The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Labour

The Good & The Bad In The Future of Labor

On this Labor day it seems like a good time to discuss what labor in general and unions in specific have to look forward to.

There’s been some very good labor news recently, for example, the UPS strike:

UPS Teamsters have won their biggest wage boost in decades: at least $7.50 an hour over five years for every current UPSer, and more for the lowest-paid. Even the 1997 strike only boosted part-time wages 50 cents (equivalent to 95 cents today) over five years.

The agreement would also end the forced sixth workday for drivers, create seventy-five hundred new full-time inside jobs, and eliminate the second tier of drivers — reversing the infamous concession in the 2018 contract.

UPS drivers could make as much as $170K in pay and benefits (which sounds better than it is, full time wages are about $120K, but is still good.)

There is also a desperation effect: there has been a lot of inflation, often higher than reported (I’d judge food inflation at the check-out where I live to have been about 66% over the last 3 years and rent inflation c.40% or so.)

A lot of unions have been having successful strikes and many non-union businesses have had to raise wages to attract workers. Anti-worker forces are fighting back, with variable success. In Britain striking is likely to be near-illegal soon, and this is something Labor agrees with the Conservatives on. Laws in some US states allowing younger teenagers to work in food processing plants and so on are also an attempt to break the power of workers.

This power is based on Covid. Covid killed a lot of “essential” workers (with restaurant workers in particular taking it on the chin) and Long Covid has moved a pile more workers off the table and will move more workers over time.

This leaves those who remain in a stronger position: in a market economy without strong pro-worker laws wages are almost entirely based on the supply of workers versus demand. This can be specific, where particular types of skilled workers are short, but for non-skilled workers its mostly aggregate.

From about 1979 Federal Reserve and ECB policy has been to raise interest rates to crush the economy any time workers began to make wage gains, but this time it isn’t working: both because the shortage is real and because the West is, though marginally, trying to decouple from China, meaning China’s mitigating effect on goods inflation is decreased. There aren’t a lot of truly cheap places left where you can easily move production because most remaining cheap places aren’t politically stable and pro-US.

In Europe the news is more mixed because Europe is shedding industry due to anti-Russia sanctions. England, having de-industrialized is now losing its developed nation status.

The pressure on the workforce will continue: Covid is still around, Long Covid and sub-perceptual organ damage will continue to increase and will continue to have an effect on the labour force, not just reducing it from what it would have been, but making a lot of people, while not disabled, less able and worse at their jobs.

There are, of course, things the ruling class can do about this. In Canada we’re bringing in about a half-million new immigrants a year (which has caused a housing crisis), in a nation of 40 million. There’s the child labor law changes and the anti-union laws.

The right is going to make some hay on this, because immigration does increase the work force and thus put downward pressure on wages. If the right were simply to stop being anti-union and anti-worker in other ways, they’d clean up. Up here in Canada, I despise the conservatives, but I have friends who are now homeless because of the housing crisis caused by the Liberals immigration policies.

In the further future, immigration will continue to be the big issue. Climate change refugees will be massive in number and hard to stop (I full expect so many machine-gunning refugees stories by 2035 that it’s “dog bites man.) Elites will want to let enough in to crush local efforts to raise wages.

So we have a window to do the best we can to improve wages. After that, things will become more difficult. Inflation will continue to be an issue (there’s a small chance of deflationary depression) because climate change will lead to real shortages of raw materials, especially food and water.

Of course, if climate change were treated as the emergency it is, there would be a ton of work available, a WWII style mobilization. And that’s the best possible future at this point: a mobilization to deal with climate change properly.

We’ll see if we do, and do it while we still can, before too much civilization collapse.


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The Labour Vote Is Up Four Percent

Picture of Jeremy Corbyn

Picture of Jeremy Corbyn

The media and anti-Corbyn MPs had made this a referendum on Corbyn’s leadership and predicted massive losses.

No.

Because of geographic clustering, a few seats were lost, but the overall vote is up.

This is remarkable. Almost the entire media in Britain has been relentlessly anti-Corbyn. Half his own MPs are constantly sniping at him. There is a ginned-up anti-semitism “crisis” in the Labour Party (how dare members criticize Israel).

And the Labour party improves its vote.

This a sign that the elites in Britain, as elsewhere, are losing control of the narrative. Ordinary people do not believe their shit any more. And it’s really a sign, because the elites have been united in vituperative and never-ending opposition to Corbyn.

Let me give some advice to my British friends across the pond: You need to purge the disloyal MPs. Oh yes, there has been great talk about how one shouldn’t do that.

You are a fool if you listen. The MPs have been acting not just in opposition to Corbyn, but traitorously to the party. They have been deliberately trying to sabotage him.

This is up to rank-and-file Labour party members. Corbyn won’t put his fingerprints on this. But Labour still has nomination meetings.

Start now. Get control of the local ridings, and, when the time comes, get rid of them. Do not apologize for this: They refuse to represent the democratic will of the Labour party membership. If they want to run on neo-liberal Blairite policies, the Lib-Dems and Conservatives can have them.

And if Corbyn gets in power, he must then purge. Within the first 100 days, major figures in the BBC must be forced to step down, the civil service mandarinate must be broken and a media-breakup law instituted and carried through, while steps must be taken to break the power of the City.

This is because those sectors will oppose his plans relentlessly. They cannot be appeased, and a deal cannot be made with them.

This is the lesson, by the way, that people should be learning from what is happening in South America. Having been left with commanding control of the media and economy, the old forces of the right have been able to use that control to sabotage and destroy left-wing governments and they have done so in extraordinarily non-democratic ways and in Venezuela’s case, through clear-cut economic sabotage.

You cannot do business with these people. They are not trustworthy, and they will use every bit of power they have to destroy you.

Those who think this is not true in Britain but only in Third world countries are whistling in the dark.

And yes, the phone call came from inside the house.


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