Category: Labor

KC-X Tanker Contest Canceled

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Looks like SecDef Bob Gates is dumping this one on the next administration.

I can’t say I blame him. The Airbus is a better aircraft, more modern and with greater fuel offload capacity, and it’s already flying, whereas the Boeing Frankenplane, cobbled together out of 3 different 767 models, has stronger pork barrel congressional support.

A delay might move Boeing to submit a shortened 777 as a bid, which would be more competitive, but the 787 is out, if just because they are so far behind schedule that they would not be able to begin deliveries until some time around 2020.

It might also have something to do with the strike, which obviously makes Boeing hitting any delivery, for any customers, which would give the delegation from Washington State more of an opportunity to whine.

FedEx Faces Massive Judgements on Misclassified Employees

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FedEx has been classifying its drivers as independent contractors for years, despite the fact that it, “tells its ground-service drivers when to work, what to charge customers and what kind of socks and shoes to wear,” and it looks like a federal judge is about to rule against them opening them up to billions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages, and possibly even more in back taxes.

What’s more, it’s likely to see successful unionization efforts once reclassification is completed.

This is an increasing problem nationwide, and one would hope that there will be a crackdown soon.

Received from the SPEEA

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Not entirely sure how I got on their mailing list, but Boeing appears to be trying to foist off a 401(k) on their employees while sticking with defined benefits for upper managers.

The Goforths Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:03 AM

Reply-To: @@@@@@@@@@@@
To: The Goforths

For Immediate Release August 11, 2008

SPEEA demands Boeing disclose funding of executive pensions

SEATTLE – To ensure the pension program relied on by 21,400 technical employees at The Boeing Company is not being secretly used to fund executive retirement benefits, the union representing the employees is demanding the company immediately disclose the extent and funding source of its executive pension plans.

The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), IFPTE Local 2001, formally requested the information from Boeing after a recent investigative news report by The Wall Street Journal uncovered U.S. corporations funding executive pensions by funneling funds through regular employee plans. This practice weakens employees’ pensions while allowing corporations to take advantage of huge tax benefits not normally available for executive pension plans.

In the Aug. 4, page-one, report, The Wall Street Journal called the pension maneuvers by corporations a “dubious use of tax law” that “risks harming regular workers.”

Earlier this year, Boeing announced the elimination of pensions for new, non-union employees. The company is seeking to eliminate pensions for union represented employees when new contracts are negotiated.

“Benefits consultants advise companies to keep quiet about these schemes to avoid employee backlash,” said Ray Goforth, SPEEA executive director. “Boeing’s move to eliminate pensions for regular workers is consistent with the pattern uncovered by the Wall Street Journal. SPEEA demands to know if Boeing is sacrificing the pensions of regular workers to benefit executives.”

The Boeing Company Employee Retirement Plan (BCERP) covers employees represented by SPEEA. Management told union leaders it wants to eliminate the long-term liability of the pension plan. The plan, a traditional pension, provides retired employees monthly payments until death. Instead, Boeing proposes making contributions to each employee’s 401k. The contribution is half the value of the present pension contribution. In addition to reducing corporate expense, the plan shifts all risk and maintenance of retirement onto the employee.

In October, SPEEA begins negotiations with Boeing for 21,400 engineers and technical employees in Washington, Kansas, Oregon, Utah and California. The existing contracts expire Dec. 1, and in Kansas, Dec. 5.

SPEEA represents 24,500 aerospace professionals at Boeing and Triumph Composite Systems, Inc., in Spokane, Wash., and at BAE Systems, Inc. in Irving, Texas. SPEEA is an affiliated local of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE).

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UAL Pilot Union Demanding Removal of CEO

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They are saying that CEO Glenn Tilton has steered the airline, “down a path to poor customer service, employee morale and financial performance.”

I’m not sure if this is a negotiating tactic, or a legitimate concern for the company.

My guess is a bit of both. He’s an oil man, and the requisite skills in that industry are not really producing anything or providing a service, but rather schmoozing people so that you can put holes in their ground.

That skill set does not translate well into any other field of endeavor, see Bush, GW, and Cheney, R.

Bankruptcies and the Birth/Death Adjustment

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When generating employment numbers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)uses something called a Birth/Death adjustment, which is supposed to account for small new businesses that it misses in its surveys.

Well, the always quotable Barry Ritholtz has a question, is anyone at the BLS looking at the “death” part of the model?

Specifically, commercial bankruptcies are up 45%, but the BLS is still using their Birth/Death model to increase employment numbers.

Boeing Looks for New Ways to F%$@ Up Labor Management Relations

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It looks like Boeing, the only company incompetent enough to get engineers to go out on strike and stay out,* is playing chicken with it’s unions again, though this time it’s the International Association of Machinists (IAM), who are far more likely to strike than the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA).

There may not be much that Boeing is good at, but forcing its employees out on bitter strikes is one of the few.

With the 787 at least 14 months behind schedule, they can’t afford a strike, but they are still pushing to screw the employees on pensions and healthcare.

Smooth move guys.

*The SPEEA went out for 40 days in 2000, despite the fact that it was a bunch of engineers, who generally hate unions, and the union was up to that point considered a joke.

Weakening New Labour May See Return of Old Labour

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It looks like following a Labour drubbing in Glasgow, Gordon Brown’s hometown, we are starting to see labor return to policies that benefit working folk, at least to the degree that they are absolutely forced to do so.

Labor has agreed to lower the age for the full minimum wage to 21. Previously £5.52 had applied to workers over 22, with those from 18-21 getting £4.60, and those from 16-18 getting £3.40.

Additionally, Brown acceded to demands for increased parental leave and to limit private contractors in the NHS.

It appears that in addition to the pasting taken in the Glasgow election, Labor’s campaign donations have shrunk, and so the party is more dependent on affiliation fees.

I sincerely hope that this is a death knell for the “third way” corporate suckups.

If You Pay Them Well, They Will Graduate With Technical Degrees

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Well, here we have another article full of hand wringing about how the US is not graduating enough people with technical degrees.

The problem is very simple. We have policies like the H1B and L1 visas that depress the wages of people in technical in fields.

People inclined to go into technical fields tend to have a greater facility with math than the rest of the population.

Mathematically inclined people look at pay as a part of their career and educational choices, and they determine that there is more money, in going into law, or business administration, or medicine, or video editing, so so choose those professions.

In order for you to increase the supply of graduates with technical skills, you must increase the benefits that accrue as a result of getting those skills.

The efforts this far, which consist mostly of crap like sending astronauts around to encourage kids to take science, don’t work because they are, at their core, a lie.

Our society does not value technical expertise. It it did, it would pay more for it.

All Your Uterus Are Belong to Us

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It appears that with only 6 months to go, Bush and His Evil Minions™ are doing their level best to make birth control unavailable a significannt portion of the US population.

First, they have now defined abortion as “anything that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

This would be many birth control pills, emergency contraception following a rape, and the IUD, in addition to a number of medications not normally used for contraception, but for which are likely to cause a failure to implant, or a spontaneous abortion.

What’s more, any medical provider receiving money for a Health and Human Services Department program would have to, “sign written certifications”, certifying that the would not, “will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control.” (see also here)

What’s amazing is that Mr. “I don’t listen to polls” HHS is using a poll, as opposed to the American Medical Association’s definition of “abortion”.

If you think that you can compromise with abortion-criminalization terrorists, you are wrong.

Their ultimate goal is to make all forms of birth control illegal in the United States of America.

Image courtesy of Feministing.

SEIU Establishes $10M Political Punishment Fund

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The Bush Blue Dog Democratic Caucus has spent too much time presenting only lip service to Democratic party goals. This move by the SEIU (scroll down) is a good start on dealing with the guys who forget the people what brung them after the elections:

In a move likely to upset some Democrats, the delegates approved an “accountability plan” in which the union would spend $10 million to pressure or punish political candidates who made pro-worker, pro-union promises, but broke them after being elected.

The union’s leaders cite a primary last February in which the service employees played an instrumental role in defeating Representative Albert Wynn, Democrat of Maryland, because the union thought he was favoring business over workers.

The New York Times Does Not Get It, Employment Edition

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The New York Times notes that there is a labor shortage in Iowa, and says that, Remedies are not simple. Companies want to be in Iowa because wages are lower than elsewhere in the nation or region, except South Dakota. But low wages also drive young college graduates out of the state, especially as student debt loads have risen, and they discourage workers from other states from moving to Iowa.”

The remedy is tough to find, and in the very next sentences the source of the problem is found: there is a worker shortage in Iowa because wages are too low.

Employers are subject to the same laws of supply and demand as everywhere else.

If they want wages to be more competitive, then they need to tighten up their minimum wage laws ($300K turnover and 90 days without a minimum wage don’t help), and revoke the state’s right to work laws so that unions can organize more efficiently.

H/T Dean Baker‘s Beat the Press.

Dutch to Curbe Excessive Executive Pay

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This is a a good start on a very serious problem, and pay of Dutch executives is on the order of 1/4 that of US executives.

The Dutch finance minister, Wouter Bos, sent a bill to parliament to crack down on this, and I agree with his sentiments:

“I believe cohesion in society is not served by inexplicable inequalities,” Bos said at a recent seminar of center-left politicians, held at a country-house hotel north of London. “Public support for entrepreneurship around the globe is eroded if you let this continue, and this is not in the interests of our economy or entrepreneurship.”

His proposal would place a 50% tax on golden parachutes in excess of €500,000 (about $800,000), and, “would increase by 15 percent the employer tax contributions to company pensions for executives who make €€500,000 a year or more.” (Not exactly clear on the specifics of Dutch pension law, so I would appreciate an explanation here)

In our system of economics, wages are very much a zero sum game, with a fixed pool of money for compensation, and the mega-compensation that exists takes money from everyone else.

I remember once running the numbers on Michael Eisner’s $550 million pay package in the mid 1990s. It came to something like $6000 for every employee of Disney, and had that money been distributed to the employees, there would have been a payback in terms of less turnover and a higher quality employee that would have increased profits.

Of course, they find some rich guy, in this case Ad Scheepbouwer, who got a €1 million ($1.6 million) bonus to argue that it will create an environment unfriendly to entrepreneurs:

Scheepbouwer argues that the Dutch government now, with its proposed limits, is encouraging a climate that penalizes entrepreneurs.

“For really talented and really exceptional performers this is not a very attractive place,” he said. “It is not accepted that people are outside the normal. The only people that are accepted outside the normal are musicians or football players.”

The my answer:

  1. These people are not entrepreneurs. They are highly compensated employees.
  2. The “talented and exceptional” bit is largely a myth, as shown by the financial executives with billion dollar packages who are now failing abysmally in the financial world. People get to where they are because of connections and luck at least as much skill.
  3. So you’re telling me that you would not do it for €1 million/year? That you have to have €20 million, or €100 million, or €1 billion?

This is another toxic export of the American capitalism model, where highly compensated executives sit on each others’ boards of directors, and vote each other raises.