Labor Day 2015: Uncertain Times for American Workers

By The Los Angeles Times

07 September 15

t's been a pretty good summer for workers. The Los Angeles City Council voted to bump the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, and a nationwide movement to raise it elsewhere has gained steam, as has pressure to expand paid sick leave to more people. The Obama administration proposed changing wage and hour rules to make more salaried workers eligible for overtime pay. The National Labor Relations Board last month made it harder for employers to insulate themselves from labor infractions by outsourcing work to contractors. And the

U.S. unemployment rate slipped from 5.7% in January to 5.1% at the end of August, a little above what it was a decade ago and far below the 10% peak after the Great Recession.

That's the good news.

Unfortunately, being a worker in America today isn't what it was a decade ago, and not all the changes can be blamed on the recession, though that certainly was economically cataclysmic for millions of people. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' data show that the country still hasn't recovered fully, let alone returned to the heights reached during the late 1990s' dot-com boom. Compared with late 2006, about 1.3 million more people are unemployed today and about 1 million more have been jobless for more than six months. Almost 6.5 million Americans currently working part time want full-time jobs, which is 2 million more than a decade ago.

Relationships with employers have changed as well. More people now work as independent contractors, which means they aren't covered by wage and overtime laws and don't receive workers' compensation if injured or unemployment insurance if laid off. Some workers prefer such jobs because of the flexibility it gives them, which also appeals to employers who may only need a worker for a specific task for a short time. But many companies exploit the system by misclassifying workers as independent contractors when they really are acting as employees and entitled to protections.

The skills demanded on the job are changing too. Consider, for example, the computers that have been integrated into cars in recent years. Auto mechanics no longer start by popping the hood; they download diagnostic data from a port near the steering column. Not every worker needs to be adept with software, but those skills will matter for a lot of 21st century middle-class jobs, which is why pressure has built on public schools, colleges and universities to raise the technical competence of their graduates.

We also appear to be in the early stages of a technology-driven revolution in the economy, which is creating both opportunities and challenges for workers. Thanks to the Internet, it's easier to find job openings, market one's skills or attract customers for one's services. An ever-growing assortment of online platforms, such as Uber and TaskRabbit, connects individuals with those seeking to hire them. But many of those companies classify the people providing the services as independent contractors, letting them control when and where they work but offering none of the benefits of being an employee, nor the ability to set prices for their services. A federal judge in San Francisco is considering a class-action lawsuit that could result in thousands of Uber drivers being reclassified as employees, and some sharing-economy companies, such as Instacart, have responded to the controversy by giving workers using their apps the option to become employees.

Interestingly, the Uber case arose when drivers banded together to challenge their working conditions — much like what a union does on behalf of its members. And speaking of unions, for them the news remains dour. Earlier this year Wisconsin became the 26th state (and the third since 2012) to adopt right-to-work laws that make it harder for unions to organize. Private sector union membership dropped from 7.9% in 2004 to 6.6% last year, continuing a decades-long slide that many experts cite as a contributing factor (along with increased automation and offshoring of work) in the shrinking of the middle class.

Clearly the nation's workers — and large segments of the economy — are undergoing significant transitions. On the plus side, the long, slow climb out of the recession seems to be continuing. On the minus side, it's still unclear exactly what we are transitioning to.

Scott Walker, Meet Noam Chomsky: Here's the Real Iran History Republicans Need to Learn

By Kyle Schmidlin, Salon

06 September 15

What will it take for conservatives to understand that we're the ones who have been meddling in Iran for decades?

s a historic deal with Iran that would temporarily block it from pursuing certain nuclear ambitions in exchange for relaxation of sanctions moves ever closer to passage, Republicans are vowing to do all they can to scuttle the deal. It’s remarkable that, at a time when the first modern meaningful international agreement between the U.S. and Iran is about to go through, Republicans are rattling sabers as aggressively as ever.

Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker called the deal “one of America’s worst diplomatic failures.” “Instead of making the world safer,” Walker alleges, “this deal will likely lead to a nuclear arms race in the world’s most dangerous region.” In keeping with the lockstep obstructionism that has defined the GOP throughout Obama’s presidency, other Republicans have protested the deal, citing Iran’s untrustworthiness and existential threat to world peace.

For years, Washington and the news media have portrayed Iran as the most dangerous national power on the planet. That opinion is not widely shared by the global community, however, which by a significant margin places the United States at the top of a list of the biggest threats to world peace. Despite the abundance of negative public opinion on Iran in the U.S., the question of what exactly makes the country such a threat is rarely meaningfully explored.

A brief history of U.S.-Iranian relations reveals everything about who should be distrustful of whom.

In 1953, the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected government and installed the Shah, a brutal dictator who proceeded to establish one of the worst human rights records of the era. Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which deposed the Shah, Washington turned its favor to another brutal dictator in the region: Saddam Hussein, who received U.S. aid throughout the Iran-Iraq War. Ever since the revolution, the U.S. has imposed various sanctions on Iran. And most recently, we launched major military operations in two of Iran’s neighboring states, further destabilizing the region and threatening Iran’s own safety.

But in the eyes of U.S. commentary, Iran remains the supreme evil. It’s instructive, for instance, that without any irony or self-awareness we charge Iran with interfering in the Iraq War – a war we instigated from the other side of the world, against massive international protest, on Iran’s doorstep. Actually, Iran’s involvement in the Iraq conflict has necessarily increased with the growing threat of ISIS, a group that only exists because of the immense power vacuum and destabilization caused by the U.S. invasion.

With all the trouble Washington causes in and around Iranian borders, it’s a wonder Tehran has as much restraint as it does. Iran has launched zero invasions in modern history. Its alleged support for terrorism mostly concerns the aid it provides to secure its regional interests and to Hamas and Hezbollah, groups that emerged as resistance against Israeli aggression in Lebanon and the West Bank.

Even more fuss is made in Western commentary over Ayatollah Khomeini and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s alleged threats to “wipe Israel off the face of the map.” As historian and prominent Middle Eastern commentator Juan Cole clarifies, such a literal threat was never made. “The actual quote,” Cole writes, “does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all … [Ahmadinejad] quoted Khomeini that ‘the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.’ It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.”

It would be nothing short of suicidal for Iran to make such a threat. But Israeli/Iranian tensions are real, and nuclear weapons are part of the problem. Three states within three or fewer borders of Iran possess nuclear weapons: Israel, Pakistan and India. Unlike Iran, none of them have signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Also unlike Iran, all three are U.S. allies.

Not only has Israel not signed the NPT, it doesn’t even admit it has nuclear weapons – though its arsenal is one of the world’s worst-kept secrets. Meanwhile, even U.S. intelligence indicates Iran has not tried to develop a nuclear weapon. Our fear of terrorists getting hold of a nuclear bomb via Iran is borderline hysterical, but the far more realistic possibility that they might acquire one through our ally Pakistan is hardly ever brought up.

Whether or not support for terrorism is justified also depends on who’s doing it. The U.S. gives tremendous support to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two of the leading sponsors of terror in the region. What it all boils down to is very simple: Washington-approved clients are allowed to possess nuclear weapons and support terror; others may not.

Iran is not without its blemishes. It restricts the freedoms of its people in myriad ways and exercises capital punishment liberally. Nothing it does is any worse – and probably a great deal less extreme – than U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, but it’s far from perfect. Nor is the nuclear deal perfect: For one thing, it frees Iran to ramp up its oil production at a time when the burning of fossil fuels is known to have put the world’s ecology on the brink of collapse.

But it’s hard to deny that curtailing nuclear weapons proliferation and opening up a dialogue are bad things. At the very least, it’s a step in the right direction – if, that is, peace and stability are the direction we want to go. For American warmongers, it apparently isn’t. The idea that Republicans would invade Iran over, of all things, being amenable and making a deal – a deal that forces them to make a great deal of concessions that regional U.S. allies like Israel would never make – is unconscionable, particularly in light of our own crimes and unethical sponsorships in the region.