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For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Families have been warned of a “ticking time bomb” ahead as new government figures show a staggering rise in home repossessions amid the deepening cost of living crisis. […] More
Biden’s climate bill victory was hard won. Now, the real battle startsImplementing the $369bn Inflation Reduction Act amid tight deadlines and high-stakes midterm will be a challenge The bitter fight to deliver a climate change bill to Joe Biden’s desk this summer pitted the White House and its Democratic allies against some of America’s most powerful industry lobbies and every Republican in Congress. It may prove to have been the easy part.At the heart of the hard-won Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a $369bn package of climate investments that Biden called the “most significant legislation in history” to tackle the climate crisis. Estimates suggest it could cut US greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030.That monumental potential, however, comes with a monumental to-do list and a series of tight deadlines – not to mention high-stakes political decisions in an election season when Democrats are fighting to keep control of Congress.Implementing the IRA “is a more complex policy challenge and management challenge than any that I’ve seen in my political lifetime”, Felicia Wong, the president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, told the Guardian.Greta Thunberg on the climate delusion: ‘We’ve been greenwashed out of our senses. It’s time to stand our ground’Read moreOne of the first tasks facing the Biden administration is the design and execution of $270bn worth of tax incentives affecting huge swaths of the US economy. At the same time, it must begin distributing close to $100bn in grants and other federal funds to cites, states, tribal nations, companies, non-profits and local communities. It must do so quickly since many programs created or supplemented by the IRA include rigorous timelines, such as a new $27bn greenhouse gas reduction fund, for which money must start going out the door no later than next February and be spent within two years.And the administration must distribute all of this money and roll out all of this policy while simultaneously:
Coordinating across dozens of different departments and agencies.
Minimizing waste and fraud.
Investing in risky and uncertain technologies.
Smoothing diplomatic wrinkles with international allies who object to the law’s manufacturing and sourcing requirements.
Meeting the expectations of climate organizations and advocacy groups whose support for the IRA was contingent on promoting environmental justice and protecting workers.
Seeking to head off the inevitable attacks and investigations of congressional Republicans.
“It is a massive undertaking,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the climate thinktank E3G. “It’s a very complex, detailed law. There are so many moving pieces to it.”The person Biden named to take charge of this massive task is the longtime Democratic official John Podesta, one of Washington’s most connected players.“This is just what [Podesta] was made for,” said E3G’s Meyer. “He knows what he’s getting into because he’s been involved in these kinds of things before, so he doesn’t have to learn on the job. He comes in knowing how to move the levers and make things happen and having the relationships with the cabinet secretaries and others that he needs to have.”While often seen as a quintessential insider, Podesta also has a less-remarked-on track record as an outside agitator on climate issues. In May, the New Republic described Podesta as “quietly nurturing the climate movement’s next generation of leaders”, including members of the progressive Sunrise Movement. Ali Zaidi, who is now serving as Biden’s national climate adviser and working closely with Podesta on IRA implementation, said Podesta was “on the cutting edge of connecting the dots between climate action and other critical progressive objectives”.Sam Ricketts, a climate policy advocate and longtime senior adviser to the Washington governor, Jay Inslee, said that Podesta’s outside efforts will be “just as important” in preparing him for his current role. Podesta has been “working in partnership with others throughout the climate community and the public sphere in designing and advocating for these policies he’s now charged with implementing”, Ricketts said. “He now gets a chance to climb inside the government and execute to make it a reality.”‘Like going to the World Series’The gears of government have already begun to turn. Podesta is managing a “core team” in the White House that “is designed to be fairly lean”, a senior administration official told the Guardian. Most of the staff working on the law are part of the agencies, though Podesta’s team includes “a small number of senior policy advisers with really specialized skills”, the official said. One team member who will start soon, for instance, is a marketing specialist hired to help the administration drive awareness of the “consumer-facing provisions in this law”, such as a new tax credit that encourages homeowners to install heat pumps.But before they can take effect, many parts of the IRA require the administration to publish detailed guidance outlining how they will actually work. The administration appears especially focused on rolling out the $270bn worth of clean-energy tax incentives created or expanded by the law. Implementing these provisions, which will be led by the treasury department but require input and expertise from across the federal government, is “a mountain of work that needs to get done fast, and it needs to get done right, and it needs to have the appropriate guardrails so that the money is well spent and not wasted”, Podesta said at a 7 October event hosted by the Roosevelt Institute.In recent weeks Podesta and his team have been “doing calls, looking for feedback, [and] looking for community input on how to design and execute on these tax credits”, Sam Ricketts, the climate policy advocate, said.Republicans plan legal assault on climate disclosure rules for public companiesRead moreThe treasury department has also issued six formal requests for public comment covering a range of tax incentives for consumers and businesses. Last week, the department announced that it would hold a number of meetings and roundtable discussions to share updates and gather external input.“They have a lot of guidance to put out, and they need to put it out quickly to maximize the impact” of the tax provisions, Sarah Ladislaw, who heads the US program at the climate thinktank RMI, said. The fact that the treasury department set a 4 November deadline for submitting comments “shows that they’re moving quite expeditiously and trying to provide guidance as quickly as possible”, Ladislaw said.Behind the scenes in the treasury department, Biden administration appointees and non-partisan civil servants are working around the clock. Shelley Leonard, a deputy tax legislative counsel, described the rollout as a “sprint” made particularly complex “because of the number of other agencies involved and because of the high-profile nature of everything that we’re trying to do all at once”.The internal complexity is matched by external interest in how the guidance will take shape. Leonard recounted leading a recent webinar on some of the new law’s tax rules. She expected an audience of 40 people; in the end, some 1,600 people signed up.“For tax nerds like us at treasury, implementing something as far-reaching and impactful as the IRA is like going to the World Series,” Lily Batchelder, the treasury’s assistant secretary for tax policy, said in a statement.A ‘three-legged stool’ of oversightOverseeing this frenzy of activity alongside Podesta’s team are agency inspectors general, who are responsible for investigating waste, fraud and misconduct in federal agencies, and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Together, they are taking what the senior administration official described as a “three-legged stool approach” to executive branch oversight.Podesta’s implementation team is responsible for setting a tone for accountability and “send[ing] a very clear signal to the agencies” that they are expected to coordinate closely with their inspectors general “at the front end”, the official said. Meanwhile, OMB “will be the one supporting the tracking of resources and conducting oversight to make sure the agencies are both in shape to execute according to plan, and then delivering on that plan over time”, Jason Miller, OMB’s deputy director for management, said.Asked how the White House was approaching oversight of IRA funding, Miller said that while the administration will watch where money goes – information agencies are already required to report publicly – it is particularly focused on tracking how the money is actually used. Oversight “is not just, ‘I’ve handed the dollars to somebody’”, Miller explained. “How are they spending those dollars? When are they spending those dollars? What are the outcomes that they’re getting?”‘Transformational’: could America’s new green bank be a climate gamechanger?Read moreThe administration wants to embed detailed reporting requirements into IRA programs and formalize those requirements before money is distributed. Miller said that this approach, outlined in two recent OMB memos centered on the rollout of the American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure law, reflects a lesson that the Biden team learned from the first Covid-19 package approved under the Trump administration: “It is very hard once those dollars go out the door to ask recipients to implement reporting requirements and provide data that you did not ask for upfront.”‘An endless educational curve’Successful implementation will require Podesta and the Biden team to balance spending the money quickly while also spending it effectively and equitably.“One of the biggest tensions here is actually going to be speed because there’ll be many incentives to get the money out the door quickly,” said the Roosevelt Institute’s Felicia Wong. But “if speed is your only criteria, then you’re going to end up probably deeply shortchanging the democracy element of all of this because speed and input are often at odds”, Wong said.“It is an uncomfortable tension to sit in,” Dana Johnson, the senior director of strategy and federal policy of We Act for Environmental Justice, said. “And in some ways it’s not really aligned with environmental justice, which says that … we move at the speed of trust” in communities. Because of the aggressive timelines included in the law, “the time that it takes to build trust is not there.”Johnson’s comments reflect the fact that the greater existence of federal resources does not automatically translate into greater on-the-ground impact. Ozawa Bineshi Albert, a co-executive director of the Climate Justice Alliance, pointed to IRA provisions that invest in rural electricity and provide support for coal miners with black lung disease as examples of the types of programs that need to be locally targeted to achieve their potential.“There’s some implementation that can happen uniformly, and then there’s some implementation that needs to happen very specific to the needs of certain communities,” Albert said. “Indigenous communities have a much different way of engaging with the government. What does that look like? What does it look like for communities who are experiencing land loss and displacement because of sea level rise? They can’t afford to not be consulted or have their experience shape the solution.”Can Biden’s climate bill undo the fossil fuel industry’s decades of harm?Read moreThe outreach challenge is exacerbated by the fact that significant portions of IRA money, such as $5bn in new grants to reduce climate pollution, will end up at the disposal of state governments. Some are controlled by Republican governors who might choose to reject the funding “instead of redistributing it to communities of color or low-income communities”, as Maria Lopez-Nuñez, deputy director of the New Jersey-based Ironbound Community Corporation, put it.Moreover, discovering funding opportunities, applying for them and meeting their reporting requirements – the same requirements that help the government track whether money is being used as intended – can be complicated and resource-intensive. Working to take advantage of these opportunities “is almost an endless educational curve”, Lopez-Nuñez said. There is a risk that “programs don’t become dispersed based on need, they become dispersed on who … can afford the most skillful consultant to write the grant for them.”In that case, the IRA could end up reinforcing, rather than disrupting, existing economic and racial disparities. Underlying this fear are the provisions of the law that extend federal support for fossil fuels, including provisions that offer new oil and gas leasing opportunities on public lands.“Much of what is being built” through oil and gas permitting, or even through investments in new technologies like carbon capture and storage, “could be built on top of existing fossil-fuel infrastructure”, explained Roosevelt’s Felicia Wong. “The argument is that if environmental justice groups and if communities of color are always the ones who are harmed the worst by existing fossil-fuel infrastructure, this does nothing to change that power dynamic.”‘You’ve got a product that is going to impact … millions of people’Despite the complexity of the task ahead, for many in the climate movement the IRA’s passage has sparked an all-too-rare feeling: hope.“I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I have never seen more energy policy in one piece of legislation,” said RMI’s Sarah Ladislaw. “If you take the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Chips and Science Act, it is the most comprehensive energy policy delivered in legislative form that I’ve ever seen.”The law “could really transform the politics of climate change over the next several years as these huge programs roll out across the economy”, said Alden Meyer of E3G. “These programs are going to be so popular and so supported by both Republicans and Democrats that it will be hard to take them away.”This enthusiasm is reflected within the ranks of the Biden administration. “You’re putting in a lot of hard, long nights,” said Krishna Vallabhaneni, the treasury department’s tax legislative counsel, who recently found himself sending an email about IRA tax provisions at 3.13 am. “It can be draining at times. But at the end of the day, you’ve got a product that is going to impact – and, you hope, in a positive way – [the] lives of millions of people.”TopicsClimate financeUS politicsBiden administrationfeaturesReuse this content More
AnalysisWe need serious public policy, not more printed money – the US economy is in tattersDoug HenwoodDecades of bailouts have convinced some that the Fed will always come to the rescue – but this only papers over the fundamental flaws of the US economy With the Federal Reserve leading the world’s central banks in a tightening cycle of interest rate rises, the likes of which we haven’t seen since 2006, commentators across the political spectrum are noting the fondness of the Fed chair, Jerome “Jay” Powell, for his legendary predecessor, Paul Volcker. On the left, the comparison is fearful; on the center and on the right, it’s one of admiration. But circumstances don’t really support the comparison.Fed announces sixth consecutive hike in US interest rates to fight inflationRead moreOn taking office in October 1979, Volcker declared “the standard of living of the average American has to decline” as a consequence of the war against the chronic inflation of the 1970s. He quickly set to work making that happen by driving interest rates up towards 20% and creating the deepest US recession since the 1930s.That squeeze did put an end to high inflation but at a tremendous social cost. Six million people lost their jobs over the next three years, taking the unemployment rate from 6% to almost 11% in late 1982. The cost wasn’t merely short-term. About half of those job losses were categorized as permanent, as opposed to being temporary layoffs, many of them in the manufacturing heartland. The term “rust belt” entered common usage.Volcker was appointed by Jimmy Carter, who seemed to have no idea of what he was getting himself into. His friend and adviser, the Georgia banker Bert Lance, prophetically warned him that he was dooming his prospects in the 1980s election. But Carter listened to the consensus of Wall Street and the political class – Volcker was the man to tame inflation, which was running around 13% at the end of 1979. The US had seen inflation rates that high before, but never outside of major wars or their immediate aftermath. Inflation, which was under 2% in 1965, had been rising relentlessly for 15 years, barely pausing even in the nasty recession of the mid-1970s. Contrary to a belief popular on the left, that inflation was not kind to workers. Wages badly lagged prices, and real average hourly earnings fell 14% between 1973 and 1980.There are some similarities between the present and 40 years ago. Then, as now, food and energy prices were important factors in sparking inflation, but in both cases, even if you strip out those two volatile components, a severe inflation remains. And in both cases, polls have shown inflation to be deeply unpopular.But there are also major differences, notably in the strength of labor. At the end of the 1970s, almost a quarter of all workers were unionized; now only about a tenth are. Then, an average of 22,000 workdays were lost to strikes every year; last year it was just 1,500 – a decline of 93%. The early 1980s recession hammered the bargaining power of the working class. Unions were busted, and we went from a time when Take This Job and Shove It could be a hit song (as it was in 1977) to one where workers were grateful to have any job at all, no matter how tenuous and low-paying. As the recession ended in late 1982, the stock market took off and the employer class began a 40-year celebration of its triumph.That’s not the world Powell finds himself in. Inflation has been a problem for close to 15 months rather than 15 years, and although there are some tentative signs of life in the labor movement – notably at one Amazon site and a few hundred Starbucks outlets (out of 9,000) – the share of the labor force represented by unions fell last year, and strike activity so far in 2022 is about a third lower than in 2021. Unlike the inflation of the 1970s, this is not the wage-push kind (to use the jargon). It’s been driven first by supply chain blockages, thanks to Covid, and extended by embargoes against Russian energy exports, and most workers are just looking on helplessly as their paychecks fail to keep up with price increases.There’s another difference as well: we’re coming off a decade of extremely indulgent monetary policy. Coming out of the Great Recession, the Fed kept short-term interest rates near zero between 2011 and 2021, with the brief exception when they pushed them up to just over 2% in 2017 and 2018 (still quite low by historical standards). On top of that, the central bank pumped over $3tn (£2.7tn) into the financial markets between 2008 and 2015, and almost $5tn between early 2020 and early 2022. The earlier pumping was meant to prevent a financial implosion after the sub-prime crisis, and the latter to counter the threats of the early pandemic months. But the result of both has been to stimulate crazy inflation in asset prices – stocks, crypto, unicorns, housing – a remarkable waste of capital and one that can be very risky to deflate. Decades of bailouts have convinced financial market players that the Fed will always come in to rescue them and reversing that mentality could require a Volckerish austerity for Wall Street – one that’s politically hard to imagine.The Fed’s interest rate hikes are going to hit the most vulnerable | Dean BakerRead moreWhat Powell is up to now bears almost no resemblance to Volcker’s clampdown. The federal funds rate, the interest rate at which banks lend each other money overnight – that is the Fed’s most direct policy target – changed from just above 0% to just under 4% after raising the target rate another 0.75 points this week. That’s almost 15 points below the Volcker peak. In real terms – deducting the rate of inflation – Volcker’s peak was almost 10%, a lot higher. Right now, the real fed funds rate is around -4% (yes, that’s a negative sign). Powell may admire Volcker, but next to him, he’s a piker.The debate over monetary policy overlooks a more important issue. That decade of cheap money papered over a lot of fundamental problems with the US economy: low levels of public and private investment, massive polarization between rich and poor and unstable employment for much of the labor force. These should be addressed with serious public policy, not by printing money. It would be nice if we talked about that, but given the degraded state of American political discourse, I’m not hopeful.
Doug Henwood is an economic journalist based in Brooklyn. His radio show, Behind the News, airs on KPFA radio in Berkeley, and is available on all the standard podcast outlets
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For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails The UK could be facing the longest period of recession since reliable records began a century ago, the Bank of England has warned. The economy could fall into eight consecutive […] More
When McKinsey Comes to Town review: the book to consult on opioids, China and moreWalt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe of the New York Times have done their homework on the management giant McKinsey & Co is the biggest name in the consulting business. Established in 1926, it employs 30,000 people, maintains offices in more than 130 locations and counts Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, among its alumni. From vaping to non-profits, insurance to energy, government work to healthcare, the McKinsey thumbprint is there.Newsroom Confidential review: Margaret Sullivan’s timely tale of the Times and the PostRead moreTraditionally, McKinsey possessed the luxury of distance, watching from the sidelines as clients bore the brunt of scrutiny, lawsuits and risk. But the space between field and bleachers has narrowed. McKinsey finds itself under the microscope.When McKinsey Comes to Town is highly informed, a fascinating read. The authors, New York Times investigative reporters Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, have done their homework. They name names, connect dots and unearth documents. Sources speak in Technicolor.Bogdanich is a three-time Pulitzer winner. Forsythe brings a keen eye to the intersection of money, politics and China. He was previously based in Hong Kong. As it happens, McKinsey has worked for both the US defense department and for Chinese state-owned companies that have aided Beijing’s military buildup.McKinsey says Bogdanich and Forsythe “fundamentally misrepresent our firm and our work”. It issued a similar statement when the Times and ProPublica highlighted its remit on behalf of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Customs and Border Protection. ProPublica said: “McKinsey Called Our Story About Its ICE Contract False. It’s Not.” The contract with Ice was reportedly worth $18m.McKinsey has advised more than 40 US agencies. It played an outsized role in Jared Kushner’s attempts to cope with Covid, which originated in China. At the same time, it maintained a presence in China. The apparent conflict of interest triggered congressional concern. A group of Republicans claimed McKinsey’s work “on behalf of Chinese … firms, is tantamount to work on behalf of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and could lead to direct or indirect support for the CCP’s armed wing, the People’s Liberation Army”.Amid rising tension between Washington and Beijing, McKinsey’s connections, contracts and loyalties will probably continue to draw attention.The firm remains in the news. In February 2021, McKinsey entered into nearly $600m of legal settlements with state attorneys general. Why? The platinum-plated powerhouse purportedly helped Perdue Pharma “turbocharge” opioid sales. Plaintiffs alleged that “McKinsey sold its ideas to … Purdue Pharma …from 2004 to 2019, including before and after Purdue’s 2007 guilty plea for felony misbranding.”McKinsey also counts the US Food and Drug Administration as a client. But that’s just the beginning. To quote members of Congress, on at least four occasions the company may “have passed along non-public information based on its relationship with the FDA or discussed its willingness to do so” with Purdue Pharma.Bogdanich asks: “What does that mean when you have an opioid manufacturer who’s pushing opioids in the middle of an epidemic?”Since 1999, opioid-related deaths have risen more than fivefold. In two decades, opioids have killed more than 450,000 in the US. Life expectancy is down and it’s not just because of Covid. Death by despair is rising.In 2020, McKinsey apologized for its involvement with Purdue Pharma, “recogniz[ing] that we did not adequately acknowledge the epidemic unfolding in our communities or the terrible impact of opioid misuse”.McKinsey also counted as a client Juul Labs – the vaping company and scourge of teachers, moms and dads – billing it between $15m and $17m. Its most important work for Juul involved responding to an FDA crackdown on youth vaping.Youthful addiction can be profitable – until it isn’t. In September, Juul and more than 30 state attorneys general reached a $438.5m settlement. The e-cigarette manufacture did not admit culpability. McKinsey was not involved in the settlement. Juul hovers on the cusp of bankruptcy.Bogdanich and Forsythe focus on another “long-standing” McKinsey policy – simultaneously serving competing clients with “conflicting interests” as well as “counter-parties in merger, acquisition and alliance opportunities”. In plain English, McKinsey can find itself on both sides of transactions.Self-policing works – until it doesn’t. Unlike the strictures that govern lawyers, the rules that pertain to consultants, if any, are porous and less rigid. Last month, South African prosecutors indicted McKinsey on unspecified charges related to the alleged looting of Transnet, the state freight rail monopoly.‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6 Read more“We believe the charges filed against our South Africa office are meritless and we will defend against them,” a McKinsey spokesman responded.Regardless of the outcome of the case, McKinsey’s experience in South Africa stands as a study in the perils posed when governments offload government functions to non-state actors.McKinsey will face continued scrutiny. Then again, it is unclear if such work as that of Bogdanich and Forsythe can or will lead to change. McKinsey services remain in demand. Eager college and graduate business school students line up for a shot at snagging the brass ring.Speaking to Bogdanich and Forsythe, one former McKinsey consultant put the reach of the firm into some perspective. Forget secret cabals, “illuminati, lizard people, or globalists” he said. Instead, “there is … McKinsey”.
When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm is published in the USby Penguin Random House
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US economy bounces back to growth despite surging inflationCommerce department estimates show 2.6% annual growth rate for third quarter, snapping two straight quarters of contraction The US economy grew at a 2.6% annual rate from July through September, snapping two straight quarters of economic contraction and overcoming punishingly high inflation and interest rates.Thursday’s estimate from the commerce department showed that the nation’s gross domestic product – the broadest gauge of economic output – grew in the third quarter after having shrunk in the first half of 2022. Stronger exports and steady consumer spending, backed by a healthy job market, helped restore growth to the world’s biggest economy.Still, the outlook for the economy has darkened. The Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates five times this year to fight chronic inflation and is set to do so again next week and in December.Fed chair Jerome Powell has warned that the Fed’s hikes will bring “pain” in the form of higher unemployment and possibly a recession.The government’s latest GDP report comes as Americans, worried about inflation and the risk of recession, have begun to vote in midterm elections that will determine whether Joe Biden’s Democratic party retains control of Congress. Inflation has become a signature issue for Republican attacks on the Democrats’ stewardship of the economy.With inflation still near a 40-year high, steady price spikes have been pressuring households across the country. At the same time, rising interest rates have derailed the housing market and are likely to inflict broader damage over time. The outlook for the world economy, too, grows bleaker the longer that Russia’s war against Ukraine drags on.Last quarter’s US economic growth reversed annual declines of 1.6% from January through March and 0.6% from April through June. Consecutive quarters of declining economic output are one informal definition of a recession. But most economists have said they believe the economy skirted a recession, noting the still-resilient job market and steady spending by consumers. Most of them have expressed concern, though, that a recession is likely next year as the Fed steadily tightens credit.Preston Caldwell, head of US economics for the financial services firm Morningstar, noted that the economy’s contraction in the first half of the year was caused largely by factors that don’t reflect its underlying health and so “very likely did not constitute a genuine economic slowdown.” He pointed, for example, to a drop in business inventories, a cyclical event that tends to reverse itself over time.Higher borrowing costs have weakened the home market, in particular. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, just 3.09% a year ago, is approaching 7%. Sales of existing homes have fallen for eight straight months. Construction of new homes is down nearly 8% from a year ago.Still, the economy retains pockets of strength. One is the vitally important job market. Employers have added an average of 420,000 jobs a month this year, putting 2022 on track to be the second-best year for job creation (behind 2021) in labor department records going back to 1940. The unemployment rate was 3.5% last month, matching a half-century low.Hiring has been decelerating, though. In September, the economy added 263,000 jobs – solid but the lowest total since April 2021.International events are causing further concerns. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted trade and raised prices of energy and food, creating a crisis for poor countries. The International Monetary Fund, citing the war, this month downgraded its outlook for the world economy in 2023.TopicsUS economyEconomicsBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
AnalysisRepublicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workersSteven GreenhouseGOP courts blue collar voters but most favor anti-union ‘right to work’ laws and reject laws that would protect right to organize After years of struggle, America’s labor unions enjoy greater public approval than at any time in more than 50 years. Yet even as the Republican party seeks to rebrand itself as the party of the working class, its lawmakers, by and large, remain as hostile as ever toward organized labor. It doesn’t look like that situation is about to change.With the midterm elections approaching, and many polls indicating that the Republicans will win control of the House, nearly all Republican lawmakers in Congress oppose proposals that would make it easier to unionize. One hundred and eleven Republican House members and 21 senators are co-sponsoring a bill that would weaken unions by letting workers in all 50 states opt out of paying any fees to the unions that represent them. And at a time when many young workers – among them, Starbucks workers, Apple store workers, museum workers, grad students – are flocking into unions, Republican lawmakers often deride unions as woke, leftwing and obsolete.Congressional Democrats – seeing the surge in unionization drives along with the aggressive anti-union campaigns by Starbucks, Amazon and other companies – say there is increased urgency to enact the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (Pro Act), which would make it easier for workers to unionize. The Pro Act passed the House last year – with 205 Republicans voting against and five in favor – but it faces an uphill battle in the Senate, largely because of a GOP filibuster, and will almost certainly fail to pass if Republicans gain Senate seats in the midterms.The Pro Act remains the Democrats’ overwhelming legislative priority for helping unions – it would, among other things, ban employers’ captive audience meetings and create substantial penalties for corporations that break the law when fighting unionization. Republicans denounce the legislation, vigorously opposing a provision that would override the right-to-work laws enacted in 27 states, laws that allow workers to opt out of paying union dues. The Senate Republicans’ policy committee has slammed the Pro Act, saying it would undermine worker freedom, “heavily tilt the scales in favor of labor” and “curb workers’ choices, threaten jobs and increase costs on employers”.It wasn’t always this way. Two decades ago, there were 30 union-friendly Republicans in the House, but that number has dwindled to a handful, partly because many of the party’s billionaire and corporate donors frown on pro-union Republicans. These donors see unions as bothersome institutions that favor Democrats and reduce corporate profits. Indeed, many Republican lawmakers treat unions and their leaders as enemies.Virginia Foxx, the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, scoffed at the idea that there is a union resurgence and said Democrats “are in the pocket of Big Labor”. “Unions are hitting the panic button and praying that Democrats can gin up a PR campaign to cover up the declining numbers and lack of interest in union membership,” Foxx told the Guardian, noting that union membership has sunk to just 6% of the private-sector workforce. Foxx, who often serves as Congress’s chief spokesperson on labor matters, belittled unions’ recent gains, saying that only a tiny percentage of Starbucks and Apple stores have been unionized.Foxx, a nine-term House member from North Carolina, said: “If Democrats genuinely believe that union popularity is soaring and that union campaigns and strikes are resonating with American workers, then they truly have a tortured relationship with both math and reality.”Even as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported a 53% jump over the past year in the number of workplace petitions for union elections, Foxx and many other Republicans are backing bills that would make it harder to unionize. With corporations prohibiting union organizers from setting foot on company property to speak with workers, unions rely on NLRB rules requiring employers to give them workers’ home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses so they can communicate with them. But the Employee Privacy Protection Act, a Republican-sponsored bill re-introduced last March, shortly after the recent union surge began, would limit unions to obtaining just one of those three ways to contact workers. Foxx said workers should “never have to hand over their personal contact information” to “a union to which they object”.Bill Samuel, legislative director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main union federation, said he has seen no sign of Republicans warming up to unions despite their increased popularity – 71% of Americans approve of unions. “I haven’t seen any change” among Republicans, Samuel said. “There’s been no outreach. We haven’t been getting calls from Republicans asking, ‘How can we help workers organize?’”Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the House education and labor committee, agreed, adding: “Republicans are pretty much as hostile as ever toward unions – pretty much down the line.”Scott said Democrats should rush to enact the Pro Act in light of the many daunting obstacles that workers face in seeking to unionize at Starbucks, Amazon and other companies due to intense corporate opposition and a flurry of alleged illegalities by management. In Scott’s view, especially important is a provision that would for the first time allow the NLRB to impose substantial fines against companies that violate the law when battling union drives. “The biggest improvement we need is to have some meaningful sanctions for unfair labor practices,” Scott said. “Right now, there is no meaningful deterrent.”Oren Cass, executive director of American Compass, a thinktank for conservative economics, said that many Republicans have grown more interested in worker issues. Cass acknowledged, however, that most Republican lawmakers remain hostile to organized labor because “unions are predominantly financing mechanisms for the Democratic party.”He said some Republicans are open to the idea of increasing worker power, but only if it’s done largely outside the framework of traditional unions. Nevertheless, whether with or without unions, hardly any Republicans are pushing to expand worker power – an idea that would irk corporate Republicans. Many GOP lawmakers instead emphasize worker choice and worker freedom – part of their decades-long effort to enact state right-to-work laws that allow workers to opt out of paying any dues or fees to the unions that represent them.Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina are co-sponsoring the National Right to Work Act, which would let workers in all 50 states opt out of union dues. Wilson told the Guardian that the bill would “eliminate forced-dues clauses” and “allow workers to choose for themselves”. He said Joe Biden and the Democrats were on “a mission to force unionization” on “workers by eliminating employee choice”. Senator Paul said their bill would “put bargaining power where it belongs, in the hands of American workers”. Unions assert, however, that workers have far more bargaining power by bargaining collectively, rather than as individuals.Cass, who worked in Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, supports steps to give workers more power and said it’s a good time for Republicans to push to increase worker power. Their “constituents are significantly and increasingly working class”, Cass noted, adding that Republicans might be more willing to distance themselves from corporations now that more business executives “are on the other side”, having endorsed Democrats.For years, most Republicans lawmakers have opposed any increase in the NLRB’s budget; that agency oversees private-sector union elections and cracks down on employers that break the law in fighting unions. The labor board’s budget hasn’t increased since 2014, a budget freeze that has angered union leaders because they say it hampers the board’s ability to move quickly against law-breaking, anti-union employers.“The NLRB has been flat-funded for a long time,” said Scott, chair of the House labor committee. “With the popularity of unions increasing, the work of the NLRB has increased. In order to get their work done, the board needs significant increases in funding.”But Foxx called increasing NLRB funding “an inherently stupid idea”, asserting that the labor board tilts in favor of unions, just as Democrats asserted that President Trump’s labor board was far too anti-union.The AFL-CIO’s Samuel voiced dismay that many Republicans seem implacably opposed to anything that would help unions expand. “All this,” Samuel said, “illustrates their hostility to make it easier for workers to enjoy what is supposed to be their basic right under the law: to come together to form a union.”TopicsUS unionsUS politicsStarbucksAmazonanalysisReuse this content More
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