Labor

[zoogs]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/justice-neil-gorsuch-is-about-to-deliver-republicans-a-big-return-on-their-investment.html

 

Quote

 

According to Alito, bargaining for a labor contract is actually political activity, because nonunion workers may hold an ideological opposition to benefits like health insurance and overtime pay. ...

 

Conservative originalist scholar Michael Ramsey agrees with Volokh ["a right-leaning libertarian who generally opposes union", who wrote an amicus brief rebutting Alito's First Amendment invocation]. The Supreme Court will not. [...] We know how this case will end; the dark-money group that spent $17 million to put Gorsuch on the court will receive a return on its investment.

 

While the legal theory upon which Janus is based is specious at best, the political theory is brilliant. The Republican Party has done an excellent job persuading the court’s conservative appointees that the thrust of the First Amendment is that constituencies who do not support the Republican Party should not have political power.

 

 

This should be one of the big stories of the day. This is frightening. And remember, too, that it is for cases such as this that Republicans in Congress took the incredible step of denying a sitting President consideration of his SCOTUS nomination, just because they could. They have made a farce of our democracy, in more ways than just that one, and they had goals.

 

[zoogs]

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/02/lane-windham-interview-knocking-on-labors-door-unions

 

Having talked a lot about the crushing of labor in the 1970s and 80s, I think it's good to get some historical context on the history of those decades. This is vital reading, and told a somewhat different story than I was expecting. It also offers a broader, more hopeful message on labor than I had.

 

A few selected passages from the interview (which is with Lane Windham, of Georgetown University):

 

Quote

"Well, first, I think we need to all accept that our employer-based social welfare system is fundamentally flawed. And I don’t think you can fix it by just tinkering with existing labor law. Benefits like pensions and health care need to be unhinged from employers, especially now that employers are becoming so successful at unhinging themselves from the employment relationship." (...)

 

The tools that workers have been given, this weak labor law, is no match for how our employment system is set up. (...) Collective bargaining–based organizations are part of the movement, but are not the full movement.

 

The key observation here is that we have offloaded to employers the burden of social welfare that is better suited for government. One of the best examples is the uniquely American employer-based healthcare model. Private enterprise, in order to be successful in the marketplace, would of course avoid this where they can (for example, by offering poor benefits to those who can't negotiate better, or shifting more to part-time employees and contractors to avoid the burdens of providing benefits entirely). This is less an indictment on the individual evils of CEOs than a straightforward consequence of the public's abdication. And there seems to me to be no good way of pushing back on this other than reclaiming the public role in social welfare.

Edited February 26, 2018 by zoogs

[BigRedBuster]

I personally think that healthcare should be unhinged from employers.  I also think a company pension is quite possibly the worst retirement plan ever devised.  I am all for 401K type plans that employers contribute to, but the employee 100% owns and controls and when the employee/employer relationship ends, so does any combined involvement on someone's retirement.  This is for the safety of both the company and the employee.

[RedDenver]

4 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

I personally think that healthcare should be unhinged from employers.  I also think a company pension is quite possibly the worst retirement plan ever devised.  I am all for 401K type plans that employers contribute to, but the employee 100% owns and controls and when the employee/employer relationship ends, so does any combined involvement on someone's retirement.  This is for the safety of both the company and the employee.

+1

 

I'll add that an individual plan (like a 401k) does have some downsides and cannot achieve the same protection as a bigger plan. As an example, think about what would happen to your retirement if the financial company that your money is with was to go under. Then consider if a whole bunch of us pooled our money so we could spread it over a bunch of financial companies - the risk of any one of those companies going under is shared amongst us and is much less.

[RedDenver]

I didn't know where else to put this, so I'll just leave it in this thread:

 

[Big Red 40]

The problems with 401k only retirement planning are many imo. Between repressed wages , slashed/no overtime, high cost of living , huge medical expenses etc millions of people struggle to make ends meet at all,  let alone save for retirement . Company pensions were a tool to attract and keep good workers and a reward for time served . With full social security at 62 and company pension workers could retire at a reasonable age and enjoy what’s left of their lives . With SS  age requirements at 70, and company pensions gone millions of people in the wealthiest country on earth will have to work until they are dead , while companies take the lions share of the fruits of their labor . It’s just wrong .