PUBLISHED
August 28, 2019
For the last few weeks, all
eyes have been on Kentucky as coal miners blockade a
railroad in protest of what’s essentially highway robbery. The coal miners in
Harlan County are demanding their unpaid wages from Blackjewel, the company
that employed them before suddenly declaring bankruptcy earlier this year.
Their physical blockade of a train full of coal is critical given that Wall
Street investors are
still looking to eke out money from Blackjewel — even if it means leaving
workers without the paychecks they’ve already earned.
The standoff is among the
latest instances highlighting a system that funnels the wealth created by
workers upwards to the elite. The statistics are startling. Incomes of the top
1 percent of U.S. households have grown more than
seven times more quickly than those of the bottom 20 percent of households over
the past four decades. CEO compensation rose by 940 percent since 1978, the
Economic Policy Institute reports.
Meanwhile, the typical worker’s wages grew by only 12 percent.
Workers — from retail
employees to rideshare drivers, teachers to bank tellers — are taking on the
structures that allow this lopsided economy to thrive. Last year, more
than 485,000
workers were involved in major work stoppages, the Bureau of Labor
Services found — the highest number since 1986. They’re taking action against
the insatiable corporate greed and predatory financial forces widening the
chasm between the elite and everyone else.
Bottom of Form
What does that corporate greed
look like? It’s industries that rake in billions and still pay their workers
poverty wages, as airlines do. That’s why dozens of airline catering workers
were arrested outside
American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, earlier this month,
announcing that one job should be enough for them to live with dignity,
especially during what their union calls “a
time of unprecedented prosperity” for the industry.
The workers aren’t employed
directly by American Airlines, but by a subcontractor that provides the
company’s in-flight meals and beverages. But they know this type of system is
essentially run as a scam — companies can pit subcontractors against each other
to get the lowest price, all while avoiding direct accountability to the
workers that allow them to prosper. Meanwhile, CEOs like American Airlines’
Doug Parker rake in nearly $12 million in
annual compensation.
Thousands of airline workers
have authorized a strike if negotiations continue to fail. Despite the fact
that they negotiate directly with the subcontractors, workers know where the
power lies, which is why they’ve taken their fight to American Airlines’s front
door.
This is the same logic that
animated the Uber and Lyft strikes, timed to the public offerings of their
companies earlier this year. While executives were set to become instant
billionaires as the companies went public, workers went on strike to show
investors who actually generated the wealth and to ensure their concerns were
front and center.
Like the airline industry,
rideshare companies have found a way to avoid any responsibility to ensure
their workers live with dignity. In a Securities
and Exchange Commission filing ahead of the public offering, Uber
essentially admitted that its business model relies on misclassifying drivers
as independent contractors rather than employees, keeping the company from
being required to provide a minimum wage, much less health care or other benefits.
Drivers were keen to contrast
this fundamentally anti-worker business model with the sky-high profits
expected by company executives, including disgraced former
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Lenny Sanchez, a rideshare driver and co-founder of
Chicago Rideshare Advocates, said he
wished he could tell Kalanick how drivers reacted when they heard how much he
had to gain. “They’re like, ‘I have to work. I’m away from my home for 14
hours, six to seven days a week … and this guy is going to make [billions]
overnight.’”
It’s no secret that an
economic system that allows executives to make such exorbitant profit off the
backs of its workers is exploitative. But some worker campaigns are also
pointing out how disparities between worker and CEO pay add a new level of risk
into the economy, encouraging executives to pursue profit over absolutely
everything else.
Bank workers, for example, are
highlighting how the inequality baked into financial companies hurt the
country’s economic systems as a whole. The Committee for Better Banks is a
coalition of bank employees, community and consumer groups, and labor
organizations fighting for better conditions for bank workers and advocating
for more protections for bank customers. Bank workers in the coalition
have blown the
whistle on predatory bank practices, like a harmful quota system used by
Wells Fargo connected to the fabrication of millions of additional bank
accounts for depositors.
Bank workers are the ones both
most motivated and most knowledgeable to regulate from below, as the Committee
for Better Banks argues. That regulation is critical given that missteps from
banks can bring
down the entire global economy. Bank executives are more focused on a feedback
loop of tax cuts, stock buybacks and inflated CEO compensation, further
distorting inequality within their industry. Building power among bank workers
helps the entire economy.
For retail workers, taking on
predatory institutions means challenging the private equity vultures that
profit off the job losses in their sector. Thanks to Wall Street’s
“investments,” more than 1.3 million retail jobs have been lost over the last
decade, a recent report found.
Toys ‘R’ Us workers, among the
most affected by private equity’s greed, staged several protests, including
a mock
graveyard in the New York lobby of Bain Capital, one of the firms that
drove the company into bankruptcy. Those workers initially didn’t receive
severance pay when they were laid off — despite the fact that the company’s executives
took home millions
in bonuses.
The retail workers received a
boost from public sector employees, who used their own financial power to
challenge the companies that play an active role in destroying the well-being
of their fellow workers. State pension funds across the country that had
invested in KKR, Bain and Vornado Realty Trust — the profiteers who benefitted
off the Toys ‘R’ Us bankruptcy — threatened to
divest their ample capital.
“My teacher friends are
disgusted,” Ann Marie Reinhart, a former Toys ‘R’ Us employee and an organizer
for United for Respect, said. “They say
that we’re all hard-working people, and it makes them sick to know their
pensions are funded by people losing their jobs.”
Thanks to protests from retail
workers and the solidarity from public sector workers, KKR and Bain Capital
eventually agreed to put $20 million toward a worker severance
fund.
All of this organizing has
gotten attention from politicians, like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Tammy
Baldwin and Sherrod Brown, and Reps. Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal — the
sponsors of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act introduced in Congress last month.
A direct response to the role of private equity and hedge funds in the demise
of retailers like Toys ‘R’ Us, the legislation puts
safeguards in place to protect the 5.8 million workers employed by private
equity-owned companies, from newspapers to nursing homes.
Corporate leaders are also
taking notice. In a recent statement from
Business Roundtable, 181 CEOs announced a shared commitment to “investing in
our employees” and “supporting the communities in which we work” — additions to
their past mottos that put shareholders over everyone else. They may think a
populist tone will help stem off criticism about heightened inequality,
especially as concerns about a recession grow. But their statements amount to
embarrassingly little, and far too late. Look to worker organizing, not CEO
platitudes, for the path toward a new, equitable economy.
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