Biden Administration Hammers Workers and Union Efforts
Friday Enlightenments and New Music
Quick Reads:
President Biden No “Pro-Union” Guy Here
The Biden administration’s war on workers is getting a pass from the U.S. mainstream media. Joe Biden’s rhetoric of supporting efforts to unionize at Amazon and Starbucks, for example, sides with management as does the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which Biden staffs.
Jacobin in this piece reports on Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s efforts to “strangle” the unionization efforts at Starbucks all over the country, which have grabbed victories in cities such as Albany, Richmond, and Pittsburgh. Jacobin dubs Starbucks the “Walmart of Coffee,” and blasts the Biden administration and the NLRB for siding with bosses like Schultz. (When Biden was elected, he declared he be would the “most pro-union president” ever. Biden has not kept campaign promises and he lies too, a lot like his predecessor.)
From the piece:
Ultimately, the Starbucks Workers United campaign will not succeed or fail based solely on the actions of Joe Biden’s NLRB. But history will judge the Biden NLRB and the ‘most pro-union president in American history’ by their ability to protect a fair choice for Starbucks workers.
In 1983, Harvard law professor Paul Weiler wrote that US union decline was ‘attributable to the stubborn and often coercive resistance of employers,’ and that the National Labor Relations Act “more and more resembles an elegant tombstone for a dying institution.” The Starbucks Workers United campaign has proven that free from management interference, its workers would overwhelmingly choose to unionize. No one seriously doubts this anymore — not even Howard Schultz. The NLRB and the Biden administration must ensure that federal labor law provides Starbucks’ pro-union workers with real protections, not just an elegant tombstone.
Biden and Federal Reserve Chairman Show Hate for Workers
As reported on by The Lever in “To Fight Inflation, The Fed Declares War on Workers,” the Federal Reserve, which controls money supply and regulates banks, is striving to bring down workers’ wages and slow down hiring.
President Joe Biden, by the way re-nominated the Federal Reserve Chief Jerome Powell, a “mega-wealthy equity mogul and a Republican,” to a second term last year, after Donald Trump gave him the job in 2017.
From The Lever piece:
New inflation data released Friday offered dismal news: Historic price increases aren’t showing any signs of abating, and in fact may be accelerating.
What can be done? Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has an idea: throw cold water on the hot labor market — perhaps the one bright spot in the current economy.
In fact, Powell recently screamed the quiet part out loud, making clear the largest central bank in the world is in fact an adversary to workers, when he declared that his goal is to “get wages down.”
And
At a May 4 press conference in which he announced a .5 percent interest rate hike, the largest since the year 2000, Powell said he thought higher interest rates would limit business’ hiring demand and lead to suppressed wages. As he put it, by reducing hiring demand, “that would give us a chance to get inflation down, get wages down, and then get inflation down without having to slow the economy and have a recession and have unemployment rise materially.”
In other words, Powell is saying that the primary, blunt financial instrument at his disposal to address sky-high inflation — hiking interest rates — will limit job opportunities and suppress pay.
Popular Author Talks Christian Prayer Power
The U.S Supreme Court is out of control, as I’ve noted here and here, and The Lever examines here.
The high court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade and its declaration that there is no federal Constitutional right to abortion is by far and away the most confrontational ruling handed down by the right-wing controlled institution in modern times.
(The opinion in Dobbs v Jackson written by Justice Samuel Alito does not apply to state constitutions. States are free to provide more constitutional protection or rights than the U.S. Constitution does. What states can’t do is provide fewer constitutional rights than the U.S. Constitution currently does.)
The Supreme Court also issued, a day after the tragic Dobbs opinion, a decision finding in favor of a public high school football coach who prayed on the field with his student-players after games. As noted in this piece, the litigation was about raising visibility and making money for a tiny nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., and was therefore not a serious legal challenge of the public high school football coach’s obnoxious show of Christian power.
Christian prayer in the public schools has never been forbidden regardless of right-wing rhetoric. For example students can form Bible-reading clubs or other religious clubs, if the public school allows student clubs to exist. Religion is also taught in world culture, history, and literature classes in public high schools across the nation. There was no way this lawsuit directed at muzzling a lone event at a Washington state public high school was going to win the day with the current SCOTUS, and the Americans United for Separation of Church and States attorneys knew that. If the lawsuit had never been brought it would not have given SCOTUS, the chance to weigh in on the matter.
The SCOTUS case, however, provides a popular author and evangelical Christian in a “guest essay” for The New York Times, a massive platform that reaches around the world, to decry the decision, saying the football coach’s prayer makes her “skin crawl.”
Anne Lamott’s NYTimes column is a laugh, though. She uses most of the piece to tell the world how she prays and how Christian prayer is powerful.
Lamott for instance writes, “It is miserable to be a hater. I pray to be more like Jesus with his crazy compassion and reckless love. Some days go better than others.” And there’s this, “I wake up praying. I say a prayer some sober people told me to pray 36 years ago, because when all else fails, follow instructions.” Oh good fucking God make it stop.
Now enjoy some wonderfully underground non-Billboard music, your heart and mind will thank you.
Music:
“DEATHFAME”, from Quelle Chris via his new album “Deathfame”.
“WOODY SHAW (feat. Melanie Charles)”, from Moor Mother’s new work, “Jazz Codes”.
“Ghosts”, from Two Shell’s EP, “Icons”.
“All The Good Times”, new music from Angel Olsen’s “Big Time”.
“Love Me More,” from Mitsk’s “Laurel Hell”.
And avoid the new Drake album, he’s the Liberace of rap music. You can do better.
