The Nub's a bi-line sums it up with two quotes:
A nice piece appeared on Monday in "The Nub", an essay by Dick Starkey on the place of unions in the 'bigger game' - in The State of the Union game."If you don't think life imitates sports, you're not reading The Nub”"Politics and baseball. Interesting blog…called ‘The Nub’ on perfectpitcher.org.”
THE NUB
Where A-Rod Fits in Resentment Against Team Labor
(http://www.perfectpitcher.org/?p=94#respond)
(Posted: Feb.28/Update 3/1)
by Dick Starkey
Alex Rodriguez, poster-boy for fan hostility to players’ salary levels and their union, was in the news over the weekend.The NYC media learned that A-Rod – he with a $275 million 10-year contract – pays virtually no real estate tax on his $6 million Manhattan penthouse. Rodriguez is benefiting from a city tax abatement program to encourage construction of affordable housing. Although the deal has nothing to do with A-Rod, the disclosure can’t help but add fuel to the national furor over the privileged position unions play in the American economic game.
Eight years ago, the players union blocked a trade that would have sent A-Rod from the Rangers to the Red Sox because he had agreed to a slightly downward adjustment in his salary. The move seemed overly protective and an outrageous example of overstepping to Red Sox fans, especially. It reminded many fans around the country why unions had earned their resentment. More than overstepping, corruption in the labor movement was rife, former rank-and-filers profiting illegally from the leadership roles to which they’d been elected. Then there were widespread pension-padding practices whereby members worked extra overtime hours their final years, the resulting elevated annual earnings the basis for their retirement pay. The perception of featherbedding was also widespread, the sense that union contracts require more members than necessary to do certain jobs. Seniority rules, protecting longtime employees at the expense of well-regarded new employees was – is – another problem. And in many parts of the country, unions were – are – known to engage in racism and nepotism, hiring preferences given to white relatives of longtime members.
All this contributed to Team Labor’s loss of fan as well as governmental support. At that stage of the game, some time after World War II, corporate franchises began playing hardball in an effort to drive the organized labor team from the field. How successful the corporate-and-media game has been can be gauged in this down economy by hearing even liberal commentators talk of labor’s need to agree to a trimming of their “generous” benefits. Those are the same benefits that were the norm when many of our parents and grandparents joined the work force. They were benefits, including job security, living wages, etc. that made possible stable home ownership, college educations and a post-war period of prosperity throughout the country.
The current contest of interests could serve to rally and renew labor’s clout in the American workplace or further accelerate its decline. Team Labor is certainly the underdog, but the final outcome is still unclear. What is clear, says Wash Post-man E.J. Dionne is the potent righty-hitting game plan:”Private-sector workers are taking it on the chin, and conservatives now see a chance to cripple organized labor altogether by killing off public-sector unions, the most vibrant part of the movement. The underlying argument is actually insidious: If workers in the private sector have it bad, shouldn’t workers in the public sector have it bad, too?”
One thing traditional labor contracts provided that the players union does not: job security. Ask respected veterans David Eckstein, Kevin Millwood, and Bengie Molina, to name an infielder, pitcher and catcher among the nearly 50 still-unsigned free agents, most of whom thought they had earned an mlb contract from someone to play another season.
[...]
Read the rest...
Many people are jealous and angry about the salaries the players make - the scale is so far out of whack to the average wage it's difficult to dismiss that part of the equation.
But I do: the salaries of the players are a function of the value of the franchises and the rarity of the player's athletic abilities, discovered in a free market. It is a meritocracy with-in a very profitable entertainment brand. If one can get past the adolescent envy that so much of popular media loves to harp on about, the lessons of the history of the players' union can help us to understand the benefits of unions in the economy over-all.
In fleshing out of certain points in Dick Starkey's essay I hope to further enlighten the over-all debate.
I'll just start at the top:
"Rodriguez is benefiting from a city tax abatement program to encourage construction of affordable housing. Although the deal has nothing to do with A-Rod, the disclosure can’t help but add fuel to the national furor over the privileged position unions play in the American economic game."
So instead of taxing the very rich to pay of low income housing in the same neighbourhood, the city makes an agreement with the developer that they won't pay, for example, real estate tax - as long as they agree to include some low income housing in the development.
And this is because of the "..privileged position unions play in the American economic game."?
Sounds more like the result of the power of multinational corporations, who have instituted a system all across the developed world where corporations pay little to no tax to the commons. Income tax is at the highest rates of all time, but tax shelters provide everyone with a way to pay almost no income tax - as long as they invest some portion of their income in the markets. Most tax revenues to government come from sales taxes now, so as the economy goes so goes government revenues. Corporations benefit by having to pay no tax and have colossal sums of our money to play with as their heart's desire.
The same is true here in the City of Toronto, where it is causing an on-going revenue problem because, by Provincial law, the city has few taxing tools in it's drawer. It's all part of the New World Order, as Bush I put it - or more accurately policies developed by the G8 group of countries, defined by the political label neo-con, or neo-liberal - a set of policies defined by a belief in free market solution to all problems, and a deregulation of the economy - that have resulted in the power of democratic governments to be overwhelmed by the power of groups of corporations.
As the economist John Kenneth Galbraith said, (paraphrasing) the hitherto compartmentalized institutions of the private economy and government have become as one.
From "A cloud over civilisation"
The Guardian, Thursday 15 July 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jul/15/usa.iraq
By JK Galbraith
"[...]
In 2003, close to half the total US government discretionary expenditure was used for military purposes. A large part was for weapons procurement or development. Nuclear-powered submarines run to billions of dollars, individual planes to tens of millions each.
Such expenditure is not the result of detached analysis. From the relevant industrial firms come proposed designs for new weapons, and to them are awarded production and profit. In an impressive flow of influence and command, the weapons industry accords valued employment, management pay and profit in its political constituency, and indirectly it is a treasured source of political funds. The gratitude and the promise of political help go to Washington and to the defence budget. And to foreign policy or, as in Vietnam and Iraq, to war. That the private sector moves to a dominant public-sector role is apparent.
None will doubt that the modern corporation is a dominant force in the present-day economy. [...]"
For a more recent example look at the financial collapse of 2008. President Obama, after winning a landslide as part of a reaction to a colossal failure of the neo-con economic vision, put in place the same team to mange the recovery as those who's policies caused the collapse - Wall Street financial gurus - some of whom lead companies that were at the centre of the implosion!
I can't see for the life of me where "privileged" unions comes into any of this - except that they are the scape goats the corporate media has chosen to defect attention from their pay masters - and the next target of these corporate backed neo-con's ravenous greed.
Back to Dick Starkey's article - from the second paragraph:
"..the players union blocked a trade that would have sent A-Rod from the Rangers to the Red Sox because he had agreed to a slightly downward adjustment in his salary."
Blame this one on precedents created in court over 200 years of Contract Law disputes. The thing that holds the union house of cards up is the idea that the players at the top of the pay scale 'draw up' the salaries of those at the bottom - through the arbitration system (which is codified in federal law - Cornell University Law School: http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/collective_bargaining).
If A-Rod takes a $30 million pay cut (as was the Red Sox offer) that effects the 3rd year guy in his first arbitration year. It is this 'drawing up' that keeps the union united; the star players in their 10th year don't need a union (even though it is the history of the union that has them now receiving their fair share of club revenues) - but guys just coming into the league would get next to nothing if it weren't for the union who negotiate base level salaries, and define the point at which players are eligible to go to salary arbitration.
In my opinion the MLB Players Union's continuing education of players about the history of the union and the game is essential to it's continued existence. As David Stern, Commissioner of the NBA showed, the state of the art in breaking a players union (see NBA, NHL, NFL) is to divide the super stars away from the union by offering them a 'special deal' during a protracted lock-out or strike - which leaves everyone else begging and breaks the union.
Next:
"..corruption in the labor movement was rife, former rank-and-filers profiting illegally from the leadership roles to which they’d been elected. Then there were widespread pension-padding practices whereby members worked extra overtime hours their final years, the resulting elevated annual earnings the basis for their retirement pay. The perception of featherbedding was also widespread, the sense that union contracts require more members than necessary to do certain jobs. Seniority rules, protecting longtime employees at the expense of well-regarded new employees was – is – another problem. And in many parts of the country, unions were – are – known to engage in racism and nepotism, hiring preferences given to white relatives of longtime members."
Unions aren't Mother Teresa, they're not the second coming, some political candidate or messiah who will make a perfect world - they are a sub-culture with-in the culture that birthed them - they are just like us. They are a mirror. As such they are also pretty democratic for the most part - with some glaring exceptions - like some locals and the central leadership of the Teamsters - like (to continue the metaphor above), like the Bush II Administration.
mh
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