Trump for the working class..

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Trump for the working class, right? 

One of the biggest forces behind this trend in which the gains of productivity increases are going to management and shareholders rather than labor is the rise of shareholder capitalism, which has been enabled by a political weakening of worker rights, as well as globalization. 

Workers went on strike at Momentive last November hoping to fight off a new contract that would have slashed their healthcare and retirement benefits. The industrial action started in the white-hot heat of the election, and many of Momentive’s workers voted for Donald Trump, whose appeal to blue-collar workers helped Trump comfortably beat Hillary Clinton in Saratoga County, Waterford’s district.

The plant has another tie to Trump. Since it was sold by General Electric in 2006, one of its major investors has been Blackstone, the private equity firm run by Stephen Schwarzman, Donald Trump’s billionaire “jobs czar”. He is one of six billionaires – including the largest shareholder, Leon Black of Apollo Global – listed as Momentive backers. Between them they have a personal fortune of $24.6bn.

“I would pray to God that Donald Trump would reconsider what he is doing and have a talk with some of these people, especially Mr Schwarzman, about what is going on here in Waterford,” Dominick Patrignani, president of the IUE/CWA Local 81359 union, told the Times Union as negotiations unfolded. “We are extremely concerned with the loss of jobs, and this guy is supposed to be the new czar of job creation and growth.”

Now, after 105 days on strike and a tense, highly public battle, the billionaires have won. Momentive’s workers returned to the factory last week following a few days of “sensitivity training” to help them work with “scab” labour brought in to cover during the strike. The deal they struck has left many of them unhappy and worried about not just their futures but those of the many workers in similar situations across the US who contacted them during the strike.

“I was naive to this. I didn’t realise they were doing this all across the country,” said Robert Hohn, a Momentive employee for 16 years. The new deal leaves Hohn with an uncertain future as he attempts to cope with already outsized medical bills for his disabled wife. “We are not looking to own boats and yachts and stuff like that. We are looking to pay our mortgage. We are looking to send our kids and our grandkids to college. That’s all we are looking for it’s just something basic, simple, the everyday American dream needs.”

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Mack is not a Trump supporter, the president has lived his life “as if he’s playing Monopoly”, he says. But many of his colleagues, he estimates 80%, including Hohn, are and remain so. For them, this is just the latest erosion of workers’ rights at Momentive since GE sold it. It hasn’t much mattered whether a Democrat or a Republican was in the White House – the common denominator has been that each time, management won and the workers lost.

Workers complain that successive CEOs have negotiated worse contracts and left shortly after with a big bonus. In 2008, Momentive slashed production workers’ wages by 25%-50%. In 2013 the company froze pensions for workers younger than 50. This time they came after healthcare, especially retiree healthcare.

'I was naive': after losing healthcare battle, factory workers fear next blow | US news | The Guardian

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President Trump sat down Wednesday for an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, and Carlson asked him to respond to criticisms that the Republican health care plan favors the healthy and hurts most of the voters who supported his election. Trump didn’t hesitate to agree that that is exactly what it does.

Trump admits his health care plan would benefit rich investors, screw over people who voted for him

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As Matt Yglesias writes, “Trump is delivering, fundamentally, what the business community wants: a light regulatory touch, a business-friendly Supreme Court, and progress toward a big tax cut. … That means turning a blind eye to Trump’s financial conflicts of interest, erratic behavior, and dishonesty while accepting his various doses of xenophobia, Islamophobia, and racism as the electioneering gambits that deliver the goods.””

President Trump appears unable to make a substantive case for the AHCA - Vox

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Chad Trador was, like many people here, a onetime coal miner struggling to find work. He, his three children and his wife stayed afloat in a tough economy for years, but after he was laid off from his job managing a convenience store, the unemployment epidemic in this region appeared to have finally reached him, too. “The best opportunities I had were another convenience store, maybe as a clerk, making minimum wage,” says Trador, 43, reflecting on last year.

“And then I heard that radio ad.” The intensive 33-week job training programme being advertised – TechHire Eastern Kentucky – promised to teach him computer coding from scratch. It would even pay him decent money while he learned. Trador signed up, and he is on track to complete the training in April, when he will emerge with a job as an Apple iOS developer.

Like many such programmes and infrastructure projects here in eastern Kentucky and across Appalachia, the job-training course has the US federal government’s fingerprints all over it. The Appalachian Regional Commission, an independent federal agency, helped jump-start it last year with a multiagency $2.75m (£2.2m) grant to a state organisation that developed it.

But after decades of work, the commission’s future is in doubt, with the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal threatening to eliminate funding for the commissions and other rural development endeavours. Voters in this part of the country, which overwhelmingly supports President Donald Trump, could be disproportionately affected if that happens.

Wendy Collins, smoking a cigarette outside a dollar store in rural Frenchburg, Kentucky, grew frustrated when she heard about the recommended cuts to Appalachian development. In recent years, using a community development block grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and a commission grant, Frenchburg has received a combined $1m to develop a senior citizens centre and a regional meal-assistance kitchen.


HUD’s community development grants also would disappear with Trump’s proposed budget. “Really? Wow. So now what?” Collins says. “The government shouldn’t take it away. This place is below the poverty level. There is nothing here, and people need something to stay out of drugs.”

Collins, 45, who draws disability benefits, becomes emotional as she speaks about her own involvement with drugs; she estimates she has known about 30 people who have died from opioid abuse. A Trump supporter, Collins says she could not vote for him because she has a felony drug conviction. She thinks Trump should visit the area to see the impact of his budget for himself.

How Donald Trump’s budget cuts could devastate rural communities in Kentucky | The Independent

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One of the biggest questions hanging over the confirmation hearing of Alexander Acosta on Wednesday was where President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Labor Department stands on the issue of overtime pay. Acosta gave some surprisingly revealing answers to that question ― and they don’t bode well for the monumental overtime reforms made by former President Barack Obama, which are now tied up in court. Before he left office, Obama tried to change overtime law so that millions more salaried workers would be eligible for time-and-a-half pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. His administration sought to do that by raising what’s known as the overtime salary threshold ― the level below which everybody is entitled to overtime pay, regardless of their job duties. The current salary level, set by the George W. Bush administration, is just $23,660 per year, meaning you probably aren’t entitled to overtime pay if you make more than that. Obama tried to roughly double the threshold, to $47,476 per year. That would have brought overtime protections to an additional 4.2 million workers, according to White House estimates.

We Now Know Where The Trump Administration Stands On Overtime Pay | The Huffington Post

Do you think companies should be required to pay their employees at least the minimum wage? Comply with workplace safety regulations? Pay employees for every hour they work? It would seem ridiculous for anyone to answer “no” to these questions. Yet Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration apparently believe that these extremely basic workplace protections are too onerous to ask U.S. businesses to uphold. As we speak, they’re working to repeal the “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” executive order, which simply suggests that agencies consider whether federal contractors comply with these and other basic labor laws in the contracting process.

Congressional Republicans Work To Repeal Fair Pay and Safe Workplace Executive Order | Demos

Last year, President Obama’s Department of Labor issued a regulation restricting the number of unemployment insurance beneficiaries that would be subject to drug testing. The move infuriated Republicans like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker who had made such a program a centerpiece of his agenda. Despite their vows to eliminate wasteful government spending, the Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump are now poised to overturn that rule — despite significant evidence that similar drug testing regimes cost a lot more than they save.

Smiling Paul Ryan touts bill to waste millions on drug testing unemployed Americans

Members of Trump's Cabinet, including White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said programs like Meals on Wheels — the public service that provides hot meals to the elderly — "sound great," but it and other anti-poverty programs are "not showing any results." The deep cuts are unsurprising. Trump has spent his campaign and the early months of his presidency touting promises to boost military spending and slash what he considers wasteful government spending. Still, Trump's moves have not gone unnoticed among Republicans.  Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said cuts to the State Department — the second-biggest loser in Trump's budget — "undermine America's ability to keep our citizens safe."

GOP pans Trump budget - Business Insider

It’s no surprise that a Republican president with close ties to Wall Street would target the CFPB. The watchdog has been a lightning rod for Republican outrage ever since Elizabeth Warren first proposed the idea as a professor at Harvard Law School. As soon as the agency was created, Republican lawmakers began trying to curtail its power or eliminate it outright. GOP ads depict the agency as a neo-Stalinist ministry that is the natural enemy of American consumers. “The CFPB supposedly exists to protect you,” House Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted after the agency levied a $100 million fine against Wells Fargo for incentivizing widespread fraud against borrowers. “But instead it tries to micromanage your everyday life.”

As a self-styled defender of the little guy, Trump should actually be working to strengthen the CFPB, not dismantle it. During his campaign, Trump railed against the global financial elite who had enriched themselves at the expense of ordinary Americans. The working class was devastated by the deep-seated corruption that caused the financial crisis, and Trump’s electoral strongholds are high-density zones of home foreclosures, subprime loans, and payday lenders—exactly the sort of predatory schemes the CFPB was designed to police.

Trump and Warren Are on a Collision Course | New Republic

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If we drug test people who benefit from public sector aid, why not everybody? Bankers, those who benefit from tax breaks like those on mortgage interest payments, hedge fund managers, etc. 

Last week, President Trump signed a bill revoking an Obama-era rule limiting drug testing for Americans who receive unemployment benefits. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, meanwhile, is reportedly planning to askthe Trump administration for permission to drug-test residents of his state who need help paying for their medical coverage. Other Republican-led states are drug testing those who receive welfare. Critics have argued that such laws demonize the poor, violate constitutional rights, and are a waste of government money.

But I think Republicans should get their wish — if, and only if, they’re willing to drug-test every American who receives government support. “No big deal,” I hear you say. “I’m not on welfare or a farmer, and I don’t receive any government subsidies.” However, subsidies come in many forms. In fact, Congress has buried about $1 trillion of subsidies in the tax code, disguised as tax breaks.

Do you take the home mortgage deduction, receive tax-free employer-provided health insurance, or claim the child tax credit? If so, you’re receiving government support, and under the logic the Republicans have advanced you, too, should be subjected to drug testing.

Republicans want to drug test welfare recipients — they should test bankers too - Business Insider

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In 2011, through ALEC’s influence, Indiana became the first state to prohibit its cities and towns from raising their minimum wages. About 20 states have followed its lead. And in 2012, Indiana was at the leading edge of a new wave of union-busting “right-to-work” legislation. The laws allow workers to benefit from union representation without paying union dues. 

Pence was likely thinking of these reforms, and of the cut in the state income tax he spearheaded, when he proclaimed in 2014 that Indiana was “blazing a trail for low taxes, balanced budgets and economic freedom in the Midwest.” In truth, Indiana was blazing a trail to the bottom. The state’s poverty rate rose by more than one third from 2007 to 2013, and the median household income declined nearly 11 percent. Indiana performed worse than any neighboring state on both counts.

The Right-Wing Machine Behind the Curtain

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Remember, this guy was proposed for Labor Secretary..

"Andy Puzder is against unions, calls the minimum wage and overtime 'restrictions' and employees 'extra cost,' and even said he wants to fire workers like us and replace us with machines that can't take vacation or sue their employers when they break the law," the nonprofit Interfaith Worker Justice quoted Rogelio Hernandez, a Carl's Jr. cook, as saying. Puzder also spoke out against Obamacare and overtime pay. In essence, as CKE's CEO, he had already gone on the record opposing regulation that groups like the Fight for $15 and the National Employment Law Project (NELP) have fought to pass and protect. With his nomination, organizations fighting for fast-food workers' rights went from seeing Puzder as the opponent as an employer, to seeing him as the enemy as a potential Secretary of Labor — the person tasked with protecting workers' rights.

Puzder's Labor Secretary failure reveals fast-food war - Business Insider

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Friday afternoon, Donald Trump traveled to the US Treasury Department where he’s expected to sign a new executive order. The order aims at making life easier for American companies that want to avoid corporate income taxes, relax regulation on some large financial institutions, and make it harder for federal regulators to wind down big banks that fail during a financial crisis. It’s all part of the Trump administration’s frenetic sprint to put some points on the board ahead of the symbolically significant 100 days mark, though it also certainly seems like a betrayal of the populist themes of his campaign. The good or bad news, depending on how you feel, is that, based on briefings provided in advance by the White House, it does not appear that today’s order actually does anything per se.

Today’s executive orders are the nail in the coffin of Trump’s economic populism - Vox

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EPI’s Perkins Project on Worker Rights and Wages is a policy response team tracking the wage and employment policies coming out of the White House, Congress, and the courts. This watchdog unit of economists and lawyers keeps an especially close eye on the federal agencies that establish and defend workers’ rights, wages, and working conditions, including the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The Perkins Project is headed by former Labor Department Chief Economist Heidi Shierholz and is named for Frances Perkins, Labor Secretary under FDR and principal architect of the New Deal labor reforms. Inspired by Perkins’s legacy, the Perkins Project monitors, analyzes, and publicizes any attempts to dismantle the laws and regulations that protect worker rights and wages. Perkins Project reporting on this site arms activists, journalists, lawmakers, and lawyers with the facts they need to fight for working people.

The Perkins Project on Worker Rights and Wages | Economic Policy Institute

Click the link and you find the most complete research on the assault on worker rights.