September 7, 2015
From the Bernie Sanders Campaign:
Gary,The middle class is at a tipping point, and it won’t last another generation if we don’t boldly change course now.The surest path to the middle class for American workers is with unions. The security and strength of a union job means that workers can have good pay, health care, and a voice at work.Today our country celebrates Labor Day in honor of the working people who fought for our rights to regular hours, fair pay, and a decent living. For decades, the labor movement propped up the middle class in America by ensuring a level playing field for workers.There are many reasons for the growing inequality in our economy, but perhaps the most significant reason for the disappearing middle class is that the rights of workers to join together and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions have been severely undermined.That is why this fall I will introduce a bill in Congress whose sole purpose is to restore and encourage workers’ rights to bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. It’s called the Workplace Democracy Act, and if it is made law, it will help rebuild the middle class.Click here to celebrate Labor Day by signing the petition to support the Workplace Democracy Act at https://go.berniesanders.com/page/s/workplace-democracy-act?source=em150907fullWorkers need unions because there are people working for minimum wage, barely able to afford to put food on the table — if even that. There are people whose jobs are dangerous, or even life-threatening, who can’t speak up for workplace safety for fear of being fired. And there are countless people working without sick days or even health insurance.Unions change that equation. When workers have unions, they are no longer afraid to speak up. They have a clear path to getting health care, sick days, basic safety precautions, and better pay. They don’t have to live in fear of their employers, and they can work to provide for their families.That is unfortunately far from the reality that exists today. Under the current law, it is incredibly easy for corporations to prevent workers from joining unions. One in five workers who try to form a union today will be fired for doing so. And half of all employers threaten to close or relocate their businesses if workers elect to form a union.But there’s effectively no deterrence for when companies do break the law. The penalties are far too weak, and there is no incentive to stop corporations from dragging their feet when workers want to negotiate contracts.The Workplace Democracy Act changes that equation. Our bill would:Ensure companies can’t prevent workers from getting a first contract.Make it easier for workers to form unions through a majority sign up process.Strengthen the enforcement when corporations break the law.This is a commonsense idea that will help our economy and rebuild the middle class. Can you say you support it?For Labor Day, join me in standing with working people. Click here to say you support the Workplace Democracy Act at https://go.berniesanders.com/page/s/workplace-democracy-act?source=em150907fullThank you for your support.In solidarity,Bernie Sanders
Walter Reuther, President of the United Auto Workers, was introduced to Louis Kelso’s universal capital ownership and binary economic ideas through my colleague Norman Kurland, who is the President of the Center for Economic and Social Justice (www.cesj.org) when he served from 1965-1968 as Planning Director of the Citizens Crusade Against Poverty. Reuther chaired the CCAP and Kurland arranged for Kelso to be invited to the CCAP annual meeting in 1967, where he suggested that the CCAP study his binary economic system for universalizing citizen access to capital ownership opportunities to grow the economy.
Walter Reuther expressed his open-mindedness to the goal of democratic worker ownership in his 1967 testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress as a strategy for saving manufacturing jobs in America from being outcompeted by Japan and eventual outsourcing to other Asian countries with far lower wage costs: “Profit sharing in the form of stock distributions to workers would help to democratize the ownership of America’s vast corporate wealth, which is today appallingly undemocratic and unhealthy. “If workers had definite assurance of equitable shares in the profits of the corporations that employ them, they would see less need to seek an equitable balance between their gains and soaring profits through augmented increases in basic wage rates. This would be a desirable result from the standpoint of stabilization policy because profit sharing does not increase costs. Since profits are a residual, after all costs have been met, and since their size is not determinable until after customers have paid the prices charged for the firm’s products, profit sharing [through wider share ownership] cannot be said to have any inflationary impact on costs and prices.” Unfortunately for democratic unionism, the United Auto Workers, American manufacturing workers, and American citizens generally, Reuther was killed in an airplane crash in 1970 before his idea was implemented. Leonard Woodcock, his successor, nor any subsequent union leader never followed through.
It is my hope that Bernie Sanders surface a new Reuther.
