TGIF..fire away

1. A jail cell for Jamie Dimon for mortgage fraud, discrimination, offshore tax scams, illegally foreclosing on military families & predatory lending while receiving a $416 billion bailout.

2. An economy that works for everyone except billionaires & those who lick their boots. https://t.co/dGCKhAll55

— Warren Gunnels (@GunnelsWarren) May 6, 2021

$15 min Wage for Federal Contractors is Great: A Union is Better

After Democrats in March voted down a national $15 minimum wage, President Biden signed an executive order raising it for federal contractors to $15 an hour by 2022. This is an excellent if insufficient step, both for the national Fight for $15 and for low-wage federal contractors. It’s heartening to see the president use the powers of the executive branch to improve workers’ lives when faced with a setback in Congress. But this is far from the most powerful move Biden, who has proclaimed himself “the most pro-union president,” could make with the power of procurement. With the stroke of a pen, he could reinvigorate the American labor movement by prioritizing workplaces with collective-bargaining agreements for federal contracts.

The government spent over $586 billion on federal contracts in Fiscal Year 2018, long before it spent trillions addressing the COVID-19 crisis. These funds finance millions of contract workers, according to a Brookings Institution study. They stretch across almost every industry in the American economy, from construction to technology, defense to health care. Compared to workers directly employed by the federal government, however, few of these contractors are unionized. If Biden is to govern as the serious “union guy” he claimed to be on the campaign trail, he could order the federal government’s massive contracting apparatus to exclusively hire union workplaces, “unless there is no such supplier that can perform that contract at a reasonable cost or comparable quality,” as labor lawyer and author Thomas Geoghegan wrote.

What, you might ask, would be the legal basis of such a determination? The basic foundation of labor law in this country. The National Labor Relations Act remains the law of the land and holds that it is “the policy of the United States” to encourage “the practice and procedure of collective bargaining.”

Actually taking this long-standing law seriously would turn the tables on big business, forcing them to drop their staunch opposition to unions if they ever wanted a public contract again. Major companies as diverse as UnitedHealth Group, Deloitte, AT&T, and Lockheed Martin take on federal contracts. This would open the floodgates to new organizing in the private sector, where employers have waged brutal, well-funded opposition campaigns to combat unions. One can only imagine how different the failed Bessemer, Alabama, RWDSU drive would have been if Amazon, a major federal contractor, did not spend big opposing its employees. It would help buoy private-sector unions whose membership rolls have been declining for decades.

Unions like the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers would be poised for a membership explosion, considering their existing footholds among federal defense contractors are a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the Defense Department’s aerospace contracting. Health care workers’ unions like National Nurses United could recruit thousands of new members employed by the Veterans Affairs Department’s contracting. And the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers can only dream of easily unionizing utility workers servicing tens of billions of dollars of Department of Energy contracts.

Big Tech companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, and HP, which manage major federal contracts, would be forced to drop their opposition to unions at their workplaces. This would clear the biggest hurdle the burgeoning white-collar tech and professional workforce has to organizing. Workers struggling to build the Alphabet Workers Union would receive a major boost if Google were forced to drop its opposition to keep its lucrative Defense Department contracts. And so would the millions of workers providing professional IT, engineering, program evaluation, or technical skills to the federal government through contracts held by any number of companies, big or small. Biden could spark worker organizing in new industries at a scale we have not seen since World War II, if he chose to.

Many businesses, historically unafraid of breaking labor law, might form company unions to remain eligible for contracts. Legitimate unions, however, have long fought to root out compromised management organizations in their midst. And existing labor law already outlaws such abusive arrangements. Important questions remain about how unions would remain independent from companies that may actually encourage unionization.

To answer this, one has to realize how unique the extreme anti-union behavior of American companies is compared to Europe. Few European countries allow companies to brazenly interfere in union elections like they do in the U.S. Instead, tripartite models in places like Finland officially craft economic and industrial policy with powerful unions, business, and the public at the table. Collective bargaining can be state policy and unions can still retain their independence, not to mention the elections every union holds periodically to choose new leadership. Despite these quibbles at the margin, the upsides of mass unionization far outweigh any potential conflicts of interest.

Collective bargaining can be state policy and unions can still retain their independence.

There are, of course, legal limits to Biden’s ability to promote unions. He cannot, for example, mandate employer neutrality, even at businesses that work for the federal government. Employers are explicitly guaranteed the right to oppose unions in their workplace by Taft-Hartley, the 1947 law that has put a straitjacket on labor for the last 70 years. Such an executive order would also be viciously fought by anti-union employers in the courts, but labor lawyers like Geoghegan and Brandon Magner have already thought through potential legal challenges. They conclude that the federal government’s contracting authority is so broad, and the National Labor Relations Act’s endorsement of collective bargaining so clear, that an executive order requiring collective bargaining in return for federal dollars would pass legal muster.

Like student debt cancellation, the real challenge is passing the Biden administration’s self-imposed hesitancy. Remembering history may help with that.

Franklin Roosevelt fundamentally reshaped the American labor landscape with both executive orders and new laws. Before overseeing the advent of a 40-hour workweek, FDR proposed shortening the work week to 30 hours to increase employment. He worked with unions to pass laws from the National Industrial Recovery Act to the Wagner Act, over the deafening cries of business, to guarantee the right to collectively bargain. His administration made employers recognize unions and forced them to bargain before labor boards created by executive order. His National Recovery Administration even introduced national industrial policy to the economy, setting industry-wide wage standards, price controls, and production quotas before it was struck down by a hyper-conservative Supreme Court.

A simple executive order on federal contracting seems small in comparison.

As the fight for the PRO Act continues, unions should be aware of the massive power Biden alone wields to make organizing easier. Even if that bill passes, unions should demand that Biden use the executive branch to deliver for his core constituency. Student debt activists provide a model. They identified the president’s power to cancel student debt and used it as a hammer to make debt cancellation a political issue every primary candidate staked a position on. Unions could do the same.

Biden already recorded a video that will be used to explain the benefits of unions at organizing drives for years to come. His promises to “hold company executives personally liable” and make them “pay a personal price” for union-busting have yet to materialize, despite his pledge “to be the strongest labor president you have ever had!” While his Labor Department picks are very promising, it will take more than administrative relief to reverse the labor movement’s long decline. This single order would go a long way.

DC activists are marching a giant Black Snake representing the Line 3 tar sands pipeline to a Wells Fargo branch demanding they #DefundLine3 pic.twitter.com/4c1PtktsUq

— Stop the Money Pipeline (@StopMoneyPipe) May 7, 2021

Senate Democrats Make First Move To Block DeJoy From Gutting USPS

A group of Democratic Senators, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), have introduced a bill that would block Louis DeJoy’s ten-year plan for the USPS.#MOGhttps://t.co/VYR3aNOHeb via @politicususa

— Michael O'Grady (@mog7546) May 6, 2021

Of course, Joe Manchin’s daughter’s company relies on the USPS for shipment to meds via mail.

100 Days in Independent Agency Appointments

Biden has accomplished a great deal in his first 100 days in office. Millions have been vaccinated, relief measures have been passed to address ongoing economic pain, and important portions of Trump’s agenda have been reversed. Yet, despite the scale of these accomplishments, the Biden administration is still far from having maximized its potential impact, particularly when it comes to executive branch power.

Nowhere is that more evident than at independent federal agencies, where Biden’s agenda has barely even begun to take root. 100 days after Biden first took office, Democrats have secured a majority at just one independent agency. At the majority of agencies, boards are either deadlocked between Republicans and Democrats, or continue to have Republican majorities. Many nonpartisan boards are still in the hands of figures who are committed to President Trump’s agenda. While, in most cases, commissioners who more closely align with Biden have taken over the offices of chair, allowing for some new hiring and the launch of new initiatives, the scope of agency action will be constrained until majorities are secured.

Many of these agencies have had vacancies since the Biden administration’s first days (and, in many cases, even earlier). These include the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and Merit Systems Protection Board, among others. Expeditious nominations might have ensured that these agencies were working at their full capacity before Biden’s first 100 days in office passed. In reality, the White House has yet to send nominations for any of these vacant positions to the Senate.

In the months since Biden’s inauguration, new seats on independent agency boards, like the Federal Election Commission, have also opened up, providing Biden even more opportunity to reshape and reorient these institutions. More seats still will be within Biden’s reach within just a couple of months, including on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Filling vacant and expired seats on independent agency boards, whether they are old or new, must be an urgent priority in the administration’s next 100 days and beyond. Vacancies on independent agency boards are even more detrimental than those at executive agencies as acting officials cannot step up to serve in commissioners’ stead. So long as they are not filled, the Biden administration’s ability to deliver on its promises related to inequality, climate, racial justice and more will be incomplete. In Biden’s own parlance, these positions are “a big f*cking deal.” They must be moved to the top of the White House Personnel Office’s agenda.

Nominations and missed opportunities in the first 100 days:

Biden nominated a total of 14 people to independent agency boards over his first 100 days in office. These nominations were to the

• Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSHIB)
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
• National Mediation Board (NMB)
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
• Surface Transportation Board (STB)
• United States Postal Service (USPS)

7 of those nominations, or half of the total, came in the last month.

These nominations represent a small fraction of the total number of vacant and expired seats that are currently waiting to be filled. Across the 40 independent agencies that we track, 48 seats are vacant and 34 seats have occupants who are serving expired terms.

With expeditious nominations, the following agencies could have plausibly been operating under Democratic majorities within Biden’s first 100 days or very soon after:

• Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
• Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)
• Export-Import Bank (ExImBank)
• Farm Credit Administration (FCA)
• Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
• Federal Maritime Commission (FMC)
• Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB)
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
• Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB)
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
• Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB)

Biden could also have nominated officials to the following boards upon taking office:

• Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB)
• Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission (FMSHRC)
• Federal Reserve Board of Governors (“the Fed”)
• Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC)
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
• Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC)
• States International Trade Commission (USITC)
• United States Sentencing Commission (USSC)

Making nominations to these boards will not result in new Democratic majorities for a variety of reasons (e.g. the board is nonpartisan, the board is evenly balanced between the two parties, the board already has a Democratic majority, or there are not enough vacant or expired seats to retake a majority). Nonetheless, nominating new officials is an opportunity to begin remaking these agencies in the public interest.

Another perspective about today’s jobs report.

Why April’s disappointing jobs report may not be so bad for Biden

In a stunning surprise for forecasters, U.S. employers added only 266,000 new jobs in April, far below what most experts had predicted and a reminder that the future course of an economy badly shaken by COVID-19 remains uncertain.

If the jobs numbers were disappointing to economists, in political terms they may strengthen President Biden’s hand in rebuffing Republican attacks on his multitrillion-dollar spending plans for economic stimulus and other domestic purposes. The GOP has attacked Biden’s plans as unnecessary in a fast-recovering economy and liable to trigger inflation.

The unemployment rate stood at a relatively high 6.1% in April, up a notch from March. That compared with 3.5% in February 2020 before the pandemic struck.

Speaking in the East Room on Friday, Biden pushed back against those who called April’s numbers disappointing.

“We knew this wouldn’t be a sprint. It would be a marathon. Quite frankly, we’re moving a lot more rapidly than I thought we would,” he said, noting that the 1.5 million jobs added since he took office are the most for any administration in its first three months.

Nevertheless he said the figures highlighted the need for his $2.25-trillion American Jobs Plan, and argued that working people remain in dire need of additional help.

“This report reinforces the real truth: For years, working-class and middle-class people, the people who built this country, have been left out in the cold,” Biden said. “We’re still digging out of an economic collapse that cost us 22 million jobs.”

Given the historic economic damage inflicted by the pandemic on both workers and employers, recovery is starting from a very low base, with lots of room for improvement.

With millions of workers still unemployed and many businesses struggling to get back on their feet, considerable slack remains in the overall economy. The Federal Reserve has emphasized its readiness to impose cooling increases in interest rates if the economy shows signs of overheating.

At the same time, claims of labor shortages and the inability to fill new job openings are increasing, and may help explain some of the weakness in hiring. Employers in the manufacturing, food service, construction and transportation industries have complained about the difficulty in finding available and skilled workers.

Adding to the problem are shortages of key materials including semiconductors and lumber, which have held back employment in car factories, trucking firms and other businesses.

Economists remained optimistic about the economy and the labor market’s growth prospects, especially in states such as California where infection cases and government restrictions have eased dramatically.

But they also point out that the pandemic has reshaped the economy in ways that no one completely understands. That makes long-term predictions — and political claims on both sides — exceptionally fraught.

Even as the president continues to make his case for trillions more in federal spending for infrastructure and various social and health programs — to be largely paid for by tax hikes on corporations and wealthy individuals — some of his senior officials have begun to worry.

The heightened sensitivity was reflected this week when Biden’s Treasury secretary and the former Federal Reserve chair, Janet L. Yellen, said higher interest rates might be necessary to keep the economy from running too fast and stoking inflation. Yellen later clarified that she doesn’t see an inflation problem now and was not recommending the Fed raise rates.

Reports of her earlier comments nonetheless spooked investors and fanned fears of an overheating in the economy, which Biden’s Republican critics see as a potentially powerful talking point as they prepare for the 2022 congressional election.

After Friday’s report, Democratic leaders and progressive groups said now was not the time to back away from plans for further help to American workers and families.

“The disappointing April jobs report highlights the urgent need to pass President Biden’s American Jobs and Families Plans,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “We need to take bold action to Build Back Better from this crisis by investing in our nation, our workers and our families.”

Conservatives and some business groups blamed the weak hiring on Democrats for enhancing unemployment benefits, with some lawmakers saying they would seek to repeal the $300 extra weekly amount.

“The disappointing jobs report makes it clear that paying people not to work is dampening what should be a stronger jobs market,” said Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The labor market shed an unprecedented 22.4 million jobs in March and April last year as COVID ravaged economies across the country. With April’s gain, the nation has recovered about 14.2 million jobs, or about 63% of what was lost.

The jobs report came on the heels of recent data showing U.S. economic output in the first quarter has just about fully recovered. And with personal incomes, production and spending all having surged recently, thanks in good part to massive federal relief money, many analysts were expecting April job growth to hit a million or more and for unemployment to drop below 6%.

Moreover, government statisticians revised the job gain in March down to 770,000 from 916,000 estimated last month, although some of that was made up by an upward adjustment to February data.

“This might be one of the most disappointing jobs reports of all time,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director at the jobs site Indeed.

There were a few bright spots. With more vaccinations and COVID worries receding, more people rejoined the labor force, notably men.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh said labor force participation reached “its highest point since last August and the number of people expressing hesitancy about returning to work due to the coronavirus is at its lowest point in the pandemic.”

That didn’t extend to women, however.

“For those hoping that female labor force participation would recover as more children went back to school, the numbers were disappointing — female participation was flat overall and down a bit for adult females,” said Harry Holzer, public policy professor at Georgetown University. He added: “We should never place too much weight on data from any one month, but the April numbers suggest that the labor market is recovering, albeit a bit more slowly than we had hoped.”

No. We don't need to end $300 a week in emergency unemployment benefits that workers desperately need. We need to end starvation wages in America. If $300 a week is preventing employers from hiring low-wage workers there's a simple solution: Raise your wages. Pay decent benefits. https://t.co/jbKiEUeCx4

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 7, 2021

DINO on collision course with Progressive Wing in the Senate over Lowering Age Requirements for Medicare

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is headed for a high-profile battle with the Senate’s leading progressives over whether to expand Medicare eligibility as part of President Biden’s human-focused infrastructure agenda.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Thursday said she wants to lower the eligibility age, a priority shared by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), as part of Biden’s $1.8 trillion American Families Plan.

But the two progressives face a serious obstacle in Manchin, a key centrist in the 50-50 Senate who opposes making Medicare available to millions more Americans, citing concerns about the long-term solvency of the program.

Warren said during a Washington Post Live event that she has laid out a plan for “lowering the age of Medicare, which by the way is on table right now and something we’re all talking about.”

“I would like to see us start out by lowering the age of Medicare down to 55,” she said.

The current age of eligibility is 65.

“I would also like to see us right now attack the cost of prescription drugs,” Warren added.

Sanders says he’s been talking directly to Biden about similar priorities.

“What I think needs to be done is that Medicare needs to be expanded to include dental, hearing aids and eyeglasses,” he told The Hill last week, adding that lowering the Medicare eligibility age is “very important.”

Manchin is squarely opposed to lowering the age.

“No, I’m not for it, period,” he told The Washington Post last week.

The internal Democratic debate over expanded Medicare will only intensify as Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) plan for moving Biden’s infrastructure agenda comes into focus.

Pressure to include significant health care reform proposals in an infrastructure package will ramp up if there’s any doubt about moving a third legislative package through the budget reconciliation process later in the year to advance any priorities left out of Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan, which together carry a price tag of $4.1 trillion.

“Whether it will end up in the final package, we will see. But Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and lots of others are pushing to include both of these things,” said Roger Hickey, co-founder of the progressive Campaign for America’s Future, referring to proposals for expanding Medicare and lowering the cost of prescription drugs.

“We think it’s important and we’re pushing as hard as we can, and it will just strengthen the whole package,” he said, noting Medicare expansion is “popular in West Virginia with people who voted for [Manchin].”

A key consideration is how many times Schumer will use budget reconciliation this year to bypass a Republican filibuster. If he plans to use three reconciliation vehicles to pass separate parts of Biden’s infrastructure agenda with simple majority votes, there might be an opportunity for Medicare expansion and other health care priorities to pass separately from Biden’s two-part infrastructure agenda.

But Schumer has been vague about such plans, saying only that budget reconciliation is an option without getting into more detail.

“I’m a little confused about whether or not we get another bite at the apple in September,” Hickey said.

Democrats looking to the White House for clarity on Medicare eligibility aren’t having much success either.

Biden said during the 2020 campaign that he supported lowering Medicare eligibility to 60 but hasn’t pushed the concept vigorously since taking office.

In his joint address to Congress last week, Biden declared that “health care should be a right, not a privilege, in America” and proposed saving hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending by giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices.

He said the money saved could go toward strengthening the Affordable Care Act and expand Medicare coverage benefits “without costing taxpayers one additional penny.”

But Biden has kept talk about expanding Medicare and lowering drug prices separate from his push to pass the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan, his two infrastructure components.

This week, he expressed concern about deficit spending, a near certainty if Congress significantly expanded Medicare access without new measures to pay for the added cost.