Thoughts About Labor Unions

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, a/k/a the Wagner Act, recognized that workers -- if they are (a) private sector and (b) not working on farms -- have a right to organize into labor unions.

As to the public sector, each state has gone its own way in giving or withholding from its own employees, or those of its subdivisions, organizational imperatives.

Which leaves us with the federal gov.: JFK issued an Executive Order in 1962 providing for labor union recognition to a limited extent. The situation remains convoluted and becomes more so each decade, but there would seem to be an inherent probem in both organizing and threatening a strike if your employer is also the sovereign.

While I was in law school, Ronald Reagan fired the federal professional air traffic controllers (PATCO) when they walked out in 1981.

I've been thinking of such matters of late. It may have made more sense in terms of the calender if I had written something of such issues on the 6th of this month, which is known after all as Labor Day. Still, my thoughts come when they wish.

The fact is, love them or leave them, unions represent a shrinking portion of the labor market pie. Despite (or because of?) the protection of union activity in the private sector, the role of unions there has been in decline for decades. In the 1950s one in every three private sector employees was a member of a union. By 2004, only 7.9%, somewhat less than one in twelve were union members.

This all reminds me of a story I once heard about the origin of the television show I Love Lucy. When a certain CBS bigwig saw the pilot, his first reaction was: "Keep the redhead, ditch the Cuban."

When told they were a married couple and CBS had to take or leave them as a package, he said that they should stick with the in-home comedy, but cut way back on the nightclub scenes where Desi sang. Which was done.

The married couple itself, in that story, functioned as a labor union, offering its services collectively, as a take-it-or-leave-it package. It was successful, not just in getting Desi Arnaz a job, but in producing a wildly successful product. CBS was hardly the loser in this negotiation, after all. It was win-win: CBS did rather well off the show, even though they had to keep that Cuban.

And, for the record, I think Desi did a fine job as Ricky. It is hard to imagine anyone else having pulled it off as well. Maybe the CBS exec was worried about the public acceptance of some televised "miscegenation," as they called such things back then.

Not into conspiracies but....

How did this happen?

CBS appears to have posted to its website a story about how global warming may be causing an increase of earthquake activity.

They withdrew it from their site a day later. Okay ... these things happen. Somebody screwed up, you discover it, you correct.

That's not the interesting part. The original story was attributed not to the TV network's own staff, but to the Associated Press.

AP says they had nothing to do with it. Indeed, there seems to be evidence to back up the AP on that point. If it were AP it would have appeared, automatically, in lots of places other than CBS' website.

Strange.

For the record, there is no reason to believe that global warming increases earthquake activity, or indeed that recent decades have seen an increase in such activity for any reason.

Three brief items

First, Dan Rather.

His lawsuit against CBS for wrongful termination will likely go forward -- it has survived a motion to dismiss. I can't help but be happy about this, as I think the proceedings may help unearth testimony and documents that will in turn prove useful for the historians of the future as they struggle with this period in the history of the United States.

Rather, you will remember, narrated a report on the CBS evening news that said that George W. Bush shirked his duties while in the National Guard.

The authenticity of the documents came under attack, and CBS apologized for the report, expelling Rather from the anchor chair.

Rather maintains that the report was, in essence though not in every particular, accurate. He also says that he was made a scapegoat because the parent corporation of CBS, Viacom, was seeking regulatory favors from the Bush administration and had to hide the whole AWOL issue under the nearest rug.

CBS' lawyers made a motion to dismiss. No definitive decision has yet issued from the bench on that motion, but the judge has indicated he is inclined to let the matter proceed to discovery, that there is "enough in the complaint" to do so. Good for him.

Second, Crude Oil Prices.

How low will they go? And is their recent decline a good sign or a bad one? Just wondering.

You'll likely all remember that when crude prices were bumping up against $100 a barrel in the final days of 2007 that fact was covered extensively in all news media. This is natural enough: my attention tends to focus on my car's odometer as the zeros line up!

With odometers, the numbers only move in one direction. With prices, the general tendency is toward an inflation of the currency (given the fiat nature of money since the demise of the gold standard) and thus toward higher prices, but there's some non-odometer like downward movement too.

And that's what we've had. On Nymex, the spot price of a barrel of oil is now barely above $90. Is this good news or bad? Good if it amounts to a lifting of a drag upon the economy. Bad if it is symptom a symptom of a slowing-down already underway. After all, if there's going to be a lot less industrial activity in coming months, there's going to be a reduction in the demand for energy in all its forms, and the decline may simply reflect that.

Third, Springfield, Mass.

Springfield appears to have gotten away with something. For the background, go here.

Springfield has apparently persuaded Merrill Lynch that it has a case that somebody at Merrill tricked somebody in Springfield's city government into signing on to some highly speculative investments. Accordingly, Merrill has agreed to by the securities at issue back from the city at the same price at which it sold them.

This is quite a bath Merrill is taking. Those securities have lost 90% of their value since the sale, last spring, now being revoked.

Merrill has also agreed to pay outside legal fees incurred by the Springfield Finance Control Board.

This stinks. Has anybody associated with any institution ever heard the phrase "moral hazard"?

So of my three items for today, I find the first cheery, the second ambiguous, and the third depressing. A balanced portfolio of news items!