Our Terrible Sick Leave System

Millions of people do not have paid sick leave, so when or if we have a pandemic like the coronavirus, we will have lots of vectors running around spreading disease.  That's because so many employers are nothing more than assholes, thinking the low-paid people not on salary are going to "abuse" sick leave, and therefore they don't provide it at all

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It's a goddamned scandal.

During most of my working life I was covered by sick leave of one type or another, but when I worked for Baker & Taylor in Reno for nearly a dozen years from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the management there was of the belief their poorly paid workers were trying to pull something if they did have sick leave.  We had something like "PTO" after years of not having any kind of sick leave at all.  It was better than nothing, but it wasn't very good.

In education, we don't have vacation pay, of course, but the sick leave tends to be generous as people in this field get sick more often thanks to parents not keeping their kids home when they are ill.  However, school districts can be the shits, too, when they violate FMLA, as I know from bitter experience dealing with WCSD.

Of course management gets all kinds of goodies like sick leave because they are SALARIED.  They are paid for the "work" they do, not the time they do it, unlike most workers.

Get a load of these stats from the article:

There is no federal law guaranteeing paid time off for illness, and paid sick leave is comparatively rare for lower-wage workers. Just 63 percent of people working in service occupations have paid sick leave, versus more than 90 percent of people in management positions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For people working part-time, just 43 percent can get sick leave from their employer.

And for people working those lower-wage jobs, it’s not easy for them to skip work if they’re not getting paid, even if they’re feeling flu-like symptoms that could be either the flu itself or the coronavirus.

All the public health warnings in the world can’t always stand up against the need to bring home a paycheck. Just 27 percent of people whose wages fall in the bottom 10 percent are able to earn paid sick leave from their job, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Any less pay eats into their basic needs: As EPI put it, the lost wages from missing three days of work can equal a month’s worth of groceries or their monthly utility bills.

An Echo, Not a Choice

After years and years of being in well-deserved obscurity, wingnut extraordinaire Phyllis Schlafly, around 90 years old, is back to her old rhetoric about how if these uppity women have the nerve to make as much as men, they will find themselves unable to find husbands.

I am thinking old Fred, her late attorney husband, must not have left her all that much money when he died. She had been relatively quiet after her successful campaign to derail the Equal Rights Amendment in the early 1980s. Now she's back, but nowadays her sexist rhetoric just sounds pathetic.

Few women have ever have glittering careers like she did; in fact, the only real economic equality that has happened in this country between men and women in the past 40 years is that they are now both equally poor. That's directly due to the rise in neoliberal ideas which undercut unions and the concept of a family wage. Schlafly, of course, despises unions.

As a little girl I remember Phyllis Schlafly, a political activist from way, way back, as the woman who singlehandedly got Senator Barry Goldwater elected president in 1964 with her book, A Choice, Not an Echo.

More Cluelessness

Nobody gives a rat's ass about child care availability or much else when millions are living in complete and total poverty, regardless if those affected are male or female.

Tax and trade policies have created this sinkhole of an economy. Until there is a big change in D.C. politics, nothing is going to improve for workers and the unemployed.

Coontz is living in an insulated world and stuck in a time warp circa 1975.

I Call It the Middling Class

There is for all intents and purposes NO "middle class" in this country today. There are those that have way too much, and those who have way too little, with very few in between.

I have a very bad feeling the best years of this country have long since passed thanks to our illustrious, bribed politicians in Washington. There are perhaps more of them who would like to see the abolition of the minimum wage than want to see it increased, let alone have it indexed to inflation like it should be.

As Oil Can Eddie pointed out, a class consciousness discourages office workers from unionizing. There’s a popular discounting company in Chicago called Groupon, where the account executives — who are all expected to have bachelors’ degrees — earn $37,800 a year. Adjusted for modern dollars, that’s about Stanley’s starting wage, without overtime. Because they’re educated and sit safely at desks, they don’t think of themselves as blue-collar mopes who need to strike for higher pay and better working conditions.

The fact that many of today’s college graduates have the same standard of living as the lowest-skilled workers of the 1960s proves that attitude is wrong, wrong, wrong. If we want to restore what we’ve traditionally thought of as the middle class, we have to stop thinking of ourselves as middle class, no matter how much we earn, or what we do to earn it. “Working class” should be defined by your relationship to your employer, not whether you perform physical labor. Unless you own the business, you’re working class.

I can remember being able to support myself over 30 years ago on 4 or 5 dollars an hour and have plenty left over to spend on goodies. I can't even find anything permanent these days, let alone ever be able to support myself unless I live long enough to receive early Social Security and substitute teach. I don't expect to ever land permanent work ever again.

Part-Time America

That's where this country's economy is headed, and it is aided and abetted by Washington policies in order to force our living standards down to third world levels:

The Obama administration is directing this attack, encouraging wage cutting and the reduction of large sections of workers to the status of casual laborers. Obama’s so-called health care “reform,” the ACA, was designed to facilitate this process by encouraging employers to reduce the hours of employees so as to evade requirements that they provide health insurance to full-time workers.

Low-wage, part-time and temporary labor—this is the essence of the administration’s so-called “jobs program.” Obama has pledged to “revive” US manufacturing and increase US exports by making American companies more competitive on world markets. What he does not say is that the heart of his strategy—and that of the ruling class as a whole—is the destruction of all of the social gains won by generations of American workers over the past century.

I sure hope there is a place in hell for these neoliberals who have done such a terrible disservice to the public.

Etc. for the Day

Coming to a country near you: Abolition of the minimum wage:

The Bank of Spain has called for the elimination of the minimum wage, more flexibility in the labour market and other attacks on the working class.

Its annual report states, “The seriousness of the labour market advises maintaining and intensifying reform momentum through the adoption of additional measures to promote job creation in the short term and facilitate wage flexibility.”

It continues, “It would be worth exploring the possibility of establishing new formulas that would allow, in special cases, temporary departures from the conditions laid down in collective bargaining agreements, or exceptional mechanisms to prevent the minimum wage from acting as a constraint on specific groups of workers with most difficulties in terms of employability.”

These idiots don't understand or care that if you cut wages, nobody will buy anything, and that will cut into profits.

It's not "sustainable," to use a hackneyed phrase that I hate.
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What does it mean to have a "good job" anyway?

For a long time now, we have heard talk about creating “good” jobs, with manufacturing being at the top of the good jobs list. It almost implies that service- sector jobs — the primary replacement for disappearing manufacturing jobs in a post-industrial economy — are really bad jobs. Well, if the definition of a good job is one that pays a solid middle-class wage that allows one to live in dignity, this is probably true. - See more at: http://www.employmentpolicy.org/topic/blog/meaning-good-job?utm_content=bufferf4a8c&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer#sthash.1ODmGSIk.dpuf

Trash on the Feet.

Those things ought to be banned from the workplace.

Women who wear those things often say they wear them because they are doing it for themselves or that they give them "power," but they will never admit the reason they wear them is to get male attention. High heels are considered a symbol of bondage, of sadomasochism. They also help make women more sexually available by restricting movement and by altering posture.

Women aren't kidding themselves when they wear this shit; they remind me of the old Chinese footbinding that restricted movement.

Here is yet another piece about shit called "shoes":

Wearing high heels can also cause inflammation of the connective tissue at the bottom of the foot, the plantar fascia. That can result in severe heel pain and the need for aggressive treatments such as oral anti-inflammatories, oral steroids, cortisone injections, walking boots and crutches.

All of these conditions can be incredibly painful, requiring corticosteroid shots and, ideally, flatter and wider shoes. His patients will take the shots, but give up the shoes?

Women, Liebow says, “will wear their high-heeled shoes until their feet are bloody stumps.”

Many women will do all kinds of stupid things to try and attract male attention.

You'd think after all these years and advances in women's rights, this shit would go out of style once and for all.

It did for years after the early 1960s. Stilettos were popular in the fifties, but then women got smart and went for comfort.

For some damned reason these garbage shoes came back into style. I have to admit I don't see the majority of women wearing them to any extent, which is a good thing, but far too many of them do.

It's the Lack of Demand,

not a "skills shortage," or "technology," or any of the other bullshit reasons think tank propagandists and neoliberal politicians and economists claim is the reason the economy is in the toilet.

It's all about the ideology of an oversupply of workers and few jobs in an attempt to destroy living standards in the United States and in all industrialized countries in order for them to compete with third world countries in a race to the bottom while the rich continue to hoard all the wealth.

The end result would literally be a return to slavery--not that it has been completely eliminated worldwide, but it would make a fierce comeback, and it wouldn't be based on ethnic characteristics but on social class.

Neoliberalism will not work, it has never worked, and all it would lead to is bloodshed and revolution. We aren't that far away from that day if these worthless morons in Washington don't reverse course with their anti-government rhetoric and actually do what they are supposed to do, and that is fix this mess that they created.

From the editorial:

Corporate executives have valuable perspectives on the economy, but they also have an interest in promoting the notion of a skills gap. They want schools and, by extension, the government to take on more of the costs of training workers that used to be covered by companies as part of on-the-job employee development. They also want more immigration, both low and high skilled, because immigrants may be willing to work for less than their American counterparts.

There are many reasons to improve education, to welcome immigrants and to advance other policies aimed at transforming the work force and society. But a skills gap is not among them. Meeting today’s job challenges requires action to improve both the economy and pay, including government measures to create jobs, strengthen health and retirement systems, and raise the minimum wage. Fretting about a skills gap that does not exist will not help.

Etc.: Labor and Obituaries

Thanks to ALEC and its bought-and-paid-for politicians, the state of Michigan is about to go further into the economic shitter.

Blame the stupid voters to putting these people in charge of government.

That state is little more than a dictatorship now.
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Obituary: Celebrated Indian musician Ravi Shankar, 92, has died. He had suffered from a variety of health problems in recent days.

Shankar was one of the key figures in popularizing world music. His influence on musicians was profound, including rock musicians like the Beatles, George Harrison in particular.

As early as the 1950s, Shankar began collaborating with and teaching some of the greats of Western music, including violinist Menuhin and jazz saxophonist Coltrane. He played well-received shows in concert halls in Europe and the United States, but faced a constant struggle to bridge the musical gap between the West and the East.

Describing an early Shankar tour in 1957, Time magazine said. "U.S. audiences were receptive but occasionally puzzled."

His close relationship with Harrison, the Beatles lead guitarist, shot Shankar to global stardom in the 1960s.

Harrison had grown fascinated with the sitar, a long-necked string instrument that uses a bulbous gourd for its resonating chamber and resembles a giant lute. He played the instrument, with a Western tuning, on the song "Norwegian Wood," but soon sought out Shankar, already a musical icon in India, to teach him to play it properly.

The pair spent weeks together, starting the lessons at Harrison's house in England and then moving to a houseboat in Kashmir and later to California.

Music clip:



link

Whiney Employers

Employers and neolib apologists are claiming what is wrong with the economy is a "skills shortage" when in fact there is a JOBS SHORTAGE, not to mention a wage and salary gap.

Paul Krugman puts the nail in the coffin of the "skills gap"argument by pointing to this piece:

Kudos to Adam Davidson for some much-needed mythbusting about the supposed skills shortage holding the US economy back. Whenever you see some business person quoted complaining about how he or she can’t find workers with the necessary skills, ask what wage they’re offering. Almost always, it turns out that what said business person really wants is highly (and expensively) educated workers at a manual-labor wage. No wonder they come up short.

Obituaries--Death of an Icon

A cultural icon is dead--at least for now:

Pabst is considering buying the Hostess brands:

“We have analyzed this opportunity very carefully for a few years now,” Metropoulos said in an e-mail. “Shedding the complications of the unions and old plants makes it even more attractive.”

The 82-year-old company also makes Hostess CupCakes, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos. The private equity firm is “fully prepared to participate in any process involving selling the brands,” Daren Metropoulos said.

Hostess said today it will fire more than 18,000 workers and liquidate after a nationwide strike by bakery workers crippled operations. The company struggled after changes in American diets led to years of declining sales while ingredient costs and labor expenses climbed.

Think Bain Capital on this.

The WSWS has commentary on this matter:

In a statement posted on its website the BCTGM said, “Our members are on strike because they have had enough. They are not willing to take Draconian wage and benefit cuts on top of the significant concessions they made in 2004 and give up their pensions so that the Wall Street vulture capitalists in control of the company can walk away with millions of dollars.”

However, the BCTGM has advanced no strategy to defend workers’ jobs. Its calculation in calling the strike appears to have been to force Hostess into liquidation in the hopes that a new owner would recognize the union.

The majority stakeholder in Hostess is the private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings. The head of Ripplewood, Tim Collins, is a financier with connections to the Democratic Party. The firm acquired Hostess after it came out of bankruptcy in 2009, in the process imposing massive concessions on the unions.

Hostess’ major lenders are the hedge funds Silver Point Capital and Monarch Alternative Capital. Known as “vulture funds,” they buy the debt of distressed companies at a steep discount in order to squeeze out profits by slashing jobs, pay and benefits. As the senior secured debt holders of Hostess, Silver Point and Monarch stand to lose little, and could even profit, from the liquidation of the company, especially if a buyer can be found for most of Hostess’ assets.

Vulture capitalism.

Etc.

This is a speech Obama should give but he never, ever will.
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What has Obama rot with his rotten policies?
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It's because the neolibs have taken over the Democratic Party, that's why.

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Top racehorse Paynter is nowhere near out of the woods, but this is the latest on his health crises:

Haskell Invitational (gr. I) winner Paynter, who was diagnosed with laminitis Sept. 4, was "walking comfortably" Sept. 5, and his bloodwork came back normal, the Zayat family said.

More Bellyaching by Companies Wanting Cheap Foreign Labor

The other day there was an article about there being a trucker "shortage" because nobody will waste thousands of dollars training for a shitty high-thirties job and never be home and have a family life. Now employers in other fields are bitching about some three million jobs not being filled while at the same time over 12 million people are unemployed, let alone millions more like yours truly who are UNDERemployed.

It's so obvious this is a ploy to get loopholes in federal laws to import more cheap H1Bs in those positions. There is NO "skills shortage" at all, just not enough people to put up with shitty pay and rotten working conditions to make it worthwhile.

You pay crap, you get crap. It's that simple.

This race to the bottom has got to stop.

Companies Too Cheap to Have OJT

are bitching constantly about a skills "shortage," but the cynic can also claim these same outfits want an excuse to import cheap labor.

These people are always predictable. It's all about cost shifting with them.

Make sure to watch the Capelli interview. A lot of screening is done with software, with dismal results for both employers and would-be applicants.

As he notes, the problem in hiring after talking with hiring managers isn't with the education of the applicants, it's with the "work experience." Companies simply don't want to do a goddamned thing with OJT (on-the-job training).

There are OJT programs available for job seekers to approach employers, and the employers get a reimbursement for hiring these people. Many do take advantage of these programs. However, I don't think these would apply to job seekers who are in professional or managerial fields.

Etc.

It appears a tentative agreement has been reached between Eagle Point School District and the educator association.

The story is behind a paywall.
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The defense rested in the bullshit case against John Edwards without calling the embattled defendant or the sociopath he took up with behind Elizabeth's back:

John Edwards' defense team rested Wednesday without calling the two-time Democratic presidential candidate or his one-time mistress to the witness stand, a sign of confidence after presenting little more than two days of testimony and evidence.

The defense had called a series of witnesses aimed at shifting the jury's focus from the lurid details of a political sex scandal to the legal question of whether the Edwards' actions violated federal campaign finance laws.

Prosecutors spent nearly three weeks trying to convince a jury that Edwards masterminded a conspiracy to use nearly $1 million secretly provided by two wealthy donors to help hide his pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter, as he sought the White House in 2008.

It was a bunch of shit, but somebody wanted to shame Edwards so that he could never be a political figure ever again.
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Obituaries: Kennedy conspiracy vultures have another body to pick apart: Mary Richardson Kennedy, 52, ex-wife of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reportedly committed suicide by hanging.

Mary Kennedy was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s second wife and the couple had four children together. The couple was married for 16 years before a divorce filing in 2010.

"Mary inspired our family with her kindness, her love, her gentle soul and generous spirit," Kennedy Jr.'s family said in a prepared statement. "Mary was a genius at friendship, a tremendously gifted architect and a pioneer and relentless advocate of green design who enhanced her cutting edge, energy efficient creations with exquisite taste and style. She applied her talent, energy and passion which were both brilliant and abundant, to advocacy for treatment and finding a cure for food allergies and asthma. She was an instrumental co-founder and driving force of the Food Allergy Initiative to which contributions may be made in her name.

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Another obituary to note: The owner at the center of one of the most famous Kentucky Derby "victories" of all time, Peter Fuller, 89, has died. He was the owner of the 1968 winner Dancer's Image, but the horse was disqualified later on for having a banned substance, a substance that was later on legal.

Fuller contested the Kentucky Racing Commission, which awarded the 1968 victory to second-place Forward Pass, owned by Calumet Farm. The case dragged on for years, but it was finally resolved against him and in favor of the commission. I have the court rulings photocopied, but of course they are in storage in Reno.

An interesting aside: The Kentucky Derby glasses, which list the winners of each of the previous runnings, had Dancer's Image on some glasses and Forward Pass on others until the case was resolved in the 1970s. For the 1969 glass, there was no winner's list.

link

Fuller died Monday at a skilled-care facility, according to one of his daughters, Miranda Bocko of Rye, N.H.

Fuller was a second-generation Boston auto dealer and son of a former Massachusetts governor who watched Dancer's Image rally from last to win by 1 1/2 lengths over Forward Pass.

A few days later, traces of the drug phenylbutazone were found in Dancer's Image's post-race urinalysis. Dancer's Image was disqualified by the stewards and placed last. Forward Pass was declared the winner.

Fuller, a big supporter of the civil rights movement, suspected his troubles might have stemmed from that support:

Yet his greatest sporting moment became one of his saddest when in 1968 his belief in the fairness of athletic competition was shattered after his horse, Dancer’s Image, came from 14 lengths back to win the Kentucky Derby by a length and a half. From that victory would flow his biggest defeat.

Several weeks before the race, Dancer’s Image won the Governor’s Gold Cup at Bowie Race Course in Maryland three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Long an advocate of civil rights, Fuller handed over the purse to King’s widow, Coretta, setting off a firestorm.

Fuller received death threats. One of his stables in New Hampshire was set ablaze. Worst of all, he and many backstretch guys in the know at the time felt his Derby victory was stolen by powerful forces in Kentucky upset with his political stance and enlightened racial convictions.

Etc.

An obituary to note: Children's author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, 83, best known for his book
Where the Wild Things Are
, of complications from a recent stroke:

Roundly praised, intermittently censored and occasionally eaten, Mr. Sendak’s books were essential ingredients of childhood for the generation born after 1960 or thereabouts, and in turn for their children. He was known in particular for more than a dozen picture books he wrote and illustrated himself, most famously “Where the Wild Things Are,” which was simultaneously genre-breaking and career-making when it was published by Harper & Row in 1963.

Among the other titles he wrote and illustrated, all from Harper & Row, are “In the Night Kitchen” (1970) and “Outside Over There” (1981), which together with “Where the Wild Things Are” form a trilogy; “The Sign on Rosie’s Door” (1960); “Higglety Pigglety Pop!” (1967); and “The Nutshell Library” (1962), a boxed set of four tiny volumes comprising “Alligators All Around,” “Chicken Soup With Rice,” “One Was Johnny” and “Pierre.”

Actually try baby boomers born in the mid-fifties onward. His book became a big hit when I was in the second or third grade.

Not that it matters, but Sendak was gay and had lived with somebody for some 50 years, but he never told his parents.
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Eagle Point, Oregon, school district teachers are going on strike today.

Substitutes are allegedly being threatened if they honor the picket line. This is unacceptable.
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According to a former WCSD official, he doesn't believe a new sup of that district will be chosen for quite some time and that an interim will be put in place when Morrison moves on to greener pastures.
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Another obituary to note: The death of Senator Richard Lugar's career, by mercy killing, tonight.

What a Bunch of Idiots

It took decades for unions to get laws enacted requiring employers to provide meal breaks and rest breaks during the course of a day. Don't these idiots in New Hampshire even KNOW that hourly workers almost NEVER are paid for their lunch breaks? THAT is why it is standard operating procedure for full-time hourly workers to actually stay an extra half hour or even hour a day at their places of employment.

As for salaried workers, they aren't paid for their time anyway but by the work they do.

I sometimes think there needs to be a standardized test for anyone who runs for public office and they have to pass it before they can run.

Meal breaks aren't even required by federal law. It is up to the individual states, and most don't have such laws on the books.

Slave Wage U.S.A..

Indiana is set to become the latest state to shaft its workers now that "right to work" legislation is set to be signed there.

If you work for a unionized employer, it only makes sense you have to join the union; otherwise, you are a freeloader. No union, no job. Of course "right to work" just makes unions weaker because they don't have the resources to fight employers the way they would if they had a closed shop.

Nevada is "right to work," and the workers there are treated like crap. Lousy wage jobs are abundant there, at least what few jobs are left.

This issue has a history. In their initial formation in the 1930s and 1940s, the unions faced the problem of achieving stability in the face of the relentless hostility of the corporations to the struggle of workers. The closed shop and automatic dues check off system emerged as a means of preserving a certain organizational protection under capitalism and combating the union-busting of big business.

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News, Etc.

In L.A. at least, labor is not on the wane, which is good news for a change, unless, of course, you are talking about LAUSD.  link

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As much as I don't care to say this, Mitt Romney wouldn't be as destructive a president as Obama.

The Democratic Party, at the insistence of the media, screwed the pooch or jumped the shark when Obama was put in as nominee despite warnings from many quarters what this guy REALLY is.

I am afraid Obama isn't on the same plane as other one-term presidents who were good at their jobs.  He's more like a Hoover or Coolidge.
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It's that anniversary again, and I REFUSE to watch the media's hype over it.  The "best" way to remember this tragedy is to see the original television footage as it happened.  Somebody on YouTube posted ALL of the networks' footage (including Fox and CNN) of the original reports for people to see.  This link is to part one of CBS's, but the sidebar has a slew of links of the other network reports.

It's history, after all, so it is important.

Thanks to Deliberate Policies and Propaganda

to vilify workers and the unemployed, the crooks at the top of the heap are doing even better than ever.

Most workers today don't make the connection and take for granted benefits such as paid vacations, sick days and workplace safety rules and lunch hours - even the five-day/40-hour work week. But these modern day standards weren't the result of employers being generous. They came about because unions and workers had to fight for them, becoming standard even for nonunion employers and employees.

Yet now, America's workers are being told by American employers that unions and their goals are part of the problem. They're being told that just to keep their jobs, they need to sacrifice key benefits.%A0Most interesting is that these efforts are being led, in many cases, by companies that are highly profitable. Two recent examples are Verizon and Mott's.