Bernie Sanders says Democrats are failing: ‘The party has turned its back on the working class’
Senator Bernie Sanders has called on Democrats to make “a major course correction” that focuses on fighting for America’s working class and standing up to “powerful corporate interests” because the Democrats’ legislative agenda is stalled and their party faces tough prospects in this November’s elections.
The White House is likely to see his comments as a shot across the bow by the left wing of a party increasingly frustrated at how centrist Democrats have managed to scupper or delay huge chunks of Biden’s domestic policy plans.
In an interview with the Guardian, Sanders called on Joe Biden and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to push to hold votes on individual bills that would be a boon to working families, citing extending the child tax credit, cutting prescription drug prices and raising the federal hourly minimum wage to $15.
Such votes would be good policy and good politics, the Vermont senator insisted, saying they would show the Democrats battling for the working class while highlighting Republican opposition to hugely popular policies.
“It is no great secret that the Republican party is winning more and more support from working people,” Sanders said. “It’s not because the Republican party has anything to say to them. It’s because in too many ways the Democratic party has turned its back on the working class.”
Sanders, who ran for the party’s nomination in both 2016 and 2020, losing out in fierce contests to Hillary Clinton and then Biden, is a popular figure on the left of the party. The democratic socialist from Vermont remains influential and has been supportive of Biden during his first year as the party tries to cope with the twin threats of the pandemic and a resurgent and increasingly extremist Republican party.
But his comments appear to reflect a growing discontent and concern with the Biden administration’s direction. “I think it’s absolutely important that we do a major course correction,” Sanders continued. “It’s important that we have the guts to take on the very powerful corporate interests that have an unbelievably powerful hold on the economy of this country.”
The individual bills that Sanders favors might not attract the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster, and a defeat on them could embarrass the Democrats. But Sanders, chairman of the Senate budget committee and one of the nation’s most prominent progressive voices, said, “People can understand that you sometimes don’t have the votes. But they can’t understand why we haven’t brought up important legislation that 70 or 80% of the American people support.”
Sanders spoke to the Guardian on 6 January, the same day he issued a statement that the best way to safeguard our democracy is not just to enact legislation that protects voting rights, but to address the concerns of “the vast majority of Americans” for whom “there is a disconnect between the realities of their lives and what goes on in Washington”.
He said millions of Americans were concerned with such “painful realities” as “low wages, dead-end jobs, debt, homelessness, lack of healthcare”. In that statement, he said, many working-class Americans have grown disaffected with the political system because “nothing changes” for them “or, if it does, it’s usually for the worse”.
In the interview, Sanders repeatedly said that Democrats need to demonstrate vigorously and visibly that they’re fighting to improve the lives of working-class Americans. “The truth of the matter is people are going to work, and half of them are living paycheck to paycheck,” Sanders said. “People are struggling with healthcare, with prescription drugs. Young families can’t afford childcare. Older workers are worried to death about retirement.”
Sanders has long been troubled by America’s increasing wealth and income inequality, but he made clear that he thinks it is time for Democrats to take on the ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations – a move he said vast numbers of Americans would support. “They want the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes,” he said. “They think it’s absurd that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t pay a nickel in federal taxes.”
He praised Biden for pushing for improved childcare and extending the child tax credit. But he said it would also be good to “show working people that you are willing to step up and take on the greed of the ruling class in America right now.” He pointed repeatedly to the high prices for prescription drugs as an example of “corporate greed”.
“There is no issue that people care more about than that we pay the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world,’’ he said, adding that the pharmaceutical industry has 1,500 lobbyists in Washington who “tried everything to make sure we don’t lower the cost of pharmaceuticals”.
The senator said: “I think the Democrats are going to have to clear the air and say to the drug companies – and say it loudly – we’re talking about the needs of the working class – and use the expression ‘working class’. The Democrats have to make clear that they’re on the side of the working class and ready to take on the wealthy and powerful. That is not only the right thing to do, but I think it will be the politically right thing to do.”
Last Wednesday evening, Sanders did a nationwide live stream in which he talked with the leaders of three long strikes: Warrior Met Coal in Alabama, Special Metals in West Virginia and the Rich Product Corporation’s Jon Donaire Desserts subsidiary in southern California. Noting that hedge funds or billionaires own large stakes in all three companies, he railed against those companies for offering modest raises or demanding that workers pay far more for health coverage even though the owners’ wealth has soared during the pandemic thanks to the booming stock market.
“These entities, where the people on top have done phenomenally well, are squeezing their workers and lowering the standard of living for workers who are striking,” Sanders said. “It’s unacceptable.”
In December, Sanders went to Battle Creek, Michigan, to support 1,400 Kellogg’s workers who were on strike at cereal factories in that city as well as in Memphis, Tennessee; Omaha, Nebraska; and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In the interview, Sanders said, “I think the Democratic party has to address the long-simmering debate, which is, Which side are you on? Are we prepared to stand with working families and take on powerful corporate interests?”
Sanders voiced frustration with the lack of progress on Biden’s Build Back Better legislation, which the Democrats sought to enact through budget reconciliation, a process that requires only a simple majority to pass. That effort was slowed by lengthy negotiations with the centrist senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – and then blocked when Manchin said he opposed the $2tn package, sparking leftwing fury and deep frustration in the White House.
“We have tried a strategy over the last several months, which has been mostly backdoor negotiations with a handful of senators,” Sanders said. “It hasn’t succeeded on Build Back Better or on voting rights. It has demoralized millions of Americans.”
He called for reviving a robust version of Build Back Better and also called for holding votes on individual parts of that legislation that would help working-class Americans. “We have to bring these things to the floor,” Sanders said. “The vast majority of people in the [Democratic] caucus are willing to fight for good policy.”
Sanders added: “If I were Senator Sinema and a vote came up to lower the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs, I’d think twice if I want to get re-elected in Arizona to vote against that. If I were Mr Manchin and I know that tens of thousands of struggling families in West Virginia benefited from the expansion of the child tax credit, I’d think long and hard before I voted against it.”
Sanders also called for legislation on another issue he has championed: having Medicare provide dental, vision and hearing benefits. “All these issues, they are just not Bernie Sanders standing up and saying this would be a great thing,” he said. “They are issues that are enormously popular, and on every one of them, the Republicans are in opposition. But a lot of people don’t know that because the Republicans haven’t been forced to vote on them.”
"People can understand that you sometimes don’t have the votes. But they can’t understand why we haven’t brought up important legislation that 70 or 80% of the American people support.” https://t.co/izDI8FHJMh
Sinema, Manchin and other so-called “Democrats” serve the same kleptocratic masters as the fruitcake GOPukes. Sinema already has her next gig lined up, and it will be an extremely $$cushy$$ one. Wish I believed in h3ll.
Torabs
Calling their bluff a bit here, I like it. Would I bet on it moving the needle and causing the Senate Dems to embrace a tactic they have opposed their entire lives? No, but it makes them look bad, while helping show that progressives and progressive ideas are in no way to blame for what’s going on.
polarbear4
Totally. As you say, what does he have to lose? What he really has to lose is this one moment to maybe get something meaningful through and if that means he hast to go back to fighting his party, so be it. they’re not gonna take away his chair. And he doesn’t wanna be their pet mascot for their corruption.
Torabs
Biden has stabbed him in the back throughout the BBB charade. Sanders has every right to raise hell for the rest of Biden’s term.
"War crimes, torture, corruption, abuse of power. Dick Cheney in my view should be on trial, not shaking his blood-stained hands with congressional Democrats, or pretending to be part of some sort of pro-democracy coalition."
he Pentagon has finally published its first Airpower Summary since President Biden took office nearly a year ago. These monthly reports have been published since 2007 to document the number of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S.-led air forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria since 2004. But President Trump stopped publishing them after February 2020, shrouding continued U.S. bombing in secrecy.
“The failure of the U.S. government, politicians and corporate media to honestly inform and educate the American public about the systematic mass destruction wreaked by our country’s armed forces has allowed this carnage to continue largely unremarked and unchecked for 20 years.” Over the past 20 years, as documented in the table below, U.S. and allied air forces have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles on other countries. That is an average of 46 strikes per day for 20 years. This endless bombardment has not only been deadly and devastating for its victims but is broadly recognized as seriously undermining international peace and security and diminishing America’s standing in the world.
The U.S. government and political establishment have been remarkably successful at keeping the American public in the dark about the horrific consequences of these long-term campaigns of mass destruction, allowing them to maintain the illusion of U.S. militarism as a force for good in the world in their domestic political rhetoric.
Now, even in the face of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, they are doubling down on their success at selling this counterfactual narrative to the American public to reignite their old Cold War with Russia and China, dramatically and predictably increasing the risk of nuclear war.
The new Airpower Summary data reveal that the United States has dropped another 3,246 bombs and missiles on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (2,068 under Trump and 1,178 under Biden) since February 2020.
The good news is that U.S. bombing of those 3 countries has significantly decreased from the over 12,000 bombs and missiles it dropped on them in 2019. In fact, since the withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces from Afghanistan in August, the U.S. military has officially conducted no air strikes there, and only dropped 13 bombs or missiles on Iraq and Syria – although this does not preclude additional unreported strikes by forces under CIA command or control.
Presidents Trump and Biden both deserve credit for recognizing that endless bombing and occupation could not deliver victory in Afghanistan. The speed with which the U.S.-installed government fell to the Taliban once the U.S. withdrawal was under way confirmed how 20 years of hostile military occupation, aerial bombardment and support for corrupt governments ultimately served only to drive the war-weary people of Afghanistan back to Taliban rule.
Biden’s callous decision to follow 20 years of colonial occupation and aerial bombardment in Afghanistan with the same kind of brutal economic siege warfare the United States has inflicted on Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela can only further discredit America in the eyes of the world.
There has been no accountability for these 20 years of senseless destruction. Even with the publication of Airpower Summaries, the ugly reality of U.S. bombing wars and the mass casualties they inflict remain largely hidden from the American people.
How many of the 3,246 attacks documented in the Airpower Summary since February 2020 were you aware of before reading this article? You probably heard about the drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians in Kabul in August 2021. But what about the other 3,245 bombs and missiles? Whom did they kill or maim, and whose homes did they destroy?
The December 2021 New York Times exposé of the consequences of U.S. airstrikes, the result of a five-year investigation, was stunning not only for the high civilian casualties and military lies it exposed, but also because it revealed just how little investigative reporting the U.S. media have done on these two decades of war.
In America’s industrialized, remote-control air wars, even the U.S. military personnel most directly and intimately involved are shielded from human contact with the people whose lives they are destroying, while for most of the American public, it is as if these hundreds of thousands of deadly explosions never even happened.
The lack of public awareness of U.S. airstrikes is not the result of a lack of concern for the mass destruction our government commits in our names. In the rare cases we find out about, like the murderous drone strike in Kabul in August, the public wants to know what happened and strongly supports U.S. accountability for civilian deaths.
So public ignorance of 99% of U.S. air strikes and their consequences is not the result of public apathy, but of deliberate decisions by the U.S. military, politicians of both parties and corporate media to keep the public in the dark. The largely unremarked 21-month-long suppression of monthly Airpower Summaries is only the latest example of this.
Now that the new Airpower Summary has filled in the previously hidden figures for 2020-21, here is the most complete data available on 20 years of deadly and destructive U.S. and allied air strikes.
Numbers of bombs and missiles dropped on other countries by the United States and its allies since 2001:
These figures are based on U.S. Airpower Summaries for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s count of drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen; the Yemen Data Project‘s count of bombs and missiles dropped on Yemen (only through September 2021); the New America Foundation’s database of foreign air strikes in Libya; and other sources. .
There are several categories of air strikes that are not included in this table, meaning that the true numbers of weapons unleashed are certainly higher. These include:
Helicopter strikes: Military Times published an article in February 2017 titled, “The U.S. military’s stats on deadly air strikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported.” The largest pool of air strikes not included in U.S. Airpower Summaries are strikes by attack helicopters. The U.S. Army told the authors its helicopters had conducted 456 otherwise unreported air strikes in Afghanistan in 2016. The authors explained that the non-reporting of helicopter strikes has been consistent throughout the post-9/11 wars, and they still did not know how many missiles were fired in those 456 attacks in Afghanistan in the one year they investigated.
AC-130 gunships: The U.S. military did not destroy the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in 2015 with bombs or missiles, but with a Lockheed-Boeing AC-130 gunship. These machines of mass destruction, usually manned by U.S. Air Force special operations forces, are designed to circle a target on the ground, pouring howitzer shells and cannon fire into it until it is completely destroyed. The U.S. has used AC-130s in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria.
Strafing runs: U.S. Airpower Summaries for 2004-2007 included a note that their tally of “strikes with munitions dropped… does not include 20mm and 30mm cannon or rockets.” But the 30mm cannons on A-10 Warthogs and other ground attack planes are powerful weapons, originally designed to destroy Soviet tanks. A-10s can fire 65 depleted uranium shells per second to blanket an area with deadly and indiscriminate fire. But that does not appear to count as a “weapons release” in U.S. Airpower Summaries.
“Counter-insurgency” and “counter-terrorism” operations in other parts of the world: The United States formed a military coalition with 11 West African countries in 2005, and has built a drone base in Niger, but we have not found any systematic accounting of U.S. and allied air strikes in that region, or in the Philippines, Latin America or elsewhere.
The failure of the U.S. government, politicians and corporate media to honestly inform and educate the American public about the systematic mass destruction wreaked by our country’s armed forces has allowed this carnage to continue largely unremarked and unchecked for 20 years.
It has also left us precariously vulnerable to the revival of an anachronistic, Manichean Cold War narrative that risks even greater catastrophe. In this topsy-turvy, “through the looking glass” narrative, the country actually bombing cities to rubble and waging wars that kill millions of people, presents itself as a well-intentioned force for good in the world. Then it paints countries like China, Russia and Iran, which have understandably strengthened their defenses to deter the United States from attacking them, as threats to the American people and to world peace.
The high-level talks beginning on January 10th in Geneva between the United States and Russia are a critical opportunity, maybe even a last chance, to rein in the escalation of the current Cold War before this breakdown in East-West relations becomes irreversible or devolves into a military conflict.
If we are to emerge from this morass of militarism and avoid the risk of an apocalyptic war with Russia or China, the U.S. public must challenge the counterfactual Cold War narrative that U.S. military and civilian leaders are peddling to justify their ever-increasing investments in nuclear weapons and the U.S. war machine.
Wondering what the cost is for those bombs, the human toll is something else. I wonder if that total is close to reality as the MIC cant keep track of the funding they get,
For information on what to do if you're exposed to COVID, test positive or want to schedule a test or vaccine in New York City — see our round-up of CDC and NYC resources here: https://t.co/TdI8nAhQAL
The @USChamber should be ousted from the Democratic Party at the state, local, and federal levels. They're anti-worker, anti-union, and therefore anti-democracy. https://t.co/kLmwIttT5d
Manchin’s Coal Corruption Is So Much Worse Than You Knew
The senator from West Virginia is bought and paid for by Big Coal. With his help the dying industry is pulling one final heist — and the entire planet may pay the price
Manchin’s influence comes from the fact that in an evenly divided Senate, he is the swing vote that can make or break legislation. He presents himself as a pragmatic man from a hardscrabble state who is always trying to do the right thing. He values good manners and civility, and sometimes seems to be channeling the folksy charm of another famous West Virginian, test pilot Chuck Yeager, who was immortalized in The Right Stuff.
The truth is, Manchin is best understood as a grifter from the ancestral home of King Coal. He is a man with coal dust in his veins who has used his political skills to enrich himself, not the people of his state. He drives an Italian-made Maserati, lives on a houseboat on the Potomac River when he is in D.C., pals around with corporate CEOs, and has a net worth of as much as $12 million. More to the point, his wealth has been accumulated through controversial coal-related businesses in his home state, including using his political muscle to keep open the dirtiest coal plant in West Virginia, which paid him nearly $5 million over the past decade in fees for coal handling, as well as costing West Virginia electricity consumers tens of millions of dollars in higher electricity rates (more about the details of this in a moment). Virginia Canter, who was ethics counsel to Presidents Obama and Clinton, unabashedly calls Manchin’s business operations “a grift.” To Canter, Manchin’s corruption is even more offensive than Donald Trump’s. “With Trump, the corruption was discretionary — you could choose to pay thousands of dollars to host an event at Mar-a-Lago or not,” Canter tells me. In contrast, Manchin is effectively taking money right out of the pockets of West Virginians when they pay their electric bills. They have no say in it. “It’s one of the most egregious conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen.”
Manchin’s grift is emblematic of generations of political leadership in West Virginia. I’m always struck by the difference between coal country and the rest of the state. Unmined places like New River Gorge (now a national park) hint at the spectacular beauty of West Virginia before the coal barons arrived; up in Morgantown, you see a thriving city that is not entirely built with money from mining and burning black rocks. But much of the state is a landscape of corporate exploitation, a place that has been pillaged by outsiders who have sucked out its gas and mined its coal and built mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, and the Hamptons, but left little behind beyond black lung and broken labor unions. The people I have met in coal country in my many visits over the years are tougher than the blade of a bulldozer, smart, self-reliant, deeply connected to the natural world. But the poverty and quiet distress is heartbreaking. If fossil fuels brought prosperity to a place, West Virginians would be dancing on gold-paved streets. Instead, West Virginia is the second-poorest state by median income, and near the bottom of virtually every social indicator of well-being, from obesity to opioid addiction to education. The few well-paying coal jobs that are left are disappearing fast. In 1950, there were 120,000 coal workers in the state; today there are only around 13,000 workers, less than two percent of the state’s workforce.
Despite the relentless hardship, Manchin figured out a way to do pretty well for himself. “Joe Manchin will absolutely throw humanity under the coal train without blinking an eye,” says Maria Gunnoe, director of the Mother Jones Community Foundation and a longtime West Virginia activist. “My friends and I have a joke about his kind: They’d mine their momma’s grave for a buck.”
So it was no surprise to Gunnoe that during an appearance on Fox News a week before Christmas, Manchin knifed President Biden’s first-term agenda by announcing that he could not support the $1.8 trillion Build Back Better Act: “I have tried everything I know to do” to support this, he told Fox host Bret Baier. Never mind that the bill includes billions of dollars in programs that would help West Virginians struggling with poverty and hardship, or that without the tax breaks and other clean-energy measures in the bill, Biden’s goal of cutting U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions in half from 2005 levels would be all but impossible to achieve. And without U.S. leadership on climate, the chances that the nations of the world will reduce emissions fast enough to hold warming at 1.5 C, which is the threshold for dangerous climate change, is virtually zero. “If Build Back Better goes down,” says John Podesta, a Democratic powerbroker and former special adviser to President Obama who has been deeply involved in international climate negotiations, “then we are completely fucked.”
All this could change overnight. “I think that the climate thing is one that we probably can come to agreement much easier than anything else,” Manchin said a few weeks after his appearance on Fox. Perhaps Manchin’s takedown of BBB was a negotiating ploy, and deals will be cut and a pared-down version of the bill will be passed. Or perhaps, as a recent report in The Washington Post suggested, he’s decided to walk away from negotiations with the White House. However it plays out, the idea that the fate of the Earth’s climate has wound up in the hands of a Maserati-driving senator from coal country is a plot twist that belongs in a Hollywood disaster movie, not here in the real world where millions of people suffer as a consequence.
Manchin’s Choice on Build Back Better: Mine Workers or Mine Owners
Senator Joe Manchin III is caught between the mine workers’ union, which supports President Biden’s social policy and climate bill, and mine owners in his state who oppose it.
For years, burly men in camouflage hunting jackets have been a constant presence in the Capitol Hill office of Senator Joe Manchin III, their United Mine Workers logos giving away their mission: to lobby not only for the interests of coal, but also on more personal matters such as pensions, health care and funding to address black lung disease.
So when the miners’ union and the West Virginia A.F.L.-C.I.O. came out last month with statements pleading for passage of President Biden’s Build Back Better Act — just hours after Mr. Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, said he was a “no” — the Capitol took notice.
With the miners now officially on the opposite side of the mine owners, it signaled the escalation of a behind-the-scenes struggle centered in Mr. Manchin’s home state to sway the balking senator, whose skepticism about his party’s marquee domestic policy measure has emerged as a potentially fatal impediment to its enactment.
While most of the attention to the fate of the social safety net and climate change bill has fixed on ideological divisions among Democrats over its largest provisions and overall cost, the battle underway over parochial issues in Mr. Manchin’s state could ultimately matter more than the public pleas of liberal groups and relentless bargaining by Democratic leaders.
Senate Democrats are growing less and less confident about whether Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) wants to strike a legislative deal with President Biden.
The lack of negotiations with Manchin since Congress returned from the Christmas recess and Manchin’s definitive statements of opposition are raising serious doubts about whether he would be willing to support any version of the Build Back Better Act, which would provide new funding for health care, child care and a host of other initiatives.
Manchin says he has tried to be as clear as possible about where he is, but fellow Senate Democratic colleagues feel confused about whether the West Virginia senator can be counted on to support some version of Biden’s sweeping agenda.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he has “no idea” whether Manchin wants a deal and that he has no more clarity about whether Manchin can get to “yes” than when the negotiations began in August.
“Still in the dark,” he said when asked about Manchin’s endgame strategy.
Other Democrats are growing skeptical of Manchin’s motives and wonder if he’ll ever get pinned down to something specific.
“It’s not like a normal negotiation and that’s what is frustrating Biden and frustrating everybody,” said a Democratic senator who requested anonymity to discuss doubts about whether Manchin is negotiating with a real end goal in mind.
The lawmaker described the process as “a dance” and said Manchin regularly tells colleagues that he likes certain provisions in the bill or at least has an open mind about various proposals but still doesn’t seem any closer to signing off on a deal than he was months ago.
“You expect people to sit in a room and hash out the details,” the senator added.
Other senators agree that there’s been little evidence Manchin wants a deal.
“I have no reason to think that he does, literally no reason to think that he does,” said a second Democratic senator, who also pointed out that Manchin hasn’t showed any serious intention to pass Build Back Better or change the Senate rules to overcome a GOP filibuster against voting rights legislation.
“All the evidence is to the contrary,” the source added.
The comments mark a significant shift in tone and outlook among Senate Democrats compared to before the Christmas break, when lawmakers thought Manchin would be prepared to vote in January.
Growing doubts about whether Manchin will ever get around to supporting some version of Build Back Better has some Democrats calling for Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to think about moving on.
Progressives such as Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have said Schumer should bring Build Back Better to the floor immediately, even without Manchin’s support.
“That this has gone on and on and on for week after week, and month after month — that does not sit well me nor the American people,” Sanders said last year.
Sanders said as far back as October that “there’s a strong feeling within the caucus that we either fish or cut bait to get this thing done or we don’t get it done but that it does not continue to drag on forever.”
When Manchin and others fight a federal paid leave guarantee, they are hurting lower wage workers who are being abused by corporate bosses https://t.co/cMjDiHilKg
Virginia Canter, who was ethics counsel to Presidents Obama and Clinton, unabashedly calls Manchin’s business operations “a grift.” ———————————— And those two ex-POTUSs aren’t grifters? Surely, you jest, Virginia.
Manchin is taking advantage of his 15 minutes of fame, like so may assholes in office only care about themselves not the people thier supposed to serve.
Symone Sanders joining MSNBC as the host of both a weekend program and a show airing on NBC’s streaming platform Peacock. @maxwelltani reportshttps://t.co/mYoK98BiW4
Wisconsin Republicans gerrymandered themselves an eternal, self-reproducing legislative majority — AND that’s allowing them to effectively keep control of any executive agencies & appointments too, simply leaving positions vacant until the next time they regain the governorship. https://t.co/kE1mSywOv1
A NEWLY RELEASED document sheds light on Google’s efforts to quash activism, including for a union, among its employees. In an order submitted Friday, an administrative law judge for the National Labor Relations Board told Google to turn over to the attorney representing a group of current and former employees documents related to its “Project Vivian,” and its hiring of a consulting firm that advises employers battling unionization efforts.
Google launched Project Vivian to dissuade employees from unionizing after worker activism began heating up in late 2018. In the order, Michael Pfyl, Google’s director of employment law, is quoted describing Project Vivian’s mission as “to engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck.” The context for Pfyl’s description isn’t clear from the order, which also references an effort to use the media to quietly disseminate Google’s point of view about unionized tech workplaces.
The judge, Paul Bogas, ordered Google to comply with portions of a subpoena for documents related to Project Vivian, as well as Google’s hiring of IRI Consultants, the anti-union firm. In November, Bogas issued a similar order for other documents concerning Vivian and IRI; the subpoena covers more than 1,500 documents.
The subpoena is part of an NLRB case brought by seven Google employees and ex-employees in December 2019. (One former employee has since settled.) Five workers were fired and two were disciplined after they engaged in workplace activism, including efforts to improve working conditions for Google contractors, and circulating a petition calling on the company to end its contract with US government agencies involved in immigrant deportation and family separation. Paul Duke, one of the fired employees who brought the charges, says the organizing was part of an effort to lay the foundation for a union.
Responding to the former employees’ claims that they were fired in retaliation for workplace organizing, a Google spokesperson wrote, “The underlying case here has nothing to do with unionization. It’s about employees breaching clear security protocols to access confidential information and systems inappropriately”—a reference to internal documents the employees accessed.
Duke flatly rejects the claim that he and his colleagues breached security protocols, saying the documents were accessible to all engineers and that the company later classified them “need to know.”
In its objections to the subpoenas, Google claimed attorney-client privilege and “work product privilege,” which protects materials prepared in anticipation of litigation. Bogas rejected many of these claims, calling one assertion “to put it charitably, an overreach.” Of the efforts to characterize a potential union election as litigation, and therefore privileged, he wrote, “The respondent cannot spin the mere fact of a nascent organizing effort among employees into ‘litigation’—like straw spun into gold—that entitles it to cloak in privilege every aspect of its antiunion campaign.”
Bogas’ order references an effort by Google executives, including corporate counsel Christina Latta, to “find a ‘respected voice to publish an op-ed outlining what a unionized tech workplace would look like,” and urging employees of Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google not to unionize. The order says that in an internal message Google human resources director Kara Silverstein told Latta that she liked the idea, “but that it should be done so that there ‘would be no fingerprints and not Google specific.’” According to the order, IRI later provided a proposed draft of the op-ed to Latta; it’s not clear if the article was ever published.
The Google spokesperson said the company disagreed with Bogas’ conclusion that the documents are not privileged. “As we’ve stated, our teams engage with dozens of outside consultants and law firms to provide us with advice on a wide range of topics, including employer obligations and employee engagement. This included IRI Consultants for a short period. However, we made a decision in 2019 not to use the materials or ideas explored during this engagement, and we still feel that was the right decision.”
Google hired IRI as early as 2019, according to a report by The New York Times, during a period when employee activism was at a fever pitch. The company had been accused of retaliating against the employees who organized the 2018 Google walkout and squelching worker dissent by installing a tool that flagged calendar events for large numbers of participants. In January 2021, the Alphabet Workers Union, an informal union without collective bargaining rights and affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, went public.
Duke says the details in the order clash with Google’s internal messaging to employees. He cited executives’ emphasis on listening to feedback from an annual employee survey, as well as a 2018 internal memo by CEO Sundar Pichai saying he supported the walkout and a blog post pledging to support employees and improve Google’s handling of sexual harassment claims and diversity initiatives. “There was always this message that was intended to come off like, we’re a family. We care about workers,” he says. “Really, behind the scenes, they’re trying to kill these union efforts and organizing efforts in general.”
The hearing for the NLRB case began in August, but was paused soon after when Google failed to comply with this and other subpoenas. Meanwhile, the employees’ lawyer has asked a federal court to enforce the subpoenas because the NLRB’s enforcement powers are limited. The hearing is scheduled to resume in February, but could be delayed further while the subpoena tussle plays out.
When it does reconvene, the employees plan to call Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, to testify. When they initially subpoenaed Walker in August, the company resisted that too. The labor board denied its request.
The economy (68%) has replaced COVID as Americans’ top issue for 2022.
“Just 37% of Americans name the virus as one of their top 5 priorities for the government to work on in 2022, compared with 53% who said it was a leading prioritya year ago.”https://t.co/40D7gkwBse
He is, but he’s not wrong at least half of the time. In this instance, this is what the GOP is betting on. Starving our folks then blaming Dems.
polarbear4
tbf, dems are complicit.
SpringTexan
Honestly, Biden isn’t doing a good job, they are counting on that. He keeps saying how good the economy is and that makes him out of touch, also seems weak. 2022 and 2024 are going to e an electoral disaster. I’ve given up donating to Democrats, donating to strike funds instead.
wpDiscuz
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/10/bernie-sanders-democrats-failing-working-class-interview
Sinema, Manchin and other so-called “Democrats” serve the same kleptocratic masters as the fruitcake GOPukes. Sinema already has her next gig lined up, and it will be an extremely $$cushy$$ one. Wish I believed in h3ll.
Calling their bluff a bit here, I like it. Would I bet on it moving the needle and causing the Senate Dems to embrace a tactic they have opposed their entire lives? No, but it makes them look bad, while helping show that progressives and progressive ideas are in no way to blame for what’s going on.
Totally. As you say, what does he have to lose? What he really has to lose is this one moment to maybe get something meaningful through and if that means he hast to go back to fighting his party, so be it. they’re not gonna take away his chair. And he doesn’t wanna be their pet mascot for their corruption.
Biden has stabbed him in the back throughout the BBB charade. Sanders has every right to raise hell for the rest of Biden’s term.
What does Bernie have to lose at this point so why not go for it and call the asshats out
Being flayed alive is too good for Dickhead Cheney!
Hey, Hey, USA! How Many Bombs Did You Drop Today?
more from Common Dreams..
20 years? Really. This has been going down for more than 20 years. Don’t insult our intelligence.
I would go back to the Korean conflict at least
I wonder if “covert” operations are included in any of these totals.
Wondering what the cost is for those bombs, the human toll is something else. I wonder if that total is close to reality as the MIC cant keep track of the funding they get,
This explains why AOC had to excuse herself in marching with Amazon workers in her district last weekend.
They more R than anything else now
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/joe-manchin-big-coal-west-virginia-1280922/
Let’s see which side he comes down on
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/us/politics/manchin-coal-miners.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/588806-senate-democrats-grow-less-confident-in-manchin
but ha PROMISED. makes them look dishonest.
Manchin is more than willing to stall any meaningful legislation out until midterms
Ha – they just realized this? SMH
Virginia Canter, who was ethics counsel to Presidents Obama and Clinton, unabashedly calls Manchin’s business operations “a grift.”
————————————
And those two ex-POTUSs aren’t grifters? Surely, you jest, Virginia.
Just like her bosses.
Manchin is taking advantage of his 15 minutes of fame, like so may assholes in office only care about themselves not the people thier supposed to serve.
I think I predicted this last month.
Corporations have taken over to the extent that I fear that my grandchildren won’t even know that there is a different and more fulfilling life.
Tell us something we dont know Tracy
Why can’t they “escort” them out or just ignore their votes. bring in the new. weak tea.
let’s hope it makes a difference. if the cms gaf
New players same weapons of mass decption
https://www.wired.com/story/document-reveals-more-google-anti-union-strategy/
Luntz is a GOPuke yahoo, and always will be.
He is, but he’s not wrong at least half of the time. In this instance, this is what the GOP is betting on. Starving our folks then blaming Dems.
tbf, dems are complicit.
Honestly, Biden isn’t doing a good job, they are counting on that. He keeps saying how good the economy is and that makes him out of touch, also seems weak. 2022 and 2024 are going to e an electoral disaster.
I’ve given up donating to Democrats, donating to strike funds instead.
great idea.