So Goldy’s post about having his video commentaries removed from YouTube, presumably at the request of the Association of Washington Business, reminded me that their president, Don Brunell, puts out a column that is faithfully carried every week by The Columbian. Usually I ignore it, but this week’s version is particularly entertaining given the wider economic situation. I’m not sure how many other outlets print it, so now and then it’s worth examining, if for no other reason that to enjoy Brunell’s sheer chutzpah.
Brunell’s column is headlined “Brunell: EU businesses find southern comfort,” and he gazes wistfully at at all the automotive plants being built in the south.
There is a virtual bidding war between southern states for modern vehicle manufacturing. Foreign-based companies now operate 13 assembly plants in the U.S., most of which are in the South.
The Associated Press reports Alabama offered $385 million to VW for the same plant, while Mississippi gave Toyota $294 million in 2007 to build at Blue Springs, and Kia received $400 million worth of incentives from Georgia.
A senior executive at Fiat, the Italian industrial conglomerate, told the Financial Times, “With the amount of money U.S. states are willing to throw at you, you would be stupid to turn them down at the moment. It is one of the low-cost locations to be in at the moment.”
Apparently nothing turns on a free-marketeer like government handouts.
But the most interesting bit is when Brunell sets forth on what is likely his true motivation, attacking unions in Washington state. I’ll only quote a couple of paragraphs, although I’m not clear on whether the AWB can sue people for quoting their corporate socialism agit-prop when they give it away free to traditional media outlets. (Bold added.)
The most attractive states are “right-to-work” states in which individual workers can decline union membership. Washington is a compulsory union state, so if people want to work at Boeing as a machinist, they have to join the union. When the union votes to strike, as the Boeing machinists did, they cannot cross the picket line even if their family is hurting for money.
Incentives and right-to-work laws are part of the decision matrix. A pool of trained and willing workers is important as well. Companies need people who know what they are doing when the factory powers up, and many states are spending millions to train workers for new factories and growing businesses.
Hmmm…so the government needs to educate the population, provide cash and other incentives to global corporations and also pass laws making unionization impossible? Is there a little box in Brunell’s “decision matrix” that reads “destroy the unions?” ‘Cause that seems to be what he’s getting at.
Such a vision reminds me of a certain large country in Asia that vacuumed up an Olympic-size portion of our jobs and currency. In the midst of a huge public backlash against conservative hypocrisy on economic issues, here’s good old Don Brunell admiring statism.
So if we peel away all the ridiculous rhetoric about markets over the last twenty-eight years, what Brunell and progressives might agree upon is this: government plays a key role in the economy. As Atrios observed yesterday about some of the commentary on CNBC:
People who prattle on about “the free market” are usually too stupid to have a clue how complicated and pervasive the “rules” had to be to to get a well-functioning modern market system: sophisticated concepts of contracts and enforcement, property rights, legal entities, proper accounting, bankruptcy, limited liability, etc… etc…, did not descend from the heavens but were, in fact, created.
To be fair to Brunell, he doesn’t seem very free-market oriented in his column at all, so I don’t think the “stupid” part applies. Atrios’s larger point is a great one, though, because societies create markets over time, and the best way to do that is through the expression of popular will, with respect to minority rights, through a truly democratic system. It’s not magical and mystical.
But many Republican candidates, lacking any other message, continue to “prattle” about the evils of government and taxes.
The real argument, as Brunell’s column reveals, is over who benefits from state actions. Brunell seems to like laws that make unionization impossible, meaning he would deny workers the right to collective bargaining, virtually the only means of allowing workers to negotiate on a somewhat even footing with multi-national corporations. In other words, he wants the playing field stacked in favor of business.
Unfortunately for Brunell and the anti-union management at The Columbian, they don’t get to wish away rights earned by our ancestors. For now this is an allegedly free country, and as the people come to understand the economic crimes that have been committed against them in the name of “freedom,” they will likely begin to grow more impatient with those who would tread on them.
As someone who was a member of the Teamsters Union for 9 years back in the late 80’s through mid 90’s I fully support the “right to work” concept. Why the hell should somebody HAVE to join the union? If there are pitfalls and risks that one takes by opting out of a union, seems to me that it should be left up to the individual employee to decide for him/herself. The Union I was a part of was 100% worthless……unless you were a shit head employee who by rights deserved to be fired, but since the Union extracts $30+ a month from their paycheck the Union is usually able to save their job. That is, until they fuck up again and by the time the company can fire them, they end up costing the company so much $$$ in lost productivity and lower morale from having a piece of shit in your midst that you can’t do anything about, thanks to the Union….who oh by the way, takes money from YOUR pocket as well.
I didn’t hear it myself, but others have said that yesterday Rush Limbaugh was ranting that the current financial problems were all caused by TOO MUCH regulation, and that if the government just stepped back and let the banks and mortgage companies do whatever the hell they wanted, everything would be just fine.
Nothing turns on a cheap labor conservative like Mexico’s $1.25-a-day wage rates! That’s why you need massive government subsidies to get businesses to locate in southern states with right-to-work laws where they have to pay the federal minimum wage, and where chicken farmers are independent contractors who earn an average income of $12,000 a year for working 80 hours a week.
@1 I agree! No one should force you to work for union pay and benefits! You should be allowed to work for non-union trucking firms for $8 an hour or 10 cents a mile, whichever is less, if you want to! However, it seems to me that if you collect union pay and benefits, then you should help pay the union’s expenses in getting them for you. Otherwise, you’re just a fucking freeloader taking advantage of your union-dues-paying co-workers. Assholes like that probably vote Republican, too.
Hmmm….one way to make sure you’ll have people willing to work for peanuts is a depression.
What Goldy Itches advocates is freeloading, as Roger Rabbit says. A freeloader is a person who doesn’t pay union does, doesn’t go on strike when the union does, but then collects all the benefits in pay and benefits which have been hard-won by the union through collective bargaining and the occassional strike.
It’s not surprising that this should be attractive to wingnuts, in that it’s similar to their arguments over taxes. They want the infrastructure and benefits supported by the taxes, but they want to pick and choose which taxes to pay, and then only in an incremental amount that they can identify as benefiting only themselves, apart from the common good.
Of course, making union membership and contributions voluntary has the same affect as making taxes voluntary. Some people will decide they want to enjoy the benefits without paying the cost, and will opt out (of the cost, but not the benefits). As time goes by, more and more people see that the freeloaders are able to get away with not paying the costs while enjoying the benefits, and it eventually kills the union (or the state). Then things quickly go to hell in a handbasket, and you have to start all over with forming a new union, or re-building a state infrastructure, etc.
Cannot cross picket line even if thier family is hurting for money?
Not true. You can cross if you want. Seen it.
Wait a minute here!!
Weren’t these wingnuts all belly aching about GUBMINT’ HANDOUTS?
LMAO!!!
6 – Notice how you completely ignored the latter half of my post about Unions protecting worthless dead weight employees who deserve to be fired. The threat of being fired for poor performance is a great motivator and often results in high performace and achievement. This does not exist in a Union shop. And by the way, opting out of a Union does not automatically result in reduced pay. Otherwise, people wouldn’t want to opt out. The company I worked for also had stores in other states that were non union. The non union stores paid employees $1 an hour less, but they were paid $2000 bonuses semi annually AND were able to participate in the 401k plan with a company match. This was not offered to union stores with union employees, since the company contributed to the Teamsters pension fund, which the employees may not ever see and that is likely being ciphoned off by the mob. You tell me who had the better deal. And we all had the same health benefits.
@ 9
Notice how you completely ignored the latter half of my post about Unions protecting worthless dead weight employees who deserve to be fired.
If you make the naked assertion that the grass is blue and the sky is green, do you expect anyone to waste any time trying to refute it?
There are ways other than unions for employers and employees to maintain good relations, and for both to prosper. The Japanese-style system, in which there’s a sort of feudal-style social contract between a corporation and its “team members”, is one. All too often, though, companies put on all the trappings of that while maintaining a hostile, exploitive atmosphere beneath the veneer.
9 – Nope. Sorry. If a unionized workforce performs poorly then that drags down the company and the company will close a poorly performing unit. The union would rather have jobs than no jobs so that’s the natural force ensuring adequate workforce performance.
A good management conveys competitive issues in a timely and honest manner and a good union does their due diligence to weed out management bullshit.
A lot of managements will do anything to bust unions including higher wages and bonuses – temporarily. Barry Goldwater for years subsidized better benefits for employees in his family’s department store business with his wife’s trust fund money to keep out a union.
My grandmother drew on a Teamsters pension until she died. There’s no reason (aside from the right wing greedheads on Wall Street) that shouldn’t continue for other pensioners.
The problem with people like Brunell is that they don’t understand that unions are a market mechanism against moral hazard. If one assumes that a free individual has the right to control their commodity that they own–their labor, and to enter into a free agreement with others to withhold said labor until the needs of their overhead can be met (housing, food, etc)–a union, and we agree that such individuals have the right to exclude others from this arrangement–a union security clause, then we can be consistent that the free market works in favor of unions as well as employers.
Since a union is the product of market forces, when unconstrained by regulations that interfere with the free formation thereof–the NLRB and the DOL, as well as public and private militias, as well as excess government regulation against free association and the right to exclude people from their association–otherwise known as “right to work laws”, and we agree with Adam Smith that all wealth is derived from labor, then we can argue further that unions protect against moral hazard when it comes to management and owners making poor decisions.
It goes like this: if management and owners know that they can simply cut wages and benefits every time they make a mistake and mismanage the enterprise, then the windfall from the line item of wages creates a moral hazard. Unions, insofar as management must bargain with an association of free people, who jointly determine their course of action based on their own rules, are a barrier to this arbitrary windfall, and actually help capitalism by weeding out the weak, incompetent, and under performing managers, who can’t cover their mistakes by simply cutting wages and benefits. Stockholders can then act accordingly.
So called libertarians can put that in their Randroid pipe and smoke it.
As for people who object to joining unions or being “forced to” join a union, buck up–you don’t have a right to work for that particular employer by your own reasoning. Why should you be entitled to a job? There are plenty of non union places to apply for work. Put your money where your mouth is and work for one of them, instead of being a bottom feeder on the work of those who have secured a good price for their product, their labor.
13 It is rather ironic that those who most loudly proclaim that it should be up to each individual to make it on his or her own support the adoption of policies that assure the rights of individuals are trumped by those of corporations.
14: Exactly. And I have yet, in all of the years that I have advanced those arguments, to find a libertarian that can refute them.
So today the free-market zealots took another gigantic handout from Uncle Sam. The Fed printed up another quarter of a trillion fresh pictures of George Washington and managed to pull the market out of its tailspin for the moment.
It seems that the Fed keeps doing this more and more frequently, with increasingly large amounts, as Bernanke blubbers about it being “the absolute last time”, and each time the tailspin ceases for a shorter interval.
Funny how the Columbian publishes Brunell’s column under the “local business” section, rather than “opinion” where it obviously belongs.
I wonder whether Brunell lives in Vancouver? Just called to ask, and the Columbian’s editor says he only accepts submissions from local writers…
Sydney Schanberg Writes Massive Piece on John McCain Hiding ‘POW Secrets’
By Greg Mitchell
Published: September 18, 2008 5:50 PM ET
NEW YORK Sydney H. Schanberg, the longtime New York Times reporter and editor and Newsday columnist — and author of “The Killing Fields” — has written a 9000-word investigative piece on John McCain and his longstanding efforts to, as Schanberg asserts in his lede, “hide from the public stunning information about the live Vietnam prisoners who, unlike him, didn’t return home.”
Part of the piece has just gone up at The Nation web site (www.thenation.com) and will appear in its Oct. 6 issue. A full version, with graphics, appears at The Nation Institute site. Schanberg, who once doubted claims about a large number of POWs left behind in Vietnam, later wrote dozens of columns for Newsday about the subject — and McCain’s alleged inactions. Now Schanberg criticizes the press for allowing this whole subject to be swept under the rug for so long.
The new piece details the evidence that hundreds may have been left behind, along with McCain promoting federal prohibitions that keep key evidence classified. Schanberg also reveals that he received a personal briefing in 1992 from high-level CIA officials who said intelligence suggested that many men were not freed — and later executed. He raises several questions about why McCain has acted the way he has but, in any case, strongly believes that McCain owes the voter “some explanations.” He also urges reporters to “dig into” the archives and complete “the historical record.”
What kills me is this leader of the business community doesn’t even know the frickin’ law.
>>Washington is a compulsory union state, so if people want to work at Boeing as a machinist, they have to join the union. When the union votes to strike, as the Boeing machinists did, they cannot cross the picket line even if their family is hurting for money.
There is no such thing as a compulsory union state. A person can opt out of the union in the state of Washington, as they can in any state that doesn’t have a right-to-work-for-less law. Furthermore, if a majority of workers doesn’t like the union, they can vote it out. Or they can get rid of the requirement of union shop, where it exists.
Secondly, you can’t prevent someone from crossing the picketline. If there is a strike, and you want to cross the picket line and be a scab, nothing prevents you from doing so. Any interference with this choice would be an unfair labor practice.
That is all.