The legacy of the UMWA

 In happier times, my home state of West Virginia was known as a union stronghold. This tradition of labor action and struggle goes back to at least 1877, when railroad workers in Martinsburg set off something close to a nationwide general strike. 

It continued as coal miners faced company and government repression, including brutal private mine guards, military intervention, airstrikes, legal injunctions, arrests, and imprisonments.  

On my watch with AFSC, I’ve tried to support the struggles of unions on picket lines and at the policy level, ranging from metal workers to building trades to retail workers to teachers and school service workers. Sometimes things got a little wild.  

I’ve made it an informal but unbreakable rule that whenever a good labor dustup happens within my range to drop everything and show up. I’m probably at least as loyal to unions as to the church I belong to … but if I had to choose between them, all bets are off. 

For people unfamiliar with the labor movement, there are three main kinds of unions: craft unions representing primarily skilled trades; industrial unions representing workers at all skill levels in a sector; and public employee unions such as those representing education workers or government employees. The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. federation of unions, comprises around 60 unions of different types and industries. 

Where I come from, you’ll hear people talk about this or that union, but when they say the union, there’s one they have in mind: the United Mine Workers of America. Coincidentally or not, AFSC has a long history of supporting this union and the workers and communities it represents. Over a century ago, AFSC began providing food assistance and supporting economic alternatives for unemployed miners and their families. More recently, it has supported UMWA members in strikes, legislative struggles, mine safety, and corporate bankruptcies that threaten retirees and surviving family members. 

People outside Appalachia may think of the UMWA, if at all, as a relic of an earlier age and a dying and dirty industry. In fact, even though its membership has dramatically declined over the last decades, it has arguably had the greatest impact on economic justice of any single organization. To the extent there’s still a middle class in this country, much of that is due to its direct and indirect influence.  

The UMWA was founded in 1890 by the merger of the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union. At a time when most unions represented skilled craft workers—mostly white, U.S. born, and male—the new union’s first goal was “to unite in one organization, regardless of creed, color or nationality, all workmen eligible for membership, employed in and around coal mines, coal washers, and coke ovens on the American Continent.” It was thus an early example of an industrial union, one that tried to represent all workers in a sector. 

The union’s progress in West Virginia was slow and sometimes bloody. It was long known that the state was rich in coal and other minerals, but it required the coming of the railroads to make large-scale extraction economically feasible. Outside investors began gobbling up land and mineral rights and displacing mountain families, generally with the support of state politicians.  

Let’s just say the good guys lost that one.  

After wiping out most of the state’s old-growth forests, corporations began building coal camps in isolated mountain communities and instituting a system of total control, including company towns, company stores, company doctors, armed company mine “guards” to enforce obedience up to and including the use of violence, and company-controlled schools and churches. In many cases, workers were paid with company scrip or currency. Those with the temerity to organize or strike faced eviction from company housing, at the very least. 

Companies actively recruited African Americans from the deep South, mostly white locals, and recent European immigrants to the camps. They hoped a “judicious mix” of different ethnicities would prevent union organization. 

They were wrong. 

From Colorado to West Virginia miners struggled, sometimes physically, for the right to organize, with something like guerilla warfare breaking out in my state during the Paint and Cabin Creek areas in 1912-1913. The struggle inspired writer Ralph Chaplin to pen the song “Solidarity Forever,” an international anthem of the working class. More militant struggles followed, including the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest workers’ uprising in American history. So far. 

It wasn’t until the New Deal era that the right of miners to organize was firmly established. For a generation or two… 

And in the 1930s, the UMWA, under the leadership of the theatrical and sometimes confrontational John L. Lewis, launched the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which initiated vast organizing drives in steel, auto, rubber, and other industries. Unafraid to confront the highest levels of authority, he once said “you can’t mine coal with bayonets.” 

During the CIO organizing drive, he proclaimed with characteristic flourish, “Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.” 

These organizing drives eventually won union recognition along with higher wages, better benefits, and improved working conditions for millions of American men and women. These new industrial unions, such as the United Auto Workers (UAW), would become strong financial and political supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. 

This was not lost on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an ardent supporter of the labor movement. In his words, “During the ’30s, wages were a secondary issue; to have a job at all was the difference between the agony of starvation and a flicker of life. The nation, now so vigorous, reeled and tottered almost to total collapse. The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.  

“Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival, but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the ’30s the wave of union organization crested over our nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.” 

The wave that Dr. King spoke of has unfortunately receded over the last 40 years, with devastating consequences. But it remains an example of what can be done when working people act in solidarity. 

So year-round, but especially on May Day and Labor Day, I celebrate the victories and mourn the defeats of the world’s diverse labor unions. However, one union has pride of place. In more ways than one, it lit the way in many dark places. 

(I wrote this piece for Labor Day on AFSC's website.)

The Walking Dead: WV legislature version

 I had to stop watching “The Walking Dead” television show a few years ago. It reminded me too much of real life.

I’m not saying that dead and decomposing people are literally shuffling around eating the living and turning those who get bitten by them into fellow flesh-eating walkers. Not yet anyway, although not much surprises me lately.

But it is the case that harmful policies and ideas that should long ago have been decently buried are shuffling around with considerable alacrity in the Legislature. And they do bite.

One such walker is Senate Bill 59, which would cut down on unemployment insurance for workers who lose their jobs from no fault of their own. A similar bill was defeated and buried last year, but it’s returned from the crypt. As was the case last year, the bill passed the Senate. Last year, fortunately, it died in the House of Delegates. This year, its fate is up for grabs.

The short version is that the bill would increase the number of hoops that people who have lost their jobs or been laid off need to jump through to get a fraction of their usual earnings, possibly threatening their ability to access this lifeline for their families.

If that weren’t bad enough, it also reduces the eligibility period for receiving unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to as little as 12, depending on the state unemployment average.

That’s another problem. West Virginia is a very economically diverse state, with unemployment, poverty and other measures of economic well-being (or the lack of it) varying widely from county to county. A statewide index would basically shackle the majority of rural counties to employment conditions that prevail in more urban and prosperous areas.

Not to pick on Monongalia County, but it’s in a different economic universe than counties like McDowell, Mingo, Logan, Wyoming, Calhoun, Clay, Wirt, etc. Mon and other counties with more economic options shouldn’t set the pace for the entire state.

Further, people laid off from well-paying jobs, such as mining or manufacturing, often take longer to find comparable work with their skill set because of local market conditions.

Let’s play it out a little further. Imagine a machinist or electrician laid off with a reduced term of eligibility. They might well take a job paying much less than a living wage that doesn’t take advantage of their knowledge or skills, while knocking someone else out of a job at the lower end of the market. When employment conditions improve, they’ll drop the old job like a hot potato, simply creating more churning and turnover for their new employer.

The ultimate effect would be to drive down wages for all workers, not to mention cause an economic loss to local economies. Unemployment benefits get spent really quickly on the basics.

These benefits also help ward off other social problems. Research on child well-being shows that economic supports in hard times increase the “protective factors” for kids and families. Every additional $1,000 spent by states on benefits is associated with a reduction in child maltreatment reports, less substantiated child maltreatment and fewer kids in foster care.

A recent study published in Demography, Duke University’s research journal, even found that “the harmful effects of job loss on opioid overdose mortality decline with increasing state unemployment insurance benefit levels. These findings suggest that social policy in the form of income transfers played a crucial role in disrupting the link between job loss and opioid overdose mortality.”

According to the authors, there is “a growing body of evidence that [unemployment insurance] may mitigate the harmful effects of job loss on physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes. They concluded that “cuts to social welfare benefits such as [unemployment insurance] have second-order effects on outcomes such as health that extend well beyond basic financial needs.”

All of which is to say that being poor and unemployed isn’t nearly as much fun as some rich people seem to think.

To be fair, sometimes well-meaning people confuse unemployed workers with those not in the labor force and think cutting unemployment insurance will boost labor force participation. They are actually two different populations. The labor force consists of all workers, including those who recently lost jobs through no fault of their own.

If the intent is to boost labor market participation, rather than just stick it to families that hit a rough spot, there are better ways to do that, some of which have been proposed as bills in this session. One obvious step in the right direction would be increasing state investments in child care, which can cost more than a college education and typically hit at a time when a family’s earning capacity hasn’t reached full bloom.

Another would be to support policies such as a Medicaid buy-in that would help lower wage workers keep health benefits if they have a chance to get a raise. Or West Virginia could join the number of states that offer refundable child tax credits or earned income tax credits.

Incredibly, while some state lawmakers support cutting assistance for the jobless, others have called for setting aside $500 million in American Rescue Plan money intended to help families and communities with the damage done by COVID to give away as corporate handouts to mostly out-of-state corporations.

It’s a question of priorities. Are we going to stand beside a coal miner’s daughter whose dad gets a layoff notice from the mine, or are we going to turn our back on them?

(This ran as a column/op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Let's not "gig" working families

There are lots of ways working people can be deprived of their rights on the job. They can be discriminated against on the basis of race, nationality, religion, sex, sexual orientation, etc.

They can be denied pay for overtime, a practice known as wage theft. They can be cheated out of break- and mealtimes. They can be deprived of their rights to associate and organize.

They can be compelled to work under unsafe conditions. They can have promised benefits, such as pensions, taken away.

But maybe the worst way to abuse working people is to deny that they are workers at all.

Unfortunately, that’s just what Senate Bill 528, now making its way through the West Virginia Legislature, does. Titled the “Creating Uniform Worker Classification Act,” the bill comes straight from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded group that cranks out model state legislation that benefits big donors.

SB 528 allows businesses to reclassify workers as “independent contractors.” And that makes all the difference.

While U.S. and West Virginia labor laws are pretty weak compared to other economically advanced nations, state and federal laws do provide some protection for employees, sometimes including legal remedies.

By allowing companies to classify workers as independent contractors, this bill would take those protections away.

For example, an employee injured on the job is generally eligible for workers’ compensation. Independent contractors are not.

When employees lose jobs through no fault of their own, they’re entitled to unemployment insurance. Independent contractors are not.

Employees are protected to a degree by anti-discrimination laws (although West Virginia has yet to enact state anti-discrimination legislation based on sexual orientation). Independent contractors are not.

It’s tough to do these days, but employees have the legal right to organize unions and bargain collectively. Contractors don’t.

In the case of programs like Social Security and Medicare, costs for retirement and post-retirement health care are jointly paid for by the employer and the employee. Independent contractors are totally on their own.

Supporters of such legislation claim this will help facilitate the so-called “gig economy,” (a term that makes me think, perhaps appropriately, of the practice of stabbing or “gigging” frogs with barbed, pitchfork-like spears to harvest their legs for food).

The non-frog version refers to those parts of a workforce based on temporary and often short-term engagements. While there are people, generally those with specialized skills in high demand, who fit this profile, being reclassified as an independent contractor is a losing proposition for most working people.

According to the National Employment Law Center, SB 528, if enacted, would “allow employers in any industry to easily convert virtually any worker into an independent business, simply by presenting the worker with a take-it-or-leave-it contract that may not reflect the actual relationship between the parties.” Examples might include people working in home health care, construction, transportation, retail, etc.

The measure doesn’t just undermine workers’ rights and labor standards. The law center also cites research showing this kind of reclassification actually would result in lost revenue while also putting responsible employers at a disadvantage.

So is it possible to legitimately distinguish between an employee and a real independent contractor? In a word, yes.

Fortunately, there’s such a thing as an “ABC test,” according to which people may be fairly classified as independent contractors if they are outside the control of the hiring entity, the work they perform is outside the hiring entity’s usual business and the contractors are customarily engaged in this kind of work. That’s a sensible approach and one that should be allowed to stand.

West Virginia’s working families are having a hard enough time getting by these days. They certainly don’t need to be “gigged” by this kind of trick.

It’s bad enough when it happens to frogs.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

West Virginia's construction workers deserve better

In 2016, the West Virginia Legislature repealed the state’s prevailing wage law, which set pay standards for workers on public construction projects.

The intent of prevailing wage laws was to prevent these projects from turning into a race to the bottom, with out-of-state contractors profiting at the public expense by underbidding local businesses and importing low wage, low skill workers laboring under unsafe conditions.

The idea for that kind of legislation didn’t come from a bunch of labor radicals. Rather it was the brainchild of two Republican U.S. senators, James J. Davis of Pennsylvania and Robert L. Bacon of Long Island, New York.

In 1927, Bacon was angered to learn that an Alabama contractor won a bid to build a veteran’s hospital in his district, bringing in poorly treated workers to do the job. In his words, they were “herded onto this job, they were housed in shacks, they were paid a very low wage, and ... it seems to me that the federal government should not engage in construction work in any state and undermine the labor conditions and the labor wages paid in that state.”

In his view, setting locally based wage standards for public projects would ensure fairness and allow local and distant contractors to compete for bids on an equal basis.

Davis believed that the government had a responsibility to “comply with the local standards of wages and labor prevailing in the locality where the building construction is to take place.”

Their legislation, known as the Davis-Bacon Act, was passed in congress in 1931 and became the model for state prevailing wage laws, including the one that used to protect West Virginia’s workers and contractors.

Opponents of the legislation, who, as far as I can tell, are also opponents of working people generally, argued that repealing the legislation would save taxpayers money.

For example, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, argued at the time that “without prevailing wage, you could build five schools for the price of three.” He also claimed that the repeal would save the state $200-300 million annually.

If that really happened, the state would have a huge budget surplus. Instead, the governor has ordered $100 million in cuts due to a budget shortfall.

And the School Building Authority reported in 2017 that, while workers’ wages had gone down on school projects since repealing prevailing wage, “the overall cost of school construction does not reflect a reduction of overall construction costs on SBA projects at this time. At this time the SBA is not realizing an overall savings that would allow for the construction of ‘five new schools for the price of three,’ as some have previously claimed.”

What did go down were the inflation-adjusted wages of carpenters, electricians and operating engineers.

I find it particularly disturbing that repealing prevailing wage seems to have reduced the number of younger workers in apprenticeship programs. In 2016, there were over 5,400 active apprentices. By 2018, that number dropped to 4,400.

That’s 1,000 fewer people likely to earn a living wage with the kinds of benefits it takes to raise a family with a degree of economic stability — a real loss to many struggling communities.

Worse still is the decline in worker safety. On-the-job construction injuries increased by 26 percent since repeal, according to a study from Michael Kelsay, economics professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Frank Manzo, of the Midwest Economic Policy Institute. The study was commissioned by the Affiliated Construction Trades and the West Virginia State Building Trades Council.

According to the report, “Costs associated with worksite injuries and an overall decrease in worker productivity have offset any savings from lower labor costs, resulting in public school construction costs that are not statistically different since prevailing wage was repealed, even after adjusting for inflation.”

Then there’s the hit to local businesses. The shift from union to non-union contractors winning construction bids opens the door for a larger share of out-of-state firms “performing work on taxpayer-funded school projects, and taking their earnings back with them to their home states upon project completion.”

Any way you look at it, repealing our prevailing wage law was a bad deal for West Virginians. It’s time for the Legislature to undo the damage.

(This appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Talking points for WV teachers and public employees

When it comes to a decent income and benefits, you may hear a lot of “We can’t afford it.” The question is “We who?” Here are some talking points:

1. Since 2007, WV has cut state taxes by over $400 million per year. “We” could have done any number of things with that, including treating working people right;

2. Over $200 million of those cuts went to business through eliminating the business franchise tax and reducing the corporate net income tax. That was more than enough to pay for debt free two and four-year college for every student at state institutions.

3. Those business tax cuts were supposed to create jobs. They didn’t. We have fewer private sector jobs in WV now than we did 10 years ago.

4. Those business tax cuts were supposed to “pay for themselves.” They didn’t. They never have.
5. What works, on the other hand, is having an educated workforce and a decent quality of life to attract and keep people here.

6. You may hear that “We have to live within our means.” Here’s the deal: our “means” aren’t caused by fate. Unlike a teacher or public employee, the state legislature decides how much income it gets.

7. State legislators get to decide to reduce income (tax cuts) or increase income (things like increasing the severance tax, rolling back some unproductive corporate tax cuts, a modest sales tax on sugary drinks, etc. West Virginia could be a failed state or one that invests in its people.

8. Incredibly, the legislature is pondering yet more unproductive tax cuts, including the business machinery tax on certain industries (mostly based out of state) and massive giveaways to the gas industry.

9. The legislature is even moving to cut SNAP food assistance for low income people, which includes many public employees. Even worse things are rolling down from the federal level.

10. Teachers and public employees in recent weeks have made a lot of progress in pressuring politicians to do the right thing and in gaining public support. This is no time to slow down or stop. It’s pretty much now or never.

Last word goes to escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass: “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

Some words of Dr. King to consider in WV

 (Image by way of wikipedia. Circa 1963.)

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.

Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.” —Martin Luther King, speaking about right-to-work laws in 1961

Different day, different rant, different paper, same old (fill in the blank)

This op-ed of mine about drastic changes to WV's insurance program for public employees ran today in the Gazette-Mail.

If you work for a living in West Virginia AND if you sometimes feel like there’s a target painted on your back these days, there’s at least a little good news: you’re probably not clinically paranoid.

Construction workers and apprentices have been targeted in efforts to repeal the state’s prevailing wage on public construction projects. Last year, some safety measures for underground coal miners were rolled back. Union workers in the private sector — and their non-union counterparts — will take a major hit if the misnamed “right to work” bill gets pushed through.

Next up: public employees and their families.

Around 233,000 West Virginians, or almost 13 percent of the state population, receive health care through the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA). This includes eligible state workers, their dependents, and retirees as well as some county and city employees.

We’re talking state troopers, teachers and school service personnel, educators and others in the state college and university system, corrections officers, highway workers, local law enforcement, social service providers, etc.

They are now facing $120 million in “draconian” benefit cuts. These include higher co-pays, out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles and all that. Retirees on fixed incomes could be among those hit the hardest.

(Historical note: Draco, from whom the term “draconian” is derived, was an Athenian lawmaker of the 7th century BC known for his harshness. Under his system, you could get killed for stealing a cabbage. When asked why his laws were so brutal, he said that if he could think of a penalty harsher than death, he’d have used it. But I digress…)

Republican legislative leaders are apparently angry that the PEIA board recommended that the Legislature appropriate money to cushion the blow. Some have tried to shift the blame to the “bad decisions” and “poor management” of the board itself.

That dog, in the parlance of our time, don’t hunt.

Really it seems to come down to basic arithmetic:

•  The number of people covered increases every year (over 3,600 since 2011).

•  Health care inflation has gone up by no less than six percent per year (around $60 million annually some years).

•  The Legislature hasn’t voted to put any additional funding into the system since 2011.

•  Since 2011, PEIA relied on reserves to make up the difference. That’s no longer possible since these are now at their lowest legal minimum.

By law, PEIA premiums are set at 80 percent for the employer and 20 percent for the employee. They can’t legally raise premium rates unless funding is increased to meet that ratio.

One obvious partial solution would be to increase taxes on tobacco products, a measure that has been proposed by the likes of both longtime Republican delegate Frank Deem and Senate Minority Leader (and candidate for governor) Jeff Kessler.

Unlike health care costs, taxes on tobacco haven’t gone up since 2003.

It remains to be seen whether that measure will gain any traction with the leadership in the coming session.

Meanwhile, it’s no wonder that with low pay and lowering benefits it’s going to be hard to get and keep motivated employees.

MetroNews reported in December that there were nearly 600 teacher vacancies in West Virginia. In this time of transition, we need good teachers more than ever. At this rate, though, more and more young and talented teachers will leave the state.

Corrections officers are paid near poverty wages and frequently have to work double shifts with forced overtime in very stressful conditions, a situation that has led to high turnover and hundreds of unfilled vacancies. Those are just two examples.

It’s good to remember that the people who will be affected by these cuts put their lives on the line every day for public safety, pour out all they have to educate our children, keep our cars moving, care for our vulnerable families, and run our public parks and libraries and more. They pay taxes, too. Some have spent their lives in public service and now are fearful of not being able to make ends meet in their elder years.

They deserve better.

Are West Virginians overpaid? Some people seem to think so

This op-ed of mine on prevailing wage appeared in today's Gazette:

I remember a bumper sticker that said “Drive like hell — you’ll get there.” I can’t vouch for its theological veracity but I get the sentiment. More generally, if we head in certain directions, there is a danger of actually getting there.

One such place some state leaders seem intent on racing to is the bottom. And they just might succeed.

This represents something of a sea change. Once upon a time, West Virginia’s politicians, with varying degrees of sincerity, at least pretended to care about working people. They’d talk about how hard they were working to ensure that workers here could earn a decent living to support their families.

A new crop of leaders, some of whom are quite well off, seems to be haunted day and night by the nagging fear that our working families are living too high on the hog. And they’re on the case.

The target of the moment is people who work in construction, although it’s anybody’s guess as to who will be next.

Here’s the deal: government is a major procurer of construction projects for things like schools, roads, bridges, public buildings, etc. — things the so-called free market doesn’t provide on its own.

Beginning in the 1930s, state and federal legislators, many of whom were Republicans, took steps to ensure that the wages paid on these projects didn’t undermine the local standard of living by granting contracts to fly-by-night low-wage contractors who often performed shoddy work under unsafe conditions.

This involved surveying the local labor market to determine what typical compensation was for given types of skilled labor. The wages that “prevailed” in a given area for nonresidential construction work became the basis for prevailing wage laws.

Contrary to rumor, local prevailing wage laws don’t guarantee public works projects go exclusively to union or even local contractors. They do, however, help ensure a well-trained and productive labor force and contractors who compete on the basis of efficiency, productivity and quality.

There are several differences between government procurement practices and how things work in the private sector. First, the jobs often require differing degrees of skill and training. It’s one thing to have someone switch out the motor of your attic fan or put on a barn roof. It’s another to wire a school or build a bridge that hundreds of thousands of people will drive over. Construction workers in public sector projects typically undergo a thorough period of apprenticeship and training.

Skilled workers can indeed earn wages and benefits that seem pretty healthy … until you recall that public construction jobs generally are temporary and don’t last all year. Typical workers in the building trades may have work for 44 weeks per year or less. And when they don’t work, they don’t get paid.

Further, private consumers can weigh many factors when making purchasing decisions. Most readers, for example, probably don’t always buy the cheapest available food, live in the cheapest possible shelter, and dress their children as cheaply as possible unless they have to. Governments, however, generally are required to select the lowest bid.

If you remove or weaken prevailing wage standards, you put pressure on contractors to cut back on training programs, wages, health care, pensions and possibly safety.

According to Steve Lyons of the Wisconsin Contractor Coalition, an association of 450 private businesses in that state, this can set up all kinds of long-range problems. “As contractors reduce their training costs, apprenticeship training declines. As apprenticeship training declines, qualifications and productivity of the construction labor force declines.”

“Prevailing wage laws allow contractors to include long-run costs of creating and maintaining a skilled, experienced and safe construction labor force in their public bids, if the private sector in the area on similar projects is paying those long-run costs as well. Studies repeatedly prove that well-trained, safe and efficient construction workers provide value to taxpayers and do not raise public construction costs.”

We do know that West Virginia’s prevailing wage law hasn’t driven up the cost of construction on public projects. Our state compares favorably to non-prevailing wage states like Virginia and North Carolina on school construction costs and is well within the range of other mid-Atlantic states.

During the last legislative session, the new Republican majority first attempted to repeal the state’s prevailing wage law but eventually seemed to agree on compromise legislation that raised the threshold and changed the way wages were calculated. Last month, they were outraged with the way Workforce WV attempted to comply with the law, presumably because it didn’t guarantee enough of a pay cut.

The latest development is pretty unprecedented. Republican legislative leaders have subpoenaed Workforce WV to search for emails revealing the influence of “outside interest.” I’m pretty sure that these “outside interests,” if there are any, are actually West Virginians who may have communicated with a public agency. Sometimes you’ll have that in a democracy.

By contrast, model legislation to gut the prevailing wage came straight from the playbook of the ultimate outsider group, i.e. ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), a corporate-funded national effort to influence state policies in the interest of the very wealthy.

I find it baffling that in a state where too many families are struggling to make ends meet, some politicians are trying to drag people down instead of build them up. I don’t know how successful they will be in the short run, but such divisive policies aren’t likely to make for a happy future.

I’m reminded of a quote from the Book of Proverbs: “He that troubles his own house shall inherit the wind.”

Water and workers

El Cabrero got snowed in today, but a lot has been going on at the capitol. Early this morning, citizens urged the Republican legislature to keep water protections.

Meanwhile, West Virginia got another reminder about what can happen to our water. This afternoon, a train carrying crude oil derailed in rural Kanawha County. According to the Gazette, at least 14 tanks are on fire and some have exploded. There is now burning oil on the Kanawha River.

Water intakes for the communities of Montgomery and Cedar Grove were turned off because of the accident, according to a release from the state Department of Health and Human Resources. While the intakes are off, customers are asked to conserve water, according to the release.

ANOTHER IT'S NOT ALL BAD REMINDER. Despite the snowstorm, a huge crowd of workers and citizens showed up today to protest attacks by the Republican legislature on the rights of working people. One Facebook  friend of mine called it "a sea of Carhardt..."

Preserving WV's prevailing wage law

This op-ed on mine appeared in yesterday's Sunday Gazette Mail:

The new leaders of West Virginia’s Republican-controlled legislature have made jobs and economic prosperity a top priority. That being the case, I hope that some will reconsider support for a bill that would take money out of the pockets of the state’s working families and local businesses.

The issue in question is West Virginia’s prevailing wage law, which sets pay standards for workers on public construction projects. The idea is to prevent these projects from turning into a race to the bottom, with out-of-state contractors profiting at the public expense by underbidding local businesses and importing low-wage, low-skill workers laboring under unsafe conditions.

Maybe a little history might help. Many state prevailing wage laws were modeled on or influenced by the 1931 federal Davis-Bacon Act, which bears the name of two Republican senators, James J. Davis of Pennsylvania and Robert L. Bacon of Long Island, New York.

Neither was anything remotely resembling a labor radical. Bacon was a banker and decorated military officer who served in World War I, while Davis served in the cabinets of Republican Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.

Bacon got on the case in 1927, when an Alabama contractor got a bid to build a veteran’s hospital in Long Island and imported poorly treated workers from that state. According to Bacon, these workers were “herded onto this job, they were housed in shacks, they were paid a very low wage, and . . . it seems to me that the federal government should not engage in construction work in any state and undermine the labor conditions and the labor wages paid in that state.”

He believed that a prevailing wage policy leveled the playing field:

“If the local contractor is successful in obtaining the bid, it means that local labor will be employed because that local contractor is going to continue in business in that community after the work is done. If an outside contractor gets the contract, and there is no discrimination against the honest contractor, it means that he will have to pay the prevailing wages, just like the local contractor.”

According to Davis, the least the government could do in such cases “is comply with the local standards of wages and labor prevailing in the locality where the building construction is to take place.”

Davis and Bacon believed their bill would help local workers and communities because wages on public projects wouldn’t be slashed by contractors who had to compete against those using cheap labor.

West Virginia’s prevailing wage law has been in place for decades and has promoted generally harmonious relations between contractors, construction workers, and building trades organizations. It has also encouraged the development of apprenticeship programs that help young people build skills for lifelong careers in a state where workforce participation is a critical issue. It has promoted high quality work, boosted productivity, reduced turnover, and promoted safety on the job.

Some of the most eloquent voices in favor of keeping the law in place are owners of construction firms. One CEO was recently quoted in the media as saying that “Loss of wage to our own people, and that wage going out of state, I just can’t understand how any legislator can explain that to his constituents.”

Opponents of the prevailing wage system basically want to reduce the wages of working people in a state where incomes are already among the lowest in the nation.

The Koch-brother supported Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia issued a report in 2009 that argued that prevailing wage laws artificially inflate wages for some workers. The study’s methodology has been characterized as flawed by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and others because it conflates data with construction wages in the home construction sector with those in the nonresidential sector.

Meanwhile, other studies, such as those by Michael Kelsey of the University of Missouri and the Keystone Research Center, compared states with and without prevailing wage laws. They concluded that West Virginia’s public construction costs are not out of line with other states and are under some without prevailing wage laws. They have also found numerous public benefits, such as those mentioned above.

I think it’s pretty simple. West Virginians win when our friends and neighbors earn a living wage with decent benefits and can provide for their children and families while building up our public infrastructure, paying taxes and contributing to our communities.

It’s great that legislative leaders want to put West Virginia back to work. I just hope we can find a way to build the state up without pulling our people down.

Social studies project

Just in time for Labor Day, here's the latest edition of The State of Working West Virginia. This report is the sixth in so many years and the theme this time is From Weirton Steel to Wal-Mart, the former having once been WV's largest employer while the latter, sadly, now holds that distinction. I worked in this with friends from the WV Center on Budget and Policy. The musical soundtrack as got to be Springsteen.

AND ON THAT NOTE, here's Robert Reich on how workers can get a fair shake in today's economy. Yeah, it'll take a lot of work.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Shook up

Dammit. West Virginia hardly ever gets anything remotely resembling an earthquake (if you don't count industrial disasters) and I missed this one. Just to be clear, I wouldn't want to experience a big one, but it would have been nice to notice a little one if it actually happened.

I've tried to figure out where I was at 1:51 yesterday afternoon and think it was driving in my old car. The vehicle in question (US and union made by the way) has around 300,000 miles on it and is pretty shaky pretty much all the time. It would have had to have been on an entirely different level of magnitude for me to feel it in that bucket.

Still, one can't be too careful about things like earthquakes. Just for safety's sake, a sacrifice to the Greek god Poseidon might be in order since he has jurisdiction over such things. He's pretty grumpy and it's never a bad idea to stay on his good side.

STANDING WITH WORKERS. Here's what I'm planning on doing Thursday.

BEYOND AUSTERITY. Here are some different ideas for boosting the economy.

HUMANS AND KANGAROOS. Yes, we're cousins. But not very close ones.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Who knew?

This one doesn't have a sign. Image by way of wikipedia.

Ordinarily, the Huntington WV Herald-Dispatch isn't all that interesting, but earlier this week a story caught my eye. It seems that two people were arrested for taking a motorized shopping scooter for a little ride on US Route 60 from a Wal-Mart to a local strip club at around 1:40 in the morning. A drink or two may have been involved.

I don't know about this one. It only seems fair to me that if Wal-Mart doesn't want you taking their scooters and tooling around on them on major roadways to strip clubs in the middle of the night after tossing down a few, they ought to have a sign telling you that straight out.

I mean, gee, without a sign like that how would you know? It could happen to anybody.

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE. Here's good background on why Congress needs to act now to extend benefits.

PLEASE READ THIS. It helps to explain why extending unemployment insurance is so important.

WHAT HE SAID. Here's a cool rant about the economy by a friend of mine.

PLUTOCRACY, USA.

FILE 13. Economist Dean Baker thinks the deficit commission report should go there.

MASSEYLAND. The tug of war between Massey Energy and MSHA just got extended.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CAUSE WHY? AND STUFF ON "FREE" TRADE

Caption: This turkey hen blames global warming on Thanksgiving.

The guiding thread through this week's Goat Rope is a series of musings on how people explain events. If this is your first visit, please scroll down to yesterday's post.

Have you ever noticed that after something really bad happens, the media goes into overdrive, reporting the facts and then bringing in an endless stream of talking heads to explain Why It Happened?

(I dare you to diagram that sentence.)

Sometimes people say the darndest things, whether there is any real evidence for them or not. Sometimes the talking heads use these opportunities to score political or propaganda points.

The classic example was the chat between Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on the 700 Club after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when Falwell said

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

I remember a conversation I had in the 90s about youth violence with someone who blamed the teaching of evolution in schools. At the time, I gently tried to suggest that most perpetrators were probably not too well versed in the neo-Darwinian synthesis.

Right wingers don't have a monopoly here either. Last week I received a statement blaming the VT massacre on the capitalist system.

Two thoughts come to mind. First, anybody can attribute the causation of anything to anything...and usually does. Second, anything can be predicted after the fact. When we move beyond shooting for explanations from the hip, it's a little more complicated. And often a little less certain.

About which more next time.

TRADE TALKS STALLED. The New York Times had an interesting article this weekend about how the issue of labor rights is stalling further action on new "free" trade deals in the US House. Short version: the majority wants them in and the administration wants them out.

I trust we need not pause to allow readers to recover from the shock....

Sample from the middle of the piece:

At issue is the Democratic demand that pending trade deals with Colombia, Panama, Peru and South Korea include a provision guaranteeing certain rights for labor in the trading partner countries, including a ban on child and slave labor and the right to organize.

In addition, the Democrats want the accords to endorse general labor protections adopted by the International Labor Organization, like the right to organize.

The Bush administration, backed by business groups, contends that this Democratic demand could lead to trading partners suing to overturn basic American labor practices, like teenage summer jobs or work on farms, or the practice in some American states of prisoners making consumer goods.

Probably the real issues the administration doesn't want uppity foreigners, many of whom are un-American, to remind it that many workers in this country are effectively denied the right to organize due to weak protections for workers.

The most amusing part of the article was a comment by National Association of Manufacturers president John Engler, who said “For state constitutions or laws to be subject to a foreign nation’s challenge would be unacceptable."

Mr. Engler chose to ignore the fact that under NAFTA and related trade deals, democratic decisions by state and local governments can already be overturned if they are considered unfair to foreign investors, but not if they are unfair to workers.

This should be interesting.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED