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      in US Politics

      Win the Amazon union fight and we can usher in a new Progressive Era | Robert Reich

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      The most dramatic change in American capitalism over the last half-century has been the emergence of corporate behemoths like Amazon and the shrinkage of labor unions. The resulting imbalance has spawned near-record inequalities of income and wealth, corruption of democracy by big money and the abandonment of the working class.All this is coming to a head in several ways.Over the next eight days, Amazon faces a union vote at its warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. If successful, it would be Amazon’s first US-based union in its nearly 27-year history.Conditions in Amazon warehouses would please Kim Jong-un – strict production quotas, 10-hour workdays with only two half-hour breaks, unsafe procedures, arbitrary firings “and they track our every move”, Jennifer Bates, a worker at Bessemer, told the Senate budget committee on Wednesday.To thwart the union drive, Amazon has required Bessemer workers to attend anti-union meetings, warned workers they’d have to pay union dues (wrong – Alabama is a “right-to-work” state that bars mandatory dues), and intimidated and harassed organizers.Why is Amazon abusing its workers?The power shift can be reversed – but only with stronger labor laws, tougher trade deals and a commitment to antitrustThe company isn’t exactly hard-up. It’s the most profitable firm in America. Its executive chairman and largest shareholder, Jeff Bezos, is the richest man in the world, holding more wealth than the bottom 39% of Americans put together.Amazon is abusing workers because it can.Fifty years ago, General Motors was the largest employer in America. The typical GM worker earned $35 an hour in today’s dollars and had a major say over working conditions. Today’s largest employers are Amazon and Walmart, each paying about $15 an hour and treating workers like cattle.The typical GM worker wasn’t “worth” more than twice today’s Amazon or Walmart worker and didn’t have more valuable insights about how work should be organized. The difference is GM workers a half-century ago had a strong union, summoning the collective bargaining power of more than a third of the entire American workforce.By contrast, today’s Amazon and Walmart workers are on their own. And because only 6.4% of America’s private-sector workers are unionized, there’s little collective pressure on Amazon or Walmart to treat their workers any better.Fifty years ago, “big labor” had enough political clout to ensure labor laws were enforced and that the government pushed giant firms like GM to sustain the middle class.Today, organized labor’s political clout is minuscule by comparison. The biggest political players are giant corporations like Amazon. And what have they done with their muscle? Encouraged “right-to-work” laws, diluted federal labor protections and kept the National Labor Relations Board understaffed and overburdened.They’ve also impelled government to lower their taxes (Amazon paid zero federal taxes in 2018); extorted states to provide them tax breaks as condition for locating facilities there (Amazon is a champion at this game); bullied cities where they’re headquartered (Amazon forced Seattle to back down on a plan to tax big corporations to pay for homeless shelters); and wangled trade treaties allowing them to outsource so many jobs that blue-collar workers in America have little choice but to take low-paying, high-stress warehouse and delivery gigs.Oh, and they’ve neutered antitrust laws, which in an earlier era would have had companies like Amazon in their crosshairs.This decades-long power shift – the emergence of corporate leviathans and the demise of labor unions – has resulted in a massive upward redistribution of income and wealth. The richest 0.1% of Americans now has almost as much wealth as the bottom 90% together.Corporate profits account for a growing share of the total economy and wages a declining share, with multi-billionaire executives and investors like Bezos taking home the lion’s share.The power shift can be reversed – but only with stronger labor laws, tougher trade deals and a renewed commitment to antitrust.The Biden administration and congressional Democrats appear willing. The House has just passed the toughest labor reforms in more than a generation. Biden’s new trade representative, Katherine Tai, promises trade deals will protect American workers rather than exporters. And Biden is putting trustbusters in critical positions at the Federal Trade Commission and in the White House.I’d like to think America is at a tipping point similar to where it was some 120 years ago, when the ravages and excesses of the Gilded Age precipitated what became known as the Progressive Era. Then, reformers reversed the course of American capitalism for the next 70 years, making it work for the many rather than the few.Today’s progressive activists – in Washington, at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse and elsewhere around the nation – may be on the verge of doing the same. More

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      in UK Politics

      UK debt reaches record high as government borrowing hits £19.1bn

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      The UK’s debt has reached a new high as government borrowing hit £19.1bn last month as it continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic and the economic fallout of lockdown.The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the public sector had borrowed more last month than during any other February since records began in 1993.The debt owed by public bodies has increased by £333bn since the start of April, the first month of full lockdown in the UK.It brings the total debt to £2.131 trillion, the ONS said.Central government bodies are believed to have spent around £72.6bn running their day-to-day activities in February, a rise of £14.2bn compared with February 2020. The figure includes £3.9bn spent on supporting jobs through Covid-19.The chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, pledged early on in the pandemic to provide whatever support businesses needed to help them through the government-imposed lockdowns.Read more:Mr Sunak said: “Coronavirus has caused one of the largest economic shocks this country has ever faced, which is why we responded with our £352bn package of support to protect lives and livelihoods.“This was the fiscally responsible thing to do and the best way to support the public finances in the medium-term.“But I have always said that we should look to return the public finances to a more sustainable path once the economy has recovered and at the Budget I set out how we will begin to do just that, providing families and businesses with certainty.”The government has backed more than £70bn through three loan schemes, and also paid 80 per cent of salaries to around 10 million workers who were furloughed.The government has relied heavily on borrowing to be able to fund this spending as tax receipts have also gone down during the period.However, Mr Sunak has signalled that tax rises are likely in the coming years, already announcing a plan to increase corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent for large companies by 2023. More

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      in US Politics

      'Inhumane and flawed': global business leaders urge governments to end death penalty

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      Global business leaders launched a campaign on Thursday declaring their opposition to the death penalty, urging governments everywhere to end the practice and asking their peers to join them.Speaking to the virtual South by Southwest festival, Sir Richard Branson, one of the campaign’s leaders, said: “The death penalty is broken beyond repair and plainly fails to deliver justice by every reasonable measure. It is marred by cruelty, waste, ineffectiveness, discrimination and an unacceptable risk of error.“By speaking out at this crucial moment, business leaders have an opportunity to help end this inhumane and flawed practice.”Initial signatories of Business Against Death Penalty include billionaires fashion mogul François-Henri Pinault and telecoms tycoon Mo Ibrahim, Ben & Jerry founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Martha Lane Fox, tech entrepreneur and Twitter board member and Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post.The campaign is being coordinated by the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice, a nonprofit human rights group led by Celia Ouellette, a former death row lawyer. “This campaign is an opportunity for business leaders to embrace their responsibility to speak out authentically on issues of racial and social justice in a way that delivers real impact.”Ouellette said in the light of the business communities support for Black Lives Matter and racial justice there was a growing awareness of the “long history of race and the death penalty among business leaders” and many were now prepared to stand against it.In a statement, Ben & Jerry founders Cohen and Greenfield said: “Business leaders need to do more than just say Black Lives Matter. They need to walk the talk and be instrumental in tearing down all the symbols of structural racism in our society. The death penalty has a long history with oppression, and it needs to end. Now.”Joe Biden is the first US president to openly oppose executions and is under pressure to end the federal death penalty. Ouellette said she was hopeful that the business community could help lobby for change in the same way it helped press for marriage equality in the US and elsewhere.“Bringing powerful voices to the table is highly impactful,” she said.The group plans to build support and increase pressure for change ahead of the World Day Against the Death Penalty on 10 October.More than 170 United Nations member states have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice.Ouellette said the practice was at a “tipping point” and that Biden’s appointment could pave the way for the US to join the countries that have effectively ended it. “I am hopeful,” she said. But she warned that the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, when the government for the first time executed more American civilians than all the states combined, shows what is at stake.“Movements can tip backwards too,” she said. More

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      in US Politics

      Activists call on Coca-Cola, Delta to fight Republican anti-voting bills in Georgia

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      Civil rights groups are escalating pressure on major Georgia companies including Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines to forcefully oppose sweeping new restrictions that would make it harder to vote in the state.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterThe campaign is focused on some of the largest employers in Georgia and some of America’s most recognizable brands. Home Depot, UPS, Aflac and Southern Company are also among the companies activists are targeting.The organizations say the companies’ support could help kill the measures, which are championed by Republican lawmakers and would cut early voting in some of the state’s most populous and non-white counties, require voters to show ID when they vote by mail, and limit the availability of ballot drop boxes. Another bill would entirely eliminate a state policy that allows any voter to cast a mail-in ballot without an excuse.The restrictions come after the state saw record turnout in the 2020 race and surging participation among non-white voters, resulting in the election of two Democratic senators and victory for Joe Biden in the state.“It is a dangerous thing for the business community to be silent,” said Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, to the Guardian. “We are obliged at this moment to call for all voices to be lifted up. And for the alarm to ring not only through the communities that are threatened directly, but by those businesses that rely on the durability of our democracy.”There is precedent for the effort. Corporate pressure has previously helped bring scrutiny to some of the most controversial bills in US state legislatures, including an anti-LGBTQ+ measure in Indiana and a discriminatory bathroom bill in North Carolina.Georgia activists have bought billboards near company headquarters, full-page advertisements in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, protested outside Coca-Cola headquarters, and have helped 55,000 Georgia voters send messages to company leadership, said Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, which is helping lead the effort.But it is particularly hypocritical for corporations to stay silent on voting rights, Ufot said in an interview. Many of them issued statements last year at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests acknowledging the need to improve racial equity in the United States. Georgia-based companies often tout the state’s history in the civil rights movement, she noted. Coca-Cola bought billboards honoring the life of John Lewis, a titan of the voting rights movement, when he died last year.“It makes me wonder whether or not they were doing it for clout,” Ufot said. “This feels like these are the character moments when you get to see … whether or not they walk their talk. It’s one thing to post your solidarity on social media and it’s another thing to stop something really harmful from happening to the Black community.”Several provisions in the bill would disproportionately harm Black voters, data shows. Black and other non-white voters are more likely than their white counterparts to cast ballots on weekend days of early voting, including on Sundays, when many Black churches run “Souls to the Polls” programs to get parishioners to vote. The bill would allow counties to only offer a single day of weekend voting in addition to the single Saturday already required under law.The response from the businesses so far has been muted. “We continue to engage with Georgia’s elected leaders on this issue. Delta’s shared values call on us to make our voices heard and be engaged members of our communities, of which voting is a vital part of that responsibility,” said Lisa Hanna, a Delta spokeswoman, in a statement.Companies such as Delta may be wary of wading into the debate around voting. In 2018, Georgia’s lieutenant governor tried to kill a tax break for Delta after it cancelled a group discount rate for the National Rifle Association, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.On Friday, the Georgia chamber of commerce released a statement to CNBC saying it had expressed “concern and opposition” to provisions in the legislation in the legislature. (It did not say which ones.) Representatives from Coca-Cola and Home Depot told the Guardian they were “aligned” with the chamber’s position.But it’s not clear exactly what they mean by “aligned”. After the Washington Post published a story on Monday saying Home Depot opposed the new restrictions, the company went out of its way to clarify that its alignment with the chamber did not in fact mean it opposed the legislation.Ufot said she rolled her eyes when she read the statement from the Georgia chamber of commerce, which was “not worth the paper it’s written on”.“What Republican legislator is supposed to look at that and say ‘I have pissed off Home Depot and their lobbyist, let me withdraw my support from this bill’?” she said.Ufot and other activists are also calling on the companies to pause political giving to Georgia lawmakers who back the voting restrictions.Since 2018, corporations have donated $7.4m to politicians backing voting restrictions in the legislature, according to Popular Information, an independent newsletter. That includes $34,750 from Coca-Cola, at least $41,600 from Delta Airlines, $34,500 from UPS, $38,700 from Southern Company and $7,250 from Aflac.Ann Moore, a Coca-Cola spokesperson, said the organization had paused political giving in January. Sara Gorman, a Home Depot spokeswoman, said a company-associated Pac, a political giving organization, “supports candidates on both sides of the aisle who champion pro-business, pro-retail positions that create jobs and economic growth”.On Tuesday, Salesforce, a software company headquartered in San Francisco said it opposed one of the bills in the legislature “as it currently stands”.LaTosha Brown, a co-founder of the organization Black Voters Matter, noted that opponents of the voting restrictions are making their voices heard in other ways, too. Last week, under pressure, officials in Hancock county, which is more than 70% Black, voted to ask Barry Fleming, one of the sponsors of the sweeping voting bills, to step down as the county attorney.“They can’t sit on the sidelines where we’re literally fighting for our right to vote,” Brown said. “This should be a no-brainer.” More

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      in US Politics

      Biden's Covid relief means small businesses can save big on taxes in 2021 | Gene Marks

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      Thanks to the stimulus programs, there are now five ways small can save big on their taxes in 2021 … and even get money back.The signing of the American Rescue Act this week means that more than $5tn has been spent on stimulus programs in the US to fight the economic impact of the Covid pandemic. A significant amount of this money has been earmarked towards funding small businesses, such as the paycheck protection program and the economic injury disaster loan program. However, all of the stimulus programs contained generous tax incentives that can not only save business owners a significant amount on their taxes in 2021, but also provide additional funding. Here are five that every small business owner should be considering.Employee retention tax creditThe employee retention tax credit is one such tax incentive. The credit was initially part of the March 2020 Cares Act and has been extended through 31 December 2021. To be eligible for the credit for any quarter in 2021 a business must show that it has been partially or fully shut down or experienced a revenue decline of more than 20% that quarter compared with the same quarter in 2019. If eligible, then the business can take a credit of up to $7,000 per employee per quarter based on their wages against their employer payroll taxes owed.The big deal is that if the credit is larger than what’s owed, the business can get the difference back in cash. The credit is also available to businesses that participate in the paycheck protection program, although wages used for forgiveness cannot be used to calculate the credit. The criteria for claiming the credit in 2020 are different but businesses owners can still apply to do that. All of these calculations are done on a company’s quarter federal tax returns.Families First Coronavirus Response Act tax creditAnother tax benefit has to do with the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA). This legislation predated the Cares Act in 2020 and required employers to compensate their employees if they had to take time off because they, or their family members, were affected by Covid. This includes having to stay home to supervise their children while they attended virtual classes. The act provided for a tax credit where the business owner could claim money back on their federal payroll tax returns for the wages they were required to pay.The FFCRA is now voluntary in 2021. But for those employers that do continue to offer these benefits – which now includes time off to get vaccinated or to recover from any effects of vaccinations – the credit is still available and has been extended through September.Cobra tax creditCobra – or Continuation of Health Coverage – is a federal law that requires employers to make health insurance available under their corporate health plans to employees for a certain period of time who lose their benefits because of layoffs or reduced hours of employment. The idea is that people don’t lose their health insurance if they lose their jobs, but they do have to pay.In a new provision, the American Rescue Plan now fully subsidizes for the continuation of Cobra benefits for employees from April through September and offers a tax credit for employers who continue to pay for the health insurance premiums on behalf of their laid-off employee.Carryback of lossesThere is another big benefit for companies that lost money in either 2020, 2019 or 2018.Thanks to the Cares Act – and subsequent stimulus bills which kept this rule in place – companies that lost money those years can, for one time only, carry back those losses for up to five years. Which means that if a business paid taxes in the past, those losses would reduce what was owed and therefore a company would be due the money back. Normally tax rules don’t allow this kind of carryback but this year is an exception. We’re telling our clients to amend and file their corporate returns as quickly as possible in order to start the refund process, which takes an average of six weeks.Work opportunity tax creditThe National Federation of Independent Businesses reported this past week that 40% of their surveyed members had open jobs to fill and another 56% of owners reported hiring or trying to hire in February, up five points from January. These numbers are likely to increase significantly over the next few months as the economy recovers. The good news is that a big tax credit related to hiring has been extended through 2025.It’s called the work opportunity tax credit and it provides a credit on income taxes due for any employer that hires a veteran, someone off of welfare or – more timely – a worker who has been unemployed more than six months. It could be an enormous tax benefit for those employers who take advantage. Some of my clients are calculating this credit in advance before a hire and then using it as a signing bonus to help them better compete against others seeking talent.Clearly there are significant tax benefits – many which include cash refunds – for small business owners who choose to take advantage of them. My smartest clients are already talking to their tax advisers and getting help. They know that these benefits are short-term. They also know that leveraging them could provide much needed funds to help them navigate to, and through, the post-pandemic recovery. More

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      in US Politics

      Bidenomics beats Reaganomics and I should know – I saw Clintonomics fail | Robert Reich

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      A quarter-century ago, I and other members of Bill Clinton’s cabinet urged him to reject the Republican proposal to end welfare. It was too punitive, we said, subjecting poor Americans to deep and abiding poverty. But Clinton’s political advisers warned that unless he went along, he would jeopardize his reelection.That was the end of welfare as we knew it. As Clinton boasted in his State of the Union address to Congress that year: “The era of big government is over.”Until Thursday, that is. Joe Biden signed into law the biggest expansion of government assistance since the 1960s – a guaranteed income for most families with children, raising the maximum benefit by up to 80% per child.As Biden put it in his address to the nation, as if answering Clinton: “The government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital. No, it’s us, all of us, we the people.”As a senator, Biden supported Clinton’s 1996 welfare restrictions, as did most Americans. What happened between then and now? Three big things.First, Covid. The pandemic has been a national wake-up call on the fragility of middle-class incomes. The deep Covid recession has revealed the harsh consequences of most Americans living paycheck to paycheck.For years, Republicans used welfare to drive a wedge between the white working middle class and the poor. Ronald Reagan portrayed black, inner-city mothers as freeloaders and con artists, repeatedly referring to “a woman in Chicago” as the “welfare queen”.Trump replaced economic Reaganism with narcissistic grievances, claims of voter fraud and cultural paranoiaStarting in the 1970s, women had streamed into paid work in order to prop up family incomes decimated by the decline in male factory jobs. These families were particularly susceptible to the Republican message. Why should “they” get help for not working when “we” get no help, and we work?By the time Clinton campaigned for president, “ending welfare as we knew it” had become a talisman of so-called New Democrats, even though there was little or no evidence that welfare benefits discouraged the unemployed from taking jobs. (In Britain, enlarged child benefits actually increased employment among single mothers.)Yet when Covid hit, a new reality became painfully clear: public assistance was no longer just for “them”. It was needed by all of “us”.The second big thing was Donald Trump. He exploited racism, to be sure, but also replaced economic Reaganism with narcissistic grievances, claims of voter fraud and cultural paranoia stretching from Dr Seuss to Mr Potato Head.Trump obliterated concerns about government give-aways. The Cares Act, which he signed into law at the end of March 2020, gave most Americans checks of $1,200 (to which he calculatedly attached his name). When this proved enormously popular, he demanded the next round of stimulus checks be $2,000.But Trump’s biggest give-away was the GOP’s $1.9tn 2018 tax cut, under which benefits went overwhelmingly to the top 20%. Despite promises of higher wages for everyone else, nothing trickled down. Meanwhile, during the pandemic, America’s 660 billionaires – major beneficiaries of the tax cut – became $1.3tn wealthier, enough to give every American a $3,900 check and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic.The third big thing is the breadth of Biden’s plan. Under it, more than 93% of the nation’s children – 69 million – receive benefits. Incomes of Americans in the lowest quintile will increase by 20%; those in the second-lowest, 9%; those in the middle, 6%.Rather than pit the working middle class against the poor, this unites them. Some 76% of Americans supported the bill, including 63% of low-income Republicans (a quarter of all Republican voters). Younger conservatives are particularly supportive, presumably because people under 50 have felt the brunt of the four-decade slowdown in real wage growth.Given all this, it’s amazing that zero Republican members of Congress voted for it, while 278 voted for Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and the rich.The political lesson is that today’s Democrats – who enjoy popular vote majorities in presidential elections (having won seven of the past eight) – can gain political majorities by raising the wages of both middle class and poor voters, while fighting Republican efforts to suppress the votes of likely Democrats.The economic lesson is that Reaganomics is officially dead. For years, conservative economists argued that tax cuts for the rich create job-creating investments, while assistance to the poor creates dependency. Rubbish.Bidenomics is exactly the reverse: Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone. This is far more plausible. We’ll learn how much in coming months. More

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      in UK Politics

      What does the collapse in UK exports to the EU really tell us about Brexit?

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      The headline figures seem to say it all. In January – the first month after the end of the post-Brexit transition – UK exports to the rest of Europe collapsed by 40 per cent, according to the latest official trade figures from the Office for National Statistics.By contrast exports to non-EU countries rose slightly in the month.This seems to be clear evidence that Brexit is having the negative impact on UK exporters to the EU that businesses and economists warned about so loudly. More

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      in US Politics

      Amazon to stop selling books that frame LGBTQ+ identities as mental illness

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      Amazon will no longer sell books that frame gay, lesbian, transgender and other sexual identities as a mental illness.
      The company made the announcement public in a letter sent to Republican senators who had asked why Amazon had stopped selling When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, a book by the conservative academic Ryan Anderson, best known for his opposition to same-sex marriage.
      In the letter, first obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Amazon writes: “As a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable.
      “That said, we reserve the right not to sell certain content. All retailers make decisions about what selection they choose to offer, as do we. As to your specific question about When Harry Became Sally, we have chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”
      The letter came in response to criticism from the rightwing senators Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Mike Braun and Josh Hawley who wrote to the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, criticizing the book’s removal and calling it a signal “to conservative Americans that their views are not welcome on its platforms”.
      The move will have a significant impact on books that frame LGTBQ+ identities as mental illnesses. Amazon accounts for 53% of all books sold in the US and 80% of all ebooks, according to Codex Group, a book audience research firm.
      The decision comes at a moment when Republicans and the conservative movement are increasingly focused on so-called “cancel culture”. Republicans have recently criticized the decision by Dr Seuss publisher to stop publishing six of his books because they portrayed people of color “in ways that are hurtful and wrong”.
      “Everyone agrees that gender dysphoria is a serious condition that causes great suffering,” Anderson and Roger Kimball, publisher of Encounter Books, which published the book, said in a statement given to the Journal.
      “There is a debate, however, which Amazon is seeking to shut down, about how best to treat patients who experience gender dysphoria,” they added. “Amazon is using its massive power to distort the marketplace of ideas and is deceiving its own customers in the process,” they said.
      A spokesperson for LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD said: “There’s an antiquated and shameful history of equating LGBTQ identity to mental illness, and Amazon’s decision to stop selling books that falsely equate the two is a positive step in ending the misinformation campaign against LGBTQ people, especially trans youth, meant only to cause harm.
      “This book is dangerous and harmful to trans kids, and those who are looking for information about trans identity should not look to resources written by someone who has made their livelihood by publishing screeds against the trans community.” More