The hidden link between corporate greed and inflation

Don’t fall for the fear mongering about inflation. The real culprit here is corporate power.

By

 Robert Reich

 -

March 22, 2022

SOURCENationofChange

Inflation! Inflation! Everyone’s talking about it, but ignoring one of its biggest causes: corporate concentration.

Now, prices are undeniably rising. In response, the Fed is about to slow the economy — even though we’re still 2 million jobs short of where we were before the pandemic, and millions of American workers won’t get the raises they deserve.

Meanwhile, Republicans haven’t wasted any time hammering Biden and Democratic lawmakers about inflation.

Don’t fall for their fear mongering.

Everybody’s ignoring the deeper structural reason for price increases: the concentration of the American economy into the hands of a few corporate giants with the power to raise prices.

If the market were actually competitive, corporations would keep their prices as low as possible as they competed for customers.

Even if some of their costs increased, they would do everything they could to avoid passing them on to consumers in the form of higher prices, for fear of losing business to competitors.

But that’s the opposite of what we’re seeing. Corporations are raising prices even as they rake in record profits. Corporate profit margins hit record highs last year. You see, these corporations have so much market power they can raise prices with impunity.

So the underlying problem isn’t inflation per se. It’s a lack of competition. Corporations are using the excuse of inflation to raise prices and make fatter profits.

Take the energy sector.

Only a few entities have access to the land and pipelines that control the oil and gas  powering most of the world. They took a hit during the pandemic as most people stayed home. But they are more than making up for it now, limiting supply and ratcheting up prices.

Or look at consumer goods.

In April 2021, Procter & Gamble raised prices on staples like diapers and toilet paper, citing increased costs in raw materials and transportation. But P&G has been making huge profits. After some of its price increases went into effect, it reported an almost 25% profit margin.

Looking to buy your diapers elsewhere? Good luck. The market is dominated by P&G and Kimberly-Clark, which—NOT entirely coincidentally—raised its prices at the same time.

Another example: in April 2021, PepsiCo raised prices, blaming higher costs for ingredients, freight, and labor. It then recorded $3 billion in operating profits through September. How did it get away with this without losing customers?

Pepsi has only one major competitor, Coca-Cola, which promptly raised its own prices. Coca-Cola recorded $10 billion in revenues in the third quarter of 2021, up 16% from the previous year.

Food prices are soaring, but half of that is from meat, which costs 15% more than last year. There are only four major meat processing companies in America, which are all raising their prices and enjoying record profits.

Get the picture?

The underlying problem is not inflation. It’s corporate power. Since the 1980s, when the U.S. government all but abandoned antitrust enforcement, two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated.

Most are now dominated by a handful of corporations that coordinate prices and production. This is true of: banks, broadband, pharmaceutical companies,  airlines, meatpackers, and yes, soda.

Corporations in all these industries could easily absorb higher costs — including long overdue wage increases — without passing them on to consumers in the form of higher prices. But they aren’t.

Instead, they’re using their massive profits to line the pockets of major investors and executives — while both consumers and workers get shafted.

How can this structural problem be fixed? Fighting corporate concentration with more aggressive antitrust enforcement. And imposing a windfall profits tax on profitable corporations that are using this period of rising costs to gouge consumers. 

So don’t fall for the fear mongering about inflation. The real culprit here is corporate 

Robert Reich

http://robertreich.org/

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, co-founder of the nonprofit Inequality Media and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, Inequality for All.

Inflation Won't Be Remedied by the Federal Reserve Imposing Higher Interest Rates

The result is likely to be a recession.

People shopping in the egg and dairy case on March 13, 2020 at Whole Foods Merket in Vauxhall, New Jersey. (Photo: Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

ROBERT REICH

March 28, 2022

 by robertreich.substack.com

As Putin’s war shakes up the world economy, the Fed last week raised interest rates by a quarter point and penciled in six more increases by the end of the year. Fed Chair Jerome Powell says he’s ready to do whatever it takes to bring inflation down, including following the example of his predecessor Paul Volcker, who increased interest rates to 20 percent in 1981.

The current inflation is the consequence of a perfect storm of unique events that won't recur—and won’t be remedied by higher rates.

Volcker’s rate rise triggered a deep recession and double-digit unemployment. We can debate whether that harsh medicine in 1981 was necessary. What should be clear is that the current inflation is nothing like the inflation of the late 1970s — a time when nearly a quarter of all private-sector workers were unionized and American corporations couldn’t easily outsource production. Today, only 6 percent of private-sector workers are unionized — which means workers have almost no long-term bargaining leverage. And today American corporations can outsource almost anywhere (although China is becoming more complicated, and Russia is now off limits).

Inflation is running almost 8 percent annually, which is surely a problem. But it’s not due to permanent wage or price hikes. In fact, it has nothing to do with the business cycle. So expecting the Federal Reserve to remedy today’s inflation by raising interest rates to slow the economy is like trying to cool off on a hot day by aiming a battering ram at your head. Wrong diagnosis. Wrong remedy. The current inflation is the consequence of a perfect storm of unique events that won’t recur—and won’t be remedied by higher rates.

We’re emerging from a once-a-century pandemic during which much of the world economy closed down. In March through May 2020, demand evaporated as people retreated into their homes. Because the nation’s (and world’s) productive capacity couldn’t be closed down all at once (productive capacity includes factories, offices, warehouses, and so on, all of which take a while to wind down), the resulting excess of supply over demand caused a deep recession.

Now, at the other end, and without much opportunity to buy for the last two years, American consumers are flush with cash (the national savings rate is at its highest level in decades). So they want to buy lots of stuff (and they haven’t yet gone back to spending much on services such as restaurants, hotels, air travel, movies and other places where COVID reigned for two years). Yet the nation’s (and the world’s) productive capacity can’t be fully operational all at once. The resulting excess of demand over supply is causing major inflation.

That inflation is being driven by other unique events as well. In housing, the real engine of rising prices is demographics. The huge Millennial generation (the largest in American history), born in the 1980s, is now storming into the housing market after COVID closed their world for two years. Making matters worse, the Great Recession clobbered the construction industry, dramatically reducing the number of available houses to buy or rent.

Energy prices are soaring mostly because of Putin’s war (they were rising even in anticipation of it). So are food costs. (Russia and Ukraine together provide about one-quarter of all the planet’s wheat exports.)

Another culprit is the pricing power of big corporations. In a White House briefing last fall, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese noted that half of the overall increase in food prices is due to spikes in the cost of beef, pork, and poultry, which has fueled record profits among the four biggest producers that control most of the market. "It raises a concern about pandemic profiteering — about companies that are driving price increases in a way that hurts consumers who are going to the grocery store, and also isn't benefiting the actual producers — the farmers and the ranchers," Deese said.

Profiteering is occurring over much of American industry, as I’ve chronicled on these pages, here and here.

Corporations have been raising prices even as they rake in record profits by coordinating price hikes with the handful of other big companies in their industry.

If you don't believe that corporations are taking advantage of their pricing power and inflation to raise prices, just listen to corporate executives themselves. The Chief Financial Officer of Constellation Brands, the parent company of Modelo and Corona beers, told investors in January that the company wants to “take as much as [we] can” from customers. (Publicly, however, the company has blamed rising material costs for their increased prices.) Here’s another: The grocery food brand Hormel saw a 19 percent increase in their operating income in the first quarter of 2022. Their CFO’s response to these soaring profits? “We’ve done a great job with our pricing.”

Of course corporate financial officers want to brag about profits. But if their corporations were actually competing against other corporations in the same industry, they’d absorb cost increases in order to keep their prices as low as possible so consumers didn't abandon them. Today, however, corporations have been raising prices even as they rake in record profits by coordinating price hikes with the handful of other big companies in their industry. That way, all of them come out ahead — while consumers and workers lose.

Raising interest rates won’t remedy any of this.

Which gets me back to trying to cool yourself down on a hot day by aiming a battering ram at your head. You won’t get cooler. You’ll only get a very bad headache. That’s exactly what the Fed will do to the economy if it sticks to its plan. The Fed’s rate hikes won’t remedy inflation. They will do the opposite. Since World War II, most Fed rate hikes have resulted in recession.

Over the longer term, it’s necessary to attack the pricing power of big corporations in America who are profiteering off the pandemic. For now, it’s best to ride out the perfect storm.

© 2021 robertreich.substack.com

  
Robert Reich, is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. His book include: "Aftershock" (2011), "The Work of Nations" (1992), "Beyond Outrage" (2012) and, "Saving Capitalism" (2016). He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine, former chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." Reich's newest book is "The Common Good" (2019). He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.

SHOULD BE CONTIENT WIDE

It's Farmworker Awareness Week. Here’s What Those Who Feed Us Deserve.

The workers who put food on our tables face poverty, deportation, and extreme heat. These are policy choices—and they can be changed.

Farmworkers tend to strawberries growing in a field on February 10, 2021 in Ventura County, California. (Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

From Cesar Chavez’s day to our own, “the struggle continues”—la lucha sigue!


ENNEDITH LOPEZ

COMMON DREAMS

March 30, 2022

Few workers play a more intimate role in our lives than the farmworkers who plant, pick, package, and ship the food we put on our tables. But unfortunately, few are more vulnerable.

As the climate crisis accelerates, their already hard jobs are getting deadlier.

Ever since the mid-20th century, when migrant braceros from Mexico kept food on U.S. tables while Americans were off fighting in World War II, farmworkers in this country have faced systemic injustices and abuse.

They’re no less vital now—in 2020, they were declared essential to ensure families continued to be fed during a pandemic that forced others to stay home. But many continue to face systemic exploitation on account of their poverty or immigration status.

There are between 2.5 and 3 million agricultural workers in the United States. Migrant farmworkers account for an estimated 75 percent of these, and 50 percent of migrant farmworkers are undocumented. Many live in this country at risk of deportation, in substandard housing conditions, and in extreme poverty.

And unfortunately, as the climate crisis accelerates, their already hard jobs are getting deadlier.

Because most farmworkers lack basic working protections and are paid “per piece”—that is, for how much they harvest—they’re often forced to choose between going without pay and working long hours through dangerous conditions. In recent years, they’ve had to work through heat waves, extreme drought, and even wildfires.

In 2021, the United States experienced the hottest summer on record, and some farmworkers died because of these unpredictable circumstances. Heat is now their leading cause of death on the job—in fact, farmworkers are 20 times more likely than other workers to die from heat-related illnesses.

Even one death on the job is too many. We need real labor standards to mitigate these gruesome conditions.

Farmworker deaths can be prevented by implementing federal heat safety standards and actually enforcing them—a call many advocacy groups have made. Employers should be required to prevent heat-related illnesses by providing clean drinking water, shade, and rest periods. And they should be held accountable for deaths caused by dangerous working conditions.

But protecting farmworkers on the job also means addressing the issues that make them so vulnerable in the first place.

Protecting farmworkers on the job also means addressing the issues that make them so vulnerable in the first place.



The piece-rate wage forces workers to put in 10- or 12-hour workdays and still leaves many food-insecure and impoverished. And due to their immigration status, farmworkers are often unable to protest dangerous working conditions or poor wages, incentivizing employers to exploit them further.

The complete marginalization of farmworkers is due to decisions made by our policymakers, as well as an exploitative food system that profits from their misfortunes. But these decisions can be changed.

Providing a legal and just pathway to citizenship would ensure that immigrant farmworkers have the opportunity to improve their living and working conditions. Labor laws that ensure workers are fairly paid regardless of their immigration status could greatly mitigate the risks many are forced to take.

And real action to address our climate crisis and protect our environment would have the added benefit of protecting our most essential workers.

The farmworkers who feed us are on the frontlines of climate change, poverty, and our broken immigration system. They shouldn’t be treated as sacrificial or replaceable—especially when they’re nothing short of essential. We must support their causes and demand justice.

This Farmworker Awareness Week, it’s critical that we continue to recognize the vital role farmworkers play to sustain our country’s entire food system, their proud history of union mobilizing and organizing, and the need to respect their humanity.

From Cesar Chavez’s day to our own, “the struggle continues”—la lucha sigue!

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

ENNEDITH LOPEZ is a New Mexico Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

'Prestige Doesn't Pay the Bills': Condé Nast Workers Announce New Union

"Condé Nast has a legacy as a storied media brand, but it now also has a legacy as one of the last media giants to unionize."

Condé Nast's West Coast regional office is in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

BRETT WILKINS

COMMON DREAMS

March 29, 2022


Employees across Condé Nast publications on Tuesday announced they are following in the footsteps of their colleagues at The New Yorker and other company outlets and forming a union to "create a better, more equitable workplace."

"If Condé wants to attract the best talent in the business, they have to stop relying on prestige and provide equitable pay and benefits."

The Washington Post reports the newly formed Condé Union sent a letter signed by more than 350 workers to company management requesting voluntary recognition of the labor group, which includes employees of nearly a dozen publications including Allure, Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, Glamour, GQ, Teen Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Vogue.

"We work for one of the largest and most influential media companies in the country, but Condé Nast also has a long, well-documented history of exploitation, leveraging its prestige to overwork and underpay its employees," Condé Union said in a statement.

Vanity Fair web producer Jaime Archer told the Post that "it comes down to prestige doesn't pay the bills."

"We love working here, and we want to keep working here," she added. "If Condé wants to attract the best talent in the business, they have to stop relying on prestige and provide equitable pay and benefits."

The unionization of Condé Nast began in 2018 with members of The New Yorker's editorial staff, who were followed by workers at Ars Technica, Pitchfork, and Wired. Company management voluntarily recognized all four efforts—but not without a fight.

Bon Appétit senior food editor Christina Chaey said in a statement Tuesday that "Condé Nast has a legacy as a storied media brand, but it now also has a legacy as one of the last media giants to unionize. We deserve to work at a brand that values our work and prioritizes helping us shape our futures here. Show us you actually want us to be here, Condé!”

Allegra Kirkland, Teen Vogue's politics director, said that "great people leave Condé all the time because they're frustrated by systemic issues at the company, or by a lack of career growth or raises. That harms both our quality of work and the quality of life of those left behind, who end up picking up the slack."

"The union will enshrine protections," she added. "It will give people an outlet to voice their concerns and a reason to stay."

Bon Appétit assistant editor Chala Tyson Tshitundu asserted that "our union will fight to improve Condé's frankly abysmal pay scale, which has not only led to stagnant wages across the board, but glaring ongoing pay inequities, especially amongst non-white staff."

Some workers called on Condé Nast to reflect the values its publications promote.

"We publish pieces every day about how women can advocate for themselves, and how mothers need to be treated well, and pay discrepancies in the workplace," Glamour staff writer Jenny Singer told the Post. "There's nothing more important than Condé practicing what it preaches in its pages."

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Airport Workers Protest Across US Demanding 'Living Wage' and Right to Union

"We're fed up after years of working jobs where we're called essential, but treated as disposable."


Protesters in Phoenix joined a national day of action for airport workers demanding better employment conditions. (Photo: Airport Workers United/Twitter)


JESSICA CORBETT

COMMON DREAMS

March 30, 2022


Contracted airport workers—including baggage handlers, cabin cleaners, security officers, and wheelchair agents—in more than 20 U.S. cities staged coordinated demonstrations Wednesday to call for higher wages, better benefits, and the right to unionize.

"As an immigrant who spent 10 years in refugee camps, I've faced plenty of hardship in my life, but none as great as the last two years."

"Airports keep our economy and our world connected. I assist disabled, elderly, and other passengers, who need help getting through the airport to their plane," said Omer Hussein, a wheelchair attendant servicing American Airlines at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, in a statement.

"I'm only paid $12 an hour. I work a lot of hours and some days I work so late that I just sleep over at the airport," he explained. "I can't afford a car, rent, and to send money home to my family in Sudan. I like working with passengers, but I'm so tired all the time. That won't fly any longer."





Hussein added that "now, airport workers like me are fed up and taking action to demand that all airport jobs must be good, union jobs that pay enough to support our families."

Along with his workplace in Texas, workers planned protests at airports in or near Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Newark, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, D.C.
  

"If I got hit by a car or a stray bullet, I'll tell the ambulance to take me to Dulles to work because otherwise I won't have a job when I come back," said 71-year-old Paul Blair, a terminal cleaner at Washington Dulles International Airport, in a statement.

Blair, who suffers from arthritis and heart problems, highlighted that "we sacrificed our lives working through Covid, but we still don't get benefits and must come to work sick because we can't afford to lose pay."


As part of the day of action, the workers—who are organizing with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)—ran a full-page advertisement in USA Today with a letter addressed to the CEOs of three major airlines: American, Delta, and United.

"Airports connect people worldwide and power the global economy. And it's workers like us who make it all possible," the ad says. "But we're fed up after years of working jobs where we're called essential, but treated as disposable."


The letter calls on the chief executives to sign the "Good Airports Pledge," which would mean promising to:
Acknowledge that airlines have the ability and responsibility to end poverty-wage jobs and inequality through the system;
Ensure the billions of public dollars airlines receive annually serve the public good, not just shareholders and executives;
Set a minimum wage and benefit standard guaranteeing all workers are paid living wages and provided affordable, quality healthcare and paid time off;
Respect workers' right to join together in a union; and
Ensure contracts with airport service providers are able to meet living wage and fair benefits standards and encourage contracts to be neutral when workers organize a union.


"Amid a national reckoning and wave of workers exercising their power, airport workers are building on years of organizing and asserting themselves as the newest force in the surging labor movement," declared SEIU international president Mary Kay Henry ahead of the protests. "They're standing up to airline CEOs, raising their voices to demand respect, protections, and pay that they can raise a family on."

"They're fed up with a system where Black and Brown workers make tens of thousands of dollars less than their white peers, and they're taking action," the labor leader added. "Airlines have long proven they can't be trusted to use the billions of public dollars they receive to serve the public good."


In statements about the demonstrations, some workers shared how the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has affected them.

"As an immigrant who spent 10 years in refugee camps, I've faced plenty of hardship in my life, but none as great as the last two years," said Ababuti Olok, a skycap worker and wheelchair attendant at Boston Logan International Airport who lives in Chelsea with his wife and two sons.

"I was grateful to go back to work after being in lay off for many months, but I still fell over three months behind on rent and feared my family would end up homeless. Even now, I'm still behind on my bills," he added. "I need relief so my children can stay in our home."


Skycap Almaz Abera, who has worked at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport for 18 years, said that "almost all of my coworkers got Covid, I'm very sad over the loss of my coworkers Ana and Brook, sometimes we cry when we talk about them."

"Those who lack health insurance can't afford to go to hospital, often dying as a result," Abera noted. "Those with healthcare make it because they can afford to go to the hospital. We have to fight the airlines for healthcare and sick leave because you can die and they won't care."

Some federal lawmakers, including Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), expressed support for the protesting workers.


"Airport workers can be paid as little as $8/hour, while CEOs are paid on average $5,000/hour," tweeted Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "It's time to raise the wage for workers across this country."

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 and share widely.

Truck Drivers Are Grossly Underpaid and Work Under Immoral Corporate Bosses

Truckers are underpaid, overworked, endangered and even dehumanized by bosses who install surveillance cameras, sensors, and other technology to record and report every twitch a driver makes.


Container trucks arrive at the Long Beach Container Terminal at the 

Port of Long Beach on November 12, 2021 in Long Beach, California.

 (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

JIM HIGHTOWER

March 30, 2022 

by Creators.com

The recent traffic-clogging protests in Canada, Washington, D.C., Europe and elsewhere by long- and short-haul truck drivers were about them being angry over having to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates—right?

Uh... no. That's the line being put out by right-wing extremists trying to use the legitimate gripes of truckers for their own political gain. As usual, the extremists are nuts—not the truckers.

Pay today is so abysmal that most truckers on the road have to drive dangerously long shifts of well over 60 hours a week (with many topping 100 hours) to make a bare-bones living.

My Uncle Emmitt was a coast to coast, high-balling trucker in the 1960s, and would attest that back then, trucking was an honest job with decent pay, union protections, benefits and normal hours. Then came the anti-government, deregulation craze of the 1980s, pushed by corporate profiteers and right-wing ideologues. Since then, cheap-rate trucking outfits have become predominant, unions have been cast aside, driver pay has crashed and working conditions have become punishing.

Pay today is so abysmal that most truckers on the road have to drive dangerously long shifts of well over 60 hours a week (with many topping 100 hours) to make a bare-bones living. It's a grind, too—you can't stand up for hours, you travel alone, dinner is a gas station burrito, bathroom breaks mean pulling out the plastic jug you carry along... and you won't get home for days. Exhaustion is a constant companion and a real hazard, especially because you're wrangling bulky machines known as "40 tons of death."

Yet corporate, political and media elites—oblivious to all of the above—whine that America has a trucker shortage. They might ask themselves, why? After all, there are plenty of people who are licensed truck drivers, but—get this—nine out of 10 quit within a year of getting a job! That's not because of a vaccine mandate, as right-wing political manipulators want us to believe. It's because truckers are underpaid, overworked, endangered and even dehumanized by bosses who install surveillance cameras, sensors, and other technology to record and report every twitch a driver makes.

Today's explosive truck-convoy protests are not a right-wing expression—it's a rebellion against the plutocratic system that the right wing has imposed on truckers... and on America.

"Keep On Truckin" was an iconic underground cartoon of the hippie era, created in 1968 by comic master Robert Crumb. Featuring various big-footed men strutting jauntily through life, the image became widely popular as an expression of young people's collective optimism. "You're movin' on down the line," Crumb later explained, "It's proletarian. It's populist."

But today the phrase has become ironic, for America's truck drivers themselves are no longer moving on down the line of fairness, justice and opportunity. What had been a skilled, middle-class job in the 1960s is now largely a skilled poverty-wage job, thanks to the industry's relentless push for deregulation, de-unionization and decoupling of drivers from middle-class possibilities. America's trucking system has been turned into a corporate racket, with CEOs feeling entitled to arbitrarily abuse the workers who move the corporate products across town and country. Why entitled? To enable the abuse, their lawyers have fabricated a legal dodge letting them claim that their truck drivers are not their employees, but "independent contractors."

Thus—hocus pocus!—drivers don't get decent wages, overtime pay, workers' compensation, Social Security, health care, rest breaks, reimbursement for truck expenses (including gasoline, tires, repairs and insurance) ... and as "contractors" they're not allowed to unionize. This rank corporate rip-off has become the industry standard, practiced by multibillion-dollar shipping giants like XPO, FedEx, Penske and Amazon. The National Employment Law Project recently reported that two-thirds of truckers hauling goods from U.S. ports are intentionally misclassified as contractors rather than as employees of the profiteers that hire them, direct them, set their pay levels and fire them.

Of course, corporate bosses try to hide their greed with a thin legalistic fig leaf: "We believe our (drivers') classifications are legal," sniffed an XPO executive. Sure they are, sport, because your lobbyists write the laws! But might doesn't make right, "legal" doesn't mean moral and "boss" spelled backward is double-S.O.B.

© 2021 Creators Syndicate


Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the books "Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow" (2008) and "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion" (1998). Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

Corporations are suppressing wages—there’s an easy fix for that

Don’t believe the optimistic hype about wages “naturally” rising. About one-third of American workers are shockingly underpaid as a result of the federal government’s continued refusal to raise the minimum wage.

By

 Sonali Kolhatkar

 -

March 30, 2022

SOURCEIndependent Media Institute

Image Credit: Common Dreams

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute.

Amid all the good news about successful labor organizing and job growth in the United States is the stark reality that wages continue to remain inexcusably low even as inflation rises. A new government report by numerous agencies including the U.S. Treasury Department came to the stark conclusion that corporate power is suppressing wages.

Two weeks later, the international aid organization Oxfam America released a report consistent with this finding, that millions of American workers continue to earn less than $15 an hour. People of color and particularly women of color are disproportionately impacted—as is always the case.

But, pro-corporate coverage paints a rosy picture about the U.S. economy—one that requires no intervention because things are apparently humming along just fine on their own.

The government report, barely noted in the media, was the result of a collaboration between the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and the Federal Trade Commission. It concluded that wages in the U.S. are 20 percent lower than they should be and that this state of affairs is the direct result of corporations wielding their power over the labor market.

Yet, conservative think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) continue to insist that wages are “naturally rising far beyond… [the federal minimum wage] due to basic supply and demand,” and therefore government intervention to raise the floor would be a bad idea. CEI cites how Target is already paying workers between $15 and $24 an hour. It offers no solution for how underpaid workers can afford to live if inflation continues to rise. Indeed, the only problem that the organization seems to care about is how rising wages could contribute to inflation.

But the Treasury Department’s report points out that corporate power is unnaturally suppressing wages in myriad ways including the offshoring of labor to nations where wages are even lower, the imposition of so-called “noncompete” contracts that undermine workers’ ability to switch jobs within their field, and the misclassification of workers that prevents them from exercising labor rights such as joining a union.

There is nothing “natural” about that.

A decade ago, the Fight for Fifteen movement, which was born in Chicago’s fast-food industry, demanded at least $15 an hour in wages. Ten years after the campaign was launched, most states still do not require employers to pay $15 an hour. While Washington, D.C., now has a $15.20-an-hour minimum wage, it remains an exception. Large states like California and New York are inching upward in the right direction, and a total of 30 states now require minimum wages to be higher than the federal minimum wage. But that is an extremely low standard.

The federal government’s minimum wage ought to be a national shame, remaining unchanged since 2009 at an embarrassingly paltry $7.25 an hour. This is the longest that the government has gone without raising the federal minimum wage since the New Deal.

According to Oxfam America’s new report, “The Crisis of Low Wages in the US,” “more than 31.9 percent of the US labor force, or 51.9 million workers, currently make less than $15 per hour, and many are stuck at the federal minimum wage.”

Dr. Kaitlyn Henderson, a senior research adviser with Oxfam America’s U.S. Domestic Policy Program, who authored the report, told me in an interview that “it is shocking, especially considering that this is the highest [that] inflation has been in four decades.”

Even those making $15 an hour earn barely enough to get by. The supposedly high upper limit “breaks down to $31,200 a year—before taxes,” explained Henderson. This means they “have a harder time keeping a roof over their head and food on the table. This is not enough for an individual to live [on], much less a working family.”

If this crisis is not apparent to the public, we can thank institutions like CEI that spread nonsense about wages “naturally” rising, and the corporate media’s near-exclusive focus on the number of jobs over the quality of jobs and pay. Media outlets routinely obscure the catastrophe of low wages each month when the Labor Department’s jobs report generates stories that focus on employment numbers and little else.

For example, the New York Times on March 4 covered the February 2022 report signaling “a flood of new jobs and new workers last month,” which to the paper meant that “the pandemic’s vise grip on the economy may be loosening.” The story featured quotes from pro-corporate economists such as Morgan Stanley’s Robert Rosener who said, “We’ve continually been surprised by the resilience of the U.S. labor market.”

This upbeat tone continued throughout the story, even when discussing wages: “The labor force grew, unemployment fell, and average hourly earnings were virtually unchanged from January, although they are up significantly over the past year, particularly for workers in low-wage industries.”

Anyone reading the New York Times or CEI’s reports would come away feeling optimistic about the state of the economy and adopt a hands-off approach. But Oxfam America’s report, which covers wages through December 2021, arrives at a very different conclusion where nearly a third of workers are scraping by on meager wages. “In the United States, the value we attribute to shareholders is somehow greater than the value we attribute to the workers who make our society function,” writes Henderson in the report.

Another major blind spot in pro-corporate economic coverage is how income inequality is delineated along racial lines. According to Henderson, “low-wage workers are disproportionately women, people of color, and women of color especially.” Henderson referred to the “occupational segregation” that Black and Latino workers are subjected to.

“When you’re thinking about it through an intersectional lens, where you’re considering race and gender, the pay gap increases substantially,” Henderson told me. So, women of color, who are overrepresented in industries like child care, are among the hardest hit. It should not surprise us then that, as per Henderson, “Child care is one of the lowest-paid professions in the United States,” and this “reflects the value system we have in this country.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) suggested that while elite figures and institutions were celebrating Women’s History Month in March, one way to put their money where their mouths are is to support the women who work in child care and home health care. CBPP’s Diana Azevedo-McCaffrey wrote that the women of color who dominate these industries and are grossly underpaid to do so are “performing the labor that underpins the nation’s economy and maintains families’ health and well-being.”

CBPP backs myriad basic federal policies to fix this problem, including paid leave and federal funding for child care and home health care. Similarly, Oxfam America backs straightforward solutions such as federal funding boosts as well as the passage of the Raise the Wage Act, which would gradually raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour—hardly a big ask 10 years after the Fight for Fifteen movement, and already inadequate to meet working people’s needs.

The problem of low wages in the U.S. ought to shock us, in spite of the pro-corporate optimism about the economy and the media’s refusal to amplify the problem. The solutions are obvious, easy, and hardly radical

Sonali Kolhatkar

Sonali Kolhatkar is a columnist for Truthdig. She also is the founder, host and producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a radio and television show that airs on Pacifica stations KPFK and KPFA and will begin airing on Free Speech TV. She is the former founder, host and producer of KPFK Pacifica’s popular morning drive-time program “Rising Up With Sonali,” based in Los Angeles. She is also the co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, a U.S.-based non-profit solidarity organization that funds the social, political, and humanitarian projects of RAWA.

Scientists to Biden: World Needs 'Rapid Transition From Fossil Fuels to Renewable Energy'

"Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently said 'we are on war footing' in calling for increased oil and gas production. This is backwards thinking."

In a new letter, scientists are calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to "rally the global community around a program of energy security through a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy." 

(Photo: myLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)


JESSICA CORBETT

COMMON DREAMS 

March 30, 2022

"In this moment of climate emergency," five scientists began a new open letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, "we write with utmost urgency to advise you and your administration to halt recent moves towards increasing fossil fuel production and instead take bold action to rapidly reduce fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure."

"The president's fossil fuel expansion takes us deeper into climate catastrophe."

Biologist Sandra Steingraber—who is leading the effort with Peter Kalmus, Robert Howarth, Michael Mann, and Mark Jacobson in conjunction with Food & Water Watch—shared a link to the letter on Twitter Wednesday and urged fellow scientists to add their signatures.

"We say the White House call for more drilling and fracking is a climate calamity," Steingraber said. "Sign with us!"

The letter—which its initiators plan to present to the president next month after collecting "a critical mass" of signatures—follows a similar message from October and comes as Biden works to ramp up U.S. gas shipments to Europe in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine.



Kalmus, who also shared the document Wednesday, tweeted that "the president's fossil fuel expansion takes us deeper into climate catastrophe."

The scientists' effort aligns with recent remarks from climate campaigners and other experts, who have argued since the war began last month that European nations' attempts to reduce their reliance on Russian fossil fuels—a key source of revenue for Putin's government—show the importance of a swift global shift to clean energy.

"Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently said 'we are on war footing' in calling for increased oil and gas production," the scientists' letter states, referencing the U.S. official's speech at a Houston conference earlier this month. "This is backwards thinking. Instead of fossil fuels, we must apply that level of urgency to building a renewable energy economy."

"Rather than working to increase oil and gas production," the letter adds, "we urge you to use your executive authority to redirect these massive investments, mobilize the country, and rally the global community around a program of energy security through a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy."

Recalling that when Biden ran for president, he pledged to listen to science, the five experts wrote that "as scientists who look at data every day, we implore you to keep this promise and listen to what the scientific community is saying about fossil fuels and the climate crisis."

They specifically pointed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last month, which features "a series of dire warnings about the unfolding climate catastrophe," including that "the scientific evidence is overwhelming that we must act now—we simply do not have time to waste."

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UN Chief: IPCC Report a 'Damning Indictment of Failed Climate Leadership'

"Already millions of Americans and even more across the world are being impacted by extreme weather, drought, flooding, sea level rise, and wildfires," the letter notes. "The IPCC report highlights millions being impacted by climate change-induced food insecurity and water scarcity."

The letter warns that "these problems will only accelerate as we continue our reliance on fossil fuels. And, this is on top of the significant health and environmental justice impacts that power plants, export facilities, and other fossil fuel infrastructure have on neighboring communities."

"The United States, Europe, and the rest of the world desperately need energy independence," the document declares, "but allowing more drilling and fracking, approving more pipelines, and expanding export facilities not only fail to address short-term energy needs, they lock us into decades of reliance on fossil fuels and ensure runaway climate chaos for the long run."

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