THE LAW IS WHAT IS NOT WRITTEN

Unilever off the hook in TRESemmé formaldehyde suit

BRIEF / December 29, 2022

CHICAGO — A federal judge in Chicago found in favor of Unilever on a fraud class action brought by TRESemmé customers who suffered rashes, itchiness and hair loss from a formaldehyde-releasing preservative present in the hair products. The ingredient was not disclosed on the front of the bottle, but the court clears the manufacturer because the products’ labeling never said they didn’t release formaldehyde, either.

Read the ruling here.

US VP Kamala Harris names Indian-American to National Space Council Advisory Group 

By PTI | 

Thursday, December 29, 2022

Vice President Kamala Harris has named Indian American Rajeev Badyal to a key national space advisory group, which is tasked to maintain a robust and responsible US space enterprise and preserve space for current and future generations, the White House has said.

 Badyal, vice-president of Project Kuiper of Amazon, is among the 30 space experts named by Harris to the National Space Council’s Users Advisory Group (UAG) on December 16.

Harris had named US Air Force Rtd General Lester Lyles as chair of the UAG. Project Kuiper is a long-term initiative to launch a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and undeserved communities around the world. 

 Previously he was the vice president of satellites at SpaceX. He has a Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Oregon State University. The UAG will provide the National Space Council advice and recommendations on matters related to space policy and strategy, including but not limited to, government policies, laws, regulations, treaties, international instruments, programmes, and practices across the civil, commercial, international, and national security space sectors, the White House said in a statement. 

The 30 members named to UAG represent a cross-section of companies and organisations that support the United States’ large and highly skilled space workforce; users of space services, including climate scientists and agriculture providers; individuals focused on developing the next generation of space professionals; and leading experts in space, it added.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Dubai approves extradition of financier accused of tax fraud


 Sanjay Shah poses for a photograph on the Palm Jumeriah Island in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sept. 29, 2020. A court in Dubai on Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022 approved the extradition to Denmark of the British financier Sanjay Shah, accused of orchestrating a $1.7 billion tax scheme.

 (AP Photo/Christopher Pike, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A court in Dubai on Thursday approved the extradition to Denmark of a British financier accused of orchestrating a $1.7 billion tax scheme.

Hedge fund trader Sanjay Shah is accused of masterminding a scheme that ran from 2012 to 2015 in which foreign businesses pretended to own shares in Danish companies and claimed tax refunds for which they were not eligible.

The Dubai government’s media office said documents show “his involvement in fraud and money laundering.” Shah was arrested in Dubai earlier this year following a request from Danish authorities. Dubai’s attorney general had appealed a ruling in September that rejected his extradition.

In a separate ruling that month, Shah was ordered to pay $1.25 billion to Denmark’s tax authority as part of a civil case in Dubai. His lawyers are appealing that judgment.

Shah’s attorney, Ali Al Zarooni, said he was “disappointed” with the latest extradition ruling and would lodge an appeal before the highest court in the United Arab Emirates, where Dubai is located. He said the defense team expects a final verdict from that court in the next two months.

The 52-year-old financier has maintained his innocence in interviews with journalists but never appeared in Denmark to answer accusations. His defense has argued in closed-door hearings that Denmark did not follow the procedures laid out in international extradition treaties.

Denmark welcomed the ruling as a “great victory.”

“It has required a sustained effort from Danish diplomacy to reach this point and constructive cooperation with the Emirati authorities,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen told Danish broadcaster DR. “Hopefully, today we have come a big step closer to bringing Sanjay Shah to justice in the extortion case.”

Shah’s lifestyle on Dubai’s luxurious palm-shaped island over the past few years had sparked outrage in Denmark. After Danish authorities signed an extradition agreement with the UAE, Dubai police arrested Shah in June. Shah is one of several suspects sought over the tax scheme.

During his time in Dubai, the hedge fund manager ran a center for autistic children that shut down in 2020 as Denmark sought his extradition. He also oversaw a British-based charity, Autism Rocks, which raised funds through concerts and performances.

His arrest comes as pressure grows on Dubai, the region’s financial hub, over its alleged weaknesses in combating illicit finance. The UAE, a federation of seven emirates, has long invited the wealthy, including disgraced public figures, to invest in the country without questioning where they made their money.

In recent months, however, the UAE has arrested several suspects wanted for major crimes, including two of the Gupta brothers from South Africa, accused of facilitating vast public corruption and draining state resources with former President Jacob Zuma. An Emirati official also recently became president of Interpol, the international police agency.

Our Labor Is Used to Create Wealth for Others. Let’s Reclaim It to Make Life.

By Michael D. Yates

September 6, 2022

Z Article
Source: Truthout

EASTVALE, CA - AUGUST 31: Worker Shi Zheng Wang packs items at Amazon fulfillment center in Eastvale on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. (Photo by Watchara Phomicinda/MediaNews Group/The Press-Enterprise via Getty Images)

In the last years of his life, my father spent many days in intensive care. He had emphysema, the product of too many cigarettes and exposure to asbestos and silica dust at the glass factory where he labored for 44 years. Once during a visit, he said from his oxygen tent that a man was following the nurses around, marking down whatever they did. The nurses were trying to form a labor union, and the observer was noting their times and motions, no doubt in an effort to spot wasted efforts that had to be corrected and to intimidate them. My father said, “Dad did that to me once.”

My grandfather was an industrial engineer, the company man with the stopwatch timing workers’ motions so that these could be reengineered and the workers ordered to perform their jobs with greater “efficiency”; that is, faster, resulting in increased glass production per hour and more profits for the employer. Grandpa “time-studied” his son, illustrating perfectly that workers, no matter their capacities, interests — in a word, their humanity — are, to those who hire them, simply commodities to be manipulated and controlled. Treated no differently than the raw materials, tools, machinery and buildings with which the employees interact to produce the goods and services of modern society.

I have studied and written about work for more than 50 years, my own and that of many others, to uncover its nature, what its consequences are for those who do it, and what might be done to change it for the better. My last book reflects what I have learned; it is titled Work Work Work: Labor, Alienation, and Class Struggle. Its thesis is simple. In a capitalist economy, businesses, spurred by incessant competition, seek to make maximum profits and to use these to achieve high, unending growth. To get what they want, however, they must rigorously control what goes on in their workplaces. The power to do this is embedded in the nature of our system: A few individuals own society’s productive wealth, while the many need access to it to survive. The latter then must sell their ability to work to the former. While the advantage obviously lies with the few, the desires of employers and workers diverge, as anyone who has worked knows. Those who labor are controlled, treated as objects, but this necessarily negates the fact that workers cannot think of themselves as commodities. Workplaces are thus alive with tensions. Management must try to control the labor process, the way in which work is done, if it is to thrive, but this must be done in the face of potential resistance, in form of sabotage, slowdowns, strikes, picketing, boycotts, mass quitting and political agitations.

The essence of management is control, and the history of capitalism is but a sequence of the implementation of “control mechanisms.” (My book provides the detail of these, their effects on workers and the possibilities for radically changing the way we labor. Here we can give only a summary.) At capitalism’s dawn, people worked at home, producing cloth, for example, with wool loaned (put out) to them by merchants who were now capitalists. When this proved inefficient, the owners of the wool herded the weavers into factories, hiring women and children (often orphans) to aid them. Here, the employer could watch them to make sure they stole no wool and, importantly, to see exactly how they performed their labor tasks. The factory whistle served to habituate those who toiled inside to the rhythms of a new work regimen, punishing those who were late or left early.

The supervisors hired to watch over their charges soon saw that a person trained in a craft divided his task into component parts — that is, details or subtasks. It was a short step to see that it would be cheaper to hire untrained workers — at first, mainly women and orphaned children — to do the details and reserve the craftsmen for what the untrained laborers could not do. The number of people who could perform each detail was very large, and this kept wages low and employees fearful of being easily replaced. Once power sources such as water wheels and steam engines could make effort independent of the workers’ bodies, some of the subtasks were mechanized. Machines could control workers directly, making them “appendages” to a mechanism, to use Karl Marx’s famous word. Furthermore, as mechanization became more sophisticated, work became further degraded, such that the human ingenuity needed for the labor process to proceed successfully diminished as the level of mechanization increased.

Toward the end of the 19th century, Frederick Taylor took the existing managerial control mechanism — centralization in factories, the detailed division of labor and mechanization — and systematized them into what he termed, “scientific management.” The conceptualization of work processes would be the sole prerogative of the employer. His band of industrial engineers would do what my grandfather did. Workers would now simply be machine-like parts in an automatic system, carrying our explicit orders and nothing else. Personnel departments, now called Human Resources, offered carrots and sticks, such as incentive plans, modest fringe benefits, demotions, transfers and terminations to keep workers happily and fearfully hard at work. If readers intuit that Taylor’s aim was to speed up production so that profits rose, they would be correct.

Led by the Toyota Corporation, “Taylorism” has been extended and deepened in what is called “lean production,” or as its critics call it, “management by stress.” This form of control includes many elements:

* Systematic Hiring: Employers use metadata, personality tests and interviews to find people who easily take orders, identify with business, won’t likely support a union and will tolerate an intense work environment.

* Team Production: Using techniques developed by the military, companies divide employees into teams, fostering team loyalty and a competitive spirit in which workers are happy to pit themselves against other teams, plants and business rivals.

* Cross-Training: Here, the idea is to have people think they are learning new skills, while the reality is that they are simply learning to do other subtasks. Work processes had already destroyed the integrity of task (skilled) labor in which one person performed a job from beginning to end. A metalsmith with a work order to make 100 funnels would make the pattern and then do each of these subtasks 100 times in succession: layout, cutting, shaping, joining, polishing and decorating (if needed). If people are hired to do each subtask only, then metalsmiths need only make the pattern. With cross-training, a person might be trained to do two instead of one of the subtasks, neither of which requires much knowledge or training.

* Just-in-Time Inventory: Parts, such as car steering wheels, are produced in subsidiary plants (saving money because the subsidiary workers are paid less, even if unionized, and now no money will be spent on inventory space and maintenance by the main plant). Workers in the primary facility will now be fearful their work will be subcontracted. For some production, it is possible that the external facilities will be exported abroad, further splitting the workforce and lowering costs. Today, this concept can be applied to workers, from those in fast food to the adjunct faculty that teach most of the classes in U.S. colleges, resulting in extreme stress and insecurity.

* Kaizen: Japanese word for “constant improvement.” This is a perpetual speed-up mechanism. For example, an assembly line might be sped up, a team might lose a member or inventory might be in short supply. Teams are then expected to solve the problem. This is where cross-training is most useful to businesses. Extreme pressure is put on teams, often through a system of lights that can go from green (good) to yellow (warning for teams to start hustling) to red (production will stop, and woe to the workers). Now, U.S. auto workers can expect, as a result of Kaizen, to work 57 seconds out of every minute.

* Extreme Surveillance: I call this the “panopticon,” after philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s plan for a circular prison with cells arranged so a guard can see all those incarcerated without them knowing if he was watching. Grandpa would have been astounded at the extent and degree to which employees are subject to employer monitoring. App developers are in competition to supply employers with ever more invasive ways to spy on those they employ. Even consumers have been used by businesses like hotels and colleges to surveil workers. What else can we call student evaluations, including external ones such as Rate My Professor and ratings on websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor?

The effects on workers of all this control are wholly negative — stress, diminished mental and physical health, anxiety, depression, substance abuse and sometimes violent behavior — just what we would expect when human beings toil under the command of others. The etymological roots of the word “work” connote torment, compulsion, affliction and persecution. These well reflect the reality of labor for most of the world’s toilers. The global labor force is about 3.5 billion persons. Of these, 800 million are farmworkers. Partly uncounted in the labor force are at least 160 million child laborers, some of them under 10 years old toiling in dangerous workplaces such as metal mines. In 2020, there were about 1.5 billion people in “vulnerable” employment: self-employed women, men and children doing everything from making deliveries, sewing clothes, producing cheap cigarettes, and selling goods and services on the streets to scavenging mine waste for saleable metal and garbage dumps looking for anything that can be converted to cash. Even in the richest country in the world, which workers would not grasp these words immediately among the tens of millions who deliver mail and packages; drive trucks and buses; labor along the assembly and disassembly lines that give us our cars, trucks and meat; clerk in grocery stores and other retail establishments; sweat on kitchen lines preparing food; provide our health care; clean our offices and buildings; teach in our schools; do clerical work; perform yard work; build houses; tar our roofs and road; and many other labors large and small?

On this Labor Day, perhaps it is time for all members of the world’s working class, to ask themselves, why is work so often a “torment,” an “affliction,” done under “compulsion”? Why does it feel as if our bosses are “persecuting” us? Why does it wreck our bodies? Why does it seem so meaningless? It certainly doesn’t have to be and was not for most of our time on Earth. And then ask, if this is true, how can we create a society in which we control our own labor, where work is a natural and necessary part of life, one we do to produce the essentials of life, not for someone else’s riches but for use by everyone, equally and in harmony with the natural world?

In answer to these questions, perhaps every labor union, workers’ center, grassroots political organization and newly formed groups of those who want to change the world should embrace the slogan of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement: “Occupy, Resist, Produce.” Use the wealth of unions, political organizations and the pooled money of workers to buy land and produce food on it collectively; build new, cheap, energy-efficient housing — training people to both do and control the work. Forge worker-community cooperatives and collectives. Pressure governments everywhere to aid these efforts. Compel employers, by organized strength, to change the way work is done. Demand a say over the introduction of new technology. Insist on an end to employer surveillance.

The possibilities are many, and the goal of unalienated work is of the greatest importance. How can capitalism be transcended and a new world constructed unless the essence of this system — controlled labor — is abolished?

Union Organizing Surged in 2022: Let’s Push for a Radical Labor Movement in 2023

By Michael D. Yates

December 29, 2022

Z Article

Source: TruthOut



More workers are forming independent unions, untethered from the AFL-CIO and other established labor groups.

The year 2022 saw a significant increase in working-class unrest in the United States. Millions of workers quit their jobs in 2021, and this trend has continued in 2022. Most moved on to different employment, while others continued their education or retired. Recently, many Twitter employees quit in response to the severe force reduction and intensification of work effort engineered by new owner Elon Musk. For those working, there has been a wave of what the media has dubbed “quiet quitting,” but which is really an old-fashioned labor strategy known as “working to rule,” or doing no more than what you have been ordered or contractually required to do. Those working from home have shown a reluctance to return to the office, an indication that, despite the problems of laboring where you live, offices are seen as worse.

Union organizing is on the rise, reflecting both the widespread disgust with workplace conditions and the now evidently positive public view of labor unions. The purchasing power of wages has stagnated for decades in the United States, while labor’s productivity has risen considerably. Unfortunately, the latter is partly the result of employer-initiated speed-ups, meaning that fewer workers must take up the slack created by a smaller workforce — again, management-created. According to Gallup, 71 percent of Americans now approve of unions, the highest favorable rating since 1965. This may help explain the surge in union recognition efforts. Between October 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022 (fiscal year 2022), union certification petitions at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) were up 58 percent over the previous year. No doubt there were other such efforts, those that simply petitioned employers to bargain with a union or where workers struck to win bargaining rights. Because employers regularly violate the law by committing unfair labor practices (ULPs) such as firing union supporters, the NLRB has faced a heavy caseload of ULPs, which rose 16 percent over the same period.

People are forming unions across a wide array of occupations, including adjunct college professors, farmworkers, grocery store personnel at Trader Joe’s, baristas at Starbucks, laborers at Amazon warehouses, Google cafeteria workers, delivery drivers, Apple employees, staff at restaurants such as Chipotle, chocolate makers at Hershey’s, clerks from Dollar General to Williams-Sonoma, autoworkers and video game designers. In every case, it is the arbitrary, arrogant, impersonal and condescending treatment of employees that has motivated this organizing. Workers are rejecting their treatment as mere commodities — controlled, spied upon, used up, sped up and expected to devote their lives to making money for those who own their workplaces. They are demanding dignity in addition to higher wages, shorter hours, benefits and safe working conditions. The Amazon and Starbucks efforts have garnered the most publicity, with the latter showing a spectacular increase in union victories. Since the first Starbucks store was unionized in Buffalo, New York, in December 2021, workers at more than 250 locations have voted to unionize. Chris Smalls, the leader of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), has become a national celebrity.

Three things stand out in these union recognition campaigns. First, “salting” has been a useful tactic. “Salts” are organizers trained by a labor organization to obtain employment in a non-union workplace and use their skills to begin a union organizing drive. It takes great skill to do this work, with the salt always risking discovery. The Inside Organizer School was formed by famed organizer Richard Bensinger and others in Silver Spring, Maryland, to train salts. A longtime organizer, who prefers to remain anonymous, informed me that those trained have gone into workplaces across the country, including the Starbucks stores first organized in Buffalo.

The second notable trend: Some workers are forming independent unions, untethered from the traditional unions in the AFL-CIO and other established labor groups. The independent ALU is one significant example. The Workers United union at Starbucks is relatively independent, but it is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Recently, an independent labor union was formed to organize service-sector workers in the South, the Union of Southern Service Workers. Naomi Harris, who attended the founding convention, said:


We are going to fight by marching up on the bosses with our petitions, striking at the right time, getting community support for rallies. We will organize walk outs, sit-ins and boycotts if we need to. We will take legal action against wage theft, because you’re not about to pay me less than I deserve and take money out of my tips at the same time. We’re going to fight and fight and fight until we get what we deserve.

The push for independence reflects the lackluster organizing record of most AFL-CIO unions, their close ties to the pro-business Democratic Party and their top-heavy, highly paid bureaucracy, which is often mired in corruption.

Third, many of those supporting and leading these organizing struggles are young, knowledgeable and downwardly mobile. The informant mentioned above, who is radical in his politics and deeply involved in multiple organizing drives, told me that these workers are keen to learn about the history of labor in the United States. They have been absorbing the insights of long-forgotten labor champions like William Z. Foster, who led the heroic fight to organize the steel industry in 1919. Through my informant, I myself have sent 400 copies of my book, Why Unions Matter to be distributed to various worker organizations across the country. I have sent my most recent book, Work Work Work, to labor studies programs in the United States as well. Education about the nature of our economic system, work and confronting employers is more critical than ever.

Increased organizing has complemented a greater willingness to strike, picket and boycott. Payday Report has tracked well over 1,000 work stoppages since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. These have been mostly short walkouts, such as the strike by Starbucks workers this year on November 17, Red Cup Day, when the company gives out its much-loved reusable red cup for the holidays. However, there have also been larger and longer strikes. Hundreds of Alabama coal miners have been on strike for 20 months, supported by their communities and the United Mine Workers of America. The company, Warrior Met Coal, has continued to operate using scab labor.

In September, The Guardian reported:

Some of the largest strikes in recent weeks in the US have included 15,000 nurses who went on a three-day strike in Minnesota, over 1,100 timber workers in Oregon and Washington, over 4,500 teachers and staff in Columbus, Ohio, more than 6,000 teachers and staff in Seattle, 2,000 mental healthcare workers in California, 1,200 casting plant workers at Stellantis in Indiana, and 700 nursing home workers in Pennsylvania.

More recently, 48,000 graduate student workers and academic researchers, represented by four unions, struck at the University of California (UC), frustrated after a year of trying to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement and the filing of more than 20 unfair labor practice complaints. One group reached an agreement, but would not return to back to work until the other units settle. The other did reach agreement mid-December of this year. The walkout was very likely the largest academic strike in U.S. history and certainly the biggest strike this year for any workers. These workers do most of the teaching at UC campuses and help with much of the research, receiving inadequate pay and benefits in high-rent areas, much the same as their counterparts throughout the country. As higher education becomes just another business, those who do the hard labor find it difficult to consider themselves anything other than employees. The same is true for many professionals, including physicians, who have begun an organizing drive at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx.

A strike is looming at UPS, one that could severely impact critical deliveries. Drivers, maximally stressed and overworked, are members of the Teamsters, now under new, forceful and more democratic leadership. We don’t know whether there will be a railroad workers’ strike, now that the federal government has callously legislated an agreement — one that has the odor of involuntary servitude — between the rail unions and the owners, an action supported by politicians claiming to be champions of the working class. Regrettably, one seldomly reported factor with respect to the rail unions is that most of their leaders are remarkably inept and have historically run their unions in an autocratic manner with little concern for the needs of their members. If ever an independent union, of all those toiling on the railroads, was needed, it is here.

There is a tendency on the left to see every working-class upsurge as a sign of the rebirth of a militant labor movement. While what I have described above is heartening, some historical perspective is necessary. In 2021, 10.3 percent of workers were unionized — with an astonishing 6.1 percent in the private sector — the same as in 2019. Total union membership is now 3.7 million lower than it was in 1983, when density was 20.1 percent. Density was very likely above 30 percent in the mid-1950s, and private sector density was almost surely higher 100 years ago. Major strikes (1,000 or more workers) have been in long-term decline, with 16 in 2021, down from 187 in 1980 and 470 (the highest on record) in 1952. These numbers may rise before 2023, but not enough to mark a sharp reversal in the trends. In addition, it is one thing to form a union, but is another to win a collective bargaining agreement. Amazon, Starbucks, Google, large universities etc. have deep pockets and labor laws that give them tremendous advantages in confronting unions. It will take great creativity and solidarity within the working class to emerge triumphant and get better wages, hours and working conditions.

And even supposing union membership skyrockets and better contracts are achieved, this is not the same as building a labor movement aimed at radically changing society. Union leadership may change, as in the Teamsters and now very likely in the United Auto Workers, but this usually means, at best, some improvements in the terms and conditions of employment. It seldom changes the relations of production, that is, it leaves intact that which must be changed: The control of the workplace monopolized by those who own the means of production.

What is needed is a labor movement with strong principles; a radical education program; the will to attack the deepening control the powerful have over the way we labor and nearly every aspect of our lives, the grotesque inequality in wealth and the anti-labor bias of the political system. And, of greatest importance, the destruction of the environment, with global warming making labor an utterly unhealthy endeavor, must be confronted as the ultimate working-class issue. The time seems ripe for such a movement to develop. We can only hope that it will. That as young workers begin to learn the underlying nature of the forces dominating their lives, they will begin to take collective actions that allow them not only to challenge their employers but also to start the long and arduous process of organizing production and distribution themselves. We have examples: the many programs of the Black Panthers, urban agriculture, peasant organizing in rural India, the communes in Venezuela, Cooperation Jackson. A labor movement worthy of the name must embrace these, broadening and deepening them, building a new society in the shell of the old.

The sharp rise of the Left was the year’s global revival story

Lula’s victory in Brazil was among several wins by leftist leaders in 2022 (Photo: AP)4 min read . Updated: 29 Dec 2022, 

:Pankaj Mishra

Pundits reviewing 2022 are heaving a palpable sigh of relief

Pundits reviewing 2022 are heaving a palpable sigh of relief. This was the year, or so the consensus goes, when far-right strongmen such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro were enfeebled, China stumbled and the ‘West’ made a comeback, at least against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Such assessments, nostalgic for a lost ‘liberal international order’, ignore a more widespread development: how a general discontent with the old order, exacerbated by the pandemic, is fuelling a revival of the Left in South America, Europe and Australasia. It’s most clear in Latin American countries long tormented by extremes of poverty and inequality. Returning to power in Brazil in October, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva heads a long victory parade by leftists in the region. In June, Colombia elected its first leftist president in Gustavo Petro. Gabriel Boric became in December 2021 the most left-wing president of Chile since Salvador Allende. Bolivian President Luis Arce came to power in 2020. In 2019 in Argentina, Alberto Fernández defeated a right-wing incumbent. A year earlier, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador won in a landslide.

Australia, New Zealand and many European countries provide additional context for why so many voters are turning to social-democratic (and in some cases avowedly socialist) leaders. In the simplest terms, the benefits of globalization are shrinking, and, as essentials such as energy and food soar in cost, voters expect more social protections. This is why centre-left parties, from Jacinda Ardern’s Labour in New Zealand to Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Workers’ Party in Spain, share an emphasis on improved wages, better job security and more public goods.

This is a move back from goals like privatization and marketization that since the 1980s have been pursued by not only right-wing but also centre-left and even some socialist parties in the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and elsewhere. Public opinion has shifted; the ideological hegemony of the so-called ‘third way’ of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and others now survives mostly in small bubbles.

Another preserve is Britain’s Labour Party, whose Blairite leader Keir Starmer and supporters in the media find themselves out of step with overwhelming public support for striking public-sector workers. Today’s cannier social democrats such as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Portugal’s Socialist President Antonio Costa work with the insight that the neglect of the welfare state, the shredding of social security nets and the rise of inequality—in part, consequences of the ‘third way’ that were experienced painfully during the pandemic—were what pushed many voters to the far Right. To get them back, leaders have to recreate some part of the old compact between the social-democratic left and the weak, the insulted and the injured. That said, too much should not be read into close relations between Germany’s Scholz, Spain’s Sanchez and Portugal’s Costa, or in the Socialist International conference in Madrid in November, presided over by Sanchez and attended by several heads of state.

Leftists today are very far from the clear and confident consensus that in the 1970s united such leaders as Willy Brandt, Olof Palme, Bruno Kreisky and François Mitterrand, and extended deep into governments and political movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America. For one, electorates have fractured, probably irrevocably, and most social democrats and socialists today come to power in coalition governments with narrow margins of victory. They have little scope for structural transformations and the new alliances they create are precarious. While winning back alienated working classes, they cannot afford to lose the progressive and professional middle classes in metropolitan areas, as well as young activists seeking climate and gender justice.

But this dilemma is not unsolvable. As inflation peaks amid the unending crises of a pandemic and war in Ukraine, fear of the future will make many more people than before look to governments for social and economic security. And politicians who respond to this widespread longing for reassurance are likely to do better than those still going on about how free markets will unleash entrepreneurial spirits and turbocharge growth. For example, after lagging behind for years, Spain’s ruling party has in recent months overtaken the right-wing party in opinion polls with a programme of public spending funded by tax hikes on banks, utility companies and large fortunes.

In reaction, a cornered right is likely to become even more intransigently radical, ramping up culture wars. Those celebrating the return of the West in 2022 ought to turn their focus to what’s likely to be the main event of 2023: how, after years of ideological confusion and stalemate, the real battle for hearts and minds will be led by a freshly reconstructed left.

WAGE THEFT

Firm Telling Associates They Won't Be Getting Bonuses After Claiming To Match Market

This feels like the rug getting pulled out.

By JOE PATRICE

onDecember 29, 2022 

(Image via Getty)

I wonder if this speaks to why Shearman & Sterling is so hot to get a merger done with Hogan Lovells.

A lot of law firms suffered slowdowns over 2022, but bonus season reminded us all that Biglaw mostly remains resilient in the face of some economic speedbumps. We thought Shearman was no exception when it first informed that it would match the Baker McKenzie bonus scale.

But the promise to meet the market was a little less than advertised. One Shearman tipster reports:

they had a zoom meeting towards the end of the year announcing there would be an hours requirement in order to get your bonus when previously Shearman has been known to not have billable hours requirements. Since the firm has been slow this year they are telling associates they didn’t meet the hours requirement and are not eligible for a bonus.

Hourly requirements are common across Biglaw, but adding one at this juncture is just an effort to pawn off a slow year on the employees with the least responsibility for the firm’s problems.

And another tipster suggests that the hours requirement is just one piece of a multi-pronged effort to get out of paying bonuses:

After Shearman & Sterling announced that it will pay bonuses to on track associates earlier this month, we are now being informed by phone calls that despite being on track and in good standing we will not get any bonus this year. They started calling associates earlier this week just a few days before payment day and did not provide any other explanation.

This isn’t a complete picture and it’s entirely possible that some associates are still getting bonuses on the prior announced scale. But adding requirements and making last second individual “bonus condolence” calls paint an unflattering picture.

Police would’ve killed more January 6 rioters if they had been Black, House security official says

Daniel Villarreal, New Civil Rights Movement
December 29, 2022

January 6 attackers at the U.S. Capitol Lev radin/Shutterstock

Law enforcement officers would've used deadlier force against the January 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol if the rioters had been predominantly Black, House Sergeant-at-Arms William Walker told the congressional January 6 panel in recently unearthed testimony.

“I’m African-American. Child of the Sixties. I think it would have been a vastly different response if those were African Americans trying to breach the Capitol,” Walker told the panel in his April testimony.

“I think the response would have been different, a lot more heavy-handed response to, I think there would have been a lot more bloodshed,” Walker said. “You know, as a law enforcement officer, there were — I saw enough to where I would have probably been using deadly force.”

The rioters that day were predominantly white. Not only was there a stunning lack of law enforcement and military officials protecting the Capitol on that day, but the officials who were present largely played defensive roles and even, in some cases, allowed rioters access to the building, standing by while they ransacked the place (largely to protect themselves from mob violence).

In his testimony, Walker compared the police response to the white Capitol rioters to the police response to Black racial justice protesters following the police murder of Black Minneapolis resident George Floyd. In the latter case, police used tear gas and less lethal munitions (like bean bag rounds), made arrests, and took sometimes actions that escalated the protests into uprisings.

Walker also said that the lack of law enforcement officers on January 6, 2021 was surprising because anyone could have predicted that the congressional certification of then-President-elect Joe Biden's victory was going to be chaotic, especially since Trump and his followers had planned to converge on the Capitol that day under false pretenses of voter fraud.

"I'm an intelligence officer ... to me, the intelligence was there that this was going to be a big deal," he said. "You don't need intelligence. I mean, everybody knew that people were directed to come there by the president."

NBC News notes, "The D.C. National Guard was not authorized to assist at the Capitol on Jan. 6 until after a delay of 3 hours and 19 minutes that the House committee's report pins on a 'likely miscommunication between members of the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense.'"

State lawsuits defend abortion access with religious freedom

Since Dobbs, lower courts in at least five states have issued rulings in abortion-related religious freedom lawsuits.

FILE - Demonstrators stand outside the House chamber before a vote is held on Senate Bill 1 during a special session Friday, Aug. 5, 2022, at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis. Critics of religious freedom laws often argue they are used to discriminate against LGBTQ people and only protect a conservative Christian worldview. But following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, religious abortion-rights supporters are using these laws to protect access to abortion and defend their beliefs. (Jenna Watson/The Indianapolis Star via AP, File)

December 29, 2022

By 

Arleigh Rodgers

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Cara Berg Raunick watched with bafflement as Indiana’s Republican legislators took less than two weeks to debate and pass an abortion ban that the governor signed quickly into law.

The women’s health nurse practitioner from Indianapolis was struck by just how frequently faith was cited in the arguments as reason to ban the medical practice. But Berg Raunick, who is Jewish, said those views go against her beliefs.

To her, a pregnant woman’s health and life is paramount, and she disagreed with legislators’ assertions that life begins at conception, calling that a “Christian definition.”

“That is a religious and values-based comment,” said Berg Raunick. “A fetus is potential life, and that is worthy of great respect and is not to be taken lightly, but it does not supersede the life and health of the mother, period.”

Arguments like this were central to an Indiana lawsuit filed in September against the state’s abortion ban, which is on hold amid multiple legal challenges. On Dec. 2, a judge ruled the ban violates the state’s religious freedom law, signed by then-Republican Gov. Mike Pence in 2015.

Critics of religious freedoms laws often argue they are used to discriminate against LGBTQ people and only protect a conservative Christian worldview. But following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, religious abortion-rights supporters are using these laws to protect access to abortion and defend their beliefs.

The Dobbs v. Jackson ruling left abortion rights up to the states. As a result, lower courts in at least five states, including Indiana, have issued rulings in abortion-related religious freedom lawsuits.

There is a “huge diversity of the kinds of claims being made” in these cases, said Elizabeth Reiner Platt, who studies religion and abortion rights as director of Columbia University’s Law, Rights and Religion Project. The religious freedom complaints are among 34 post-Roe lawsuits filed against 19 states’ abortion bans, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

For some, abortion access can be a way to exercise one’s religion, Platt said. Other lawsuits challenge the bans under constitutional clauses that say the government is “establishing” a religion, imposing a law on residents who do not share that belief.

In the Indiana case, lawyers for five anonymous women — who are Jewish, Muslim and spiritual — and advocacy group Hoosier Jews for Choice have argued the state’s ban infringes on their beliefs. Their lawsuit specifically highlights the Jewish teaching that a fetus becomes a living person at birth and that Jewish law prioritizes the mother’s life and health.

The Indiana attorney general’s office this month appealed a ruling siding with the women and asked the state Supreme Court to consider the case. In January, the Indiana justices are already scheduled to hear another abortion ban challenge on the grounds it violates the state constitution’s individual rights protections.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, three Jewish women are arguing the state’s ban violates their religious rights under the state’s constitution and religious freedom law. They say in a lawsuit, which has been removed to federal court, that Kentucky’s Republican-dominated legislature “imposed sectarian theology” by prohibiting nearly all abortions. The ban remains in effect while the Kentucky Supreme Court considers a separate case challenging the law.

For those wanting to end abortion bans, lawsuits arguing state governments are establishing a religion via the bans could be more effective than ones arguing for the free exercise of religion, said Elizabeth Sepper, a University of Texas at Austin law professor. The former would apply to more people, she said.

“If an abortion ban violates either a state establishment clause or the federal establishment clause, then the entirety of the statute comes down,” Sepper said.

Some state lawsuits use both arguments, such as a case filed by Planned Parenthood that in July successfully blocked Utah’s ban. The law is on hold pending a decision from its state Supreme Court.

That same month, a lawsuit partly based on Wyoming’s religious-liberty clause blocked the state’s abortion ban. The Wyoming high court said Dec. 21 it would not weigh in on the state’s new abortion ban for now.

Elsewhere, Florida religious leaders in June cited the state’s religious rights law and state constitution’s privacy protections in multiple lawsuits against their state’s 15-week abortion ban. A request to hear an appeal of the ban, which remains in effect, rests before the Florida Supreme Court.

Amid the legal machinations, abortion access remains a divisive issue among the nation’s faithful. In June, clergy across the U.S. reflected that divide and its nuances as they rearranged worship plans to provide religious context — and competing messages — after Roe was overturned.

Across the U.S., few voters in religious groups say abortion should always be illegal, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the midterm electorate. But religious groups differ in their level of support for abortion.

While Protestants in general are closely divided over whether abortion should generally be legal, most white evangelical Protestants — about 7 in 10 — say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. Similarly, about 7 in 10 Mormon voters say abortion should be generally be illegal.

By comparison, 6 in 10 Catholic voters, about 8 in 10 Jewish voters and close to 9 in 10 religious unaffiliated voters say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

An array of religious beliefs were on display during Indiana’s summer legislative debate, which ultimately resulted in the state becoming the first in the U.S. to enact tighter abortion restrictions after Dobbs. The state law displeased both abortion-rights advocates, who say it goes too far, and anti-abortion activists, who said it didn’t go far enough.

State Rep. Ann Vermilion, who opposed the ban, condemned her fellow Republicans that called women “murderers” for getting an abortion.

“The Lord’s promise is for grace and kindness,” Vermilion said. “He would not be jumping to condemn these women.”

Dr. Kay Eigenbrod, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist who attended Indiana Right to Life’s “Love them Both” rally during the debate, said in a July interview that, because of her Catholic upbringing, she supports a complete abortion ban without exceptions.

“Women just don’t have to turn to abortion for any reason,” she said. “We as a society just need to be better about supporting them both.”

Months later, Berg Raunick, a member of Hoosier Jews for Choice but not involved in the lawsuit, hopes lawmakers will continue to value religious freedom.

“That has to mean protecting all religions, not just Christianity, and not just the majority,” she said. “Now, we sort of wait and see how how true that is.”

___

AP writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report from Washington, D.C. Arleigh Rodgers is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/arleighrodgers

This Year, the Reproductive Justice Movement Showed Us What It Means to Fight

By Garnet Henderson

December 29, 2022Z

Source: TruthOut

Image: Adam Fagen

In a year of worst-case abortion access scenarios, reproductive justice activists showed us what solidarity looks like.

For reproductive justice advocates, the start of 2022 was ominous. In September 2021, the Supreme Court allowed a six-week abortion ban to go into effect in Texas, declining to block the law even temporarily despite the fact that it was an obvious violation of Roe v. Wade.

When oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization arrived in December of that year, the Texas ban had been in place for four painful months. That fact, plus some of the justices’ questions during oral arguments, cast an even deeper pall over the coming year. It was clear that the Supreme Court’s new and extremely conservative majority was ready to overturn one of the court’s most significant precedents and eliminate the constitutional right to abortion. But many activists, organizers and people working in abortion care felt like they were screaming and hardly anyone was listening. They didn’t see their sense of urgency mirrored in society at large.

Confirmation came in May, when the (apparently not-so-unprecedented) leak of the court’s majority opinion showed that the justices planned to pave the way for states to ban abortion entirely. This set off a torturous waiting game, where abortion providers and funders prepared for the worst without knowing exactly what day the hammer would fall.

One abortion provider told me at the time that his Texas clinic started packing appointments for the few abortions they were able to offer into the early morning hours in order to do as many procedures as possible each day before any Supreme Court decisions were issued. A telemedicine provider serving Wyoming, a state with a “trigger” ban designed to outlaw abortion automatically in the event of Roe’s demise, said she was checking her phone in between every patient to make sure abortion hadn’t become illegal during her last appointment. In late May, the state of Oklahoma — where nearly half of Texans who traveled out of state for their abortions received care — enacted a total abortion ban. When the official Supreme Court decision finally came down on June 24, providers in many states were forced to send patients home and stop providing services immediately.

2022 was the year that the Christian right succeeded in its decades-long plan to seize control of the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade. Yes, the Republican Party led that charge. But the Democratic Party failed — or perhaps, chose not to — mount a real defense. For years, pundits and politicians alike dismissed warnings that legal abortion was in jeopardy as hysterical, even as roughly half of U.S. states worked to legislate accessible abortion out of existence and many laid plans to ban abortion the moment they could. So far, 13 states have banned abortion entirely, and one — Georgia — has banned abortion at six weeks. In 10 other states, bans that have been temporarily blocked in the courts remain a threat.

There is no silver lining in suffering. But when the worst-case scenario that reproductive justice advocates had warned of for decades came to pass, they rose to the occasion with a bravery and grit that almost defies comprehension.

Overworked and overwhelmed, clinic workers kept showing up, even when they weren’t sure how much longer their jobs would exist. Though a wave of union organizing efforts began among clinic staff years ago, some of those unionized workers were still without contracts this year. However, just before the end of 2022, workers at Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania — one of whom spoke with Truthout in September — won and ratified their first contract after 20 months of bargaining.

According to Abortion Care Network, an association of independent abortion clinics, 42 independent clinics closed in 2022 — each one a devastating loss. However, in the face of incredible adversity, a handful of independent clinics have managed to stay open to provide non-abortion services in states that now ban abortion. One of them is West Alabama Women’s Center, whose operations director told me in August that the clinic could be forced to close in a few months. It remains open, offering contraceptive access, prenatal care, treatment for pregnancy complications, and other general health care. Other clinics have moved to or opened new locations in nearby states where abortion is still legal, so they can continue providing abortion care.

Abortion providers also found innovative new ways to serve patients traveling long distances. Just the Pill, formerly a telemedicine service, launched Abortion Delivered, the nation’s first fleet of mobile abortion clinics, and several Planned Parenthood affiliates followed suit.

Elevated Access, which flies people from restrictive states to places where they can safely receive abortion and gender-affirming care, told Truthout it has received applications from more than 1,000 volunteer pilots. Partners in Abortion Care, a new all-trimester abortion clinic, opened with help from more than 3,000 individual donors and said it has been seeing patients from all over the U.S. and abroad since October.

Abortion funds have also raised and distributed millions of dollars this year. The New York Abortion Access Fund recently reported that it had disbursed over $1 million as of October this year. The Missouri Abortion Fund distributed more than $647,000. Kentucky Health Justice Network (KHJN) told Truthout it helped roughly 1,650 abortion seekers this year. Prior to August, over 80 percent of its callers were going to one clinic in Kentucky. Now KHJN funds procedures at nearly 20 clinics across the region. Reproductive Freedom Fund of New Hampshire said it met 100 percent of the need for abortion funding for in-state patients and funded $50,000 toward procedures for out-of-state patients. New abortion funds launched, including the REACH Fund of Connecticut and Abortion Freedom Fund, which specifically funds telehealth abortions.

Though most abortion funds have historically ran on volunteer labor, many have begun to hire paid staff in order to make their work more sustainable. For example, DC Abortion Fund, which told Truthout it pledged over $2 million dollars to over 5,000 callers this year, also hired five full-time paid staff members for the first time in its history. Holler Health Justice, a fund in West Virginia, told Truthout its staff unionized with Industrial Workers of the World-West Virginia and finalized a first contract in May.

Online, I Need an A created a new advanced search feature allowing internet users to look for clinics based on the type of procedures offered and local legal restrictions, as well as search for abortion support organizations. Online Abortion Resource Squad told Truthout its volunteers answered 11,000 posts with accurate information on Reddit. A late 2021 Food and Drug Administration rule change made telemedicine simpler and more accessible, although only in the 31 states that allow it.

Advocates have also successfully defended people against criminalization for their pregnancy outcomes. In April, organizing by South Texans for Reproductive Justice, Frontera Fund and the Repro Legal Defense Fund helped secure the release of Lizelle Herrera, who was arrested for allegedly self-managing an abortion and held on $500,000 bail. Repro Legal Defense Fund posted Herrera’s bail and all charges against her were later dropped.

Pregnancy Justice (formerly known as National Advocates for Pregnant Women) told Truthout that it has secured the release of 10 pregnant and postpartum women — and counting — who were being held on unconstitutional bond conditions in an Alabama jail, and secured a policy to change those conditions moving forward. Along with a coalition including the ACLU of Northern California and Drug Policy Alliance, Pregnancy Justice also secured the release of Adora Perez, who spent four years in prison after being charged with murder when she experienced a stillbirth.

In a huge organizing and get-out-the-vote victory, Kansas voters resoundingly rejected an anti-abortion ballot measure in August. Despite concerns that the post-Dobbs momentum had faded, abortion-related ballot measures in the midterm elections in Michigan, Kentucky, Vermont, California and Montana all went in favor of abortion access and rights. Several states also enacted laws to expand and protect access to abortion, and even invested in directly funding abortion. And this is not even a comprehensive accounting of the victories, large and small, that advocates for abortion access have achieved this year against all odds.

And yet, there are many people who aren’t getting the abortions they need.

It’s hard to know exactly how many; based on data from Texas and surrounding states, researchers estimate the abortion rate among Texas residents declined by more than 30 percent after that state’s six-week abortion ban was enacted in 2021. However, that was a six-week ban, not a total ban, and Texas residents were still able to travel to nearby states at that time.

Now, for many people across the South and Midwest, the nearest abortion clinic is hundreds of miles away. Though some will order abortion pills online and self-manage their abortions, it is likely that thousands of people will be forced to carry pregnancies to term and give birth against their will. Every single one of these denied abortions will be a gross violation of human rights and bodily autonomy — not just the ones that endanger the pregnant person’s life.

Across the board, reproductive justice advocates and abortion care providers tell me they are exhausted. No one should have to work as hard as they have this year, with such high stakes. I’m tempted to say that we don’t deserve them, but the truth is that we do. Each and every person deserves someone to fight for their right to self-determination with such ferocity. But these tired, overworked people can’t do it alone. So, for 2023, I ask: How will you help them?