The News Media’s Blind Spots Covering the Working Class [feedly]

An interesting take on "working class" mainstream news stories internal bias that feeds the "white workers for Trump" memes and links whenever the "working class" term comes up.  

However, I am not sure this article does commit a comparable error. The export of capital and factory operations was ongoing long before NAFTA. The poverty of Latin America from a century of corruption, exploitation and extraction was reaching revolutionary boiling points in numerous places. Trade agreements replaced raw imperial intervention techniques. US working class interests were never safe from globalization by right wing nationalism in any form. Mexican auto workers have a different view.

The News Media's Blind Spots Covering the Working Class
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2019/09/23/the-news-medias-blind-spots-covering-the-working-class/

At midnight on Sept. 15, 49,000 UAW-GM workers walked out on strike at locations across the country, a day after their 2015 collective bargaining contract with General Motors expired and the union declined to extend the provisions of the agreement.

In a statement, UAW Vice President Terry Dittes said "While we are fighting for better wages, affordable quality health care, and job security, GM refuses to put hard-working Americans ahead of their record profits of $35 billion in North America over the last three years. We are united in our efforts to get an agreement our members and their families deserve."

The President promised then punted on saving the GM jobs, and never seemed to imagine that the UAW would later be leading the fight. Given their news coverage from earlier this year, neither did the New York Times imagine the UAW would take on GM.

While the auto industry is increasingly profitable, autoworkers have been suffering. Ground zero of that story is the iconic GM Lordstown plant in northeastern Ohio, which lost the discontinued Chevy Cruze and was shuttered when GM moved production of the revived Chevy Blazer to a Mexican assembly plant.

Beyond its regular reporting, the New York Times committed an amazing level of resources to the story of the Lordstown closing, producing an episode of The Dailypodcast on July 5, an episode of The Weekly (on FX and Hulu) on July 7, and an earlier New York Times Magazine interactive piece with photos and text (May 1, 2019).

I have watched The Weekly episode on Lordstown several times, listened to The Daily podcast many more times, and re-read the multimedia piece. I've also gone back to review the Times' 1992-1993 editorials and opinions on NAFTA, the trade deal that eventually caught up with Lordstown and many other manufacturing plants.

The Times's impressive investment and multiple stories across multiple formats cover the human injury of GM's boardroom decisions and note that the unwritten rules of the "social contract" have changed. These workers are victims of changing times, and the story is told with drama and great empathy.

Still, this is both a story we have heard before, and, as I discuss I my recent book, the kind of narrative that emerges with the built-in blind spots of a news organization focused on stories for upscale readers, listeners, and viewers.

The Times' stories are mostly framed as national political stories, even as they acknowledge that the workers they interview are weary of that angle. The Dailymakes this clear, stating "There's got to be some political fallout from [the Lordstown closing]. What is the consequence for Trump in this scenario?" In framing the issue this way, The Daily and The Weekly focus on white, male workers who voted for Trump.

To understand the politics of this and so many other "working class" stories since Trump's election 2016, imagine that The Daily interviewed a black woman worker from Lordstown who didn't vote for Trump. The political angle would vanish in such a story. But the national media is more interested in politics than in people. They would rather feature a white male worker who voted for Trump and who now (presumably) struggles with the cognitive dissonance of his beloved president not saving his job. This means ignoring the wide range of people who are working class – including those at this plant.

Conversely, the multimedia piece, featuring interviews and photos by an African-American freelancer, takes a different perspective. Not framed as a political story, it is also the only part of New York Times coverage of Lordstown that includes multiple representations of African American workers and women workers.

"The system" that the Times says is broken extends beyond their limited political framing of the story. It includes a blind spot about the paper's complicity with that system. The nation's newspaper of record ran  many editorials in favor of NAFTA in 1992-93, labeling workers and their unions as "protectionist," and stating that there would be only "a few visible losers," with "many in low-paid occupations." The Times' economics columnist wrote pieces with headlines such as "Job Loss in Pact Is Seen as Small" and "Trade-Pact Fears Seem Overstated," which supported its editorial position.

In its recent reports on Lordstown, the New York Times fails to acknowledge how its editorial support of NAFTA contributed to what has happened to America's "losers." In fact, a number of negative outcomes for Lordstown and the Mahoning Valley extend from NAFTA: the pressure for concessions and givebacks to save jobs, the export of jobs to Mexico (where GM assembly plants grew from one to four after NAFTA), the granting of millions in tax breaks and incentives to keep jobs (but draining needed public funds for schools and municipal infrastructure).

The New York Times failed to be a countervailing power (to use John Kenneth Galbraith's term) for working people in 1992-93, precisely at the time when it was most needed, as government (with majorities in both parties lined up in favor of NAFTA) had failed to be a countervailing power for working people. Government and the mainstream news media were in the corner of GM and other corporations. No one was in labor's corner.

Because of this, the Times also failed to recognize the UAW as a solution in their coverage. In the early 1990s, the union was a protectionist loser, and in 2019 it was an institution down for the count, whose members' only remaining power was their individual ballots for Democratic or Republican presidential candidates with whom they could place their faltering hope.

So, in 2019 there is a poetic justice for the UAW-GM workers themselves, all 49,000 of them, who decided to take a stand and be a countervailing power to the auto industry, despite the lack of support from the government or the news media.

Their audacity elicited a rarity from the pages of the Times a few days later: an opinion piece that avoided framing the UAW's actions in the politics of Trump. David Leonhardt's column "Why I'm Rooting for the G.M. Strikers," in a story long overdue for the working class.

Yes, Lordstown and the working class are political stories, but they are stories so much larger than that, too. They are even stories about journalism itself, and the role it has in "the system" that it often fails to see.

Christopher R. Martin

Christopher R. Martin is author of No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class (Cornell University Press). He is professor of Digital Journalism at the University of Northern Iowa.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Wage Trends: Tell Me How You Want to Measure, and I'll Give You an Answer

http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2019/09/wage-trends-tell-me-how-you-want-to.html

More than eight million workers will be left behind by the Trump overtime rule: Workers would receive $1.4 billion less than under the 2016 rule [feedly]

First rule of the Higher Wages Party: IF IT CUTS LABOR INCOME, ITS BAD!

More than eight million workers will be left behind by the Trump overtime rule: Workers would receive $1.4 billion less than under the 2016 rule
https://www.epi.org/blog/more-than-eight-million-workers-will-be-left-behind-by-the-trump-overtime-rule-workers-would-receive-1-4-billion-less-than-under-the-2016-rule/

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor announced its final overtime rule, which will set the salary threshold under which salaried workers are automatically entitled to overtime pay to $35,568 a year. The rule leaves behind millions of workers who would have received overtime protections under the much stronger rule, published in 2016, that Trump administration chose to abandon.

For quick details on the history of this rulemaking, see this statement. The two tables below show just how many workers this administration is turning its back on with this rule, and how much money workers will lose. Using the same methodology used by the Department of Labor in their estimates of the economic impact of the rule, I estimate that 8.2 million workers who would have benefited from the 2016 rule will be left behind by the Trump administration's rule, including 3.2 million workers who would have gotten new overtime protections under the 2016 rule and 5.0 million who would have gotten strengthened overtime protections under the 2016 rule. As the table shows, this administration is turning its back on 4.2 million women, 2.7 million parents of children under the age of 18, 2.9 million people of color, and 4.6 million workers without a college degree.

Table 1

With this rule, the Trump administration is cheating workers out of billions. The annual wage gains from this rule are $1.4 billion dollars less than they would have been under the 2016 rule—and these annual earnings losses balloon over time because the Trump administration neglected to include automatic indexing in their rule. Once again, President Trump has turned his back on the working people of this country.

Table 2

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Re: Your post about cashiers

Hey guys. Wondering if you had a chance to look over our career resource tool:
https://www.zippia.com/cashier-jobs/#career-paths

And whether or not you thought it was worth adding a link to on your page:
http://economics.enlightenradio.org/2016/09/

Thanks!
Kristy

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Kristy Crane
Public Relations
Zippia.com

Zippia is a resource site for job seekers who want to empower their career aspirations with knowledgeable data. We've been featured in USA Today, Forbes, Fortune, CNBC and the NY Times, among other leading publications.

As a union leader, I've learned one big lesson: Workers can't just rely on promises from CEOs [feedly]

As a union leader, I've learned one big lesson: Workers can't just rely on promises from CEOs
https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-unions-fight-benefits-pay-not-rely-on-corporate-ceos-2019-9?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

• CEOs are promising to take better care of workers with stronger benefits and higher pay.
• But as a union leader, I know firsthand that workers can't take these promises for granted.
• I led a strike of 20,000 AT&T workers fighting for better pay and working conditions.
• Our strike proved that workers must be willing to put up a fight to get better conditions.
• Richard Honeycutt is the vice president for District 3 of the Communications Workers of America.
• Read all of Business Insider's WeWork coverage here.

Some say the era of corporate accountability is here, pointing to statements like the one recently put out by the Business Roundtable in which executives from companies like JPMorgan Chase, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, and Walmart affirmed their commitment to doing right by customers, employees, and the communities in which they work.

But with another Labor Day behind us, and now 49,000 General Motors employees represented by the United Automobile Workers on strike around the US, the truth is that trusting corporations to hold themselves accountable is like trusting the fox to guard the henhouse. True accountability comes from workers who join together to fight for fairness, respect, and dignity for themselves and their communities.

That was made clear when more than 20,000 members of my union across nine Southeastern states launched an unfair-labor-practice strike against AT&T — the largest private-sector strike in the South in over a decade. We entered into contract negotiations with AT&T in good faith, but the company sent negotiators to the table who lacked the authority to make a deal.

Among the CEOs who signed the recent Business Roundtable statement was AT&T's Randall Stephenson. In recent years, when it has come to investing in employees by compensating them fairly, providing them important benefits, offering training and education opportunities, and supporting the communities where the company works, AT&T more often than not fails to back its talk with action.

Our experience with AT&T and other employers shows that workers can't rely on letters from CEOs to get the treatment they deserve but instead need to raise their voices as one to make sure they are treated and compensated fairly.

We had to fight for a fair shake

When we began bargaining for a new contact this summer, AT&T negotiators came to the table with a list of demands that would dramatically increase healthcare costs, require employees to take on more responsibilities without additional compensation, force employees to be on call at all times, and make it easier for the company to send work to low-wage contractors.

Not only did this multibillion-dollar corporation no longer feel the obligation to share its record-breaking profits with the people who make it all possible, but it wanted to pad those profits by taking even more away from its highly trained, dedicated union workforce.

CWA members at AT&T already put in long hours to support our business and residential customers. Because AT&T has been cutting jobs, they are often forced to work overtime, and night and weekend work requirements force them to be away from their families, missing important milestones. Customer-service representatives at call centers are not only expected to provide assistance to customers, but they must also sell additional services or risk being fired.

We brought our own list to the bargaining table, ready to negotiate fair wage increases, continued access to affordable healthcare, and improvements to job security. But once we got into the tough issues, we discovered that AT&T's negotiators thought we were on a one-way street. They had their list of demands but did not have the authority to make decisions on the issues our members had brought to the table. Once it became clear AT&T was not going to bargain in good faith, it was only a matter of time before workers walked off the job.

I've heard people say that unions are unnecessary, that if you don't like what the boss is offering, you should just find another job. Is that what we really want? Every person for themselves, giving up without a fight?

What I saw on the picket lines was amazing. In just four days, thousands of people from different backgrounds joined together as one family. They were unified, their unity was powerful, and it worked. AT&T came back to the negotiating table ready to make a deal, one that recognized workers had earned the right to share in the success of the company through family-supporting wages and benefits and job security.

Don't just rely on high-minded letters

The Business Roundtable executives want a pat on the back for stating what most Americans already thought was true — companies have a responsibility to customers, employees, and the communities they work in. By negotiating a fair contract, one grounded in the respect and loyalty we deserve, AT&T has taken a first step toward backing up its talk with action. But it took 20,000 workers walking off the job to get us here.

American corporations like AT&T have spent decades putting higher shareholder value above all other goals for their companies. The consequences have been devastating for working families. The Business Roundtable executives say they are reassessing their priorities and considering the well-being of all stakeholders, including workers, not just shareholders.

Well, AT&T now faces another chance to back that talk with action: The corporate raider Elliott Management announced plans this week to extract profits from AT&T by eliminating jobs and sending work to low-wage contractors. If AT&T's board of directors stands by the Business Roundtable letter, it should reject Elliott Management's proposals.

Time will tell whether the Business Roundtable pledge holds up, but for the foreseeable future workers won't expect executives to do us any favors. AT&T employees, like GM workers and working people across the country, know the accountability we see in corporate America is the result of workers' long and hard fights for fair pay and standards in the workplace.

What the AT&T strike made clear is that America's corporations won't be held accountable unless workers are willing to put up a fight.

Richard Honeycutt is the vice president for District 3 of the Communications Workers of America.

NOW WATCH: Nxivm leader Keith Raniere has been convicted. Here's what happened inside his sex-slave ring that recruited actresses and two billionaire heiresses.

See Also:

• Trump is starting to undermine health coverage, but the real danger is on the horizon
• Trump's plan to revoke California's power to set its own automotive-emissions standards isn't about cars or California — it's about Obama
• The US should amend the Constitution to put an end to gerrymandering and protect our democracy

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Merkel’s Climate Deal Will Cost Billions And Everyone Hates It [feedly]

Article Illustrates the kind of challenges we confront IF Dems WIN, or worse, if the fascists are not marginalized.

Merkel's Climate Deal Will Cost Billions And Everyone Hates It
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-21/merkel-s-climate-deal-will-cost-billions-but-everyone-hates-it

When it comes to Germany's $60 billion climate plan, environmentalists and polluters are in rare agreement. It's a dud.

Europe's economic engine wanted to regain its place on the frontlines in the battle over global warming. But instead, Chancellor Angela Merkel emerged from tortuous all-night negotiations with a package that failed to live up to the hype. Far from reclaiming her place as a climate champion, it exposed further the weakness of her leadership now in its twilight years.

Activists branded the measures, such as extra taxes on flights and incentives for electric cars, as insufficient for a "climate emergency." Economists criticized carbon price proposals as too shy an approach to spur emissions cuts. Big industry and some union leaders slammed Germany's go-it-alone approach, saying it would harm jobs and businesses.

In short, no one was happy. On Friday, thousands took to the streets in Berlin and around the world to demand action from the political class on what is rapidly becoming a key issue for voters. Among them were kids, inspired by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who within a year has become the face of the climate movement.

Global Climate Strike demonstration in Berlin, Sept. 20.

Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

Merkel's fiercest political enemies were quick to seize the moment. "Merkel is bowing down to Greta's movement of school truants," Alternative for Germany leader Joerg Meuthen quipped on Twitter. "Permanent climate hysteria reigns."

The far-right party, a persistent thorn in Merkel's side, doubts the scientific evidence behind climate change and says Merkel's plan is "really expensive."

Polls, however, show an increasing share of Germans place greater weight on the environment than they do on jobs. Record-breaking heat waves, dwindling of the Rhine river and a series of powerful storms have turbocharged the climate debate and lifted the Green party to second place in election polls.

But environmentalists think Merkel's plan is nothing but "hot air and empty promises." Germany will miss its 2020 climate goals due to rising emissions from transport and heating, and the new plan intended to at least chart a path to a 55% cut in emissions by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.

"I am bitterly disappointed," Annalena Baerbock, co-leader of the Green party, said of the measures. "The government has failed in the humanitarian task of climate protection."

After threatening to pull out of Merkel's coalition, the Social Democratic Party appeared to back down. In a comment on Saturday, SPD's parliamentary caucus head Matthias Miersch said the agreement lays the groundwork for fighting climate change.

Germany is not alone in struggling to reconcile climate needs with messy politics at a time when recession clouds gather. The task of trying to appease industrial interests, while grappling with a worsening economic situation and restive environmentalists is near impossible.

In Canada, October's election could be decided on Justin Trudeau's introduction of a carbon tax. In France, Yellow Vest activists have taken to the streets to protest Emmanuel Macron's environmental levies on gasoline. In the U.S., Donald Trump is taking the climate fight to California with a plan to revoke its right to regulate vehicle emissions.

Protesters arrive in Pariser Platz square near the Brandenburg Gate during the Global Climate Strike.

Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

There are a lot of stakeholders in the game and the lesson Merkel is learning is that in trying to please everyone, you please no one.

While upsetting environmentalists, Merkel still didn't soothe the concerns of fossil-fuel industry leaders. For example, would an increase in taxes on flights put German airlines at a disadvantage against international competitors who don't face the same charges?

"This intensification of a unilateral approach in the highly competitive aviation market will not reduce CO2 emissions, but merely shift them, which is ecologically useless and economically harmful to airlines in Germany," said BDL chief executive Matthias von Randow, who runs the powerful airline lobby.

The union representing energy and chemical industry workers said the government avoided tackling the slow expansion of Germany's power grid with new cables needed to get renewable energy from north sea wind parks to the country's manufacturing heartlands further south. Attempts to build power lines have so far gotten snagged by "not in my backyard" protests from locals.

The measures "are exactly the flip-flopping that the chancellor said she wanted to avoid," IGBCE leader Michael Vassiliadis said in a statement.

Merkel may have also misjudged the public mood, with a mid-week ARD poll suggesting voters now place a higher priority on the environment than on economic wellbeing. As she heads to the United Nations climate conference next week, one has to wonder whether she could have done more.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Enlighten Radio:Great Big Sea Festival NOW on Enlighten Radio

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