Category Archives: Wage Slavery

East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:

Last Friday, 318 days after the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump via letter asked the Georgia secretary of state to decertify their election results or whatever the correct legal remedy is so he could reclaim the presidency. Trump did not claim fraud, according to The Washington Post, but did claim a violation chain of custody rules, which he said would make 43,000 ballots invalid.

According to a recent U.K. study, those who are vaccinated have half the risk of experiencing long-haul symptoms from a breakthrough case of COVID-19.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a new study shows evidence that unvaccinated people who already beat COVID-19 are more than twice as likely to get the disease again, as compared to those fully vaccinated.

It took 19 months for the nation to reach one in 500 people having died from COVID-19, The Washington Post reported. The death toll from the disease exceeded 663,000 last week. The figure in low-vaccinated Mississippi was 1 in 320, according to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Worldwide, Reuters reported that 58 percent of the population has yet to receive even one vaccination dose, creating a vibrant playground for COVID-19 to form variants.

Worker shortage: It used to be (in the early 20th Century) that the average age in the U.S. was 23. Its 38 today, according to Ben Waddell, associate professor of sociology, and a contributor to Writers On the Range. That has narrowed the pool of potential employees. But Waddell highlighted there are other deterrents: unaffordable rent due to the hot real estate market and fewer immigrant workers. The latter reflects a 44 percent drop in temporary and permanent worker visas, and the fact that more Mexicans are going home rather than coming to the U.S. One problem faced by immigrant workers is wage theft, according to Pacific Media Workers. Some communities have ordinances against wage theft. The National Association of Home Builders said in 2020 that close to one in four construction workers was foreign born.

The left-right political divide in the U.S. was further demonstrated when, at a Republican political gathering in Dallas, the audience applauded when a speaker said President Joe Biden would not be meeting his 70 percent vaccination goal.

The plan for Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices via the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act (BBB Act) hit a snag: all Republicans and two Democrats are resisting, joined by the pharmaceutical industry. The New York Times said high drug prices are a top voter concern. According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis, prices for some drugs would fall by more than half, and the federal government would save over $450 million over 10 years if the BBB Act language is passed into law.

Compromises taken in order to pass the BBB Act (that aims to invest in childcare, education, paid family leave, healthcare and care of the climate) are compromises for the wrong reason, wrote Robert Reich, former U.S. labor secretary, in The Guardian. While its normal for Republicans to make decisions based on campaign donations, he said the practice is holding sway over some Democrats, such that initial plans to tax the wealthy has instead morphed into a 3 percent surtax on incomes over $5 million. Reich pointed out that most wealthy people dont live off of an income.

The departure from plans to tax extreme wealth and to tax certain incomes instead also includes retaining some corporate loopholes and special tax breaks for oil and gas companies. Added to lawmakers fear of losing campaign donations is the fear theyll be targeted with expensive and misleading ads about job-killing taxes, Reich stated.

Republican resistance to the BBB Act has been aided by Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.). Manchin, according to Open Secrets, founded two coal companies and is a top recipient of campaign funding from the oil and gas industry. He also chairs the Senates Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Blast from the past: 159 years ago this month soldiers from the U.S. and the Confederacy fought at Antietam Creek in Maryland. The Confederates hoped to pull Maryland into the rebellion as well as affect the 1862 election. And U.S. commanders hoped for a decisive victory against the rebels.

It earned a reputation as the bloodiest single day in American history with about 23,000 men killed or wounded. The conflict also marked the first time photographs were taken at the battlefield. When shared with the public in a New York City studio, the stills of dead soldiers brought the war to life in a new way. Both sides had initially thought the war would be over after a few battles.

The Norths narrow victory in Maryland prompted President Abraham Lincoln to declare that as of Jan. 1, 1863, all people held in slavery would be forever free, and the U.S. government would maintain the freedom of such persons. By the end of 1863, Lincoln redefined the war as that of protecting the nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all me are created equal.

The Confederates were defeated in 1865.

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Bits 'n pieces from east, west and beyond - The Western News

Following recent calls for prisoners to be used to fill labour shortages caused by Brexit, Virginia Mantouvalou discusses key legislation around this question. She explains how prisoners both in the UK and elsewhere are excluded from protective rules, includingthose pertaining to wages, workers rights, and tax and social insurance contributions.

It was recently reported that the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers was in discussions with the Ministry of Justice, exploring how prisoners could be used to cover labour shortages. The scheme under which this could be done is the Release under Temporary License, which permits certain categories of prisoners to work. Another group of prisoners who could work in this context are those coming towards the end of long sentences and who have been idle while in prison.

Work in prison is not part of prisoners punishment: the European Prison Rules explicitly say that [p]rison work shall be approached as a positive element of the prison regime and shall never be used as a punishment. It is typically justified on the basis of other reasons. It is said that it can promote reintegration in society by teaching prisoners new skills and improving their employability, which can also reduce reoffending. It can provide them with income to support their dependents, cover personal needs (such as buying phone credit), and make life less monotonous. Nevertheless, work in prison is often compulsory. A Council of Europe survey that looked at 40 member states found that in25 of those prisoners are required to work at least in certain circumstances. Those who refuse to work may be sanctioned with reduced visits from friends and family, reduced television or gym time, less or no income and even solitary confinement.

State-mediated structures of exploitation

While real work in prison can be beneficial, working prisoners are trapped in state-mediated structures of exploitation: the state has a major role to play in creating and perpetuating workers vulnerability by excluding them from protective laws. Prisoners are a vulnerable group, as the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly ruled, and the authorities have a duty to protect them. That the state creates further vulnerability by excluding them from labour rights should be scrutinised carefully.

In the UK more specifically, the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 excludes working prisoners from its scope. In a report of the Howard League for Penal Reform, it was documented that the average pay for prison service work is 9.60 per week, while it has also been reported that some prisoners work up to 60 hours per week. Certain private companies pay about 2 per hour for prisoners labour. The Prisoners Service Order 4460 says that prisoners who work for outside employers doing a job that is not in the voluntary or charitable sector have to be paid at least the minimum wage. The distinction between work in prison and work outside prison is not justified though. Private employers get prisoners to work for them in prison, and avoid in this way their obligations to pay the minimum wage (see further here).

The vulnerability of working prisoners is further compounded by the fact that they would most probably not be viewed as working under a contract of employment. As a result, they may be excluded from other protections. The issue was discussed in a UK Supreme Court decision, where it was pointed that the relationship of the working prisoner and the prison authorities differs from an employment relationship: prisoners do not work on the basis of contract, but because they have been sentenced to imprisonment, and are only paid nominally. However, these features rendered the relationship if anything closer than one of employment: it was founded not on mutuality but on compulsion.

The element of compulsion that the Court recognised makes working prisoners more vulnerable to exploitation than other workers and should ground full protection of labour rights. Moreover, there should be scope for recognising an employment relation for prisoners who are employed voluntarily and not under the threat of sanctions.

Are the exclusions justified?

Some may think that these exclusions of working prisoners from protective laws are justified because they should contribute to the cost of the running of the facilities. Yet the work that prisoners do often consists of much more than that: it can involve long working hours, the quality of the work does not support their reintegration (prison labour often consists of cleaning, cooking and other work towards the maintenance of the facilities; other times it involves boring and monotonous work for private employers) while private firms make profit from this situation. The fact that this work is linked to structures of exploitation from which profit-making organisations benefit must make us question this supposed justification.

There is another crucial issue. These structures of exploitation are connected to precarious work prisoners find themselves in after they leave the criminal justice system. It has been observed by Erin Hatton that those who have worked in prison come to expect and sometimes embrace low-wage precarious work outside prison. In addition, they also face serious obstacles when attempting to find better work because of their criminal record. What we see is that the structure of exploitation in prison extends to structures of exploitation after prison.

Human rights for working prisoners

The exclusions of working prisoners from labour rights may also violate human rights law. One problem, though, is that even in human rights law we find exclusions of prison labour. This includes Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) draws a distinction between private and public prisons in the Forced Labour Convention No 29 of 1930. It excludes prison work from its scope when it is performed in state prisons, but includes privately-run prisons.

The exclusions of working prisoners from human rights may have seemed acceptable when these legal documents were adopted, but they are not acceptable anymore. The ILO examined in 2007 whether prison labour for private employers complies with the Forced Labour Convention. It said that what is needed is the formal, written consent of the prisoner and working conditions similar to a free labour relationship for labour to be voluntary.

The ECtHR examined prison labour in a case that involved affiliation of working prisoners with an old-age pension system. The finding of the majority was disappointing, as it ruled that lack of affiliation with a pension scheme does not render a prisoners work forced labour or violate their right to property and the prohibition of discrimination. However, there were powerful dissenting opinions. Judge Tulkens highlighted:

[C]an it really still be maintained in 2011, in the light of current standards in the field of social security, that prison workwithout affiliation to the old-age pension systemconstitutesworkthat a person in detention maynormallyberequired todo? I do not think so. This, in my view, is the fundamental point.Nowadays, work without adequate social cover can no longer be regarded as normal work. It follows that theexceptionprovided for in Article 4 3(a)of theConventionis not applicable in the present case.Even a prisoner cannot be forced to do work that is abnormal.

Such opinions should form the basis for the development of the law in the future.

Captive labour and a continuum of exploitation

I want to point to a continuum of exploitation here. I recently wrote on unpaid work requirements that are imposed on certain offenders and managed by profit-making organisations, and on work in immigration detention, arguing that the exclusion of working offenders and immigration detainees from labour rights is not justified. If we take these examples together, we see that the state creates and sustains a continuum of structures of exploitation. It systematically increases the vulnerability of captive labour, through legal rules that exclude workers from legal protections. This is not acceptable.

Frances Crook of the Howard League for Penal Reform was right in her recent powerful piece in the Guardian. She explained that prisoners can work for private companies and that this can be valuable for them and for society at large. But for prison work to be fair, radical change is needed: prisoners have to earn real wages, have workers rights, and pay tax and social insurance contributions. It is only through radical change of the legal framework on working prisoners rights that their recruitment by private companies can be acceptable. Without that, the authorities will be playing a major role in structures of exploitation and violate the human rights of working prisoners.

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Note: a longer version of the above was first published on theUK Labour Law Blog.

About the Author

Virginia Mantouvalou is Professor of Human Rights and Labour Law at UCL, Faculty of Laws. This piece is based on her project Structural Injustice and the Human Rights of Workers which is funded by the British Academy through a Mid-Career Fellowship. Her book on the topic will be published by Oxford University Press in 2022.

Photo by Carles Rabada on Unsplash.

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Working prisoners are trapped in state-mediated structures of exploitation; using them only to fill Brexit labour shortages is a bad idea - British...

Shucking past taboos, corporate marketeers hard sell directly to children bypassing or undermining parental authority. What they sell is obesity, diabetes, promiscuity, dangerous addictions and violence in their merciless entertainment programs and narratives about armed force, however illegal it may be.

In terms of sheer time, range of exposure, and planned peer group pressures, corporations are raising our children day and night.

Big companies do strategic planning about everything affecting our children. There are no longer adequate limits and boundaries on corporatism or protections of commercial-free zones.

It's getting worse. Eyewear for augmented reality from Facebook and rapidly expanding artificial intelligence induce dependency and more sedentary living. People from Bill Joy to Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk have strongly warned about these emerging technologies and the consequential loss of freedom and democracy.

I'd like to invite some open-minded educators to consider a six-hour curricula for late middle school through high school students on the modern global corporation. Hour One could be called Big Corporations are Different from You and Me illuminating this fast-dominating artificial person with all the rights of real humans yet structurally escaping from responsibility, a status of privileges and immunities under corporate law[lessness].

Hour Two could be devoted to the history of corporate power so heavily characterized by the costs of their amassing wealth costs to workers, communities, small businesses, voters, consumers, patients, our governing ways, and, yes, students. Having been told repeatedly about how companies built America, students should learn about all the Nos. Corporations were operationally entrenched against the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, union organizing, the minimum wage, universal health insurance, early solar energy, mass transit, public campaign financing, and governmental institutions accountable to the citizenry. The most recent big NOs' are against consumer, labor, and environmental justice and, of course, waging peace instead of forever wars of mayhem and profit have filled volumes of documentation.

Hour Three might run students through all the attempts and reforms by the American people to reign in the destructive, unjust excesses of large companies and their controlling ideology of corporatism. What were the results from all those widespread protests, regulatory actions, prosecutions, and electoral reforms? What are the successes of the peace movement, environmental groups and initiatives by workers, consumers, creators, and defenders of The Commons, (such as the public lands and public airwaves), investors and savers for justice and the common good? What happened to the corporate tax system, the drive for shareholder rights and corporate democracy and, most importantly, the rule of law over corporate power?

Hour Four, Hour Five, and Hour Six well, to be continued. That is, if we hear from people interested enough in having this proposal described further.

Excerpted: Please Teach Your Children About Corporate Criminals

Commondreams.org

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A new crime - The News International

A survivor of human trafficking says he was made work 16 hour days and beg for clothing.

The young man was lured to Scotland from his Eastern European home with the promise of a job but was trapped and made to work seven days per week.

His trafficker threatened to kill him if he tried to leave but the survivor said his life has now been transformed by a new job and home, reports our sister title the Daily Record.

READ MORE - Mum 'overwhelmed' in McDonald's by homeless woman's kind gesture to daughter

The man, who we are calling Peter, said: It has taken a while but I feel like the person I used to be. I am not afraid any more.

Scotland Against Modern Slavery (Sams), an alliance of companies raising awareness of trafficking and supporting victims, found him work with one of its members Scotbeef.

Peter said his self-respect has been restored working in the companys meat processing plant, where he is paid above the living wage and is treated with respect.

He had worked unpaid for his trafficker, was living in squalid conditions and had to beg him for basics like clothes and toiletries.

Peter, who is from Eastern Europe, said: It used to be humiliating having to ask for things like clothes.

When I got my first wage, I was excited. I went shopping, bought clothes and went to a KFC. It is a simple thing but it meant so much to me.

I didnt need to ask anyone for anything. I joined a gym, I eat healthily and I want to buy a dog. There is so much I can do now.

Some 32 firms have joined the network of Sams, which was launched earlier this year.

So far seven trafficking victims have now been given jobs.

Shan Saba, director of recruitment agency Brightwork, launched Sams after hearing stories of exploitation during a human trafficking awareness course.

It exists to support victims into work and to ensure companies are educated in the evils of modern slavery and are committed to eradicate it.

Peter was released from the farm last year after it was raided by police and he was taken to a safehouse. He added: The police were really good but for the first few months, I couldnt sleep.

I kept thinking the farm owner would turn up and kill me. I couldnt go out because I was scared he would find me.

I had anxiety and panic attacks and it felt like a weight on my chest crushing me. Before I went to the farm, I was confident and outgoing and I had friends. Afterwards, I had no confidence.

I was a shell of who I had been. It became normal for me to feel like that.

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Charity Migrant Help, stepped in and helped him find accommodation and counselling and gradually he started to regain his confidence. Shan took him under his wing, taking him for lunch, spending quality time with him and becoming friends.

Peter said: Shan is a nice man who has become a friend to me. I could turn to him with any problem. He has given me back my life and I consider him a friend.

Scotbeef offered Peter a job in their processing plant in Queenslie in Glasgow and HR manager Debbie Lutton was assigned to be his point of contact and support if he needed anything. Peter said: I love my job and Debbie has been very supportive. I have friends at work. They dont know my story and they treat me like anyone else.

I look forward to going into the plant and seeing them. I want to socialise again. I try to make as many friends as possible. I feel like myself again.

He has worked hard to put the experience of the farm behind him and he is confident he is now strong enough to ensure he would never be exploited like that again.

He added: I would recognise the signs now and I would never let that happen to me.

When victims are placed through Sams with a business, there is a support structure in place as many struggle with trauma and they can find the workplace intimidating.

Debbie said it had been satisfying to watch Peter flourish with Scotbeef.

She said: I have noticed such a difference in him since the day I met him. At first he came across as vulnerable, he couldnt really make eye contact and he was really quiet.

He was struggling with his mental health.

The stability and routine and the communication and friendships have made such a difference to him. The feedback from his managers now is that he is confident, chatty and a fantastic asset to his team.

He is not a victim any more, he is definitely a survivor.

Shan added: At first we had people who didnt last in jobs because the structure wasnt there. These people feel worthless and they have been traumatised.

They need someone there to check in with a listening ear and help if they need it.

Having a job and earning money for the work they do is something many trafficking victims have not had before and it restores their independence and self-respect.

Thats key to helping them move on with their life.

Shan has grown close to Peter, who struggled at first to find the confidence and energy to hold on to a job.

He said: It took at least a month of regular contact for him to trust me.

Now I feel like he is a friend and I have a genuine personal interest in him succeeding in life.

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Terrified man was trapped on Scottish farm and forced to work 16 hours every day - Edinburgh Live

As in the New Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures are peopled with a wide variety of women.Some of their names have been lost to history, others have names and stories that seem larger than life.However,all are part of the great fabric of salvation historywhich is our story.Thatstorybegan with the words, "Let there be light."

The author of Genesis 1:1wrotethatthe spirit/breath of God moved over the fearfulmysteryof chaos. I like toinvitethat same Holy Breath to bemy prayer companionon a regular basis eitherindividuallyor in a group of otherBiblical/saintlyfemininefriendsof my choice.

In severalmodernlanguages,such as Spanish,nouns areconsideredeither masculine or feminine.During my graduate theology studies, I took a class on Hebrew. I was surprised to discover that Hebrew nouns are likewise either masculine or feminine. Thus, the wordruahis,grammatically,a feminine nounthat means spirit or breath.However, ruah and many other Hebrew feminine nouns are often used as poetic metaphors in the human attempt to say something about God.

Joan P. Schaupp had this to say in her article "The Feminine Imagery of God in the Hebrew Bible":

There are profound metaphors of God as feminine in the Hebrew Old Testament. On occasion this poetic imagery is allegorized literally as female; most often the feminine appears in the Hebrew Bible in metaphor and allegory. ...

For women, this introduction to Genesis has profound implications, which are being grasped as a growing number of scholars closely examine the original Hebrew text. Simply stated, God is described in both masculine and feminine imagery in the opening verses of Genesis.God(a masculine noun) creates by his Word, and life begins as thespirit(a feminine noun) of God hovers over the earth with her life-giving breath.

That said, one can honor the feminine aspect ofruah.

Another Hebrew feminine noun is shekhinah, which is translatedas presence of God. Includingthis conceptduring my prayer helps medeepenmy meditation.I found this beautiful description in the Jewish Virtual Library: "It is through the shekinah that humans can experience the Divine. Thespirit moved to help bring order out of chaos. Thus,beginning the process of creation, we can pray for those who workto care for our Earthandfor government leaders to craft laws that will help heal and protect our Earth.

I reflect on the mother of Moses (Exodus 2:1-10): how sadthat she had to give up her childnot once buttwice.Many parents during the Holocaust sent or gave their children to other people so they would have a chance to grow up.Thisrealitycontinues today as parents of families fleeing violence often must make the difficult choice toseparate from their children bysendingthem to places they hope are more safe.I can imagine myself listening to Moses mother as she shares her painof letting go.With whatever spiritual practice you use to pray for the end of violence,prayalsofor thosefamilies andfor those unwed mothers who have given their child up for adoption,as well as formore women whowill choose adoption over abortion.

Turning to Miriam, sister to Moses and Aaron,(Exodus 15:1-18)makes me think of Oh,Freedom!, asong Ioftenenjoy hearingthe lyricsopranoRene Fleming sing. Her rendition islush,which, I believe, is perfectfor this timelessspiritual.While its lyricsoriginallycelebratedthe ultimate freedom of heaven after death, the song was commonly sung as part of the civil rights movementto celebrate the newfound freedom of African Americansin America.

After theIsraelites crossedthe Red Sea, Miriam ledherpeople in a dance to celebrate their deliverance.I can well imagine how these freed slaves must have danced and sang their own version of Oh, Freedom!The biblical text mentionstheIsraelitesconsideredMiriam a prophetess. Maybe her prophetic role was to show her people how to celebrate again.After 400 yearsof slavery, perhapstheyhad forgotten how.

When this pandemicendsand Christians of every faith community return to churchin greater numbers,how will we all celebrate?Let us pray with Miriam that we allwillsing with grateful heartsa freedom hymn.Pray also for those people who seeking freedom as refugees as well as for those who live under dictators.

Another favorite is Abigail(1 Samuel 25:2-42). Locked in an arranged and difficult marriage,Abigailwas able toremain true to herselfusingher strong diplomatic skillswith her husband.Shealsousedher diplomacytosoftenDavid's angry response toher husband'sinhospitable behavior. Itwasno surprise that after her husband dies, David marriesher.To have such strong skills,Abigailmust have first been a very caring and compassionate person.What might she say to you about compassion? As you listen, perhaps you could pray for those couples who have difficult marriages and for those who have escaped domestic violence.

Then there is Anna, Tobit's wife(Tobit). At one point in the story,Tobitbecomesblind.As a result,Anna must become the wage earner.Even though her earnings were essential for their survival, itwas a source offriction in their relationship.As a result, the story reveals the ups and downsmanymarriages go through.What I find interesting is how this couple's conversation progresses.We see Annaas a wife who speaks her mind to a doubting husband then a husband whochangesfrom doubtingto one who comforts a tearful wife.Similar tensions can occur today when a husband can no longer work due to an accident or illness.Anna would be an apt companion when we pray for couples in such situations and for those who are preparing for marriage.

Susanna(Daniel:13)was beautiful, rich, and deeply religious. Buther spiritualitydidntprotect her from beingsexuallyassaultedverbally. Then came "blame the victim.The two elders had everything going for them or at least they thought they did.Then someone spoke up oddly enough, it was a youth.Suddenly, everything changed.The elders were put on trial,their lie wasexposed, they were found guilty,thenthey received the punishment meant for Susanna.I like to share Susanna's prayerto intercedefor the unjustly condemned on death row,for women who are sexuallyharassedon their joband for all those who are sexually violated.

If you invite these or other women of the Hebrew Scriptures to be a part of your prayer and if you usetheintentionsI suggested, consider addingone or two ofyour own.In whatever way we choose to pray, we must prayfor a needy world.

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Pray with these women whose stories are woven into the 'great fabric of salvation history' - Global Sisters Report

If you care about justice, democracy, or labor rights, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants should be a no-brainer. Denying millions of US residents the right to vote in elections that impact their lives is an affront to basic democratic principles, and noncitizens who have to worry about deportation are far more likely to hesitate before joining unions or seeking legal action against employers who violate labor laws.

Ideally, this path would be about as complicated as getting a public library card after moving to a new town. But even a long and winding path is better than no path at all. And given Democrats campaign rhetoric on this issue, enacting some path for at least a significant percentage of undocumented workers is the least they can do.

Or so you would think.

Under the absurd and deeply antidemocratic Senate rules, essentially all legislation requires a supermajority to pass. Theres one major exception: if a bill is deemed to have more than incidental budgetary impact, it can pass with a simple majority using the budget reconciliation process.

The problem, of course, is that nearly everything has some impact on the budget. Pretending that determinations of whats incidental and whats more than incidental are like objectively correct solutions to complex mathematical equations, waiting in some abstract Platonic realm for a sufficiently clever expert to discover them, is more than a little implausible.

The provision in the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package providing a pathway to citizenship, for example, would ultimately lead to millions more being eligible for food aid and various health care programs like Medicaid and the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The estimated budgetary impact is $139.6 billion over the next decade.

Is that significant, or is it incidental? How about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour? That would certainly change which tax revenues were coming from which sources, but is that change more than incidental?

At the very least, these are judgment calls. Realistically, theyre political decisions.

The current Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, has decided that the budgetary impact of the proposed immigration provision is incidental. She made the same determination earlier this year about the minimum wage.

In both cases, the Democratic leadership has thrown up their hands and claimed theres nothing that they can do.

The great twentieth-century philosopher Harry Frankfurt has a classic example to test our intuitions about free will and determinism: If theres only one possible thing that will happen, does that mean we arent responsible for our actions?

Frankfurt asks us to imagine that a man named Jones is preparing to make a decision. A villain named Black is prepared to intervene to manipulate Jones into doing what Black wants him to do. Perhaps hell hypnotize Jones. Perhaps hell use some science-fiction device that will alter the chemistry in Joness brain. Depending on how you fill out the details, you get one of the many variations of what philosophers call Frankfurt cases.

But heres the twist: Black will only intervene if he doesnt think Jones will do what Black wants him to do on his own.

If Black intervenes and somehow makes Jones do what Black wants him to do, wed all agree that this wouldnt be Joness fault. (It would be Blacks fault, of course.) But what if Jones does what Black wants him to do because its also what Jones wants to do? In that case, Frankfurt thinks, its clearly Joness fault.

If Jones says, I had no choice Black would have made me do it anyway, Frankfurt thinks no one should be impressed by this excuse. Jones made the decision because thats what he wanted to do. The fact that Black hypothetically would have forced him if he hadnt wanted to do it doesnt matter. Jones is at fault.

Many leftists suspect that what the Democratic leadership is doing right now is similar playing a rotating villain game where they let various figures take the blame for not passing important reforms. Sometimes its Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Sometimes its the parliamentarian. But these obstacles arent really why the Democratic leadership isnt passing these reforms. They just dont want to or at least they dont want it enough.

That sounds cynical, but in this case, the truth is even worse. Its not that Democrats are using the fact that they cant do something they dont want to do as an excuse. The more we look at the actual legal status and powers of the Senate parliamentarian, the more the real situation starts to look like this:

Black points his finger at Jones and says, This is a gun. If you dont do what I say, Ill shoot you! Jones grins from ear to ear and says, In that case, I better do what you say!

As democratic socialist congresswoman Ilhan Omar has pointed out, Elizabeth MacDonough isnt stopping the Democratic leadership from including immigration reform in the reconciliation package.

Responding to Omars tweet, right-wing blowhard Sean Hannity accused her of advocating that the Senate ignore the Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, the budget reconciliation process is only necessary in the first place because of the filibuster. Not only is this not hinted at it in the text of the Constitution, but the framers were quite explicit in opposing any kind of supermajority rule in the Senate. In the decades after the founding, the previous question rule stopped minorities of senators from blocking legislation supported by a majority. An overhaul of the Senate rules later accidentally created the loophole that allowed for a filibuster, but defenders of Southern slavery only started exploiting the loophole decades later. No law never mind any constitutional provision mandates that the Senate maintain the filibuster. Current Senate rules include both the filibuster and the budget reconciliation process as a way around it, but the Senate has the power to change its rules at any time.

Second, even those current rules dont make the parliamentarians judgment about what counts as more than incidental binding. A quick glance at a relevant report from the Congressional Research Service shows that Congresswoman Omar is unambiguously correct: As a staff official, neither parliamentarian is empowered to make decisions that are binding on the House or Senate. The parliamentarians and their deputies/assistants only offer advice that the presiding Representative or Senator may accept or reject . . .

Third, far from being an office specified in the Constitution, the Senate has only hired a parliamentarian to advise the body on interpretive questions about its rules since 1935. Over the last several decades, there have been multiple instances of the vice president, as presiding officer of the Senate, simply ignoring that advice. In 2001, Senate Republicans fired a parliamentarian whose advice they didnt like.

Democrats can evasively mumble about the importance of norms, but you shouldnt buy it. The simple truth is that theyre pretending to be powerless before the nonbinding recommendations of a staffer they could literally fire at any time. Thats grotesque.

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It's Really Not That Hard: Just Ignore the Senate Parliamentarian - Jacobin magazine

Donald Trump hasnt said much about Californias recall election. But Trumpism may be responsible for killing its chances to succeed.

A spate of recent polls show Tuesdays recall headed to defeat, just weeks after likely voters were split on whether to toss out Gov. Gavin Newsom. The difference: Then, Democratic voters were far less engaged or even aware of the fact that Newsom was on the endangered governors list and werent dialed into an off-election-calendar recall vote.

That has changed in part because of what the Newsom supporters are touting as the largest voter outreach plan in the states history.

But lets be real: It would have been a lot harder for Newsom to wake up Democrats if he hadnt received the early Christmas present of Trump-friendly conservative commentator Larry Elder emerging as the leading Republican to replace him. A Berkeley IGS Poll out Friday found that 38% of likely voters backed Elder to replace Newsom, far more than his next closest competitor, Democrat Kevin Paffrath at 10%, or other Republican rivals.

It was one thing for the Newsom campaign to try to cast the recall campaign as Trump-inspired, which it did from before the recall officially began. But Team Newsom wasnt finding a lot of traction in painting his top Republican foes John Cox, Kevin Faulconer and Kevin Kiley as marching in lockstep with Trump. They were either too bland or too moderate in Faulconers case to be mistaken for Trumpists on the order of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Then, on July 12, Elder entered the race. And Newsom found the foil he was seeking.

When the delta variant spiked, and Elder and most other top Republican candidates rejected mask and vaccine requirements as an impingement on personal freedom, Newsom received another gift. During an appearance in Bakersfield this month, Elder promised that as governor he would repeal mask mandates for state workers before I have my first cup of tea.

Our challenge from the start of this thing has been about getting Democrats understanding that this campaign is happening, Newsom consultant Sean Clegg said in San Leandro last week, where Vice President Kamala Harris parachuted in to speak for 11 minutes at a rally for Newsom.

Clegg said that the operating theory of the case from day one was to kind of learn from the mistakes that we experienced here in California when voters recalled Democrat Gov. Gray Davis in 2003.

Then, much of the campaigns narrative was focused on the unpopular Davis who had a 26% pre-recall approval rating while comparatively less critical analysis was trained on political newcomer Arnold Schwarzenegger he of the 100% movie-star name recognition.

This recall was about making the campaign a referendum on the opposition, Clegg said. Not just a kind of a dunking booth exercise on the incumbent.

In Elder, they found someone else to dunk on. Someone who not only held positions far outside the California mainstream, but like Trump wont back down from them. Orrin Heatlie, the retired Yolo County Sheriffs sergeant who initiated the recall drive, compared Elder to a streaker darting across the field naked at a football game.

His friends egged him on to do it (get in the race), the crowd is cheering him on, Heatlie told me, emphasizing that he was speaking as an individual. But he has no business being on the field.

Heatlie said Elder has been a dual-edged sword for those who want to boot Newsom.

He definitely brings the attention to the yes vote, but it also gives the opposition a villain they can focus on, said Heatlie, who has individually endorsed Kiley, a GOP Assembly member from Placer County, to replace Newsom.

The best news of all for the Newsom camp: Elders decades of off-the-cuff Trumpian commentary are preserved in the amber of his radio shows, speeches and writings.

Elder, who would be Californias first Black governor, mused in July that if California was going to talk about reparations the state has a task force that is studying the idea then slaveholders should be eligible for reparations for their financial losses since slaves were legally considered property at the time.

When people talk about reparations, do they really want to have that conversation? Like it or not, slavery was legal, Elder said as a guest on conservative commentator Candace Owens radio show in July. Their legal property was taken away from them after the Civil War, so you could make an argument that the people that are owed reparations are not only just Black people but also the people whose property was taken away after the end of the Civil War.

Some Republicans were frustrated that the more Elder spoke, the more he helped Newsom.

Are we done with this radio talk show host campaign-as-a-PR-stunt thing yet? tweeted Ron Nehring, the former chair of the California Republican Party, who supports former San Diego Mayor Faulconer. This guy Elder delivers ammo to Newsom and the Dems faster than a fleet of C17s heading out of Afghanistan.

On policy, the Newsom team emphasized how out-of-step Elder was on issues like the minimum wage. Elder opposes it. Hes not just against increasing the minimum wage he opposes any minimum wage. For weeks, Newsom has turned that fact into an alarm clock and stuffed it under organized labors pillow with lines like this at the San Leandro rally:

The fight for $15 (an-hour minimum wage)? He doesnt even believe in 15 cents, Newsom said. The governor spent about half of his dozen minutes on stage reciting a litany of Elders positions more time than he spent explaining his own.

That was a marked change from Newsoms campaign theme just a few months earlier, when he kept repeating that California was roaring back from the pandemic. Then the delta variant appeared. And Newsoms roaring back message disappeared.

Even so, Newsoms handling of the pandemic may have saved him. The Berkeley IGS Poll found that 60% of likely voters did not feel that he greatly overstepped his authority as governor in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic a common critique from recall proponents. A Public Policy Institute of California survey last week found that 78% of likely voters thought the government had done at least a good job. Thats a big increase from January, when only 36% felt that way.

Newsom consultant Ace Smith said the governors handling of the pandemic could be a template for other Democrats to emulate in next years midterm races.

The message that should be taken from this campaign is simple, which is dont be timid on COVID, Smith said. The message Democrats should use is Do you want to be safe? Do you want your communities to be safe, you want your schools to stay open? We decided to be bold on it. And frankly, that was the turning point in this campaign when voters saw that there was this clear choice between Newsom and Elder.

Recall organizer Anne Dunsmore said there will be an Elder effect, theres no question about it in this campaign, but that it is too soon to know exactly what it is.

It could be that Elder emboldened the Democratic base. It could be that Elder emboldened more Republicans who think they have a chance to win because he is a very well-known public figure. It could be that hes alienating some of the left-of-center (voters) that we may have been able to capture, Dunsmore told me. We just dont know yet. But there will be an effect.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli

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Larry Elder is the Trumpist who may save Gavin Newsom's job - San Francisco Chronicle

The nature of work has undergone a lot of changes during the pandemic. Millions of office workers began working from home; the service industry has struggled to get workers to come back, and some businesses, like Kickstarter, are now experimenting with four-day workweeks -- without reducing salaries. In Congress, Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., has introduced legislation to make a 32-hour workweek standard.

This "Great Reassessment" of labor feels revolutionary. But we have been here before. In 1933, the Senate passed, and President Franklin Roosevelt supported, a bill to reduce the standard workweek to only 30 hours.

Americans have worked hard, perhaps too hard, since the Colonial era. English and other European colonists often had to work longer and harder on farms here than in the Old World, and a philosophy of working from sunrise to sunset prevailed, according to the Economic History Association. The Massachusetts colony even passed a law requiring a 10-hour minimum workday.

Enslaved people, whose labor profits were stolen, generally worked 10-16 hours a day, six days a week. Some studies estimate that when slavery ended, the hours African Americans spent working fell by 26-35 percent.

In the 1830s, workers in manufacturing were on the job roughly 70 hours a week, often in horrendous and even deadly conditions. By the 1890s that had dropped to about 60 hours. This period also saw the rise of labor unions, the creation of Labor Day as a national holiday, Grand Eight Hours Leagues and the motto "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what you will." At that time, "what you will" did not include Saturday; workweeks were generally six days with only Sunday off.

The eight-hour day picked up in popularity in the decades preceding the Great Depression. Federal workers, railroad workers and Ford Motor Co. employees all moved to eight-hour shifts. CEO Henry Ford first instituted a six-day, 48-hour workweek for male factory workers in 1914, according to History.com. In 1926, a five-day, 40-hour workweek was extended to all employees, along with a pay raise. Ford argued that his employees were more productive in fewer hours; critics were skeptical they could be productive enough to make up the difference.

Then came the stock market crash, the Great Depression and record-high unemployment. After an underwhelming response from President Herbert Hoover, he faced New York Gov. Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 election. Shorter work hours was a major issue among voters, and both candidates had ideas, according to historian Benjamin Hunnicutt in his book "Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the 'Right to Work.'" Roosevelt, a Democrat, pushed federal legislation to establish shorter work hours -- something he had already done at the state level in New York -- while Hoover backed voluntary share-the-work drives. The idea was that if workers had shorter hours, no one would be unemployed, even if everyone ended up making less money, though unions were also pushing for a decent federal minimum wage.

After Roosevelt won the election but before he took office, Sen. Hugo Black, D-Ala., introduced a bill backed by the American Federation of Labor to temporarily shorten the workweek drastically, to only 30 hours -- six hours a day, five days a week. For a while, it had Roosevelt's support, and he began negotiating with business leaders behind closed doors; if they would shorten the workweek to 30 hours voluntarily, then he would go easy on antitrust reforms, he said, according to Hunnicutt.

As soon as Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, he called Congress into a special session -- what would become its most productive streak in history. Over the next 100 days, Roosevelt and his Cabinet guided more than a dozen major bills through the House and Senate, stabilizing the banking system, regulating Wall Street, subsidizing farmers and getting relief checks into the hands of the unemployed.

Amid this flurry, on April 6, the Senate passed Black's 30-hour week bill 53-30 in a bipartisan vote. Supporters claimed it would create 6 million jobs, The Washington Post reported. It was expected to pass the House, and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins was publicly supportive.

Business leader were up in arms. "Instead of looking at the increase in leisure as inevitable or as potentially beneficial," Hunnicutt wrote, they feared that if workers got a taste of a 30-hour week, they would never want to go back, and the law would become permanent. Men of industry held emergency meetings in Chicago and Philadelphia, and Perkins, who also supported a federal minimum wage, was flooded with messages of opposition.

Meanwhile at the White House, as Roosevelt worked on a comprehensive recovery plan, he began to turn against the 30-hour week. What if, rather than sharing available work, there was just more work? As the plan for a massive public-works program took shape, support for the 30-hour week collapsed. Instead, Roosevelt used the threat of it as leverage to get industry leaders to agree to ban child labor, set a modest minimum wage and limit the standard workweek at 40 hours, Hunnicutt wrote.

The resulting National Industrial Recovery Act was a triumph, but one that didn't last. Two years later, in May 1935, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in a decision that so angered Roosevelt he threatened to expand the court.

In 1938, the minimum wage, 40-hour week and child labor ban returned in the form of the Fair Labor Standards Act. This time, Perkins asked Department of Labor lawyers to draft a law that had a better chance of passing judicial scrutiny. And they had another ace in their sleeve - a few months earlier, Roosevelt had nominated his first justice for the Supreme Court. He chose Hugo Black.

For decades, the 40-hour week has endured, but it didn't seem like it would in the beginning. As Joe Pinsker of the Atlantic pointed out in June, many economists once assumed we would be working fewer than 40 hours by now. In 1956, even then-Vice President Richard Nixon predicted a 32-hours, four-day workweek in the "not too distant future."

It hasn't happened yet. In fact, in a 2014 Gallup poll, half of full-time employed respondents reported working 41 hours or more per week; 18 percent said they worked more than 60. Only 8 percent said they worked 39 hours or less.

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That time America almost had a 30-hour work week - theday.com

Most of the conversation to date has focused on reparations in terms of payouts of some form. Prominent authorTa-Nehisi Coates, in a powerful argument for reparations, said payments must be made by white America to Black America much as Germany started paying Israel in 1952to compensate for the persecution of Jews by the Nazis.

As ascholar who has written on economic justice and the labor movement, I agree that reparations must have economic substance, because the impact of racism is inherently linked with power and money. But myresearch suggests another model for reparations: If one of the most significant aspects of slavery even if not the only one was a massive disruption of labor relations, then a crucial part in the reparations discussion could involve reshaping the labor relationship between employers and employees today.

I believe such a reshaping of the labor relationship would substantially benefit the descendants of enslaved people in the United States. Labor, as my research has argued, has implications for all aspects of life and labor reform would, I believe, address many of the problems of structural racism as well. In addition, reshaping the labor relationship would also have positive effects for all working people,including those who experience enslavement today.

Labor relations can be considered distorted when one party profits disproportionally at the expense of another. In other words, it is a departure from a fair days pay for a fair days work a concept that forms a bedrock demand of the labor movement, alongside good working conditions.

This is not just a matter of money but also of power. Under the conditions of slavery, the distortion of labor relations was nearly complete. Slave owners pocketed the profits and claimed absolute power, while slaves had to obey and risk life and limb for no compensation.

Black Americans continue to be disadvantaged in the labor market today. As CEO compensationsoars, the number of Black CEOs remains remarkably low there were just four Black CEOs at Fortune 500 companiesas of March 2021. In general, the wage gap between Black and white employeeshas grown in recent years. Fueling these disparities, as well as building on them, is the structural racism that reparations could be designed to address.

Unionization can be a tool to rebalance labor relations and candiminish this racial gap,studies have shown. But union membership in general and among Black workers in particular has declined in recent decades. And a weaker labor movement is associated with greater racial wage disparity.

Another tool to rebalance labor relations is worker-owned cooperatives, which have along tradition in African American communities, as economist Jessica Gordon Nembhard has noted. From early on, she points out, African Americans realized that without economic justice without economic equality, independence and stability social and political rights were hollow, or actually not achievable. Gordon Nembhards work also shows that such cooperatives were often fought and ultimately destroyed because they were so successful in empowering African American communities.

Some in the labor movement are beginning to link reparations with union rights. Laborlawyer Thomas Geogheganhas suggested that the proposed Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a bill before Congress that would strengthen workers rights and weaken anti-union right-to-work laws, should be viewed as a practical form of Black reparations. He argued inan article for The New Republicthat wealth redistribution through union membership is more permanent and lasting than a check written out as Black reparations, however much deserved, and far more likely to get a return over time.

While there is considerable disagreement about the profits employers should be able to make from the labor of their employees, there is little disagreement about the wrongness of practices like outrightwage theft which today takes the form of employers not paying part or all promised wages or paying less than mandated minimum wage. Even those who rarely worry about employers making too much profit would for the most part likely agree that wage theft is wrong. Agreement on this matter takes us back to slavery, which might be considered the ultimate wage theft.

Addressing the ongoing legacy of slavery and systemic racism requires not only economic solutions but also improving labor relations and protecting workers against wage discrimination, disempowerment at work, and violations such as wage theft thatdisproportionately affect workers of color.

Reparations that fail to pay attention to improving labor relations may not achieve economic equality. The reparations paid to Israel by Germany, for instance, have not helped to achieve economic equality the Israeli economy is still, alongside the U.S.s, among the most unequal in the developed world, with the richest 10% of each countrys population earning more than 15 times that of the poorest.

Simple monetary payouts are not, I believe, sufficient to solve the problem of racial inequality. Wage theft can again serve as the example here. While repaying stolen wages as New York state did in 2018 by returning $35 million to workers is commendable, repaying stolen wages does not in itself change the skewed relationships between employer and employee that enable wage theft in the first place. Greater empowerment of working people is needed to do that.

So while redistributing money can be part of the solution, it may not go far enough.

Tying reparations to the improvement of labor relations which can happen through the empowerment of working people or the promotion of worker-owned cooperatives would not only help those most affected by wealth and employment gaps, Black Americans, it would also benefit others who have traditionally been discriminated againstin employment, such as women, immigrants and many other working people.

Improving labor relations would address systemic racial discrimination where it is often most destructive and painful: at work, where people spend the bulk of their waking hours, and where the economic wellbeing of families and by extension entire communities can be decided.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Slavery was the ultimate labor distortion: Empowering workers today would be a form of reparations - Kansas Reflector

On Labor Day, the Pullman National Monument will open in Chicago, celebrating the role of Black workers in the American labor movement and transforming our nations economy for the better. But theres a dark parallel to the Pullman story, which, unfortunately, is memorialized in the Illinois and United States policy to this day.

In the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War, train companies like Pullman and restaurants based in the South resisted paying newly-freed Black workers. Each industry and the rights of their workers literally ended up taking different paths. Train companies were expanding their reach into the North, especially through the new Pullman sleeper cars, and owner George Pullman was very clear that he wanted to hire formerly enslaved workers because they were accustomed to servitude and would work for rock bottom wages. Both Pullman and restaurant owners invented a new loophole to pay Black workers even less importing the idea of tipping from Europe, which had always been an expression of extra gratitude on top of wages by instead establishing tips as a replacement for wages. In fact, some white restaurant owners actually charged Black workers for the supposed privilege of being able to work for tips.

White unions had already set a precedent for labor organizing among train workers, but refused to organize Black workers among their ranks. Still, because of that and the fact that train work literally connected Black workers to each other and to more radical political networks in the North, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was eventually organized by A. Phillip Randolph as the first Black labor union in the nation. Among other reforms, the union quickly pushed to abandon tipping as a replacement for wages.

Restaurant workers followed a very different path and in 1938, when the first federal minimum wage was established, restaurant workers were among those exempted. They were legally allowed to be paid $0.00 for decades. Eventually, this was codified into a formal subminimum wage which is still law at the federal level, in Illinois and in 42 other states. Restaurant workers are legally paid less-than-full-minimum wage because customers are expected to pay their wages through tips.

This policy, a vestige of slavery, perpetuates racism and sexism across the industry. Today, nationwide, women have to rely on customers for their tips, no matter what. The subminimum wage is responsible for the restaurant industry having the single worst rates of sexual harassment compared to any other industry in the nation. Additionally, Black women tipped restaurant workers earn $4.79 less per hour than their white male colleagues largely because of discrimination in tipping patterns exacerbated by the subminimum wage. These conditions worsened during the pandemic, when tips decreased and health risks, hostility and harassment increased all leading to 53% of all Illinois restaurant workers and 57% of women restaurant workers in IL reporting that theyre considering leaving the industry. Illinois workers were significantly more likely than the national sample to report that a full, stable, livable wage would be the most likely factor to make them stay at their job (84% v 78%); clearly, if we want to let restaurants fully reopen statewide, we must address this direct legacy of slavery immediately.

There is no single museum or monument for the subminimum wage; but this horrid legacy of slavery is memorialized in every restaurant and bar and diner throughout Illinois. And ironically, while our state is helping lift up the positive example of the Pullman worker organizing for fair wages and justice, Illinois continues to perpetuate injustice by maintaining the subminimum wage for restaurant workers. Its a lose-lose proposition; we know that the seven states that have moved to One Fair Wage with tips on top have higher restaurant industry growth, higher small business growth rates and even higher rates of tipping. Everyone does better. And yet our state and our nation continue to prop up a slave-era policy that keeps workers down.

President Biden has been pushing legislation calling for a $15 minimum wage for tipped workers, with tips on top, and recently stated that this is the solution to the industrys staffing crisis. Now more than ever, Illinois needs to follow his lead and pay workers a living wage all while ending this legacy of slavery, especially as restaurant work is more dangerous during Covid and occupancy and tipping are down. Its a win win. We can save the restaurant industry while ensuring that restaurant workers are decently paid, safe and secure. If Illinois really wants to memorialize the leadership of the Pullman workers, it will end the subminimum wage and move to One Fair Wage with tips on top for all.

Fourth Ward Alderman Sophia King

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Op-Ed: We need a living wage to end slavery's legacy and celebrate Labor Day - Hyde Park Herald