Tag Archives: jobs

An Attack on Workers’ Rights

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Hypocritically, it’s by the Progressive-Democratic Party, which runs Michigan’s government. That’s the party that claims to champion the rights of America’s workers.

[State] Senate Democrats voted along party lines in support of repealing the decade-old “right-to-work” law in a state long considered a pillar of organized labor.

The State’s House already had passed a substantially similar bill, now the two go to conference to reconcile the differences, then the result will be voted up in both houses and sent to Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) to be signed into law.

Michigan’s workers, for the last decade, had been able to speak for themselves, to join or not join unions, to not pay dues to unions to which they didn’t belong.

The Michigan government is telling those workers they have no voice, and their wishes have no importance. Oh, and pay up, suckers.

So much for workers’ rights when Progressive-Democrats reign in Michigan.

Free Market or Pro-Working Class?

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That’s the question posed regarding the future of the Republican Party in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal Saturday Essay.

The headline and subheadline combine to posit a false dichotomy, though.

Can the GOP Become a Real Working-Class Party?
Some Republicans want the party to break from its longtime free-market agenda and focus instead on the needs and frustrations of workers. Others see danger in moving away from the legacy of Reagan.

It isn’t possible to be pro-working class without being also being pro-free market. It’s the free market that generates the prosperity, flexibility of business decision-making, and breadth of worker and potential worker choice that produce the most benefit for workers.

Yes, and No

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Company employees are getting pay raises just for staying on the job rather than moving on to other endeavors.

Wages for workers who stayed at their jobs were up 5.5% in November from a year earlier, averaged over 12 months, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That was up from 3.7% annual growth in January 2022 and the highest increase in 25 years of record-keeping.

It’s also the case that new hires are getting bigger signing bonuses, initial salaries, and more perks for joining the company.

However, this claim by The Wall Street Journal (at the link above) is mostly backwards in the present environment:

Faster wage growth is contributing to historically high inflation….

It’s true that increasing wages—increasing labor costs generally—feeds into inflation as companies have to raise their prices when labor costs eat too far into their profit margins. However, as WSJ also noted,

Prices rose at their fastest pace in 40 years earlier in 2022.

That sharp rise in inflation actually began before the sharp rise in wages, and it has far outstripped the rise in wages: 2022’s inflation peaked above 9%, and it’s still around 7%. The current wage increase is only a nominal increase. The real change in wages, what real people spend on real necessities and wants, has been negative: that 5.5% nominal increase in November, compared with November’s 7.1% inflation for instance, actually represents a 1.6% decrease in actual buying power for us average Americans.

The fact is that the current period of high inflation is driving the rise in labor costs, not the other way around.

Federal Workers Working Remote

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I agree with the concept, sort of.

The Federal Government Initiative, an NGO government watchdog, has noticed that current federal telework practices, implemented during the Wuhan Virus situation, are associated with a dramatic reduction in paid leave used by the federal workforce. The FGI has expressed misgivings.

Before the federal government engages in expanded telework in perpetuity, its impact should be investigated more fully by agency Inspectors General, Congress, and other oversight entities[.]

I agree that many—most, in fact—nearly all—Federal workers should be allowed to work remotely, and in perpetuity. Remotely, mind you, not via telework.

The Federal offices, especially the large ones, like Education, Interior(!), Commerce, Federal Reserve, Treasury, and agencies like CFTC, SEC, CFPB (these are not at all exhaustive lists) should be removed from DC and scattered around the middle-sized and small towns of middle America, of flyover country. Those offices should be among the people they serve, us average Americans, and away from the overweening influence of the bubble-residing coastal elites.

Here’s the deal, though: all of the employees should be required to come back to the office. No more teleworking. The remoteness of their work will consist of working in the small towns of the Midwest, the north, the Southeast, and the Southwest. They’ll get used to it, though, and they’ll learn that middle America isn’t all that remote, after all.

Fiddling While….

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg seems to be a modern day fiddler. During the…negotiations…with rail unions just concluded, Buttigieg chose to go haring off to Portugal on vacation. He also appears to have told no one of the public he was heading out: previously undisclosed trip, according to the Washington Free Beacon as cited by Fox News.

“The secretary took a long-planned personal trip from Aug. 29 to Sept. 5,” a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation told Fox News. “As usual, while traveling on personal time he remained available and engaged on urgent issues, which in this case meant multiple calls with staff and stakeholders to work on the topic of rail labor negotiations.”

“Long-planned.” Nothing so trivial as a looming transportation strike with national economic implications was to disturb his precious vacation. Phone calls, though. Because there’s no need to meet in person with the players. Vacation.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) noted the irony hypocrisy:

Rail workers just wanted a few days of paid sick leave. President Biden told them to pound sand and his Transportation Secretary vacationed in wine country[.]

And, of course, us taxpayers continued to pay Buttigieg’s his salary—he gets paid vacation, along with his paid sick leave.