paid sick leave and 4 percent paid family leave. Paid sick leave and family leave also varies by industry. The leisure and hospitality industry with arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodations and food service establishments has the lowest paid sick and family leave coverage among United States industries. The National Compensation Survey reports only 27 percent have paid sick leave and 3 percent paid family leave.
Paid sick leave and family leave also vary by firm size. Only 50 percent of firms with 1 to 49 employees have paid sick leave while 82 percent of firms with more than 500 employees have paid sick leave. Only 7 percent of firms with 1 to 49 employees have paid family leave while 20 percent of firms with more than 500 employees have paid family leave.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a similar pattern for paid holidays and vacation time, but with higher percentages. The National Compensation Survey report 77 percent have some paid holidays and 77 percent have some paid vacation. Only 42 percent of firms allow all 10 federal holidays.
However, paid holidays and paid vacation also drop off for part time employees. Only 40 percent have paid holidays and 35 percent paid vacation. Paid holidays and vacations also vary by industry. The leisure and hospitality industry with arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodations and food service establishments has the lowest paid holiday and vacation coverage among United States industries. The National Compensation Survey reports only 38 percent have paid holidays and 46 percent paid vacation.
Only 69 percent of firms with 1 to 49 employees have paid holidays while 91 percent of firms with more than 500 employees have paid holidays. Only 67 percent of firms with 1 to 49 employees have paid vacation while 90 percent of firms with more than 500 employees have paid vacation.
The varied employment benefits offered in the private sector suggests they are high or low depending on the same market conditions that affect wages. For example, the food service industry, mostly restaurants, pays among the lowest wages and also has the lowest benefits. Part time work does not often pay as well as full time work and it also has substantially lower benefits. Unequal benefits contribute further to inequality of income and wealth.
Company benefits make it harder to compare pay packages between firms and may allow firms with better benefits to keep employees from leaving for higher wage offers. Company benefits can also be adjusted to improve with years of service. Vacations often work this way. The National Compensation Survey reports that only 20 percent of private sector firms have 3 weeks or more of vacation after one year of service while 76 percent have 3 weeks or more after 10 years of service. Moving to another job will be less attractive if it is necessary to start over in vacation days.
President Obama’s proposal comes after six years in office and compared to other countries it is very modest. The Healthy Families Act he supports only applies to employers with more than 15 employers where paid sick days accumulate by 1 day for each 30 days on the job up to a maximum of 56 hours.
There is another proposed law not mentioned in the Washington Post article: the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, sometimes called the Family Act. It would allow up to 12 weeks of leave with partial income payment of 66 percent of monthly wages capped at a maximum amount. Payments would be financed with a payroll charge of twenty cents per $100 of wages. It is also a modest proposal.
These new proposals come at a time when new forms of competition pressure firms to reduce or eliminate employment benefits, especially for the service industry. The higher productivity that is possible using smart phones and GPS communications pressures companies with older traditional forms of employment to imitate or go broke. For example, companies like Uber offer taxi services through Uber’s centralized communications network, but drivers provide their own car and manage their own work and time as independent entrepreneurs. The new business model eliminates key conditions that define employment or to apply the requirement for employers to pay social security payroll taxes. Similar service arrangements are spreading to short term rental housing like Airbnb, or home repairs like Taskrabbit and home services like Homejoy.
The Health Families Act is a start, but it looks too much like too little too late.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Jobs in Technical Writing
Standard Occupational Classification #27-3042 Technical Writers
SOC definition Technical Writers #27-3042 -- Write technical materials, such as equipment manuals, appendices, or operating and maintenance instruction manuals. Many assist in layout work. Examples of other common names are documentation writer, assembly instructions writer, specifications writer
Technical writing work is classified as a media and communications occupation with the largest share working in the professional and technical services industries, almost 36 percent of the jobs. Among the professional services computer systems design and related services has 18 percent of the jobs, but other professional services like architectural and engineering services, management and scientific and technical consulting services also employ a large number.
Another 16 percent are in various manufacturing industries that need owner’s manuals and repair manuals to go with manufactured products. Computer and electronic product manufacturing has 6 percent of these jobs alone with small percents scattered in many manufacturing industries.
The publishing industry employs a little over 8 percent with 5 percent working for software publishers. Government employs 3.4 percent; 2.5 percent in the federal government. The rest are scattered as small percents in many industries because finance, health care and so many industries need to explain technical material. A little over 9 percent are self employed.
National employment as technical writers was 47,300 in 2013. Jobs are down from 50,700 since 2000 in a modest decline. Annual average job decline was 262 per year since 2000 at a growth rate of -.53 percent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is forecasting job growth for technical writers of 280 per year through 2022 with a growth rate of 2.07 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 technical writers are forecast to be 2,260 a year through 2022.
The recently updated BLS Education and Training Classification assignments lists BA degree skills as necessary for entry into jobs as technical writers. However, percentages from survey data are published for technical writing that show an educational distribution where 47 percent have a BA degree and another 26 percent have advanced degrees. Another 21 percent have some college, but no degree, or an associate’s degree. Some specialized knowledge or experience may be satisfactory in some industries, but less than 6 percent who work as technical writers have high school or less than high school training. Previous experience of 1 to 5 years is considered important, but short term on-the-job training is expected for new hires.
Relevant BA degree programs include Professional, Technical, Business and Scientific Writing, English Language and Literature, General and also Journalism degrees that teach writing as a career. For those interested in technical writing it is wise to find a college that offers the Technical Writing specialty in that only a few actually specialize in technical writing.
There were 685 Professional, Technical, Business and Scientific Writing BA degrees for the last full year of data reported by the Department of Education. In addition, there were 363 more advanced degrees. The ratio of relevant degrees to openings equals 0.464, or 1,048/2,260, assuring a shortage of highly trained and specialized candidates to fill job openings. There were also 43,260 BA degrees in English Language and Literature, General, and 12,249 BA degrees in journalism. Even though these degrees are not as specialized to technical writing, Professional, Technical, Business and Scientific Writing degree candidates should expect other qualified candidates in the applicant pool.
The entry wage for the national market in the 10th percentile for technical writers is reported as $40,270 in 2013. The 25th percentile wage equals $51,850. The median wage is $67,900, the 75th percentile wage equals $86,340 and the 90th percentile wage is $105,760.
The wages of technical writers have kept up with inflation for the last decade. For example, to have the buying power of the 2006 median wage of $58,050 in 2013, the technical writers wage would need to be $67,079.11. In stead it was $67,900, a 1.22 percent increase in the real wage for those six years.
SOC definition Technical Writers #27-3042 -- Write technical materials, such as equipment manuals, appendices, or operating and maintenance instruction manuals. Many assist in layout work. Examples of other common names are documentation writer, assembly instructions writer, specifications writer
Technical writing work is classified as a media and communications occupation with the largest share working in the professional and technical services industries, almost 36 percent of the jobs. Among the professional services computer systems design and related services has 18 percent of the jobs, but other professional services like architectural and engineering services, management and scientific and technical consulting services also employ a large number.
Another 16 percent are in various manufacturing industries that need owner’s manuals and repair manuals to go with manufactured products. Computer and electronic product manufacturing has 6 percent of these jobs alone with small percents scattered in many manufacturing industries.
The publishing industry employs a little over 8 percent with 5 percent working for software publishers. Government employs 3.4 percent; 2.5 percent in the federal government. The rest are scattered as small percents in many industries because finance, health care and so many industries need to explain technical material. A little over 9 percent are self employed.
National employment as technical writers was 47,300 in 2013. Jobs are down from 50,700 since 2000 in a modest decline. Annual average job decline was 262 per year since 2000 at a growth rate of -.53 percent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is forecasting job growth for technical writers of 280 per year through 2022 with a growth rate of 2.07 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 technical writers are forecast to be 2,260 a year through 2022.
The recently updated BLS Education and Training Classification assignments lists BA degree skills as necessary for entry into jobs as technical writers. However, percentages from survey data are published for technical writing that show an educational distribution where 47 percent have a BA degree and another 26 percent have advanced degrees. Another 21 percent have some college, but no degree, or an associate’s degree. Some specialized knowledge or experience may be satisfactory in some industries, but less than 6 percent who work as technical writers have high school or less than high school training. Previous experience of 1 to 5 years is considered important, but short term on-the-job training is expected for new hires.
Relevant BA degree programs include Professional, Technical, Business and Scientific Writing, English Language and Literature, General and also Journalism degrees that teach writing as a career. For those interested in technical writing it is wise to find a college that offers the Technical Writing specialty in that only a few actually specialize in technical writing.
There were 685 Professional, Technical, Business and Scientific Writing BA degrees for the last full year of data reported by the Department of Education. In addition, there were 363 more advanced degrees. The ratio of relevant degrees to openings equals 0.464, or 1,048/2,260, assuring a shortage of highly trained and specialized candidates to fill job openings. There were also 43,260 BA degrees in English Language and Literature, General, and 12,249 BA degrees in journalism. Even though these degrees are not as specialized to technical writing, Professional, Technical, Business and Scientific Writing degree candidates should expect other qualified candidates in the applicant pool.
The entry wage for the national market in the 10th percentile for technical writers is reported as $40,270 in 2013. The 25th percentile wage equals $51,850. The median wage is $67,900, the 75th percentile wage equals $86,340 and the 90th percentile wage is $105,760.
The wages of technical writers have kept up with inflation for the last decade. For example, to have the buying power of the 2006 median wage of $58,050 in 2013, the technical writers wage would need to be $67,079.11. In stead it was $67,900, a 1.22 percent increase in the real wage for those six years.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Death's Door
Steve Lehto, Death’s Door: The Truth Behind the Italian Hall Disaster and the Strike of 1913, (Detroit: Momentum Books, 1913) second edition, 397 pages
Steve Lehto first published Death’s Door in 2006. It includes a detailed account and review of evidence from a panic at a Christmas Eve party attended by children and parents of striking copper miners in Keweenaw, Michigan. The panic that took place on the second floor of Italian Hall in Calumet resulted in the death of 73, mostly children. The title Death’s Door derives from the pileup and suffocation of victims toward the bottom of the stairwell in front of the exit door. The book includes narrative history of the Keweenaw copper strike of 1913-14, which is necessary to understand the events at Italian Hall and the claims and charges in the aftermath.
The second edition published in 2013 added new material as the hundredth anniversary of the strike approached. It takes up old controversies that still remain and some new ones that recently surfaced in other books and accounts.
The discussion of the Christmas party comes as a brief version of events in the Introduction, then again in more detail in a chapter also titled Death’s Door, actually Chapter 7, although the book’s sixteen chapters are not numbered. The next chapter narrates several days after and the short chapter fifteen titled “What Actually Happened” provides further discussion and Lehto’s conclusions about the panic at Death’s Door.
The Western Federation of Miners strike in the copper mines of Keweenaw began July 22, 1913 and did not end until April 1914. Sketches of the local community, the mining companies and business groups, the union, and some biographical material of general managers, and other officials fill chapter 2. Chapter 3 narrates the strike from the beginning into mid August, a period that included picketing and parades, the governor mobilizing the National Guard, and the county sheriff deputizing hundreds of strike breakers and vigilantes. The rest of the events of the strike including Italian Hall are scattered in chapters four through ten.
Narrative in the first ten chapters takes several detours to examine specific events that occurred during the strike. For example, chapter four takes sixty pages to discuss the legal record in a brutal attack and shootings by private detectives and sheriffs deputies that occurred August 14 at a boardinghouse full of miners in Seeberville. Discussion of the Seeberville shootings and other violent events like the Italian Hall panic benefit from Lehto’s experience as a Michigan attorney. In each of several other episodes and the Italian Hall panic he reviews and evaluates the legal evidence with a microscope: arrest warrants, transcripts of testimony of preliminary examinations, coroner’s inquests, and trials.
After the hardships of nearly six months on strike miners planned a large Christmas Eve Party at Italian hall for union members and their families. After the party was well underway a man entered the hall, climbed the stairs and shouted “fire” into a room stuffed with 700 hundred people, which caused the panic and death already mentioned. Accounts of what happened varied dramatically depending on who told the story. Striking miners identified the man from a business group known as the Citizens Alliance; mining companies and the newspapers had other stories and supplied other explanations.
Chapter 8 has a thorough review of newspaper reports; chapter 9 covers the archival record of officials like the county sheriff, his deputies, the prosecutor and coroner; and chapter 10 reviews testimony at hearings of a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee sent to Keweenaw to investigate the strike and Italian Hall. Transcripts of official proceedings, especially the coroner’s inquest remain, which allows an evaluation of established legal procedures with the record of events that took place in 1913.
Lehto concludes the misconduct of mine owners with their cozy relationships with law enforcement officers and government officials made them co-conspirators and accomplices to crimes. He writes a strikebreaker named Edward Manley entered Italian hall, cried “fire” and ran out. While it is likely that Manley only wanted to create a disturbance and disrupt miner solidarity, his intentional actions killed 73 people.
Lehto’s views in the first edition published in 2006 got more controversial as the 100th anniversary approached and other accounts and views were discussed and published. More recent explanations have cast the mine owners in a more benevolent light suggesting what occurred at Italian Hall was a tragic accident the cause of which cannot be solved. The remaining six chapters address these controversies as individual topics.
Chapter 11, entitled Lingering Controversies, challenges five of the revisionist views such as the suggestion the exit doors opened inward and that was a cause of the tragedy. Italian Hall was torn down in 1984 and the State of Michigan authorized an historical marker at the site dedicated in November 1989, which allowed these revisionist views, but there are other points in contention reviewed in this chapter.
In the next chapter readers find out about a 2012 grant from the Michigan Humanities Council to Michigan Technological University in Keweenaw to create an exhibit on the strike entitled, Tumult and Tragedy. The authors of Tumult and Tragedy also published a revisionist book about the strike and the Italian Hall panic entitled, Community in Conflict. In the book they specifically attack Lehto’s work and so he devoted a chapter to review their book and reply to these attacks.
A few more short chapters reiterate conclusions to finish the book. The book reads as a mixture of historical narrative, legal analysis and journalism. The writing flows along easily, but the material does not always follow an obvious line of organization and so it sometimes feels jumbled. One aside, Lehto started over a hundred sentences with the word, interestingly, which got to be an amusing bit of surplusage. An insert of 36 pages of pictures and drawings of the floor plans of the Italian Hall adds a significant benefit to the book. It does not have numbered footnotes but a list of unnumbered footnotes at the end organized only by chapter heading, which makes it harder to find citations. There is no index, a serious shortcoming in my view.
The period of 1910 to early 1920’s is a period of vicious and violent attacks on organized labor throughout the United States and especially the Western Federation of Miners. WFM president Charles Moyer had a long career as a labor organizer in the western United States when he arrived to help in the Keweenaw strike. Out west he was frequently attacked, beaten, kidnapped and once acquitted in a long murder trial in Idaho that resulted from perjured testimony.
He arrived in Calumet at the time of the Christmas Eve party. After the Citizens Alliance decided to donate funds to families of victims of Italian Hall, the families and union President Moyer refused the money as inappropriate given events of the strike. Alliance members were enraged and the county sheriff and several Alliance members confronted Moyer at his hotel room. When he again refused their money they threatened him. The sheriff left but within minutes twenty men bashed down his door and physically attacked him. During the beating a hand gun went off and the bullet hit Moyer in the shoulder. Wounded and bleeding the gang dragged him to the train station and forcibly deported him to Chicago; no one was ever prosecuted.
The Moyer shooting and kidnapping and other shootings during the strike were committed by men paid by the mine owners. All of those killed were strikers. These known and admitted facts in the case along with Lehto’s careful examination of the written evidence refute the revisionist views. The Keweenaw copper strike was like strikes all over the country where organized labor and the working class struggled in divided communities to cope with the bitter opposition of business and their supporters among the well-to-do and middle class. Be assured Death’s Door is the definitive source for the Keweenaw copper strike of 1913.
Steve Lehto first published Death’s Door in 2006. It includes a detailed account and review of evidence from a panic at a Christmas Eve party attended by children and parents of striking copper miners in Keweenaw, Michigan. The panic that took place on the second floor of Italian Hall in Calumet resulted in the death of 73, mostly children. The title Death’s Door derives from the pileup and suffocation of victims toward the bottom of the stairwell in front of the exit door. The book includes narrative history of the Keweenaw copper strike of 1913-14, which is necessary to understand the events at Italian Hall and the claims and charges in the aftermath.
The second edition published in 2013 added new material as the hundredth anniversary of the strike approached. It takes up old controversies that still remain and some new ones that recently surfaced in other books and accounts.
The discussion of the Christmas party comes as a brief version of events in the Introduction, then again in more detail in a chapter also titled Death’s Door, actually Chapter 7, although the book’s sixteen chapters are not numbered. The next chapter narrates several days after and the short chapter fifteen titled “What Actually Happened” provides further discussion and Lehto’s conclusions about the panic at Death’s Door.
The Western Federation of Miners strike in the copper mines of Keweenaw began July 22, 1913 and did not end until April 1914. Sketches of the local community, the mining companies and business groups, the union, and some biographical material of general managers, and other officials fill chapter 2. Chapter 3 narrates the strike from the beginning into mid August, a period that included picketing and parades, the governor mobilizing the National Guard, and the county sheriff deputizing hundreds of strike breakers and vigilantes. The rest of the events of the strike including Italian Hall are scattered in chapters four through ten.
Narrative in the first ten chapters takes several detours to examine specific events that occurred during the strike. For example, chapter four takes sixty pages to discuss the legal record in a brutal attack and shootings by private detectives and sheriffs deputies that occurred August 14 at a boardinghouse full of miners in Seeberville. Discussion of the Seeberville shootings and other violent events like the Italian Hall panic benefit from Lehto’s experience as a Michigan attorney. In each of several other episodes and the Italian Hall panic he reviews and evaluates the legal evidence with a microscope: arrest warrants, transcripts of testimony of preliminary examinations, coroner’s inquests, and trials.
After the hardships of nearly six months on strike miners planned a large Christmas Eve Party at Italian hall for union members and their families. After the party was well underway a man entered the hall, climbed the stairs and shouted “fire” into a room stuffed with 700 hundred people, which caused the panic and death already mentioned. Accounts of what happened varied dramatically depending on who told the story. Striking miners identified the man from a business group known as the Citizens Alliance; mining companies and the newspapers had other stories and supplied other explanations.
Chapter 8 has a thorough review of newspaper reports; chapter 9 covers the archival record of officials like the county sheriff, his deputies, the prosecutor and coroner; and chapter 10 reviews testimony at hearings of a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee sent to Keweenaw to investigate the strike and Italian Hall. Transcripts of official proceedings, especially the coroner’s inquest remain, which allows an evaluation of established legal procedures with the record of events that took place in 1913.
Lehto concludes the misconduct of mine owners with their cozy relationships with law enforcement officers and government officials made them co-conspirators and accomplices to crimes. He writes a strikebreaker named Edward Manley entered Italian hall, cried “fire” and ran out. While it is likely that Manley only wanted to create a disturbance and disrupt miner solidarity, his intentional actions killed 73 people.
Lehto’s views in the first edition published in 2006 got more controversial as the 100th anniversary approached and other accounts and views were discussed and published. More recent explanations have cast the mine owners in a more benevolent light suggesting what occurred at Italian Hall was a tragic accident the cause of which cannot be solved. The remaining six chapters address these controversies as individual topics.
Chapter 11, entitled Lingering Controversies, challenges five of the revisionist views such as the suggestion the exit doors opened inward and that was a cause of the tragedy. Italian Hall was torn down in 1984 and the State of Michigan authorized an historical marker at the site dedicated in November 1989, which allowed these revisionist views, but there are other points in contention reviewed in this chapter.
In the next chapter readers find out about a 2012 grant from the Michigan Humanities Council to Michigan Technological University in Keweenaw to create an exhibit on the strike entitled, Tumult and Tragedy. The authors of Tumult and Tragedy also published a revisionist book about the strike and the Italian Hall panic entitled, Community in Conflict. In the book they specifically attack Lehto’s work and so he devoted a chapter to review their book and reply to these attacks.
A few more short chapters reiterate conclusions to finish the book. The book reads as a mixture of historical narrative, legal analysis and journalism. The writing flows along easily, but the material does not always follow an obvious line of organization and so it sometimes feels jumbled. One aside, Lehto started over a hundred sentences with the word, interestingly, which got to be an amusing bit of surplusage. An insert of 36 pages of pictures and drawings of the floor plans of the Italian Hall adds a significant benefit to the book. It does not have numbered footnotes but a list of unnumbered footnotes at the end organized only by chapter heading, which makes it harder to find citations. There is no index, a serious shortcoming in my view.
The period of 1910 to early 1920’s is a period of vicious and violent attacks on organized labor throughout the United States and especially the Western Federation of Miners. WFM president Charles Moyer had a long career as a labor organizer in the western United States when he arrived to help in the Keweenaw strike. Out west he was frequently attacked, beaten, kidnapped and once acquitted in a long murder trial in Idaho that resulted from perjured testimony.
He arrived in Calumet at the time of the Christmas Eve party. After the Citizens Alliance decided to donate funds to families of victims of Italian Hall, the families and union President Moyer refused the money as inappropriate given events of the strike. Alliance members were enraged and the county sheriff and several Alliance members confronted Moyer at his hotel room. When he again refused their money they threatened him. The sheriff left but within minutes twenty men bashed down his door and physically attacked him. During the beating a hand gun went off and the bullet hit Moyer in the shoulder. Wounded and bleeding the gang dragged him to the train station and forcibly deported him to Chicago; no one was ever prosecuted.
The Moyer shooting and kidnapping and other shootings during the strike were committed by men paid by the mine owners. All of those killed were strikers. These known and admitted facts in the case along with Lehto’s careful examination of the written evidence refute the revisionist views. The Keweenaw copper strike was like strikes all over the country where organized labor and the working class struggled in divided communities to cope with the bitter opposition of business and their supporters among the well-to-do and middle class. Be assured Death’s Door is the definitive source for the Keweenaw copper strike of 1913.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Michigan Jobs 2014-2015
Michigan reached a monthly average high of 4.68 million establishment jobs way back in 2000, followed by a long slide to a low of 3.86 million jobs in 2010, a decline of 813 thousand jobs over the decade. Job growth returned in 2011 until average monthly employment reached 4.11 million in 2013, an increase of 241 thousand jobs over the three year period. Jobs are up for the first 9 months of 2014, but at a slower pace of increase with only 12.9 thousand new jobs for the new year.
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder took office January 1, 2011 and after the 2014 election will continue until the end of 2018. His first three years in office included a significant improvement on jobs where 241 thousand new jobs equals an annual growth rate of 2.04 percent, higher than the national job growth rate and higher than the growth rate of forty-five of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. His re-election to a new term gives a good chance to make a mid-term assessment on jobs.
Manufacturing
Michigan lost 422.6 thousand manufacturing jobs from 2000 through 2010 about 52 percent of the statewide decline in jobs. From 2010 to 2013 manufacturing employment increased from 474 thousand to 555 thousand, an increase of 81 thousand, or a third of the statewide increase in establishment jobs. The Michigan increase in manufacturing jobs was higher than any other state, even the five states that have higher non-farm employment than Michigan. As of 2013 manufacturing has 13.5 percent of statewide establishment employment compared to the national average of 8.8 percent.
Share Reversals – From Decrease to Increase
Manufacturing was part of the job reversals from 2010 to 2013. However, all three of the goods production industries, natural resource, construction and manufacturing, reversed from decreasing between 2000 and 2010 to increasing from 2010 to 2013. Goods production declined by 8.24 percent of statewide jobs over the decade ending 2010, but increased by 1.33 percent in the three years ending 2013.
Professional and business services are another group of industries that reversed direction in 2010 from a declining share to an increasing share of Michigan jobs. The professional and technical services component of these services have jobs in law, accounting, architecture, engineering, computer design, management consulting, scientific research, advertising, and veterinary services. Professional jobs were up from 222.8 thousand in 2010 to 260.7 thousand in 2013, an increase of 37.3 thousand jobs. The new jobs were up enough to raise their share of Michigan jobs by .57 percent to 6.3 percent by 2013, reversing a small decline from 2000 to 2010.
The administrative and support services component of professional and business services includes office and facilities support services, employment services, travel agencies, security services, and services to buildings and grounds. Administrative and support jobs were up from 242 thousand in 2010 to 284 thousand in 2013, an increase of 42 thousand jobs. The increase was enough over the three years to raise their share of Michigan jobs by .65 percent to 6.9 percent.
Percentage Share Reversals – From Increase to Decrease
When some industries have higher percent others must have a lower percentage, which guarantees other industries lost jobs or did not have enough new jobs to maintain their share of Michigan jobs. Job growth in health care, government and education faltered after 2010 even though these industries helped sustain Michigan employment with more jobs from 2000 to 2010.
Health care employment was up from 9.6 percent in 2000 to 13.8 percent of statewide employment in 2010, an increase of 4.2 percent, but health care lost a .11 percent of Michigan jobs by 2013. Government service including education dropped 1.85 percent of statewide employment from 2010 to 2013. The decrease includes a .96 percent drop in jobs for the public schools and universities.
Private school education also declined from 1.9 percent of statewide employment to 1.8 percent from 2010 to 2013. Combined public and private education was up by 1.7 percent to 10.5 percent of statewide employment in 2010, but after 2010 jobs dropped from 406 thousand to 384 thousand with a loss of 1.1 percent of statewide employment.
The New Direction
The new direction shows up primarily with an expansion of goods production, especially manufacturing, and professional and business services in exchange for less government services, health care, and education. Combined goods production and business and professional services increased from 27.6 percent of statewide employment to 30.2 percent in just three years. The combination of government services, education, and health care decreased from 32.3 percent of statewide Michigan employment to 30.1 percent from 2010 to 2013.
Jobs usually figure in elections. If that is true in the 2014 Michigan election then 2010 to 2013 job growth undoubtedly translated into positive votes for Governor Snyder. Job growth justifies his claim that Michigan’s job outlook improved during his first term.
If new jobs are a goal for newly elected politicians the safest strategy is to work for new jobs in all sectors of the economy. The Michigan mix of new jobs has a political component because the governor has taken steps to increase jobs in the private sector as he pressed for a reduction in government services, which have decreased jobs in government and education.
Lagging Service Sectors and Productivity
The expanded use of computers and digital technologies raises productivity and slows the growth of jobs across service industry sectors that make up a large share of Michigan jobs. For example, wholesale and retail trade made up almost 16 percent of jobs in 2000, but barely 15 percent now.
Productivity has also slowed the growth of other service industries like newspapers, broadcasting, phone services, and in financial services like banking, lending, insurance and real estate as America slowly shift to a paperless economy. Combined these sectors continue to have 21.3 percent of statewide employment but their slow growth, and sometimes decline, makes them an unlikely source for significant increase in the future.
Other small sectors like repair and maintenance services, transportation, utilities, arts-entertainment-recreation including gambling, accommodations including casino hotels, personal services and non-profit associations have small shares with a combined 9.4 percent of statewide employment in 2013, down about .15 percent from 2010. Gambling employment dropped a few hundred jobs to 7 thousand statewide jobs.
Government and education including private schools have 16.4 percent of statewide employment as of 2013, off 39 thousand jobs in the last three years. These remain an unlikely source of new jobs in the current political climate.
Restaurants reached their highest statewide employment in 2006 with 352.3 thousand jobs, but with moderate ups and downs it is 350 thousand in 2013 with 7.5 percent of statewide employment. The job changes over the last decade do not suggest restaurants will be a major source of future jobs, but it has been adding about 7 thousand jobs a year recently and may continue.
Health Care and Professional and Business Services
The combined total of the above service sector jobs comes to 54.6 percent, which leaves 45.3 percent of the remaining sectors as the most likely source of new Michigan jobs. Remaining sectors include health care with 13.7 percent of Michigan establishment jobs, professional and business services with 14.7 percent and goods production with 16.9 percent.
Michigan needs 80 to 90 thousand new jobs a year to sustain the growth of the last three years. Major sectors like trade and information services continue to lose percentage share and now education and government services are down for political reasons, which makes it essential to have replacement jobs from other sectors. To keep the job mill going health care, professional and business services, and goods production needs to grow a little faster than the statewide average to increase their share of jobs.
Michigan health care employment increased between 8 and 9 thousand jobs a year from 2000 to 2013, but the rate of increase has fallen below the statewide growth rate for the last three years. The pace of new jobs needs to increase so that Michigan adds 12 to 13 thousand health care jobs a year, which will help make up for other slow growth sectors. Michigan health care employment has 13.7 percent of statewide employment compared to 13 percent in the national economy, but it will be difficult for Michigan to meet its job needs unless it continues at 13.7 percent or ticks up toward 14 percent.
Professional and business services employment, which recall has the combination of professional and technical services, managerial establishments, and business support services, reached a statewide high in 2000 with 641 thousand jobs. It declined to a low of 501 thousand by 2009. Jobs started to increase the year before Governor Snyder was elected but has continued to increase to the present. The monthly average in 2013 was 602 thousand jobs.
Michigan professional and business services jobs were up between 32 and 35 thousand a years in the four year period. Except for legal services growth rates in these industries exceeded the statewide growth rate, often at double and sometimes at triple the statewide rate. Michigan already has 14.7 percent of its statewide employment in these industries when the national average is 13.6 percent, making it unrealistic to expect the pace to continue, but Michigan needs 20 to 25 thousand of these new jobs to keep pace for continued growth around 2 percent a year.
Goods Production
Goods production also reached a high in 2000 with 1.12 million jobs, but declined to a low of 597.6 thousand in 2009. Jobs started to recover before Governor Snyder took office, but 93 of the 98 thousand new goods production jobs came after he was in office.
Natural resources and mining was up a thousand jobs and construction was up 4 thousand jobs over the three years. While up is better than down both sectors have small shares of Michigan jobs. In the national economy natural resources employment is .64 percent, but in the Michigan economy it is only .2 percent. Natural resources has not added more than a thousand jobs a year in natural resources going back to 1990.
Construction jobs increased by 11 thousand to 132 thousand in the three years since 2010. Michigan has construction employment equal to 3.2 percent of statewide employment compared to the national economy where it is 4.3 percent. Construction needs just 3 thousand new jobs a year to keep pace with the current statewide growth rate. A good economy should be able to increase it to 5 or 6 thousand a year.
Motor Vehicles
That leaves manufacturing, the most uncertain variable in Michigan jobs. The Michigan increase in manufacturing jobs came primarily in motor vehicle and motor vehicle parts manufacturing with 36 thousand of the 81 thousand manufacturing increase. Another 29 thousand of the manufacturing jobs were in auto related primary metals, fabricated metals, and machinery manufacturing. Combined these auto related industries make up 80 percent of the Michigan manufacturing increase.
In spite of the national decline in manufacturing after 2000 and the national decline of more than a 100 thousand jobs in automobile manufacturing in the same period, Michigan still has more motor vehicle manufacturing jobs than any other state. In 2012, it had 39.1 thousand jobs making complete vehicles or the chassis and frame, which was 23.4 percent of national employment in this industry; in 2013 it was up to 42.4 thousand jobs, which was up to 23.8 percent of complete vehicle, chassis and frame manufacturing. Second place Ohio had barely 20 thousand of these jobs.
Michigan ranks sixth in motor vehicle body and trailer manufacturing with 6 thousand jobs, but this is the smallest segment of the industry.
Michgian is first in the biggest segment of the industry: motor vehicle parts manufacturing. Employment here was 109.7 thousand jobs in 2013, which was 21.6 percent of the national employment. Ohio was second again with 63.6 thousand jobs.
From 2012 to 2013 jobs in the three component motor vehicle industries added 42.8 thousand jobs in nationwide employment. Michigan had 10.9 thousand of the new jobs, or just over 25 percent of them. It was more than any other state. Since five states had a decrease in motor vehicle manufacturing employment, and 13 states had a decrease in auto parts manufacturing employment, Michigan is clearly making gains in competition with other states in motor vehicle manufacturing.
The benefits of job gains depend partly on wages. The Bureau of Labor Statistics now publishes wage distributions by state, by industry and by occupation. Production occupations make up 60 to 66 percent of jobs in motor vehicle manufacturing including assembly and parts manufacturing. The Michigan median wage for production workers in motor vehicle manufacturing was $22.92 in 2012 and was up to $23.69 in 2013. Wages were up as employment was up from 21,540 in 2012 to 31,450 in 2013.
For Michigan production workers in motor vehicle body and trailer manufacturing in 2012 the median wage was $17.64 but was down to $15.27 in 2013. Employment here is low with only 2,640 jobs in 2012 and 2,680 in 2013.
For Michigan production workers in motor vehicle parts manufacturing in 2012 the median wage was $19.67 but was down to $17.09 in 2013. Wages were down as employment was up from 56,910 in 2012 to 61,290 in 2013. However, the wage bill (wage x employment) dropped for production workers who had less wage income to put into the Michigan economy.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data allows comparison between Michigan and other states. Production occupations for motor vehicle manufacturing in 2013 exceed 1,000 jobs in 10 states, but seven of those states report median wages higher than Michigan and two states with median wages below Michigan.
Production occupations for motor vehicle body and trailer manufacturing exceed 1,000 jobs in 26 states, but nine states report median wages higher than Michigan and sixteen states have median wages below Michigan.
Production occupations for motor vehicle parts manufacturing exceed 1,000 jobs in 28 states, but three states report median wages higher than Michigan and 24 states have median wages below Michigan.
A Cautious Future
Michigan needs at least 80 thousand new jobs a year to meet statewide employment needs. The job shifts over the last three to four years make Michigan more dependent on selling exports to other states or countries and therefore more vulnerable to job losses in an economic downturn. Through the first 9 months of 2014 manufacturing is up 8.9 thousand jobs out of a statewide increase of 12.9 thousand. Motor vehicle and motor vehicle related manufacturing in fabricated metals and machinery manufacturing were up 9.1 thousand in the same period, which means other manufacturing industries have a net decline in jobs.
The narrow advance of jobs in the three industries motor vehicle manufacturing, professional services expect legal services, and employment services makes a future forecast hard to make. In the first 9 months of 2014 retail trade, financial services, education, health care, accommodations, repair and maintenance services, personal services, non-profit associations, and federal, state and local government all had small job losses. Michigan has a better outlook on jobs than it did in 2009 and 2010, but it needs a broader advance across more industries to be optimistic it will continue.
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