Trump, Corporate America and the Upper Class

 Trump, Corporate America and the Upper Class

In his first crusade to be president Donald Trump campaigned with a list of Democratic proposals the Republican establishment hates and blocked during the Obama years. He attacked American business moving jobs overseas during the campaign along with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and trade agreements in general. Neither the Republican nor Democratic parties, nor any of its presidents care to challenge the demand of corporate America to shut down plants and operations in the United States and move them to Mexico or China or anywhere they want to go, but Trump’s threat attracted support from angry and alienated voters. He added to this appeal by insisting he would build a border wall to cut immigration in direct opposition to corporate America that can’t get enough of that cheap foreign labor.

Trump called NAFTA a “disaster” and the “worst agreement ever negotiated,” He threatened to have the United States withdraw without the changes he demanded. On May 18, 2017 he gave the legally required 90-day notification to begin re-negotiation. Trump claimed he could benefit American labor by eliminating NAFTA trade deficits with new policy in a new NAFTA agreement. Keeping corporate America’s production and investible capital in the United States creating American jobs appealed to an angry working class.

When real negotiations got underway all parties proposed moderate changes with revised language without changing NAFTA’s free trade philosophy. Corporate America was there watching to make sure changes would be acceptable while giving public relations deference to their brush off to Trump’s populist appeal.

Trump’s attacks on immigration and American corporations moving jobs overseas during the campaign came as a complement to his attacks on the NAFTA trade agreement. His campaign promises to the working class that voted for him required that he fight corporate America and the Republican Party establishment and be aggressive in his efforts to restrict the flow of immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants coming from and through Mexico.

Once in office corporate America continued hiring undocumented aliens with impunity while remaining silent and letting Trump and Republicans demonize and debase Mexicans and Mexican families to suit his political purposes. He decided separating families and holding young children in detention would be a good threat and public relations strategy for his purposes while corporate America looked the other way knowing his threats were tall talk of no benefit to the working class.

These Trump failures help demonstrate Republican presidents do not, and cannot, serve populist appeals. It also left corporate officials to continue doing as they please to invest abroad or to pressure cities and states to compete against each other to get socialist subsidies for roads, water, sewers, property tax cuts and other benefits as a condition of investing capital in one place over another. They make these demands expecting to leave at any time and wreck lives, housing and property markets in the process. Maybe Trump had a point: unregulated free trade equals cheap labor at the expense of the working class. Too bad he did nothing about it.

 

During the 2016 presidential campaign corporate America supported Trump despite his populist talk. Once in office Trump's conduct resembled his campaign with regular appearances directing personal abuse at objectors and preening himself as a genius. He continued as well to hold true believer rallies filled with lies and fabrications while making no secret of his refusal to read security or policy documents prepared for him or to study anything. With no previous experience in government and so much of his time spent talking or tweeting he did remarkably little governing.

As his 2017-2021 term passed Trump accepted what all presidents accept as president; they are expected to carry out the corporate agenda without objections or questions. Corporate America remained happy and content with him since they controlled economic policy and Congress and got everything they wanted from government while Trump otherwise played the role of corporate helpmate, or errand boy depending on point of view. Except for having a president offering a daily dose of useless vulgarity and personal abuse to minorities and objectors, the country continued as usual and the macro economy did well, mostly thanks to Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell. As the 2024 election approaches, we might suppose all could remain the same for another term of Trump as president. However, the events of January 6, 2021 intervened, bringing doubt to any thesis that a second term could only be as bad as the first.

The events of January 6 and his repeated demands to violate and terminate the U.S. Constitution since then prevent him from being a legitimate candidate for president. Recall the oath of office written into Title II of the Constitution: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Whether he would recite the oath of office on January 20, which he may refuse to do, remains irrelevant after a violent attack on the Congress. Even though Trump lost the popular vote, or what is really the democratic vote, in both the 2016 and 2020 elections and will lose the democratic vote in 2024, corporate America made him a candidate hoping to exploit the Electoral College and get him back in office. In spite of these constitutional questions corporate America and their media want Trump. If they wanted him out he would be gone, but corporate America got what they wanted in his first term and they expect to have the same control in a second term.

Before January 6 Trump praised others in their racist views and promoted violence by others, but January 6, 2021 was distinctly different. He organized his followers to attack the capital and extensive video coverage establishes they acted with confidence and impunity while expecting to be protected by Trump as part of their devotion to his authoritarian ways. They offered no agenda beyond over throwing a national election in Trump’s behalf, nor a word or a thought of policy. The evidence of his active involvement from the January 6 attacks, and since then, guarantees a significantly more threatening and violent second term compared to the first.

To build an Electoral College win Trump and the Republicans know they have the white racist vote. Some of America’s racist whites call themselves white supremacists, but many others merely whine and complain black people get unfair advantage from policies intended to create equal opportunity regardless of race, creed or color. Make America Great Again means Make America a white male dictatorship again. Republicans have also attracted those who demand unrestricted access to guns and assault rifles and those who want to ban access to prenatal care and abortion. At least some of these voters overlap with white racists and cannot be expected to enlarge the racist vote totals enough to elect Trump. Trump needs more than the racist-gun-antiabortion vote to get back in office, even with the advantages of the Electoral College.

To win Trump needs the additional votes of upper class white Republicans, many of whom do not care for his foul mouth or overtly racist talk. These are the wealthy and the professional well-to-do living in suburban enclaves with all the education and experience necessary to understand what Trump stands for and his threat to the domestic and international order. Some of these lifelong Republicans will vote for Harris as a result, but significant numbers will not. The upper class Republicans that vote for Trump do so expecting him and his corporate allies to protect their privileges. They show no reservation how much of their privilege result from three tax cuts: the 1986 Reagan tax cuts, 2003 Bush tax cuts and 2017 Trump tax cuts. Instead they worry a Democrat might raise their taxes or support programs to relieve income and wealth inequality and disrupt their class structure. The combined benefit to the well-to-do amounts to billions and billions reaped from the lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends over these decades; benefits to their compounding growth in consumption that depend on political influence without contributions to the economy and Gross Domestic Product.

If Trump returns to office in 2024 the upper class and well-to-do voters from suburbia will supply the votes that put him there. The racist-gun-antiabortion vote consistently voted for him in 2016 and 2020 and will do so again, but Trump needs the well-to-do suburban voters in key states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Many of these wealthy are not shy contributing campaign funds or planting Trump signs in front of their mansions, which can be translated into Trump will protect us; the Constitution and democracy mean nothing to us. They brush off Trump’s erratic and violent threats as something that will not affect them and will be controlled by corporate power anyway. That Trump remains a candidate after the January 6 attacks stand for corruption and decay in United States politics and an end of corporate and upper class leadership. Never has the United States sunk this low.

Labor Line

October 2024_________________________ 

Labor line has job news and commentary with a one stop short cut for America’s job markets and job related data including the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

This month's job and employment summary data are below and this month's inflation data is below that. 

The latest blog entry Trump, Corporate America and the Upper Class

Click here for a review of the Blog author's new book The Fight Over Jobs, 1877-2024

The Establishment Job Report with data released October 4, 2024.

  -Current Job and Employment Data- 

Jobs

Total Non-Farm Establishment Jobs up 254,000 to 159,105,000

Total Private Jobs up 223,000 to 135,684,000

Total Government Employment up 31,000 to 23,421,000 Note 

Civilian Non-Institutional Population up 224,000 to 269,080,000

Civilian Labor Force up 150,000 to 168,699,000

Employed up 430,000 to 161,864,000

Employed Men up 521,000 to 85,596,000

Employed Women down 91,000 to 76,268,000

Unemployed down 281,000 to 6,834,000

Not in the Labor Force up 75,000 to 100,381,000

Unemployment Rate went down .1% to 4.1% or6,834 /168,699

Labor Force Participation Rate stayed the same at 62.7%, or 168,699/269,080

Prices and inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all Urban Consumers was up by a monthly average of 4.1 percent for 2023. 

The CPI September report for the 12 months ending with September shows the 

CPI for All Items was up 2.5% 

CPI for Food and Beverages was up 2.0% 

CPI for Housing was up 4.4% 

CPI for Apparel was up .3% 

CPI for Transportation including gasoline was down 1.0% 

CPI for Medical Care was up 3.0% 

CPI for Recreation was up 1.6% 

CPI for Education was up 3.1% 

CPI for Communication was down .4% 

This Month’s Establishment Jobs Press Report

A MUCH BETTER MONTH

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its October report for jobs in September. The civilian labor force was up 150 thousand while the employed increased by 430 thousand and the unemployed decreased 281 thousand. Men’s employment jumped by 521 thousand while women’s employment was down 91 thousand. The decrease of the unemployed and increase in the employed lowered the unemployment rate by .1 percent to 4.1 percent. The labor force participation rate remained at 62.7 percent.

The seasonally adjusted total of establishment employment was up 254 thousand for September. The increase was 202 thousand more jobs in the private service sector combined with a(an) 21 thousand increase in jobs from goods production. The total of 223 thousand jobs gained in the private sector combined with a(n) increase of 31 thousand government service jobs accounts for the total increase.

Goods production had a net increase of 21 thousand jobs. Natural resources had 3 thousand new jobs; construction added 25 thousand. Specialty trade contractors added 22.8 thousand of the construction jobs with residential jobs adding 5.8 thousand jobs and nonresidential having the remaining 17 thousand. Heavy and engineering construction added 3.8 thousand offset with small job losses in building construction accounting for the net total. Manufacturing employment was down 7 thousand jobs after last month’s bigger loss. Both durable and non-durable goods production were down: durable 3 thousand, nondurable 4 thousand. No sub sector did well in durable goods with motor vehicles and parts down 6.5 thousand jobs. Among nondurable goods food processing had 2.4 thousand jobs with small job losses in nearly everything else.

Government service employment increased 31 thousand jobs. The federal government added 2 thousand jobs, state government added 13 thousand jobs while local government jobs added 16 thousand jobs. Government jobs excluding education were up 10.6 thousand this month, which leaves 18.8 thousand new jobs in state and local education. Private sector education was up 9.4 thousand seasonally adjusted jobs, which brings the total of 28.2 thousand new jobs in education.

Leisure and hospitality took first place for private service sector job gains this month with 78 thousand new jobs, displacing health care for the second month in a row. Arts, entertainment and recreation had a net of only 2 thousand new jobs this month with amusements, gambling and recreation adding 2.4 thousand jobs offset with other job losses. Restaurants had 69.4 thousand new jobs with 6.6 thousand more jobs in accommodations.

Health care took second place for private service sector job gains with 72 thousand new jobs, a recovery compared to last month. All four of the health care subsectors had more jobs with ambulatory care adding 24.3 thousand jobs; hospitals added 11.5 thousand jobs; nursing and residential care were up 9.4 thousand jobs. Social assistance services added 26.5 thousand new jobs, but individual and family services had 21.2 thousand of the jobs; badly needed child care added another 4.2 thousand more jobs. The growth rate for health care was up from last month to 3.81 percent, above the average of 2.09 percent per month of the last 15 years.

Professional and business services had only 17 thousand new jobs, but better than last month. The professional and technical services subsector added 12.3 thousand jobs; management of companies added 6.4 thousand of the jobs after last month’s job loss. Administrative and support services including waste management subsector dropped by 2 thousand jobs.

Among professional and technical services, computer systems design had 2.9 thousand new jobs; scientific research and development also added 2.9 thousand jobs in a slow month for professional service jobs. The management of company jobs added 6.4 thousand jobs. Among administrative support services temporary help services that usually adds jobs was down by 13.8 thousand.

Trade, transportation and utilities, the biggest sector of all, created only 13 thousand new jobs. Wholesale trade added 1.9 thousand new jobs; retail added 15.6 thousand jobs. Transportation lost 8.6 thousand jobs with warehousing and storage down 11 thousand jobs. Transit and ground passenger service added 3.4 thousand of the new  jobs but most of modal transportation lost jobs.

Information services added 4 thousand jobs after last month’s decline. Computing infrastructure, data processing and web hosting had 6 thousand new jobs offset with other sub sector job losses. Financial activities had a net gain of 5 thousand jobs with 5.7 thousand of the increase coming in finance and insurance, mostly insurance. Jobs in real estate and leasing and rental services were down 1.5 thousand, mostly because leasing and rental services were down 3.8 thousand jobs. The category, other, added 4 thousand jobs with personal and laundry services up 2.1 thousand jobs, repair and maintenance adding 300 jobs and non-profit membership associations adding another 1.8 thousand jobs.

The economy added 254 thousand jobs for September, continuing monthly increases and with more jobs added this month than last month. Establishment employment in September was 159.105 million with an annual growth rate of 1.92 percent. Health care returned to its more regular number of new jobs and restaurants added lots of new jobs, but these continue as the primary source of new jobs. These two sectors had 59 percent of this month’s new jobs. This month’s job total is 2.438 million above September a year ago and 5.423 million jobs above September two years ago.

September Details 

Non Farm Total +254

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Non-Farm employment for establishments increased from August by 254 thousand jobs for a(n) September total of 159.105 million. (Note 1 below) An increase of 254 thousand each month for the next 12 months represents an annual growth rate of +1.92% The annual growth rate from a year ago beginning September 2023 was +1.56%; the average annual growth rate from 5 years ago beginning September 2019 was +1.00%; from 15 years ago beginning September 2009 it was +1.34%. America needs growth around 1.5 percent a year to keep itself employed.

Sector breakdown for 12 Sectors in 000’s of jobs 

1. Natural Resources +3

Natural Resources jobs including logging and mining increased 3 thousand from August with 639 thousand jobs in September. An increase of 3 thousand jobs each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +5.66 percent.   Natural resource jobs are down 6 thousand for the 12 months just ended. Jobs in 2000 averaged around 600 thousand with little prospect for growth.  This is the smallest of 12 major sectors of the economy with .4 percent of establishment jobs.

2. Construction +25

Construction jobs were up 25 thousand from August with 8.303 million jobs in September. An increase of 25 thousand jobs each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +3.62 percent.  Construction jobs are up 238 thousand for the 12 months just ended. The growth rate for the last 5 years is 1.98%. Construction jobs rank 9th among the 12 sectors with 5.2 percent of non-farm employment.

3. Manufacturing -7

Manufacturing jobs were down 7 thousand from August with 12.917 million jobs in September. A decrease of 7 thousand jobs each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of -.65 percent.  Manufacturing jobs were down for the last 12 months by 37 thousand. The growth rate for the last 5 years is +.10%; for the last 15 years by +.72%. Manufacturing ranks 6th among 12 major sectors in the economy with 8.2 percent of establishment jobs.

4. Trade, Transportation & Utility +13

Trade, both wholesale and retail, transportation and utility employment were up 13 thousand jobs from August with 29.044 million jobs in September. An increase of 13 thousand jobs each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +.54 percent. Jobs are up by 162 thousand for last 12 months. Growth rates for the last 5 years are +.94 percent. Jobs in these sectors rank first as the biggest sectors with combined employment of 18.3 percent of total establishment employment.

5. Information Services +4

Information Services jobs were up by 4 thousand from August with 2.996 million jobs in September.  An increase of 4 thousand jobs each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +1.60 percent. (Note 2 below)  Jobs are down by 12 thousand for the last 12 months. Information jobs reached 3.7 million at the end of 2000, but started dropping, reaching 3 million by 2004 and has slowly come back to 3.0 million in the last decade. Information Services is a small sector ranking 11th of 12 with 1.9 percent of establishment jobs.

6. Financial Activities +5

Financial Activities jobs were up 5 thousand from August at 9.259 million in September. An increase of 5 thousand each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +.65 percent. Jobs are up 35 thousand for the last 12 months.  (Note 3 below) This sector also includes real estate as well as real estate lending. The long term growth rates are now at a 5 year growth rate of +1.09 percent, and a 15 year growth rate of +1.18 percent. Financial activities rank 8th of 12 with 5.8 percent of establishment jobs.

7. Business and Professional Services +17

Business and Professional Service jobs went up 17 thousand from August to 22.989 million in September. An increase of 17 thousand each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +.89 percent. Jobs are up 125 thousand for the last 12 months. Note 4 The annual growth rate for the last 5 years was +1.44 percent. It ranks as 2nd among the 12 sectors now. It was 2nd in 1993, when manufacturing was bigger and second rank now with 14.5 percent of establishment employment. 

8. Education including public and private +28

Education jobs were up 28 thousand jobs from August at 14.678 million in September. An increase of 28 thousand jobs each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +2.31 percent. These include public and private education. Jobs are up 255 thousand for the last 12 months. (note 5) The 15 year growth rate equals +.52 percent. Education ranks 5th among 12 sectors with 9.2 percent of establishment jobs

9. Health Care +72

Health care jobs were up 72 thousand from August to 22.660 million in September. An increase of 72 thousand each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +3.81 percent. Jobs are up 926 thousand for the last 12 months. (note 6)  The health care long term 15 year growth rate has been +2.09 percent lately compared to +3.81 percent for this month’s jobs. Health care ranks 3rd of 12 with 14.1 percent of establishment jobs.

10. Leisure and hospitality +78

Leisure and hospitality jobs were up 78 thousand from August to 17.075 million in September.  (note 7) An increase of 78 thousand each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +5.51 percent. Jobs are up 367 thousand for the last 12 months. More than 80 percent of leisure and hospitality are accommodations and restaurants assuring that most of the new jobs are in restaurants. Leisure and hospitality ranks 4th of 12 with 10.7 percent of establishment jobs. It moved up to 7th from 4th in the pandemic decline.

11. Other +4

Other Service jobs, which include repair, maintenance, personal services and non-profit organizations were up 4 thousand from August to 5.918 million in September. An increase of 4 thousand each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +.81 percent. Jobs are up 63 thousand for the last 12 months. (Note 8) Other services had +.67 percent growth for the last 15 years. These sectors rank 10th of 12 with 3.7 percent of total non-farm establishment jobs.

12. Government, excluding education +13

Government service employment went up 13 thousand from August at 12.627 million jobs in September. An increase of 13 thousand each month for the next 12 months would be an annual growth rate of +1.20 percent. Jobs are up 320 thousand for the last 12 months.  (note 9) Government jobs excluding education tend to increase slowly with a 15 year growth rate of +.28 percent. Government, excluding education, ranks 7th of 12 with 7.9 percent of total non-farm establishment jobs.

Sector Notes__________________________

(1) The total cited above is non-farm establishment employment that counts jobs and not people. If one person has two jobs then two jobs are counted. It excludes agricultural employment and the self employed. Out of a total of people employed agricultural employment typically has about 1.5 percent, the self employed about 6.8 percent, the rest make up wage and salary employment. Jobs and people employed are close to the same, but not identical numbers because jobs are not the same as people employed: some hold two jobs. Remember all these totals are jobs. back

(2) Information Services is part of the new North American Industry Classification System(NAICS). It includes firms or establishments in publishing, motion picture & sound recording, broadcasting, Internet publishing and broadcasting, telecommunications, ISPs, web search portals, data processing, libraries, archives and a few others.back

(3) Financial Activities includes deposit and non-deposit credit firms, most of which are still known as banks, savings and loan and credit unions, but also real estate firms and general and commercial rental and leasing.back

(4) Business and Professional services includes the professional areas such as legal services, architecture, engineering, computing, advertising and supporting services including office services, facilities support, services to buildings, security services, employment agencies and so on.back

(5) Education includes private and public education. Therefore education job totals include public schools and colleges as well as private schools and colleges. back

(6) Health care includes ambulatory care, private hospitals, nursing and residential care, and social services including child care. back

(7) Leisure and hospitality has establishment with arts, entertainment and recreation which has performing arts, spectator sports, gambling, fitness centers and others, which are the leisure part. The hospitality part has accommodations, motels, hotels, RV parks, and full service and fast food restaurants. back

(8) Other is a smorgasbord of repair and maintenance services, especially car repair, personal services and non-profit services of organizations like foundations, social advocacy and civic groups, and business, professional, labor unions, political groups and political parties. back

(9) Government job totals include federal, state, and local government administrative work but without education jobs. back

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Notes

Jobs are not the same as employment because jobs are counted once but one person could have two jobs adding one to employment but two to jobs. Also the employment numbers include agricultural workers, the self employed, unpaid family workers, household workers and those on unpaid leave. Jobs are establishment jobs and non-other. back

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The Fight Over Jobs, 1877-2024: An Accounting of Events Distorted, Suppressed or Ignored

A new book of labor history is just published in July 2024.

The Fight Over Jobs, 1877-2024: An Accounting of Events Distorted, Suppressed or Ignored

Author Dr. Fred Siegmund

Americans work “at will” and can be fired or laid off at any time. Work and the boss can be difficult; sometimes we strike, picket and protest.  Take the time back in July 1877 after the Pennsylvania Railroad cut wages 20 percent and the Pittsburgh superintendent laid off half his conductors, flagmen and brakemen. Striking crews blocked the tracks, except railroad officials declared to “clear the tracks” and found a compliant governor ready to call out the National Guard. His troops fired directly into the crowds at Pittsburgh’s 28^th Street grade crossing, leaving 16 dead and 27 wounded. Follow along with the “angry surging tide of humanity” descending into the rail yards for three days of arson, looting and rioting. Take a trip through the Sunday aftermath to consider the burned-out ruins of 1,200 freight cars, 126 locomotives and two miles of smoldering Pittsburgh. The Fight Over Jobs narrates these street battles in one strike after another along with the confrontations on the picket line, the shop floor, the bargaining table, in Congress and the courts over the years 1877 to 2024.

Six parts divide the history, further sub divided into twenty-one chapters, which should be treated as evidence for the discussion and frank assertions made about America’s labor and labor relations in Part VII. Part VII, Labor History’s Déjà vu, offers arguments, interpretations, conclusions.

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Part I begins with the Pittsburgh strike, often known as the Great Upheaval, that develops the early era between 1877 and 1913. Four chapters develop the major organizing and strikes of the era that include the 1892 Homestead strike, the Eugene Debs’ American Railway Union and the 1894 Pullman strike that follows. The era includes organizing details of the Industrial Workers of the World and their free speech fights and strikes. Readers meet Mother Jones and the early United Mine Workers organizing and Clare Lemlich leading the uprising and revolt in early textile industry strikes. Part I includes narrative review of the Haymarket bombing and Triangle fire.

Part II covers the years from 1913 to 1921, the Presidential years of Woodrow Wilson.  His first two years in office feature some of labor history’s renown labor battles at Paint Creek and Cabin Creek, West Virginia, Akron, Ohio, Paterson, New Jersey, Keweenaw, Michigan, Wheatlands, California, and Ludlow, Colorado and the legal battle over Joe Hill. A chapter covers President Wilson’s preparedness campaign and then his decisions over wartime labor relations that dominant the years of his first term. In spite of labor’s no strike pledge there were wartime strikes with the Bisbee, Arizona and Butte, Montana strikes providing two especially grim examples. War time labor relations included race riots at East St. Louis and then at Chicago as part of the great migration. Once the war ended in 1918, 1919 turned into another horror of strikes and violence in Seattle Washington, and the fall strikes of the Boston police, steel workers and coal miners ending with the shootings and lynching in Centralia, Washington.

Part III develops labor relations through the three Republican party presidents of 1921 to 1933. These years feature the Republican Party’s determination to neutralize unions in contrast with Lenin’s Russian revolution and the hope to empower unions and the working class. Labor relations in the agriculture, mining and textile industries declined even further in the 1920’s. This chapter narrates the violent Matewan, West Virginia strike featured in the John Sayles film. There were more strikes in the textile industry at Passaic, New Jersey, New Bedford, Massachusetts as well as a celebrated railroad shopman’s strike. In the last chapter of part III, the depression arrives and describes Herbert Hoover’s failure to respond.

Part IV covers the depression era of Franklin Roosevelt and labor relations during WWII for the years of 1933 and 1945. The first Roosevelt plan for recovery brought corporate opposition and strikes and rioting from a desperate working class. Strikes in agriculture came in spite of the Agriculture Adjustment Act and strikes in manufacturing came in spite of the National Industrial Recovery Act. Strikes filled 1934 at Toledo, Ohio, at Minneapolis, Minnesota, at San Francisco, California, and up and down the east coast with more textile strikes. Senator Robert Wagner of New York responded to these failures by steering the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) through Congress in 1935.

Part IV continues with the drive to organize under the new NLRA and the internal, political and legal battles to enforce the law. Narrative includes the Roosevelt court packing plan, the Robert LaFollette Congressional hearings and negotiations and strikes in the rubber, steel and automobile industries. These sections narrate the celebrated Flint sit-down strikes. The success of the sit-down strikes proved to be the high point of the New Deal. The last chapter of part IV narrates the corporate resistance to union organizing and the changes to labor relations during and after World War II.

Part V covers 1945 to 1981 that begins when Harry Truman takes over and the great post war strike wave of 1945-46 begins. It was a tough time for labor with corporate America determined to undue the New Deal. Republicans take over the 80^th Congress and pass the Taft-Hartley Act and then harass labor with Congressional hearings and charges of a communist take over of the labor movement that includes the Joe McCarthy outbreak and the legal assault on Hollywood actors and labor organizers.

Part V continues with Senator McClellan of Arkansas investigating labor racketeering in general and Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters in particular. Narrative here follows Robert Kennedy’s legal pursuit of Jimmy Hoffa and the successful effort to amend labor law with the Landrum-Griffin Act.  By the 1960’s the civil rights, women’s rights and Vietnam war protests joined forces with the labor movement organizing in California with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers, in Memphis, Tennessee with the sanitation workers, in the Detroit auto plants and especially in the 1968 elections.

Once Richard Nixon took over as president, he attempted to court labor in a concerted effort to have the working class vote Republican. The 1970’s labor movement was dominated by law and politics although there were also celebrated strikes like the one at J.P. Stevens. Labor and the working class divided over the McGovern election and the federal courts consistently ruled against labor unions. President Carter only added to their troubles by failing to support labor legislation.

Part VI opens when Ronald Reagan takes office in 1981 and establishes a new era in labor relations that runs to the present. The PATCO strike begins the Reagan era, but narrative turns to the aggressive union busting efforts in the copper industry, the paper industry and the meat parking industry. The 1980’s featured the rise of the service industry unions like Service Employees International Union, the Justice for Janitors campaign and the organizing of support workers at Yale University.

Part VI continues into the 1990’s with the George H.W. Bush era strikes at Eastern Airlines, at Las Vegas in the hospitality industry, at the Pittston Coal company in Virginia and in Decatur, Illinois at Caterpillar Tractor, Bridgestone Tire and Staley Food Products. Strikes continued during the Clinton years, featuring the politics of health care, NAFTA, and labor law legislation along with a couple of celebrated strikes at UPS and the Detroit Newspaper Strike. The second George Bush, a.k.a. W, allowed the anti-union parts of his administration to be active opponents of labor unions and labor organizing. The Bush era also featured internal disputes within the labor movement as Lane Kirkland, Andrew Stern, John Sweeney, John Wilhelm and a few more fought with each other to bring change to a calcified labor movement. The Bush administration gave way to the Obama and Trump administrations, but the focus of politics and labor were the same as they had been since the 1980’s: health care, NAFTA and immigration issues

The book develops labor legislation and labor law in separate sections of Parts I to VI as the law progresses from the 19^th century to the present. The legal narrative explains the principal labor legislation – the Railway Labor Act, National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), Taft-Hartley Act, and Landrum-Griffin Act – and provides a chapter appendix with a readers guide giving condensed versions of the important sections of the laws.

Before Congress passed labor legislation the courts resolved labor disputes with the common law of conspiracy and the 1890 Anti-trust laws to curtail union strikes and organizing. After Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act both labor unions and corporate management attempted to enforce their view of the law by filing unfair labor practice complaints with the newly created National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  NLRB enforcement allows review in the federal courts and further appeal to the Supreme Court. The book reviews these cases by providing details of the disputes and analyzing the court decisions.  The book follows the law cases covering the legal right to strike, the right to work, the right of free speech in labor relations and the duty to bargain as required by labor statute.

Part VII, entitled Labor History’s Déjà vu, pressures readers to consider common themes among the social, economic and political events of labor history narrated through the book. Part VII confronts readers with America’s class divisions, the narrow minds of economists, the short comings of capitalism and our obsolete Constitution. Part VII confronts inequality of income and civil rights, corporate America’s never-ending quest for cheap labor, and refusal by corporate officials to be leaders in a society they demand to control. It analyzes, defends and supports a living wage.

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This is a long book of 868 pages, with endnotes and index added to that, but a necessary length to bring out the central themes for a long period like 1877 to 2024. It intends to be self-contained and assumes only basic familiarity with U.S. history and political science, but it is not elementary and requires attention to detail. The central themes repeat in the same or similar ways over the many years. To help connect these themes from one era to another, readers are occasionally asked to “Recall” similar events already passed and informed of similar events to come in the future with “as we shall see.” Part and chapters begin with an epigraph specific to events of labor history. They are intended to reinforce these central themes. A few examples should help.

#1 - Joseph A. Dacus, editor, St. Louis Republican, 1878

It is cheap labor, more than any other fact, that most endangers our institutions, cheap labor serving corporate wealth, intent upon nothing but more wealth. Here is where capitalists make the gravest mistake, and the great strikes of the present year should be taken as a wholesome warning. Capitalists consider their direct interest in the cheap labor they hire, and not their indirect interest in the dearer labor that buys what wealth wishes to sell.

#2 - Lyman Trumbull, writing in Public Opinion, October 18, 1894

If the accumulation of fortunes goes on for another generation with the same accelerated rapidity as during the present, the wealth of this country will soon be consolidated in the hands of a few corporations and individuals to as great an extent as the landed interests of Great Britain now are. Neither strikes of the laboring classes, which it controls, nor the governmental control of the great railroad and other corporations, will remove the existing conflict between labor and capital, which has its foundations in unjust laws, enabling the few to accumulate vast estates and live in luxurious ease, while the great masses are doomed to incessant tool, penury, and want.

#3 - Memorandum from Louis Brandeis to President Woodrow Wilson, June 14, 1913

The conflict between the policies of the Administration and the desires of the financiers and of big business, is an irreconcilable one. Concessions to the big business interests must in the end prove futile. The administration can at best have only their seeming or temporary cooperation. In essentials they must be hostile. While we must give the most careful consideration to their recommendations and avail ourselves of their expert knowledge, it is extremely dangerous to follow their advice even in a field technically their own.

#4 - Bayard Rustin, quoted from Commentary, February 1965

“No social movement has ever been successful in this country which did not involve as an ally the hard-core white middle class.”

--------------Available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble in Perfect Bound or epub

American Whitelash

Wesley Lowery, American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress, NY: Mariner Books, 2023), 237 pages The book opens by recounting the Grant Park celebration following the 2008 election of President Barak Obama. The narrative contrasts those who saw the election as an opportunity to ease the racial divide with the many white men and a few white women who saw the election as a threat to their identity and class status. The election of a president with a black father and a white mother brought a surge of anger and hatred and paved the way for a Whitelash filled with violence, and Trump. The author quotes Obama from his memoir. “It was as if my very presence in the White House had triggered a deep-seated panic, a sense that the natural order had been disrupted.” A quote from a poet and essayist, Camonghne Felix, explains “What we expected of the Obama administration was beyond what the framework of the presidency allowed.” How true. Presidents take an oath to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution, which falsely suggests there is presidential power to do. The book has five parts divided into numbered subsections and an epilogue, all of it covering just 237 pages. Part I establishes the threat of terrorism with a review of white supremacy as practiced in the United States. At the end of Part I Lowery explains the book is “an exploration of the horror that our era has wrought and an attempt to place a decade of American carnage in the context of America history; . . . My goal is to be neither comprehensive nor encyclopedic. This book is an attempt to put human faces on the relentless cycle of violence that has defined American history.” Part I ends at page 27 and readers should know the remaining 210 pages puts a depressing and violent human face on the United States. In part II readers visit Patchogue, Long Island, where they meet Joselo Lucero and his son Marcelo. They are immigrants from Ecuador. Narrative follows a gang of middle class white teens, some with Swastika tattoos, roaming about intentionally looking for victims to assault. One of the group named Jeff Conroy stabbed and killed Marcelo Lucero. The narrative follows a journalist's investigation of the boy's racist and white supremacist views, and the prosecution and trial of a hate crime manslaughter and gang assault. Part II and all the remaining parts fill in related historical material of racism, cite criminology research and provide examples of the current status of white supremacy. Lowery's white supremacy discussion establishes white supremacy as a dangerous and more violent extension of the more common racial prejudice that has always plagued America. Part III - White Radicalization - builds a narrative around the saga of white supremacist Wade Michael Page. Page carried out a mass shooting after invading the temple of Sikhs in Oak Park, Wisconsin. Part IV - An American Nazi's final bark - builds another narrative around white racist, Glenn Miller, who attacked a Jewish Community Center and assassinated Jewish people there. Upon his arrest he informed police “My name is Glenn Miller. I’m an anti-Semite. I hate goddamn Jews. How many did I get.” As with Part II, Parts III and IV, add related discussion of related study and writing in the causes and consequences of right-wing extremists and the need for more aggressive counter measures. Part V - A Movement Rises – narrates a history of the Black Lives Matter campaign, which began shortly after the Obama inauguration with the deliberate murder of Oscar Grant by BART transit police at Fruitvale station. A bystander recorded the Fruitvale murder with a phone camera. There would be more video recorded murders that would go online. Lowery interviewed some of the victim’s families giving an especially personal side to their horror and rage. Readers will find assassination discussion of Eric Garner, New York; Trayvon Martin, Sanford, Florida; Michael Brown, Ferguson, Missouri; Shawn Washington, St. Louis; George Floyd, Minneapolis; Jamar Clark, Minneapolis; Philando Castile, St. Paul, Minnesota; Heather Heyer, Charlottesville; Breonna Taylor, Louisville, Kentucky. Only a page of a twelve page epilogue has what I would expect to find in an epilogue. All but a page recounts another assassination of a young man named Richard Collins III and its depressing aftermath. The one page ending takes a couple of sentences to write the depressing reality of what so many suspect already that politicians like Trump will continue to exploit and encourage bigotry and the murderous acts of white supremacists. Lowery’s last sentence reads “And as long as there are elements within our mainstream politics and media willing to cynically play to those fears – unwilling to call racism and bigotry by their rightful names – we can expect additional bursts of white racial violence, the horrific calling card of our era of American Whitelash.” Author Lowery does a good job narrating and documenting the evidence for the many episodes of white supremacist violence he recounts in the book. As a journalist he covered many of the events, which allows a first-hand account. The book has endnotes by page number but does not have an index, a decided disadvantage because it makes it difficult to follow names that appear and reappear in the narrative. The book includes authors and titles of related work at various places around the book. I counted at least twenty of them and they appear in lieu of a bibliography. We learn from a white supremacist interviewed for the book they avoid formal organization as too easy to infiltrate and prosecute. Instead, they use social media to spread their violent aims and hope converts will plan their own assassinations. As Lowery explained at the beginning, he wanted to let readers understand “the relentless cycle of violence that has defined American history.” He did that well but I would expect those who finish the book will be evaluating the chances for civil war and realize Trump has spent the last eight years preaching white supremacy.

Rural White Rage - A Review

 

Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, (NY: Random House, 2024), 249 page

White Rural Rage examines the white rural population as a minority block of angry, threatening, and violent voters ready to empower Donald Trump and the Republican Party to bring down democracy in exchange for arbitrary rule. The authors explain in their prologue they write as a warning to complacent members of the majority who might be discounting the threat.

The authors develop their arguments in eight chapters where the first chapter defines four compounding causes of our dangerous politics. They list and give brief descriptions of the four causes: 1. white despair, 2. outsize political power, 3. veneration of white culture and values, 4. media triggering of whites. Then they identify a “Fourfold Threat” from viewpoints common to rural whites: 1. Racism, xenophobia, anti-urban disdain, and anti-immigrant sentiment, 2.  Acceptance of conspiracies as facts, 3. Undemocratic and anti-democratic beliefs, 4. Justification of violence.

Chapter 2 narrates the mostly economic problems generating white despair that include the loss of population, jobs, and the closing of basic services and essential health care.  In chapter 3 the authors describe how and why rural America has political power much greater than its numbers should allow. Discussion of the gerrymandered House and malapportioned Senate provide much of the answer.  

The next two chapters describe the ways and means Fox News and their political commentators work to generate resentment and hatred in the urban-rural divide, then on to Donald Trump as the unlikely leader of rural America. Chapter 6 returns to a more detailed discussions of the “Fourfold Threat” where the justification of violence holds most of the threat. Chapter 7 describes the rural population, currently at 76 percent white, but the 24 percent minority share is up in recent years, especially the Latino community. Discussion here describes the unique hardships of rural minorities as they provide cheap labor to a still depressed economy. The last chapter combines the cumulative evidence with an incredulous discussion of a divided America. Having assembled a well-documented book full of evidence of America’s social and political decline the authors might be wondering how America could fall so far.

I found a broad theme of Republican Party division mentioned at various places through the book. For example, at page 147 I found Trump “exposed a profound division between the Republican Party and the base of voters upon whom it relied, making clear that the base and the elite are different people with different priorities.” The Republican elite has worked relentlessly to convince white rural America they are an aggrieved minority justified in hating urban Democrats.

Republicans have succeeded in getting the white rural vote by wide margins while they ignore the rural population and do absolutely nothing for them. Schaller and Wardman document Republican party efforts to make rural life worse over time that include promoting private school vouchers, defunding public schools and public colleges.  They have successfully run off OB-GYN physicians as part of attacks on abortion rights and birth control. State governments create the local governments with enabling legislation, but state legislatures have the sovereign power to eliminate local government authority at any time. They can cancel elections and appoint their Republican operatives or deny local governments from providing services such as broadband service, preserving it for corporate monopolists.

The white rural population consistently votes against their own economic interest but no one should think they do not understand what they are doing. The authors apparently agree as I quote them: “With wide eyes and full hearts, rural Whites recognized Trump’s exclusionary, reality defying, undemocratic and violent tendencies- and rallied behind him because of, not despite, his repeated disregard for America’s most sacred democratic traditions.”

Remember that 18- and 19-year-old white boys of the south fought the Civil War and died by the tens of thousands to preserve slavery for rich plantation owners. In exchange the survivors got to claim to be in a class superior to the black freedmen. Before the Civil War southern white boys did not lynch blacks, they were a plantation investment. After the war Jim Crow and lynching made life quite dangerous for blacks, all to maintain class relations with the acceptance of the white elite that controlled the south. Never underestimate the power of class as a source for violence and political breakdown.

The rise of Trump has brought the country some unlikely sycophant followers. Senators Elise Stefanik and Ted Cruz, to wit, both graduates of Harvard College; maybe Harvard breeds more arrogance and egotism than knowledge and principle. Schaller and Wardman discussed politics with politicians that do not worry Trump misconduct will ever affect them. They express privilege as their just due with or without democracy. They pander to Trump violence toward objectors with no sign of reservation.

The authors of White Rural Rage did an impressive job organizing and documenting their varied assertions.  There was a variety of economic data, polling and voting data, stories of Trump followers planning violence such as the plan to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer. They also consulted a variety of non-profit funded research from places like the Brookings Institution and others. I for one would not challenge any conclusions they made, but I will suggest a return to America’s recurring racism takes first place as the cause of this new round of America’s disintegrating politics. Trump merely threw out all restraint with a more aggressive brand of vulgarity and overt threat of violence than George Wallace from the 1970’s or any previous presidential candidate.

Trump has repeatedly vowed to end constitutional government which makes it impossible to believe he can take the presidential oath of office to protect and defend the constitution. He is not a legitimate candidate, but corporate America with their campaign money bags sits mum on the side lines, apparently in the belief Trump will not interfere with them or hurt their profits. The authors make an excellent case of the threat to democracy, but the threat of violence and civil warfare permeates the discussion. Readers can decide for themselves what they think are chances for widespread violence of Trump as president.

On the shortage of Labor, Especially Children

On April 1, 2024 Washington Post reporter Lauren Gurley wrote yet another story of politicians promoting child labor: “America is divided over major efforts to rewrite child labor laws.” The Post has previously published stories on child labor such as February 11, March 8, April 23, and April 30, 2023.

Corporate America’s relentless effort to exploit children goes back many decades. Congress passed the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act back in 1916, an age when the courts would not do anything to impede corporate America in their eternal quest for cheap labor. Child welfare reformers tried to use the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution to prohibit the transportation of products through interstate commerce for products produced with child labor.

Use of the commerce clause was a legal strategy intended to satisfy the judicial review they were certain would come. In previous cases the Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that the commerce clause of the constitution provided Congress with the necessary power to regulate interstate commerce. Even though the court previously upheld a ban on the interstate transportation of adulterated drugs, and another banning the interstate sale of lottery tickets, and still another banning the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes, the justices searched for previously unheard of excuses to undo child labor legislation.

In the Supreme Court case known as Hammer v. Dagenhart the court wrote that the interstate transportation of adulterated drugs, lottery tickets, and prostitutes created “harmful results” but the new law that restricted children under 14 from working more than 8 hours a day, or more than 6 days a week, or before 6 a.m. or after 7 p.m. in textile mills did not create “harmful results” and was therefore beyond the power of Congress to regulate. In the wrap up to their long and convoluted written opinion of June 3, 1918 the justices declared the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act “repugnant” to the constitution.

The Post’s April 1 review reported a long list of child labor law violations with under age teens working long hours doing hazardous work that state and federal labor law prohibits for minors. Not to worry, just change the law as did Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. She signed a new law that allows minors in that state to work in industrial laundries, light manufacturing, demolition, roofing and excavation. Ms. Gurley also mentions the Florida-based lobbying group, the Foundation for Government Accountability, that fights to restrict access to anti-poverty programs as well as drafting legislation to end child labor protections. This groups fits perfectly into Florida where Governor DeSantis signed a new law that allows 16 and 17 year olds to work seven days in a row and removes all hours restrictions for teens in online school or home school, effectively permitting them to work overnight shifts.

Current Population Survey data proves a plentiful supply of labor. The Bureau of the Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics report the civilian population since 1990 was up every year with an annual growth rate of 1.05 percent. A growing population allows an increase in the supply of labor, but the actual increase depends on the numbers who enter the labor force. In 2023, an adult civilian population of 266.9 million people supplied 167.1 million adults to the labor force, leaving 99.8 million adults not in the labor force (NLF); adults not children. Those not in the labor force can change their mind and enter the labor force to look for work and become part of the labor supply.

In the ten years from 2013 leading through 2023 the adult civilian population increased at .83 percent a year while the labor force increased at a rate of only .73 percent. In the same period the labor force increased at .73 percent the adults not in the labor increased at 1.01 percent.

In a labor shortage we would expect the opposite. In a shortage, the labor force grows faster than population as employers lure some of those 99.8 million adults back into the labor force by offering higher wages and maybe a few benefits as well. We can all conclude that wages and working conditions are substandard and do not generate enough people able or willing to return to the labor force. The United States does not have a shortage of labor; shortages are a myth offered by the cheapskates of corporate America, always trolling for people they can coerce to work for lower wages, including undocumented immigrants and underage children.

Freedom's Dominion - A Review

 Jefferson Cowie, Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, (NY: Basic Books, 2022), 416 pages

Freedom means different things to different people, a matter Professor Cowie explores in his latest work of history. Our Constitution defines a government that wants us to obey the rules and accept the restrictions on freedom that democracy creates, but it does not define freedom. Freedom’s Dominion explores how some Americans have exploited the term freedom to justify their social and political views. 

Cowie’s introductory discussion applies freedom as it continues to be used and distorted in the American south to justify their racial views and their efforts to maintain an authoritarian social hierarchy. The introduction establishes the theme for the four episodes of southern history with the emphasis on how they played out in the town of Eufaula, Alabama. The first period follows five years after 1832 when the federal government signed the Treaty of Cusseta with the Creek Indians. The second period covers the years of reconstruction after the civil war while the third period covers the south after reconstruction ends, and the federal government withdrawals from the south. This third section continues into the 1950’s, but ends with the rise and career of George Wallace and the civil rights protests, the subject of section four.

Down in Alabama in 1832 southern whites would not accept the terms of the Treaty of Cusseta, which awarded the Creek Indians land in Alabama for a reservation. Southern whites invaded the reservation lands and settled them as their own. When the Federal Government attempted to fulfill their obligations and protect Indian land, southern whites decided an oppressive federal government denied them their freedom as they defined it.

In all four episodes southern whites declare states rights as justification for doing as they please and overrule federal government attempts to apply equal treatment before the law written into the U.S. Constitution. The white south came close to exterminating the Creek Indians, which the federal government resisted, but without matching southern violence with enough might to prevail. Instead, the remnants of the Creek nation were forcibly removed to Oklahoma territory.

The second episode covers reconstruction and the efforts of the federal government to protect the freed slaves from the determination of the white south to deny their rights and keep them as subordinate cheap labor. Again, the south claims freedom allows them to do as they please while the federal government has to resort to military occupation and be constantly ready to match southern violence in the name of constitutional government.  This second episode wears down the resistance of the north and sets the stage for the third episode and the failure of the federal government to protect the black community from 1877 until 1961. Chapters in this third section narrate the history of schemes to coerce and terrorize blacks into submission.

The schemes include arresting blacks on false claims to exploit them as prison labor. How to rig elections and destroy democracy is another chapter, followed by lynching blacks in the next chapter.  

On lynching, Cowie writes “Largely unexplored in the varying explanations of American lynching is something fundamental: the continuity of the underlying idea of freedom. Reframing the most heinous aspects of American violence as part of the most cherished set of principles in American life is neither obvious nor easy to accept.” Impossible to accept for most of us, but he reviews others who have puzzled over it and written books about it. In one, the author suggests lynching “arose precisely out of an ideology of the sense of what rights accrued to someone possessing democratic freedom.” Cowie reviews others writing on lynching: Ida B. Wells, Jacquelyn, Dowd Hall, and describes the tepid efforts of Presidents that worried too much about votes to take a principled stand.

Part III continues into the great depression and the New Deal that finds southern whites working in the textile mills for a pittance while blacks remain impoverished as tenant farmers. White supremacy reigns but only the white elite have political and economic power, which they use to assure political dominance and cheap labor. WWII finds racial discrimination in war productions jobs and a weak response by the Roosevelt administration to bring equal rights for blacks.

The book’s fourth part covers the rise of George Wallace as a resident of Eufaula, a state legislator, state judge, governor of Alabama and presidential candidate. Readers get a sense for Wallace from some of his aphorisms: “Moderation [is] political suicide,” [Voters]’d rather be against something than for something.” And “[A] certain amount of pain must be expected and tolerated; opponents must be dispatched without mercy; and fighters must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to win.”

Winning for Wallace meant appealing to the racial bigotry of southern whites, slightly disguised as freedom from “oppressive” federal government efforts to guarantee the civil and political rights in the U.S. Constitution. Cowie tracts the political career of George Wallace narrating his opposition to voting rights, civil rights, racial equality, integrated schools, and his campaigns platforms for the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections.

A twelve-page conclusion ends the book, where the last paragraph calls for a commitment for the federal government to defend civil and political rights at the local, state and federal levels. Good history has a theme to go with the narrative and Cowie does this extremely well in Freedom’s Dominion. He comes back to freedom as practiced in the south from 1832 to the present. Since neither blacks nor anyone else give up civil rights through deception, southern politics requires violence, or the threat of violence, for whites to sustain their prerogatives. All four eras define freedom that includes white violence used in defiance of a consistently timid federal government.

The book is well organized, reads easily and provides useable documentation to pursue selected topics. It connects directly to current Republicans that define freedom and patriotism as it suits their authoritarian aims. Those who believe in equality and freedom may react with incredulous disbelief at the southern notions of freedom, but unfortunately it qualifies as current events.