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(Excerpts Fall/Winter
2000)
Fighting Poverty, Supporting Jobs
How Many Cheers for Lower Unemployment?--From
the Chair
Living Wage Laws Gain Support
Social Democratic and Green "Modernization"
Canada's Welfare State is on the Ropes
Minimum Wage Critical for Low-Wage Workers
Network News
Fighting Poverty, Supporting Jobs: A
Five-Year Plan
By Gregory N. Heires
Imagine a society without poverty in which all people have jobs
that support a decent standard of living and healthy lives. That
vision of society underlies a proposal to combat poverty and inequality
that the National Jobs for All Coalition presented to the National
Council of Churches.
The proposal, done at the NCC's request, calls for a five-year
initiative to promote living-wage jobs for all workers and a dramatic
increase in public income support and government social welfare
programs.
"For all the hoopla about prosperity and a booming economy, poverty
and inequality continue to plague our country," said Gertrude
Goldberg, chair of the National Jobs for All Coalition, commenting
on the proposal. "This age of budget surpluses provides a unique
opportunity for government to address the failure of our economy
to provide a decent standard of living for all of us."
NJFAC presented its proposal to the NCC in September. The initiative
is timely because the NCC is considering reaching out to other
church groups to undertake a decade-long campaign to battle poverty.
Initiatives
The first section of the proposal outlines a series of initiatives
to support living wages and jobs with decent pay.
The goals of these initiatives are to cut the official unemployment
rate in half within five years and to reduce the gap between the
unemployment rates of disadvantaged groups and the rest of the
population, as well as to increase the minimum wage to its peak
level in 1968 (about $7.50 in 2000) and link it to an economic
indicator, such as average wages or consumer prices. Also, one
of the goals is also to reduce wage gaps between men and women
and low- and high-wage workers.
Strategies for implementing these goals include:
- Changing the priorities of the Federal Reserve Board from
fighting inflation to reducing unemployment, which is the mandate
of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth
Act of 1978,
- Implementing public job-creation programs that offer jobs
that pay at least the minimum wage for unemployed individuals
who are ineligible for unemployment insurance or who have exhausted
their benefits,
- Improving anti-discrimination laws,
- Creating jobs in areas where disadvantaged groups live and
in areas of higher than average unemployment,
- Tightening the labor market through full-employment measures,
- Enforcing labor legislation, including protections for the
right to organize,
- Encouraging unionization campaigns, particularly among low-wage
workers.
- Supporting living-wage campaigns and pushing for corporate
accountability.
Income Support, Social Welfare
The second section of the proposal calls for the government to
bolster its income support and social welfare programs.
The proposal recommends a series of ways in which the government
can raise incomes above the poverty level and alleviate the financial
burden of high-cost goods and services, such as child care, housing,
health care, transportation, banking and credit, and utilities.
Recommended actions include paid family leave, housing subsidies,
universal health care, an expansion of child-care subsidies, income
support for the elderly and people with disabilities, increased
funding for public transportation, greater assistance for home
utility expenses and improving access of low-income people to
banking services and credit at reasonable rates.
"Other rich countries, though all with less wealth than the US,
have achieved much lower poverty rates and largely through the
anti-poverty effects of their social welfare system," the proposal
says. "Such programs, though a vital component of a strategy to
end poverty, should remain complementary to the primary thrust
of public policy - living-wage jobs for all."
Requests for copies of the proposal can be made by calling NJFAC
at (212) 870-3449. The proposal will also be posted on the Coalition's
Web site (www.njfac.org).
Gregory N. Heires is a member of the National Jobs for All
Coalition's executive committee and an associate editor of the
District Council 37's newspaper Public Employee
From the Chair
How Many Cheers for Lower Unemployment?
By Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg
"Unnatural" rates of unemployment continue.
Whether or not the monetary authorities in charge of the U.S.
money supply have rejected the pernicious theory (known as NAIRU)
that accelerating inflation is an inevitable "natural" consequence
of lower unemployment -- they have certainly not aligned themselves
with full employment.
Indeed, even before inflation threatened, they applied the brakes
numerous times in the past year. If policymakers would commit
themselves to "no more recessions" or to controlling inflation
by means other than increasing unemployment, then Jobs for All
advocates might have more to cheer about.
One cheer for Lower Unemployment
The National Jobs for all Coalition gives one cheer for
an official unemployment rate below 4 percent. As would be expected
in a tighter labor market, real average hourly and weekly earnings
are both up since 1995. However, the lengthy discussion of wages
in the forthcoming edition of the Economic Policy Institute's
The State of Working America 2000-01* is not a cheerful
one. Real wages have not recovered the ground lost since 1973
and remain below 1979 levels as well. Nor in the past five years
have they kept pace with productivity gains.
Over one-fourth of all workers earn poverty-level wages (less
than the four-person poverty level of $13,290 for year-round,
full-time work in 1999), higher than the proportion of poverty-level
workers in 1973. Over one-third of blacks (35.6 percent) and 45
percent of Hispanics earn poverty wages. Of special relevance
for the consequences of welfare "reform" is the fact that two-fifths
of black women and one half of Hispanic women fall into this group
of disadvantaged workers. In other words many who have jobs are
underemployed. The distinguished English economist, Sir John Eatwell,
calls this "disguised unemployment."
A bigger pie isn't shared with workers
The pie is bigger, but the shares at the bottom are smaller.
The GDP per capita is more than 40 percent higher than in 1973.
But these gains in total national resources have not been shared
with workers. Whereas the top one-fifth of households had about
10 times the share of aggregate income of the bottom fifth in
1973, this inequality ratio had risen to over 13-to-1 in 1999.
And the second lowest quintile -- with incomes in the $17,000
to $32,000 range in 1999 -- lost even more ground than the lowest
one-fifth.
CEOs, on the other hand, must be giving four cheers for
themselves. Their pay has increased nearly 90 percent since 1988.
And they are the richest CEOs in the world. On average CEOs in
12 other advanced countries make only about two-fifths as much
as their U.S. counterparts.
Coalition Efforts
What is the National Jobs for All Coalition doing about the low
unemployment rate? Here are some of our initiatives.
- Hispanic Outreach
With two-fifths of their members earning poverty-level wages,
Hispanics are a natural constituency for full employment or Good
Jobs for All.
With a grant from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation and
encouragement from the Latino-American Studies Program at Syracuse
University and its director, Professor Silvio Torres, the Coalition
has translated its brochure and parts of its Uncommon Sense
series into Spanish. Professor Julian Rivera, director of the
Undergraduate Program in Social Welfare at Adelphi University,
is serving as editor of the Spanish editions, and Milagros Butler,
of the Spanish Action League in Syracuse, has done some of the
translations. Under the leadership of NJFAC founding member Frank
Bonilla, former director of the Inter-University Program for Latino
Research, the Coalition is forming a Latino Advisory Group that
will aid it in distributing these materials in the Latino community.
- An Anti-Poverty Plan for the National Council of Churches
The National Council of Churches (NCC) called upon the Coalition
to propose a plan to cut poverty in half in the next five years.
NCC hopes to unite a wide range of Christian groups through collaboration
on a single issue of public concern such as poverty.
- Social Security Project
Social Security continues to be hotly contested. In preparation
for the post-election deliberations on the nation's largest social-welfare
program, the Coalition will be issuing a Social Security Packet.
Jean Bandler's "Social Security Is not Just for Seniors" is the
latest addition to this packet, which includes the earlier publications,
"Social Security Is not in Crisis" by Richard DuBoff and "Women
and Social Security" by the Women's Institute for Policy Research.
- Income Inequality and Low Wages
On the assumption that the large numbers of underemployed or underpaid
workers have a stake in full employment, the Coalition is stepping
up its publication of pieces identifying and analyzing the problems
of low wages and income inequality. Reprinted in July, "The Great
Divide," by former labor secretary and Coalition Advisory Board
member Robert Reich discusses the extraordinary widening of income
inequality since the 1970s and some policies that would reduce
it. A new, soon-to-be released Uncommon Sense by Beth Shulman,
former special assistant to the president of the United Food and
Commercial Workers, will document the lack of a social contract
for 35 million low-wage workers, describe their working conditions
and suggest policies to improve their status.
*Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and John Schmitt, The State
of Working America, 2000-01 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, forthcoming). Most of the data in this article was taken
from Economic Policy Institute's invaluable biannual report on the
US economy.
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Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg is professor of social policy at Adelphi
University and National Jobs for All Coalition chair.
Social Democratic and Green "Modernization"
Germany's Tax Reform Cuts Services, Retirement Benefits
By Jörg Huffschmid
The German coalition government has backed off its initial support
for a new economic policy to promote jobs and social justice,
abandoning the agenda for which it was elected in September 1998.
The recently adopted tax reform brings lower taxes for everyone.
Insofar as this includes considerable tax relief for lower income
groups, it is certainly
welcome.
The largest tax gifts, however, go to the corporate world and
big corporations in particular. And the whole tax package was
mostly financed through huge spending cuts -- as usual, predominantly
in social programs.
Altogether, the reform amounts not to a reversal but rather a
continuation of the politics of redistribution of income in favor
of profits. The reform is being carried out at the expense of
workers and weakest sectors of society.
Threat to Social Security
The really big "reform" the government is about to set in force
is the destruction of the traditional pension and retirement system.
Under the government plan, the two basic principles of the current
system -- pay-as-you-go funding and financing of the system by
employers and employees -- would be replaced by a mixture of pay-as-you
go pensions and supplementary private old age insurance.
The supplementary insurance would be financed exclusively by
the employees. This means that all those who cannot afford to
pay for a supplementary private insurance will have considerably
lower pensions, and many will be thrown into poverty.
For those who do participate in supplementary private insurance,
the total burden of contributions -- public and private -- will
rise, while the contributions of employers, who will not be financing
the private insurance, will remain low.
The conservative Kohl government attempted reforms of this kind
several times during the last ten years. Each time it was stopped
by strong resistance from Social Democrats, who were then an opposition
party. Now more than an opposition party is needed to stop the
Social Democrats in government from dismantling the social security
system.
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Jorg Huffschmid, professor of political economy and economic
policy at the University of Bremen, is a member of the NJFAC Advisory
Board and co-founder of European Economists for an Alternative
Economic Policy.
Canada's Welfare State is on the Ropes
By Harold Chorney
Canada was once known and respected for its commitment to a moderate,
almost social democratic vision of low unemployment, tolerance,
high economic performance and a well developed welfare state.
Its health care system was widely respected as a humane and better
alternative to the American system. As John Kenneth Galbraith,
our greatest intellectual export to the United States, has often
noted, Canada was a liberal democratic society that was strongly
influenced by Keynesian ideas.
Alas, this was the Canada of old.
During the past two decades, neo-conservative policies have dominated
Canadian public policy and significantly damaged the Canadian
welfare state
and public health system. Unemployment in Canada during both the
1980s and the 1990s averaged close to 10 percent. The rate finally
dropped below 9 percent in 1997 after the longest and deepest
recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The current
rate, 6.9 percent, is the lowest since the mid-1970s.
A Dogmatic Central Bank
The Bank of Canada , once known as the Bundesbank of the North,
has been one of the most dogmatic practitioners of monetarist
doctrine since its conversion in 1975. The damage that this has
done to the Canadian economy has been enormous.
After more than a decade of budget slashing and deficit obsession
that began under the previous Conservative government of Brian
Mulroney, the Liberals, who returned to power in 1993, are using
a 22 billion Canadian dollar surplus and a projected surplus of
over 50 billion dollars over the next five years to promise a
reinvestment in the health care system. The national health-care
system was badly damaged by severe IMF approved budget cuts over
the past seven years. The Liberals' policy amounted to a reversal
of some of the draconian changes to the employment insurance system,
also IMF inspired, that resulted in fewer than 50 percent of the
unemployed being eligible for benefits. It also includes a reinvestment
in education and social policy areas. On top of this they have
committed $12 billion to debt reduction.
The debt to GDP ratio in Canada now stands at about 58 percent
and will continue to fall so long as the economy grows and the
budgetary balance remains.
Amazingly, because of the dreadful employment performance over
the past two decades, the current 6.9 percent unemployment rate
is celebrated as the return of boom times to the Canadian economy.
But our central bank seems determined to stamp out any widespread
joy. Already the Bank of Canada has been making threatening noises
about the need to nip "inflationary expectations" in the bud despite
the complete absence of any inflationary threat. Over the past
year it has raised interest rates several times.
Further, if Alan Greenspan were to raise rates higher in the
US in the coming
months, the pressure on Canada to follow suit would be enormous.
Harold Chorney, professor of public policy at Concordia University,
Montreal, and vice president of the International Research Group
on Employment, is a member of the National Jobs For All Coalition
Advisory Board.
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