“People Ain’t Gonna Come to Work if They Don’t Feel Safe” [feedly]

"People Ain't Gonna Come to Work if They Don't Feel Safe"
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2020/05/11/people-aint-gonna-come-to-work-if-they-dont-feel-safe/

If you live in Iowa, you get to see a little bit of how the sausage is made, so to speak, especially if it's pork. It's a common occurrence to see long semi-truck trailers on the highways, with round pink hog noses poking out through the metal slots, three levels of about 175 hogs. You can smell the truck before you see it.

In northeast Iowa, the full trucks are all en route to the Tyson plant in Waterloo. Tyson has six pork plants (in addition to beef and chicken facilities) in the U.S. Collectively, they process 461,000 hogs per week. That's nearly 24 million hogs a year.

In Black Hawk County, Iowa, Tyson is the second leading employer(after John Deere), with about 2,800 jobs. The plant has long drawn Latino, Bosnian, Congolese, Burmese, and Pacific Islander immigrant workers, making Waterloo (along with other meatpacking towns) one of the most diverse cities in the Midwest. Students in Waterloo schools speak 45 different languages.

Triumph Foods pork processing facility in St. Joseph, MO. Photo by Preston Keres, USDA.

The work is hard. Meat cutters often work shoulder to shoulder cutting and packaging meat, on their feet the entire time. A current job description notes "heavy/detailed knife work, stunning, and/or saw operation. May require climbing stairs/ladders. Must be able to lift up to 150 lbs (2 people) and push/pull up to 280 lbs." — all while working in rooms that can be wet and slippery, with temperatures in some rooms as low as 35-40 degrees or over 90 degrees in others. The average hourly rate is $14.96. Shifts can run 10-12 hours, six days a week.

Large institutions with thousands of people in close quarters are perfect places to spread coronavirus. When COVID-19 hit Iowa in mid-March, I was sent home from my university to teach my classes online. On the other side of the county, Tyson workers carried on, in person at the factory. The situation mirrors the COVID-19 class divisions across the country: many middle-class people get to work from the safety of their own homes, while working-class "essential" workers risk coronavirus exposure daily as a condition of their labor.

The work of meatpacking is rarely in the news nationally, or even locally in the Midwest. Although the top four meatpacking companies employ nearly a half million people, in an industry that generates over $231 billion a year, but their difficult work is nearly invisible, off of the radar of the middle-class-targeted news audience. Stories like the Department of Agriculture's speed-up of pork processing lines last fall are covered as policy debates and rarely include workers' voices.

The coronavirus has changed that.

A quick review illustrates how the number of stories about meatpacking has skyrocketed. I searched the Nexis News database for the first four months of this year, using the search terms "meatpacker" and "worker." There were 718 news stories, and the monthly count grew exponentially during the first part of the year, almost like the virus itself:

Jan. 2020:        14 stories

Feb. 2020:       33 stories

Mar. 2020:      59 stories

April 2020:     612 stories

The framing of the stories has changed, too, as a deep concern about workers and communities spread.

The story of coronavirus in Iowa meatpacking plants blew up in the second week of April, as Tyson suspended production at its Columbus Junction, Iowa facility, with at least two dozen workers infected with COVID-19. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said Tyson would make the decision on when the plant would reopen, and that "they are doing everything they can, not just to protect the employees but to continue a really critical part of our food supply chain." Meanwhile, in Black Hawk County, at Tyson's largest pork processing operation, workers who have no paid sick days written into their UFCW union contract began a sickout in mid-April, refusing to work in an environment they called dangerous.

On April 18, fearing an enormous outbreak at the Waterloo plant, 20 elected officials from the area pleaded with Tyson to close the plant until all mitigation efforts could be completed. Tyson did not respond, and Reynolds refused to close the plant, lamenting that shutting down the factory might result in hogs being euthanized.

Finally, on April 22, after worker sickouts, community criticism, and more than 180 Waterloo worker COVID-19 cases and one worker death, Tyson closed the plant. That week, Iowa won the ignominious honor of having the fastest virus spread of any state in the U.S.

Hopes to get ahead of the virus lasted only a few days. On April 26, Reynolds announced her first steps to reopen businesses across the state, dismissing a report by University of Iowa researchers that "a second wave of infections is likely" if prevention measures weren't kept in place until at least mid-May.

This isn't just a political story. Local news media across the state are bringing workers' voices into the mix. Like most news organizations across the country, the Waterloo Courier doesn't have a regular workplace beat reporter. But Courier multimedia reporter Amie Rivers listened to what people were saying in the community and broke the story of the sickout at Tyson in Waterloo. Iowa AP correspondent Ryan Foley wrote moving stories about people who worked at Tyson plants and died from COVID-19. IowaStartingLine, an online publication, interviewed young Latinos and Latinas deeply worried about their parents who worked in meatpacking plants. Local TV stations and Iowa Public Radio featured stories of workers and meatpacking, too, as did CBS, CNN, NBC, and MSNBC. The New York Times podcast "The Daily" featured a heartbreaking half-hour interview with Achut Deng, a single mother, UFCW member, and Sudanese refugee who contracted COVID-19 at the Smithfield factory in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Iowa's meatpacking plants are only part of the story. Mike Elk, a labor reporter and founder of Payday Report, has literally connected the dots by mapping all of the instances of worker resistance. On his COVID-19 Strike Wave Interactive Map, he has recorded 184 wildcat strikes that happened since the beginning of March. The actions, all pandemic related, include Amazon fulfillment workers walking out in Tracy, California; fast food workers striking at 50 stores in Central Florida; and Richmond, Virginia bus drivers conducting a sickout.

On May 5, Reynolds finally released data showing almost 1,400 coronavirus cases at three Tyson plants: 221 in Columbus Junction, 444 in Waterloo, and 730 in Perry, the latest outbreak. The local newspaper headline in Perry read "Jaw-dropping 58% of Perry Tyson workers test positive." Two days later, the Tyson pork plant in Waterloo reopened with plastic shields spacing workers six feet apart. The day after reopening, Black Hawk County health officials reported that 1,031 Waterloo Tyson plant workers had COVID-19, more than 2.3 times the number of the state's undercount.

I talked with Samuel Stokes, the UFCW Local 431 union representative/organizer in Waterloo, about how the workers felt about going back. "People ain't gonna come to work if they don't feel safe. They don't care about being fired. They care about their lives and their family's lives." He said about half of the workers want to return, and about half don't. "They just pray that Tyson has their back. If they go back and Tyson is not safe, it will be the same thing all over again. They will voice their opinions."

It is hard to believe that it has been only about two months since the WHO called COVID-19 a global pandemic. Workers face the double threat of a deadly virus and long-term unemployment that increasingly rivals the Great Depression. There is no magical cure (sorry hydroxychloroquine, UV rays, and bleach), so we may well see more examples of workers and citizens forming a mutual solidarity for their own and their community's survival for months or years to come.

Christopher R. Martin, University of Northern Iowa

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Fed Chair Warns the Economy May Need More as Congress Hesitates [feedly]

Fed Chair Warns the Economy May Need More as Congress Hesitates
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/business/economy/fed-chair-powell-economy-virus-support.html

text only:

The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, delivered a stark warning on Wednesday that the United States was experiencing an economic hit "without modern precedent," one that could permanently damage the economy if Congress and the White House did not provide sufficient financial support to prevent a wave of bankruptcies and prolonged joblessness.

Mr. Powell's blunt diagnosis was the latest indication that the trillions of dollars that policymakers have already funneled into the economy may not be enough to forestall lasting damage from a virus that has already shuttered businesses and thrown more than 20 million people out of work.

Yet the warning comes as discussions of additional rescue measures have run aground, with Democrats proposing sweeping new programs and Republicans voicing concerns over the swelling federal budget deficit, which is projected to hit $3.7 trillion this year. President Trump and his economic advisers have pressed the pause button on negotiations for additional spending, waiting to see how much the economy rebounds as states begin lifting restrictions on business activity.

Mr. Powell lauded Congress for the more than $2 trillion relief effort it had already funded, but he made clear that a rebound could take months to materialize, requiring more support.



"The recovery may take some time to gather momentum," Mr. Powell said at a Peterson Institute for International Economics virtual event. "Additional fiscal support could be costly, but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery."

Stock markets swooned after Mr. Powell's comments, as investors digested the likelihood of a sluggish recovery. The S&P 500 index closed down 1.75 percent.

As the virus persists and the number of unemployed grows, Mr. Powell and his central bank colleagues have begun trying to prod Congress and the White House into action by reminding them that the Fed alone cannot carry the burden of digging the economy out of its deep hole.

Fed officials have slashed interest rates to zero, purchased bonds at a record pace to restore order to roiled government bond markets and unveiled nine emergency lending programs in partnership with the Treasury Department. But Mr. Powell reiterated on Wednesday that the Fed's programs, which will buy bonds from companies and local governments and make loans to midsize businesses, can only temporarily supply credit. The Fed lacks spending powers, which are reserved to Congress.

Mr. Powell characterized the Fed's ability to help as a "bridge across temporary interruptions," while suggesting that more may be needed as huge uncertainties confront the economy, from the speed of reopening to the scope of testing and the timing of a vaccine.



"There is a sense, a growing sense I think, that the recovery will come more slowly than we would like," he said, after highlighting that "the scope and speed of this downturn are without modern precedent, significantly worse than any recession since World War II."



Fed officials have increasingly cautioned that the recovery remains highly uncertain and that if the policy response proves inadequate, the consequences could be long-lasting and painful, particularly for the most disadvantaged.

Loretta Mester, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, has urged more fiscal help to fend off "dire" economic scenarios. Robert S. Kaplan, the Dallas Fed president, said on Tuesday that the economy "may well" need more government help if the unemployment rate continues to rise, and Neel Kashkari, the president of the Minneapolis Fed, has said the fallout could last for years and displaced workers will probably need more aid to make it through.

Coronavirus lockdowns have left tens of millions unemployed, disproportionately hitting service sector workers, many of them low income and without savings. Mr. Powell said a Fed survey set for release on Thursday would show that almost 40 percent of people who were working in February and were members of households making less than $40,000 a year had lost their jobs in March.

"While the economic response has been both timely and appropriately large, it may not be the final chapter, given that the path ahead is both highly uncertain and subject to significant downside risks," Mr. Powell said.

"Since the answers are currently unknowable, policies will need to be ready to address a range of possible outcomes."

Whether Mr. Powell can push lawmakers into action remains to be seen. The Fed chair has cultivated solid relationships with key congressional Republicans and has a history of influencing economic thinking on Capitol Hill. Yet many Republicans, urged on by Mr. Trump, have begun trying to shift the conversation from federal spending support toward efforts to help the economy rebound as quickly as possible. They have largely stopped conveying the sense of urgency that Mr. Powell voiced on Wednesday.



"I'm not sure I agree with that," Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, said when asked about Mr. Powell's remarks. "Not sure that pumping more money out of Washington is going to do more good than harm at this point. I think we have to think that through very carefully."

On Tuesday, House Democrats released a multitrillion-dollar, 1,800-page proposal that includes hundreds of billions of dollars for state and local governments to shore up holes in their budgets and additional direct payments and tax credits for low- and middle-income Americans. But the proposal also contains a wide range of provisions that Republicans dismissed immediately as not directly linked to those struggling amid the pandemic, including bailouts for troubled pension plans and lifting a cap on state and local tax deductions.

Republicans are working on their own proposals that Democrats have similarly said should be off the table, including shielding businesses from virus-related legal liabilities. Lawmakers and the White House have also begun pushing for additional individual and business tax cuts.

Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, did not seem spurred to action by Mr. Powell's warnings, noting that "it's one person's voice — a smart person, that I tend to agree with a lot — but it is just one person."

"I think we have to be very targeted about the next few weeks," he said.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, expressed some openness to more financial relief, provided that the spending was temporary and dealt with the pandemic as opposed to creating new permanent programs that would balloon the deficit.

"I'm not insensitive to the debt issue nor do I believe we can government-spend our way out of this forever. Government cannot replace the private economy," he said, adding that "at some point, we need economic activity to come back."

Early indications suggest that activity is only returning slowly to states that have moved to reopen businesses, as many would-be consumers and workers continue to stay home out of fear of contracting the virus. Total hours worked by employees of small businesses that use the human resource firm Homebase remain down by a third from pre-crisis levels in South Carolina and by two-fifths in Texas and Georgia, even after governors eased many restrictions in those states.


With little evidence that Republicans and Democrats are willing to work together to continue helping businesses through a protracted slump, there is growing concern that the trillions already spent may have been too limited.

The economic stimulus payments that many Americans received remain, at least for now, a one-time payout. Expanded aid to the unemployed is set to expire at the end of July.

The government's main vehicle for helping small businesses — the Paycheck Protection Program — has nearly exhausted its $660 billion in funds, and many companies are beginning to worry that the loans, which cover just eight weeks of payroll, will not be enough as the virus persists.

Economists and business advocates say now is not the time to abandon efforts that could determine whether a company comes through the crisis bruised but alive or is forced into bankruptcy.

"They have yet to solve for the fundamental problem," said John Lettieri, the president of the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington think tank that has pushed Congress and the Trump administration to spend more on the payroll program and loosen restrictions. "The program as implemented simply doesn't do enough to help deeply affected businesses survive the crisis."

If the current recession is drawn out, Mr. Powell said, it could inflict "lasting damage" on the economy's productive capacity, with "avoidable" business insolvencies weighing on growth for years to come. He also cautioned that long stretches of unemployment could erode worker skills and leave families struggling with huge debt loads.

"We ought to do what we can to avoid these outcomes, and that may require additional policy measures," Mr. Powell said.



While congressional Republicans are worried that the packages will significantly add to the federal deficit, Mr. Powell said this was not the moment to fret over government spending.

"Now, when we are facing the biggest shock that the economy has had in modern times, is, for me, not the time to prioritize considerations like that," he said. That time will come "a few years down the road, when the economy is well and truly recovered, or at least mostly recovering."

Mr. Trump, who has been consistently critical of Mr. Powell and accused him of putting the United States at a disadvantage by keeping interest rates too high, said on Wednesday night that the Fed chair was the government's "most improved player."

While noting that he still wanted the central bank to try out negative interest rates, Mr. Trump said Mr. Powell had been doing a "great job." Mr. Powell on Wednesday ruled out lowering rates below zero, saying evidence about the effectiveness of negative interest rates had been "mixed."

Jeanna Smialek writes about the Federal Reserve and the economy for The New York Times. She previously covered economics at Bloomberg News, where she also wrote feature stories for Businessweek magazine.  @jeannasmialek

Jim Tankersley covers economic and tax policy. Over more than a decade covering politics and economics in Washington, he has written extensively about the stagnation of the American middle class and the decline of economic opportunity. @jimtankersley

Emily Cochrane is a reporter in the Washington bureau, covering Congress. She was raised in Miami and graduated from the University of Florida. @ESCochran


 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Trumka proposes universal federal jobs payments [feedly]

Trumka proposes universal federal jobs payments
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/trumka-proposes-universal-federal-jobs-payments/

WASHINGTON —Sticking to a here-and-now solution to coronavirus-caused joblessness, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka proposed the federal government guarantee paid employment – by actually shelling out the money – for all workers. Employers would be a pass-through, nothing more.

In a 13-minute speech posted on the federation's Facebook page, Trumka said that with unemployment at highs unseen since the Great Depression and with the future clouded by millions of jobless people, now is not the time for partisan politics.

Instead he declared, lawmakers should unite, as some already have, behind federal subsidies straight into workers' pockets, and not to CEOs or Wall Street.

Trumka also warned, as public health specialists have, against reopening the economy too soon. Right-wing pressure has forced some states to yield and start reopening businesses, even without enough coronavirus testing, a lack Trumka pointed out. Doing so, he declared, could put us right back down again.

"If we reopen before we're ready, if we reopen because we're impatient, if you send workers into unsafe workplaces, if you send consumers into an unsafe community, we'll be reopening an economic wound that will make it much harder to heal down the road.

"Impatience and imprudence will create a catastrophe of sickness, of joblessness and of economic collapse."

Though Trumka did not say so, seven states – all "red" and GOP-run – never totally shut. At least one, South Dakota, already paid a jarring price at one of its biggest employers, the Smithfield pork plant in Sioux Falls: 900 workers are ill and two died so far.

And the economic collapse is already here. Trumka spoke the day before the Labor Department's release of the monthly jobs report for April. That report will showed one huge impact of the mass closures and shutdowns forced by the coronavirus pandemic – as many as 50 million workers are unemployed.

Coupled with the seven million jobless before April, and an estimated 10 million who have given up trying to seek benefits because they can't get through to antiquated and overburdened state jobless aid agencies, Trumka calculated there could be up to 50 million unemployed people overall.

Those are people who want to work and who, Trumka said, realize that we can't go back to "normal," because "workers realize the old normal wasn't working" for them.

Trumka didn't propose long-range "new normal" solutions. Those are posted on the federation's website. Others, in and out of Congress, have proposed drastic restructuring of the U.S. economy to make sure it works for workers, including stripping corporate executives of power, seating workers on boards, and confiscatory taxes on capital and wealth.

But Trumka said politicians ranging from conservative Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., to Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., all advocate the guaranteed pay. Others should follow their lead, he stated.

Jayapal and the rest of the 95-member caucus are trying to get her guaranteed income bill, which would subsidize pay of up to $100,000 per worker, plus health insurance coverage, into the next economic stimulus bill. With Hawley as a notable exception, the overwhelming majority of congressional Republicans detest and oppose the idea.

They prefer shoveling more money at business, or – in the case of powerful Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — not acting at all. That won't work, Trumka said, calling out McConnell by name.

"Working people will suffer in a way we haven't seen in our lifetimes. Our economy will come apart because nothing works when people aren't working."

And "losing health care in the middle of a recession is bad enough. But losing it in the middle of a pandemic – with no end in sight? That's criminal," he said. He noted 12 million have already lost health care and predicted millions of others will follow.

McConnell also wants to let states and cities go broke, an idea Trumka denounced, calling out the Kentuckian's bias against "blue," Democratic-run, states. "That's not a solution. That's a scam," Trumka said.

"Forcing first responders" – like nurses – "and teachers and other public workers into unemployment is a drag on the economy and a danger to all of us. How on earth will we beat the virus without them?" he asked.

And individual workers and their families are suffering, he pointed out. And those workers aren't just numbers, he said, citing two workers, one a school custodian in Florida and the other a restaurant cook in Philadelphia. Both were laid off; both have dependents who rely on them. The cook hasn't gotten jobless benefits yet.

"No one should be living by a prayer," as she is, "and hanging by a thread," Trumka said.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Pelosi Bill Includes Much-Needed Medicaid Funding for States [feedly]

Pelosi Bill Includes Much-Needed Medicaid Funding for States
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/pelosi-bill-includes-much-needed-medicaid-funding-for-states

WASHINGTON—House Democrats released a new $3 trillion stimulus bill on May 12, designed to cope with the continuing economic collapse that coronavirus-caused closures have caused. There's money for protective personal equipment (PPE), hazardous duty pay for front-line workers, and a number of other pro-worker provisions.

The 1,815-page measure is tentatively scheduled for a May 15 vote and is expected to pass the House on party lines before going to the Senate. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and members of his GOP caucus are already lining up to block the proposal, however, declaring it "dead on arrival."

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was happy with the House's legislation, saying "FDR would be proud." Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Saru Jayaraman, founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Center, were less satisfied. Both said the Dems missed an opportunity to restructure the economy towards workers—with Jayaraman denouncing capitalists for the rigged economy, to boot. Among the shortcomings highlighted were the lack of a pay guarantee for everyone and the fact the bill has no worker rights measures in it.

Up to $10,000 hazard pay

The Democrats' bill includes grants to pay "essential workers"—and the definition of who's essential is broad, including grocery workers, meat plant workers, warehouse workers, airline workers, restaurant meal deliverers, and more. They'll all be eligible for $13 more an hour, up to a maximum of $10,000 on top of their current pay. The added pay would be retroactive from Jan. 27 through 60 days after the end of the "national emergency" from the coronavirus pandemic.

Chelsea Watson, a worker from the District of Columbia, pins a protest banner on her jacket during a May Day rally in Washington, May 1, 2020. | Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP

And bosses can use those federal grants only to top off workers' pay, not replace it. They also can't displace essential workers or cut their hours, the measure says.

The measure, called the Heroes Act, also includes $1 trillion, available in various ways, for states, local governments, and tribal governments, through Sept. 30, 2023. Without it, "the only thing those workers are getting so far is a pink slip," AFSMCE President Lee Saunders said in a statement.

"The only way to beat COVID and reopen the economy is to save vital public services and the public service workers who provide them," he said. "This bill…does exactly that," Saunders explained.

"This legislation, instead of bailing out wealthy corporations, invests in the services and the people who make our communities strong: People who provide clean water, safe roads, strong schools, fully staffed hospitals, and much more," he added in a statement.

Trumka lauded the legislation. "The Heroes Act includes an emergency workplace infectious disease standard, gives aid for state and local governments, public schools, the U.S. Postal Service, and pension relief, keeps workers on payrolls to avoid mass layoffs, extends unemployment insurance, provides more direct payments to working people, extends health care coverage, and provides housing and food benefits, and much more," he said.

Assuming lawmakers pass the measure, it would become the Democratic-run House's bargaining position with the Senate's right-wing Republicans. That's a direct contrast with the last two economic stimulus bills, including the $2.2 trillion measure of March 18.

Then, Senate Majority Leader McConnell ordered lawmakers to leave town, giving workers and Democrats a "take-it-or-leave-it" choice: His bill, or nothing at all. If McConnell blocks this one, Trumka said, "this could very well be his final term in the Senate." McConnell faces the voters this fall.

PPE push

Besides the money, another big win for workers in this measure orders the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue an emergency standard mandating that health care facilities craft and implement anti-virus protection plans for their workers. That's a key cause of National Nurses United. The union repeatedly points out how hospitals and nursing homes have stinted on PPE because there's no OSHA safety standard.

And the bill adds at least $1.3 billion for buying PPE—and that's just in one section.

Buying PPE for nurses and other essential workers is particularly important because the nation's top coronavirus expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, warned senators on Tuesday that "some states acting too quickly" to reopen businesses and public areas would likely produce a coronavirus comeback in fall. Most are GOP-run.

Such a catastrophe would be on top of the 1.4 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S., as of the morning of May 13, and 83,000+ deaths. The number of coronavirus cases is so large that it's as if every person in Dallas, plus 14,000 more people, were ill.

The Democrats' bill also gives OSHA $100 million more, directs it to hire more inspectors, and demands they concentrate on probing the nation's pork, chicken, and beef processing plants, sites of high coronavirus outbreaks.

Support for families

Also included in the House legislation is another round of direct stimulus for American families, with checks totaling up to $6,000 of help per family.

Like the earlier round of payments approved in March and paid out starting in April, the new proposal calls for $1,200 for individuals making up to $75,000 a year, and $2,400 for couples with family income up to $150,000, with smaller amounts phasing out at higher income levels.

Unlike the previous direct payments, though, this round would provide more help for families with children. Every dependent child, up to a maximum of three, would qualify a family for an additional $1,200 of assistance. The earlier stimulus package only gave $500 per child under age 17.

Even now, in early May, much of those funds are still being distributed. In the meantime, as unemployment climbs and unpaid rent and bills pile up, working families are falling further and further behind.

Missed opportunities

While the AFL-CIO's Trumka was generally happy with the proposed stimulus, others were less satisfied. For them, it didn't go far enough. Some green groups called it a giveaway to corporate lobbyists. One even charged it had a tax cut for the rich, though a reading of the tax provisions did not disclose one. Jayaraman was especially vehement about corporate influence on the measure.

In an evening Zoom conference call with Jayaraman and Arkansas chicken plant worker and Venceremos co-founder/activist Magali Licolli, Rep. Jayapal said that instead of $1,200 per adult grants, "We should take care of everybody, then target more aid to the lowest-paid workers," such as Licolli's colleagues.

"You maintain economic pressure" to reopen the country the right way, Jayapal added, "when you put money into people's pockets" so they aren't forced to take such low-wage jobs. But the Dems' bill doesn't do that. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, rejected Jayapal's and the caucus's plan for guaranteed pay of up to $100,000, plus health care coverage, for all.

"I'm still looking at it," Jayapal said of the legislation Pelosi unveiled.

"We had 15 million service workers" in a million U.S. restaurants "and half of them aren't coming back," because of permanent closures and service cuts, Jayaraman explained. Many of the others won't get the checks or jobless benefits, either, she noted.

"These people will be unemployed not for six months, but for three or four years…. This is not happening because of incompetence, ignorance, or stupidity. The system was set up to deny, deny, deny" benefits "based on the capitalist philosophy to keep unemployment insurance as hard to get as possible so people will take jobs at low pay as possible."

But there also some other disappointments for workers and unions, and not just the lack of pay guarantees and worker rights.

For example, the Postal Service, which is hemorrhaging money due to a 50% drop in its money-making First Class mail, asked for $75 billion, and the nation's postal unions back that sum. Otherwise, Postmaster General Megan Brennan says, it could literally run out of money by Sept. 30. The Democrats give it one-third of that and said USPS's top priority should be to buy and equip all its frontline workers with PPE.

Mass transit agencies and the presidents of the nation's two big transit unions—John Costa of the Amalgamated Transit Union and John Samuelsen of the Transport Workers and—said transit systems need $32 billion combined to take them through the end of this calendar year and through calendar 2021.

The House bill, which runs through this Sept. 30, allots $15.75 billion. It reserves $11.75 billion for transit agencies serving metro areas housing at least three million people each—from #1 New York, #2 Los Angeles-Long Beach, and #3 Chicago through to #15 San Diego.

New York City's MTA alone needs $3.9 billion to get through Dec. 31, and $6.5 billion next year, given huge declines in both state aid and farebox revenue—some 90%—CEO Patrick Foye told reporters on May 12 just before Democrats unveiled their measure.

And all transit agencies, including two not at the press conference but which are more dependent on farebox revenue, the Chicago Transit Authority and Washington's Metro, "are faced with the same struggles," Costa said in a follow-up phone interview with People's World. Foye and the others cited ridership declines from 80% on one system to 95% on the Long Island Rail Road.

All the transit leaders emphasized that without functioning mass transit "cities would come to a halt, the economy would come to a halt, and the recovery would be hampered."

But the transit money also satisfies other requests by the transit leaders: It's specifically directed towards replacing lost revenue—the bigger the loss, the bigger the grant—and towards keeping workers employed, the measure says.

Losers: Tax-dodging employers, payday lenders, Trump

The Democrats' proposal includes hazard pay for workers in a range of "essential" jobs. Here, workers line up to enter the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Logansport, Ind., May 7, 2020. The plant had closed after nearly 900 employees tested positive for the coronavirus; on order of President Trump, it reopened. | Michael Conroy / AP

In other good news for workers, the House measure doesn't include three favorite schemes of Republican leaders: GOP President Donald Trump's demands for a cut in the capital gains tax and suspension of the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, and McConnell's "red line" that businesses who protect workers or customers from the coronavirus should be immune from lawsuits unless they don't follow federal protection guidelines.

"Emergency broadband connectivity" to wire the whole country, a top Communications Workers cause, would get $8.8 billion. And the poor couldn't be cut off of broadband service; it'd be part of the federal government's current telephone "lifeline" program.

The Democratic bill also provides a partial solution for the financially troubled multi-employer pension plans, which could affect millions of workers, especially Teamsters, Seafarers, Machinists, grocery workers, and coal miners. The measure would set up a hybrid system where those plans would be frozen and workers and beneficiaries gradually be transferred to so-called "composite plans," with potential benefit freezes, but not cuts.

And the bill would take coordination of buying and distributing medical supplies, including PPE, gloves, gowns, ventilators, and respirators, out of Trump's hands, protecting against the president's politically motivated distribution that has favored states helmed by Trump loyalist governors.

Blue-state governors, plus Maryland Republican Larry Hogan, have screamed about Trump agents seizing and diverting supplies they ordered. Many have resorted to evasive measures, such as chartering state flights directly to China and Korea to pick up PPE and test kits.

The bill orders Trump to name a "Medical Supplies Response Coordinator to coordinate the efforts of the federal government" in supplying and distributing "critical supplies and equipment related to detecting, diagnosing, preventing, and treating" the coronavirus.

The measure also bans debt collectors from garnishing wages and other payments to consumers and non-profit groups, or seizing or foreclosing on houses and other property. Without naming payday lenders, it caps creditors' interest rates and charges creditors.  And it bans evictions from federally-funded housing.

The payday lending and debt collection industries, two of the sleaziest and most evil in the U.S., have been lobbying Trump's Treasury Department to let them cash in on the billions in small business aid Congress allotted in prior stimulus bills.

And two big corporate tax breaks McConnell snuck into the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill, which passed in March, would be repealed. One would let businesses immediately write off all their equipment expenses, not 80%. The other section would let businesses carry losses backward as well as forward, thus getting refunds from the Treasury for past tax payments. That section particularly helped real estate developers—such as Donald Trump.

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Rodrik: Making the Best of a Post-Pandemic World [feedly]

Making the Best of a Post-Pandemic World
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/three-trends-shaping-post-pandemic-global-economy-by-dani-rodrik-2020-05

Making the Best of a Post-Pandemic World

May 12, 2020DANI RODRIK

Insofar as the world economy was already on a fragile, unsustainable path, COVID-19 clarifies the challenges we face and the decisions we must make. The fate of the world economy hinges not on what the virus does, but on how we choose to respond.

CAMBRIDGE – The global economy will be shaped in the years ahead by three trends. The relationship between markets and the state will be rebalanced, in favor of the latter. This will be accompanied by a rebalancing between hyper-globalization and national autonomy, also in favor of the latter. And our ambitions for economic growth will need to be scaled down.



There is nothing like a pandemic to highlight markets' inadequacy in the face of collective-action problems and the importance of state capacity to respond to crises and protect people. The COVID-19 crisis has raised the volume on calls for universal health insurance, stronger labor-market protections (including of gig workers), and protection of domestic supply chains for critical medical equipment. It has led countries to prioritize resilience and dependability in production over cost savings and efficiency through global outsourcing. And the economic costs of lockdowns will grow over time, as the massive supply shock caused by the disruption of domestic production and global value chains produces a downward shift in aggregate demand as well.

But while COVID-19 reinforces and entrenches these trends, it is not the primary force driving them. All three – greater government action, retreat from hyper-globalism, and lower growth rates – predate the pandemic. And while they could be viewed as posing significant dangers to human prosperity, it is also possible that they are harbingers of a more sustainable, more inclusive global economy.

Consider the role of the state. The neoliberal market fundamentalist consensus has been in retreat for some time now. Designing a larger role for government in responding to inequality and economic insecurity has now become a core priority for economists and policymakers alike. While the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in the United States fell short of clinching the party's presidential nomination, it has largely dictated the terms of the debate.

Joe Biden may be a centrist, but on every policy front – health, education, energy, the environment, trade, crime – his ideas are to the left of the party's previous presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. As one journalist put it, "Biden's current set of policy prescriptions would … be considered radical if they had been proposed in any previous Democratic presidential primary." Biden may not win in November. And even if he wins, he may not be able or willing to implement a more progressive policy agenda. Nevertheless, it is clear that the direction in both the US and Europe is toward greater state intervention.

The only question is what form this more activist state will take. We cannot rule out a return to an old-style dirigisme that achieves few of its intended results. On the other hand, the shift away from market fundamentalism could take a genuinely inclusive form focused on a green economy, good jobs, and rebuilding the middle class. Such a reorientation would need to be adapted to the economic and technological conditions of the present moment, and not simply mimic the policy instincts of the three golden decades after World War II.

The return of the state goes hand in hand with the renewed primacy of nation-states. The talk everywhere is about de-globalization, de-coupling, bringing supply chains home, reducing dependence on foreign supplies, and favoring domestic production and finance.

The US and China are the countries that set the tone here. But Europe, perpetually on the verge of greater fiscal union, provides little counterweight. During this crisis, the European Union has once again backed away from cross-national solidarity and emphasized national sovereignty instead.

The retreat from hyper-globalization could lead the world down a path of escalating trade wars and rising ethno-nationalism, which would damage everyone's economic prospects. But that is not the only conceivable outcome.

It is possible to envisage a more sensible, less intrusive model of economic globalization that focuses on areas where international cooperation truly pays off, including global public health, international environmental agreements, global tax havens, and other areas susceptible to beggar-thy-neighbor policies. Otherwise, nation-states would be unencumbered in how they prioritize their economic and social problems.

Such a global order would not be inimical to the expansion of world trade and investment. It might even facilitate both insofar as it opens space for restoring domestic social bargains in the advanced economies and crafting appropriate growth strategies in the developing world.

Perhaps the most damaging prospect the world faces in the medium term is a significant reduction in economic growth, especially in the developing world. These countries have had a good quarter-century, with notable reductions in poverty and improvements in education, health, and other development indicators. Aside from the massive public-health burden of the pandemic, they now face significant external shocks: a sudden stop in capital flows and steep declines in remittances, tourism, and export receipts.

But once again, COVID-19 only accentuates a pre-existing growth problem. Much of the growth in the developing world outside of East Asia was based on demand-side factors – public-investment and natural-resource booms in particular – that were unsustainable. Export-oriented industrialization, the most reliable vehicle for long-term development, appears to have run its course.
Developing countries will now have to rely on new growth models. The pandemic may be the wake-up call needed to re-calibrate growth prospects and stimulate the broader rethink that is needed.

Insofar as the world economy was already on a fragile, unsustainable path, COVID-19 clarifies the challenges we face and the decisions we must make. In each of these areas, policymakers have choices. Better and worse outcomes are possible. The fate of the world economy hinges not on what the virus does, but on how we choose to respond.

DANI RODRIK

Writing for PS since 1998
172 Commentaries

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Greenstein, CBPP: Pelosi Package Would Provide Essential Support for Economy, Relief to Households [feedly]

Greenstein: Pelosi Package Would Provide Essential Support for Economy, Relief to Households
https://www.cbpp.org/press/statements/greenstein-pelosi-package-would-provide-essential-support-for-economy-relief-to

Pelosi leads. Her strategic positioning and tactics are a sober and important reflection of the relationship of forces at present. That does not mean it fully meets with either sufficient justice or the necessary support that both public health and the economy will require, and that a scientific and majoritarian administration, congress and judiciary could deliver.

Nonetheless, she has repeatedly outmaneuvered the Trumpers. And made Trump look the gangster fool he is.

  

Speaker Pelosi's new COVID-19 proposal seeks to address the unprecedented health and economic crises our nation faces with measures substantial enough both to provide strong support for the economy — and thereby lessen the severity and duration of the deep recession — and to ease hardship significantly for tens of millions of Americans, many of whom are in increasingly desperate straits. In the absence of such a package, important relief provisions enacted since March will expire much too soon, with one key provision for unemployed workers ending in less than 80 days. And state and local governments — which face huge revenue shortfalls in their new fiscal years, which start July 1 in most states — will be compelled to institute massive budget cuts or tax increases and lay off large numbers of teachers and other employees, making the downturn substantially worse than it already is.

"THE PELOSI PACKAGE, WHILE NOT PERFECT, STEPS UP TO THE PLATE AND PROVIDES THE TYPE OF RESPONSE THE NATION NEEDS."People in large numbers are losing jobs and health coverage and facing hunger, the threat of eviction, and other serious hardships. States are contemplating deep cuts in education, health care, and other crucial services. Growing numbers of businesses are facing collapse due to the plummeting of consumer and business spending. The severity and scope of the crisis require a robust response that matches the challenge. The Pelosi package, while not perfect as explained below, steps up to the plate and provides the type of response the nation needs.

The package contains strong state and local fiscal relief. States, which are required to balance their budgets every year, face collapsing sales and income tax revenue, which will produce budget gaps totaling an estimated $650 billion, of which state reserves and the federal relief provided to date will fill only a modest portion. In the absence of strong further federal support, many states will institute painful budget cuts in areas such as education and health care — which account for the lion's share of state budgets — and lay off teachers and other staff and terminate various contracts with businesses. That would materially worsen the recession, delay recovery, and deepen the harm that families and communities are already experiencing. Moreover, state health care cuts could undercut the public health response efforts. The Pelosi package includes assistance to states, through both flexible grant aid and strengthening and extending the Families First Act's temporary increase in the federal share of Medicaid costs, a particularly effective and efficient form of aid that alleviates state budget pressures and protects health coverage.

The new package also includes a temporary increase in the maximum SNAP (food stamp) benefit through September 30, 2021 to help address growing hunger across the nation. SNAP is one of the most effective mechanisms available both as stimulus (because virtually all of the benefits it provides are spent quickly, injecting stimulus into the economy) and as a way to lessen spikes in poverty, food insecurity, and hardship.

Similarly, the package aims at helping avert evictions, homelessness, doubling up, and reliance on mass shelters, which are problematic enough in normal times but can literally be deadly in a pandemic. The package provides important funding for low-income housing assistance, including resources for rental vouchers, the single most effective policy to reduce homelessness and ensure people are safely housed.

In addition, to keep extremely poor families from falling through the cracks and spiraling downward, the package includes a modest but important increase of $9.6 billion in Social Services Block Grant funding to provide resources to states, localities, and community-based organizations for emergency aid and services.

Also of vital importance, the package extends the key unemployment benefit provisions of the CARES Act, one of which (an increase in benefit levels, which otherwise are often quite low) is currently slated to expire in just 80 days, at the end of July. It would have been better, however, if the package extended the unemployment provisions and certain other measures in the package until economic indicators like the unemployment rate show that the job market has recovered significantly and the economy no longer requires the stimulus these measures provide. Under the package, the unemployment provisions extend only until January 31, 2021. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the unemployment rate will average 10.1 percent in 2021 and still be at 9.5 percent in 2021's final months.

The package also contains other important measures to boost consumer purchasing power and thereby both help families make ends meet and help businesses keep operating and ultimately hire more people back. These measures include a second round of stimulus payments later this year, at increased levels for most families with children. Importantly, both rounds of payments would go to two groups originally left out of the first round: immigrant families, many of whom are working on the front lines in the pandemic, providing health care, delivering food, or caring for vulnerable elderly people; and tax dependents over age 16, including older children who are dependents such as 17- or 18-year-olds and adult children with disabilities.

The package also follows up the stimulus payments with a temporary increase for tax year 2020 in the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, which tax filers would receive next winter and early spring after they file their 2020 tax returns. These temporary expansions would be well-timed; as noted, CBO predicts unemployment will still be at double-digit levels then. Moreover, elements of the Child Tax Credit and EITC proposals would be especially well targeted to help avert a poverty spike, as they would extend the Child Tax Credit to children in families with low or no earnings and expand the now tiny EITC for poor workers who aren't raising children at home.

The package does fall short in several areas, where it could be improved. First, it's important for key relief measures neither to expire too soon (a mistake made in responding to the Great Recession) nor to last too long. Accordingly, it would be best to tie the unemployment provisions, state fiscal relief, and SNAP measures to economic indicators so they remain in effect until the labor market is considerably healthier.

Second, the package contains a measure weakening, for one state, the Families First Act's Medicaid maintenance-of-effort (MOE) protections. The MOE provision in question is essential to ensure that states don't respond to budget gaps by cutting Medicaid coverage or eligibility, which would be particularly problematic amidst the health crisis. We recommend this weakening provision be removed.

Finally, the package contains a poorly targeted, temporary repeal of the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction, which was enacted in 2017. This measure has little to do with addressing the health or economic crisis we face and shouldn't be in the bill. Tax Policy Center analysis shows that repealing this cap would be extremely regressive. The richest 5 percent of households — a group unlikely to spend much of a new tax cut — would receive more than 80 percent of the benefits from repeal, while the bottom 80 percent of households would get only 4 percent of the benefits. And 97 percent of the households in the middle of the income spectrum (i.e., those in the middle fifth of the income distribution) would get nothing at all. Moreover, repeal wouldn't produce new dollars now for states, which desperately need immediate relief.

The package's shortcomings pale in comparison, however, to its virtues. It would provide badly needed relief to families and individuals, strengthen consumer purchasing power, and go a long way toward shoring up state and local budgets — all of which would provide vital support for the staggering economy. The package reflects the very tenuous position the nation is now in and recognizes that the risk of an inadequate response far exceeds the risk of doing too much. The costs of doing too little include severe hardship for millions of families and a considerably deeper and longer recession, with far more in the way of lost jobs, lost wages, and lost work experience, particularly for people who already faced significant barriers to economic opportunity. Yes, the package is large and costly. But as Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, who chaired President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, noted recently, "There are times to worry about the growing government debt. This is not one of them."

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