So says Dean Baker, and I am surprised that the number is that low, with Bush and His Evil Minions™ running the NLRB.
It’s also illegal as hell.
Card check now.
Category: Labor
Sit Down Strike Ends: Workers Get Owed Benefits
Bank of America and JP Morgan loaned a total of about 1¾ million to the owners, with specific stipulations that it be paid for, “60 days severance wages, vacation pay and a two-month extension of health insurance.”
Still, the more I hear, the more I think that the banks were set up by the owners, who were attempting to close down the plant, because they set up a new one down the road.
Update on the Sitdown Strike
It appears that the owner may have been planning to shut down the plant and skip town for some time. It appears that, “company managed by the wife of Republic Windows and Doors owner Richard Gillman recently purchased an Iowa plant that manufactures similar products.”
Echo Windows and Doors was created two weeks ago and lists Sharon Gillman as its manager, according copies of records obtained by the Daily News from the Iowa Secretary of the State. According to Cook County property tax records, Sharon Gillman is Richard Gillman’s wife.
The couple purchased a $2.6 million Oak Street condo together in 2007, according to property records.
The Gillimans could not be reached for comment today. But this afternoon, Richard Gillman released a statement confirming the creation of the new company.
Also, Amy Zimmerman, who has served as Republic’s marketing director, is now listed as the contact on the newly registered echowindows.com domain name. She refused comment today.
As much as it pains me to say this, it may very well be that Bank of America is blameless in all this. The Gillimans may have set up a second company to find cheap non-union plant in Iowa, and then screwed up their credit line with BoA on purpose, so they could get out from under things like COBRA, owed vacation time, and other benefits.
In the mean time it appears that Chase, which had a 40% stake in Republic, is actually doing the right thing: it has pledged $400,000 to the employees there.
Still, this is getting weird, and if this is a scam by the Gillimans, and it looks increasingly so, there may very well be a criminal fraud case against them.
How Very White of Them
So, Merrill Lynch’s John Thain and Mogan Stanley’s John Mack have decided to forgo bonuses this year, after the Andrew Cuomo basically read the riot act to their respective firms.
Asking for millions in bonuses when your company is losing money….Failing upwards….Welcome to George W. Bush’s America.
In Addition to Firing Him, Give Him a Really Bad Haircut
So the WSJ is reporting that people are starting to suggest that GM fire Rick Wagoner.
Not just the man on the street either. Senator Dodd has explicitly called for his head, as have representatives of investor, and former GM board member, Kirk Kerkorian.
Barack Obama has also implied that there need to be management changes.
This is a no brainer. Mullaly was brought in about a year ago to turn Ford around, and Nardelli’s tenure at Chrysler (full disclosure, I worked for him, though I never met him, at GE Transportation Systems in the 1990s)* is even shorter, so they do not bear full responsibility for the mess that their companies are in, but Wagoner has been CEO of GM for 10 years, and in charge of North American Operations for 4 years before that, so this is his baby that has come crying to Congress.
*Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.
Sitdown Strike Update
Ian Walsh of FDL notes that the entire situation with the Republic Windows sit-down strike was likely triggered by the $350 billion stimulus package. Basically, following the receipt of bailout money, banks like Bank of America, which had a $50 million line of credit out to the manufacturer, decided that it made sense to hoard cash so that they could buy other banks, so they cut off Republic Windows, which proceeded to collapse like broccoli cooked in a British boarding school kitchen.
It’s amazing how much damage Hank Paulson and His Evil Minions™ have been doing to the country.
Interestingly enough, it now appears that there is some push-back, with Barack Obama supporting the strikers:
“When it comes to the situation here in Chicago with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned, I think they are absolutely right,” Obama said Sunday at a news conference announcing his new Veterans Affairs director. “What’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy.
Additionally, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has ordered all Illinois agencies to stop doing business with Bank of America.
In 1936-7, the workers in Flint had to contend with National Guardsmen and police trying to evict them.
In 2008, not so much.
I Know that I Should Feel Bad for Them….
But the reports of mass layoffs of Wall Street Brokers fills me instead with Schadenfreude.
I feel sorry for the janitors, and the receptionists, but for the brokers…I just want to go “neener-neener.”
It really reflects more poorly on me than it does on them.
The Return of the Sit-Down Strike
More echos of the 1930s, with workers at the Republic Windows and Doors plant in Chicago occupying the plant, after being given three days notice that the plant was closed.
They are saying that, “They won’t go home without assurances they’ll get severance and vacation pay.”
I don’t think that the governor will call out the national guard, so it will be up to modern day Pinkertons to murder them, my money would be on Blackwater, USA.
Schadenfreude: Outsourcing Edition
Now they are outsourcing lawyers.
Today lawyers, tomorrow, economics faculty and journalists.
SPEEA Approves Contract
So Boeing will not be hit by an engineers strike this year.
How the frack they got engineers to strike the last time, I’ll never know.
There are so many Randroid engineers out there.
Big Bonuses Make You Stupid
That’s the short read on Dan Ariely’s reseasrch, he is a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University:
We did this study in India, where the cost of living is relatively low so that we could pay people amounts that were substantial to them but still within our research budget. The lowest bonus was 50 cents — equivalent to what participants could receive for a day’s work in rural India. The middle-level bonus was $5, or about two weeks’ pay, and the highest bonus was $50, five months’ pay.
What would you expect the results to be? When we posed this question to a group of business students, they said they expected performance to improve with the amount of the reward. But this was not what we found. The people offered medium bonuses performed no better, or worse, than those offered low bonuses. But what was most interesting was that the group offered the biggest bonus did worse than the other two groups across all the tasks.
(emphasis mine)
So, we have people over compensated and for work that mostly really does not to be done, (financials have exploded relative to the rest of the economy over the past few decades) and given bonuses for under-performing, and now we find out that the bonuses make them do a crappier job.
Delightful.
Lies Republicans Tell
In the (I can’t believe that I’m quoting them) New Republic, they have a very good analysis of the labor costs of the Big 3 (Big 2½), and it confirms what I have been saying, that $70/hour cost of a UAW employee is a lie, and attempts to equate the cost retirees with the current labor costs in order to attack unions.
It turns out that, after the latest round for cuts, the hourly rate and benefits for current workers are probably a bit less than the transplants.
The Big 3’s (Big 2½) labor problem is not the cost of its workforce, it’s the fact that it has been contracting its labor force for 4 decades, and management has systematically underfunded pensions, and now they find themselves in a vice.
Boeing Uses Labor Agreement as Cover to Trim Outsourcing
So, we now see that Boeing will move more engineering and manufacturing in house after the debacle with its long-delayed 787:
Boeing has expected too much from major outsourcing partners and will take much detailed design work and some major production back in-house to avoid in future the troubles that have plagued its long-delayed 787 programme.
I think that some of the upper management will now say that they had to, because of the labor deal they cut with the IAM, as opposed to admitting that farming that much out to future competitors so as to reduce the initial investment, did not work, and transferred core competencies to the “partners”.
I think that the employment guarantees in the contract were a relief to management, because they had to bring this stuff back in, but admitting failure in an honest way would have meant some high level firings.
Also, toward the bottom, it appears that the SPEEA is feeling its oats with Boeing too, though I don’t expect a strike from them, they are engineers, who tend to be Randroid by nature.
Then again, I did not predict the last time, when they did go on strike, so YMMV.
The Wall Street Journal Wrings its Hands at Timid Pro-Labor Moves
This needs to move quickly, because if card check ant other labor provisions don’t go through quickly, they won’t at all.
FWIW, my agenda would be more aggressive than the unions: Repeal Taft-Hartley too.
There is 50 years of anti-union legislation to repeal.
The Important Question on the Banking Melt Down
IAM Votes to Approve Boeing Contract
I’m not surprised by the vote, and I do not expect the SPEEA to go on strike at all.
IAM Boeing Deal Appears To Have Been Reached
We have reports that Boeing and the machinists union have reached an agreement, according to a statement released by the IAM.
In related news, Boeing and its SPEEA engineering union have agreed to delay contract talks, pending the resolution of the IAM negotiations.
What Do You Call This?
The punch line is the same as for the joke that starts, “What do you call 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?” (Answer at bottom of post)
The head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, Lalit Kishore Choudhary, was beaten to death by employees he had sacked.
I have said on a number of occasions that if you want to go postal, go after upper management first, and it seems that these employees were of a like mind.
The quotes regarding this, show just how callous people are:
A spokesman for the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry said: “Such a heinous act is bound to sully India’s image among overseas investors.”
That is an unbelievably cold statement. Some dude got beaten to death, and the only comment is, “It’s bad for business.”
Of course, being the Times of London, they are wringing their hands over this, and note the violence at the location selected by Tata for a factory to manufacture its ultra cheap Nano, but refuse to mention the fact that the land in question was stolen from the peasant farmers who had worked it for hundreds of years.
Meanwhile India’s Labor Minister has apologized for saying that the murder of Choudhary should, “serve as a warning” to managers to treat workers compassionately.”
He was right the first time.
If you want to read a more full throated, and more eloquent endorsement of actions that might make senior executives think twice, you need to go no further than Exiled Online
Live by heartless officialese, die by heartless officialese plus a hammer upside the skull. Nothing could be fairer than that. Proceed with the mob beatifications as soon as we get their names. And somebody find that f@#$-you-Mr.-Cheney guy’s name too while you’re at it. Something about the politeness of the “Mr.” right after the “f@#$ you” really enchants us. This is a guy who understands the importance of human dignity. No doubt, with a little encouragement, he could put together a nice mob.
Damn good writing, and you should read the rest right now.
In conclusion, the philosophical foundation driving our current system is that the “entrepreneurial class” should be able to operate without any external limits on their behavior, and that they should operate without conscience or empathy, and this is a psychotic world view.
As to the riddle at the beginning of the page? The answer, of course, is “A Good Start.”
Got Schwag?
Went to a Career Fair down in Greenbelt today.
I really hate these things, but I went, handed out my resume, and got Schwag, free handouts, from potential employers, mostly pens, though a TLA (three letter acronym) government agency had a combined tape measure, level, and pen on a belt clip.
Boeing Continues to Fail Amazingly
In addition to all the other problems with Boeing, it appears that their determination to screw their workers is now preventing the first flight of the 787.
I have no clue as to what Boeing was thinking when, in a year of record profits, it presented its employees what amounted to a pay cut…Actually I have no clue IF Boeing is thinking at all.