Class warfare

Paul Waldman in The American Prospect:

These are not good times for American workers. Real wages are lower today than they were before the recession of 2001, and barely higher than they were thirty-five years ago. Health insurance is more expensive and harder to obtain than ever before. Manufacturing jobs continue to move overseas. The unions whose efforts might arrest these trends continue to struggle under a sustained assault that began when Ronald Reagan fired striking air-traffic controllers in 1981, in effect declaring war on the labor movement.

This is a story with which you are probably familiar. But these are in no small part symptoms of a larger transformation of the relationship between employers and employees, in which Americans increasingly sign away their humanity when they sign an employment contract.

Let’s take just one component of today’s work environment that most people have simply come to accept: drug testing. An article published last year on Time magazine's web site titled, "Whatever Happened to Drug Testing?" reported that in the last decade, the proportion of employers testing their employees for drug use has declined to 62 percent, after having exploded to over 80 percent in the 1990s.

That's right -- "only" 62 percent of employers make their employees pee into a cup (or fork over a lock of hair, the current state of the art). The recent decline notwithstanding, the fact remains that most Americans work at places where drug testing is standard practice.

Bush To Veto Children's Health Insurance

It seems that not a day goes by without more evidence emerging that the Bush Administration is without human conscience. The New York Times has the story:

The White House said on Saturday that President Bush would veto a bipartisan plan to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program, drafted over the last six months by senior members of the Senate Finance Committee.

The vow puts Mr. Bush at odds with the Democratic majority in Congress, with a substantial number of Republican lawmakers and with many governors of both parties, who want to expand the popular program to cover some of the nation’s eight million uninsured children.

The program expires on September 30. Last year, some 7.4 million children were, at some point, covered by it. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill Bush will veto would reduce the number of uninsured children by 4.1 million.

So, why would Bush want to deny 4.1 million children health insurance coverage? According to a White House spokesman, part of the reason is that it would be funded through an increased cigarette tax. Another reason:

“The proposal would dramatically expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program, adding nonpoor children to the program, and more than doubling the level of spending,” Mr. Fratto said. “This will have the effect of encouraging many to drop private coverage, to go on the government-subsidized program.”

Because we all know that nonpoor children can easily afford private health insurance. This is the 2007 Health and Human Services Poverty Guideline:

Persons in Family or Household	48 Contiguous States and D.C.	Alaska	Hawai
1	$ 10,210	$12,770	$11,750
2	13,690	17,120	15,750
3	17,170	21,470	19,750
4	20,650	25,820	23,750
5	24,130	30,170	27,750
6	27,610	34,520	31,750
7	31,090	38,870	35,750
8	34,570	43,220	39,750
For each additional person, add	3,480	4,350	4,000

Now, consider that any families making more than that are considered by the Bush Administration as too affluent to need public health insurance for their children. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compared the relative benefits of public and private health insurance plans. This was their conclusion:

All children covered by Medicaid and SCHIP receive relatively comprehensive health benefits, including preventive and primary medical care, inpatient and outpatient care, laboratory and x-ray services, prescription drugs, and immunizations. Almost all publicly-insured children have coverage for dental, vision and mental health care. (Medicaid standards are more rigorous and require that these services be available for children. They are not required in SCHIP, but most states do cover them.) In comparison, private health insurance benefits vary widely and are typically less comprehensive. Many private plans do not offer dental or vision care, services that are important for children, and some low-cost private plans do not even offer basic services like prescription drugs or preventive care.

The bottom line is this: to the Bush Administration, protecting the tobacco industry and the private health insurance industry is more important than protecting the health of children. Moral values, and family values, indeed.

American Corporations Worse Than China On Labor Rights

Harold Meyerson, in The American Prospect:

Beyond the Starbucks of Shanghai, the China of workers and peasants is a sea of unrest, roiled by thousands of strikes and protests that the regime routinely represses. Cognizant that they need to do something to quell the causes of unrest, some of China's rulers have entertained modest changes to the country's labor law. The legislation wouldn't allow workers to form independent trade unions or grant them the right to strike -- this is, after all, a communist regime. It would, however, require employers to provide employees, either individually or collectively, with written contracts. It would allow employees to change jobs within their industries or get jobs in related industries in other regions; employers have hitherto been able to thwart this by invoking statutes on proprietary information. It would also require that companies bargain with worker representatives over health and safety conditions....

As documented by Global Labor Strategies, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization headed by longtime labor activists, the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and the U.S.-China Business Council embarked on a major campaign to kill these tepid reforms. Last April, one month after the legislation was first floated, the chamber sent a 42-page document to the Chinese government on behalf of its 1,300 members -- including General Electric, Microsoft, Dell, Ford, and dozens of other household brand names -- objecting to these minimal increases in worker power. In its public comments on the proposed law, GE declared that it strongly preferred "consultation" with workers to "securing worker representative approval" on a range of its labor practices.

Based on a second draft of the law, completed in December, it looks like American businesses have substantially prevailed. Key provisions were weakened; if an employer elects not to issue written contracts, workers are guaranteed only the wages of similar employees -- with the employer apparently free to define who, exactly, is similar. Business is relieved: Facing "increased pressure to allow the establishment of unions in companies," Andreas Lauff, a Hong Kong-based corporate attorney, wrote in the January 30 Financial Times, "comments from the business community appear to have had an impact." The new draft "scaled back protections for employees and sharply curtailed the role of unions."