2013 oregon afscme convention

I wasn't really sure what to expect heading into Bend, OR, Friday afternoon for the 2013 Oregon AFSCME Convention. I'm relatively new to my workplace and my local, and I essentially went in blind, not even initially intending to go. Someone apparently couldn't make it and my union rep got one of the organizers from the Next Wave Young Member Committee to see about giving me their scholarship and taking their place as a guest less than a week before the convention.

I arrived at the Riverhouse Hotel and Convention Center around 3pm, just in time to register and attend the new delegate workshop, which basically gives new delegates (and guests) an idea of what to expect at the convention, particularly when it comes to voting and other parliamentary procedures, and to answer any newb questions they might have.

The opening ceremony began about an hour later, kicking off with the singing of the National Anthem and a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance (which, although written by a socialist, is a bit too nationalistic for my cosmopolitan leanings) and an invocation from local Pastor Chris Kramer, followed by a welcome from the mayor and mayor pro tem of Bend. AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain (definitely no Eugene Debs) and Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley (one of the best congressional representatives currently in office) also spoke. The latter especially impressed me, not so much by what he said as what he's done while in office, including a consistent stream of bills, votes, and statements supporting workers.

The remaining time consisted of election business, including the nomination of officers and trustees, which wasn't as exciting, especially since I didn't know any of the people in question. After the body adjourned for the night, there was a welcome dinner and reception in the adjoining banquet hall, where everyone mingled and networked.

The Next Wave committee also organized a bowling and karaoke event that night at Lava Lanes, mainly for younger members to network and interact in a more informal setting, although it was open to anyone. They rented out the private lounge with seven lanes for a couple hours, and everyone had a blast. I ended up bowling with some pretty cool people, albeit after a fair amount of coercion, including a librarian at Tillamook County Library and one of the local presidents (who coincidentally happened to be elected to the Executive Committee as our workplace sector vice president on Sunday). I also had the chance to meet Jeff Klatke, a Next Wave member who was running for Oregon AFSCME president.

I started off the second day at a workshop called "Massaging Our Message." As if the name itself wasn't funny enough, one of the first things the speaker, Don Loving, said was, "We can't just spew things out." I don't know how everyone didn't bust out laughing. The focus of the workshop was how union members need to change the way we talk about ourselves and important issues; and they gave some helpful tips about ways to better engage non-union members unfamiliar with union jargon, as well as how to get both fair-share and inactive members more involved.

One of the things they mentioned near the end of the workshop is that unions are 'you'; they care when you care and get involved, i.e., you get out of them what you put in. That really struck me for some reason. Unions are often looked at ambivalently or even suspiciously by fair-share or otherwise inactive members as some kind of labour-like 'big Other.' But unions only seem that way when they're something external to us. When we're actively involved and engaged in our unions, however, they cease to be an Other and become a means for workers to be actively engaged in their workplace in a new and more empowering way. At the heart of it, people need the support of other people, and unions are people who care about the material needs of their fellow workers.

After the workshops, the convention was reconvened, and AFSCME International President Lee Saunders delivered the keynote address, which was more like a Southern Baptist-style sermon reminiscent of MLK, Jr. than a speech per se.

Saunders was definitely a more charismatic speaker than the rest, and I liked a lot of the things he said, especially when talking about the need for unions to have a unified approach and to be done with 'fair weather friends' who talk big about supporting labour until they get elected. With years of declining membership combined with the ability of capitalists and their vast accumulations of wealth and social power to so easily lobby government, influence the discussion in the media, and coordinate anti-labour campaign across the country, as the recent wave of right-to-work legislation illustrates, it's clear that organized labour needs to start cooperating rather than competing with one another. Otherwise, it's game over.

Listening to him speak and thinking about charismatic leadership in general, however, reminded me of Eugene Debs famous exhortation about the dangers of relying too heavily on the leadership of others:

I am not a labor leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the Promised Land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands.

After Saunder's key note address came the candidate's forum, lunch, election of officers and trustees, hours of extremely tedious debates and votes over a number of constitutional amendments and resolutions. There was also a "State of Our Union" address given by Executive Director Ken Allen, echoed Saunder's message in many respects, stressing the rather dire state of unionism in the country and the need for unity. Allen noted, for example, that he helped craft a unity document between AFSCME, SEIU, and NEA, and that they're going to cooperate on everything from politics to organizing. "This may take some getting used to for some of us," he said, "but we can't be fighting each other anymore—we have big enemies on the outside and we need to band together."

Saturday ended with a well-deserved cocktail party (everyone got two free drinks to help start things off) and a three-course dinner, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. They also had a live band (the Swingline Cubs) that played a lot of great Motown hits. During dinner, I sat next to our new union rep and discovered that she was an organizer in El Salvador during the civil war, where they routinely 'disappeared' and killed union activists.

I heard from a second-hand source that when she was around 22, the right-wing government junta in El Salvador was killing people at an alarming rate, and she basically got involved in the labour movement and became an organizer to help change things for the better. Eventually, after a few years, everyone on her executive board was disappeared or killed except her. She was eventually fired herself on charges of being a revolutionary, so she actually became one and was active during the civil war. At some point, she came to the US (ironically enough since the US helped fund a second junta to help put down the leftist insurrection) as a political refuge through the Catholic Church, where she was eventually asked by HERE to help organize, particularly among the Latino community. And from there, she got involved at AFSCME while working towards her BA at PSU.

I stopped by the room of one of the Next Wave members for a night cap, where I ran into Jeff and congratulated him on being elected president, before finally heading off to bed.

The final day of the convention started off with a memorial tribute to all the AFSCME 75 members that passed away since the last convention, and the unveiling of a new app that combines social networking and push technology to help keep members more informed and involved with their local unions. These two presentations were followed by more votes on constitutional amendments and resolutions, as well as the congressional district vice president elections, workplace sector vice president elections, and executive board elections. The out-going president, Gary Gillespie, gave his address, all the new officers were sworn in, and the convention was adjourned.

All in all, I had a great time at the AFSCME Convention, and I'm glad that I was able to go. I learned a lot about the inner workings of the union, and met a lot of really cool people in the process. Everyone I talked to encouraged me to be more active in both my local and the union as a whole; and based on this experience, I think I might despite some of the reservations I have about my own abilities.

another nail in the coffin of austerity?

So it turns out that one of the most influential and widely-cited studies used to push austerity measures, showing that countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90% tend to have slower economic growth, is flawed, containing a coding error (as well as 'selective exclusions' a questionable method of weighing the countries and averaging the data) that seriously skews the results.

Not only does it neglect to consider other possibilities, such as high debt ratios are a symptom of downturns rather than a cause, when corrected, its own numbers suggest that a debt-to-GDP ratios above 90% doesn't necessarily lead to a drastic reduction in growth. In fact, the corrected number, 2.2% as opposed to -0.1%, only suggests a moderate slowdown, which itself could be the result of a downturn or other contributing factors, and not the precipitous fall into negative growth that the study initially concluded.

Besides motivating people to be more rigorous and have their data peer-reviewed and vetted before releasing it, this revelation should have us seriously rethinking our approach to dealing with the current economic downturn and unemployment.

Many, for example, argue that implementing austerity measures in the midst of a crisis will likely serve to slowdown an already sluggish economy, simultaneously decreasing demand and increasing unemployment while attempting to reduce debts and deficits at the expense of the working class, poor, and elderly since social spending is almost always the first target of such measures. And with more people drastically reducing their consumption, the growth rate will further decline with or without government deficit spending.

And looking at the Eurozone, which has taken the lead in instituting austerity measures in the wake of the most recent financial crisis, we can already see that the average unemployment rate is over 10%, and above 20% in places with the harshest deficit reduction policies like Greece and Spain.

While everyone has their own ideas about what approach to take, mine is somewhat radical and seemingly counter-intuitive at first look. Basically, it involves a combination of an overall reduction in hours of of labour, raising the minimum wage, and instituting a universal basic income, which I think would collectively go a long way to solving a lot of our problems and make things generally better for everyone.

For starters, an overall reduction in hours of of labour would immediately help to relieve unemployment by opening up space in the workforce, as well as give people more of their own time back. And that, plus a fairly drastic raise in the minimum wage, could eventually help shift employment from unproductive capitals to productive capitals, reducing the size of the state (and state spending), as well as the size and numbers of capitals producing for and financing the state.

Last but not least, a universal basic income would empower workers, decommodify labour-power by helping free workers from absolute dependence on wage labour for subsistence, enlarge the nonmarket social economy, and help increase the amount of non-labour (leisure) time for the vast majority of people.

part of the union

So I finally happen to be a part of a union. It's not necessarily the best union around, and a lot of the people where I work aren't actively involved in our local, but after the two steward training classes I just took, I'm more convinced than ever about the need for, and potential usefulness of, unions. And with two right-to-work measures coming our way in November, I think it's important to get involved.

Our system is designed to protect private property rights, and those who possess the means of production (i.e., property) have the most legal protection and leverage in the marketplace. Unions, when their rank and file members are involved and they function properly, help balance the power in the workplace, which by default is entirely in the hands of the employer, who has sole input into wages, benefits, working conditions, job classifications and duties, etc. Unions bring individual workers together into a single collective unit, giving them more power and input than they'd have individually.

Workers' power lies in their numbers, and without something like unions to help effectively organize individual workers, they have little leverage in the marketplace, being resigned to selling their labour for whatever the employer is willing to pay, under whatever conditions the employer sets, essentially being at the complete mercy of the employer. Unions simply allow workers to collectively bargain with the employer, with one voice, instead of individually, when they're at their weakest. Unions essentially inject democracy (or at least a certain level of democracy) into a naturally totalitarian framework.

Most unions these days are extremely limited by their contracts, being purely 'contract unions' and signing away their right to strike, etc., being primarily a legalistic mediator between capital and labour instead of a more radical organization willing to fight for their demands continuously and agree to return to work only when they're met; but even contract unions can still do a lot for their members and fair-share members alike, both in the workplace and in the broader political arena.

But what I think ultimately determines the quality and effectiveness of any union is the rank and file membership's involvement. The more people are actively involved in their workplace unions (or even just actively involved in their workplace as individual workers united by a common relationship and material needs), the better and stronger they'll be. Moreover, by being active in their respective unions, attending meetings, voting, etc., workers can direct how their dues are used and the direction the union (or at least their local) itself takes.

Unions aren't perfect, but by becoming more involved in mine, it's my hope to educate myself about the practical aspects of union activity and organization and the specifics of our contract, helping protect my fellow employees in the process, in addition to doing what I can to help push my union in a more radical direction (i.e., away from strict contact unionism and more towards direct unionism) as unlikely as I am to succeed.

trpf and crises

I've been reading a little about Marx's theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall lately; and while I think I get the gist of it, I'm still not sure I entirely understand the specifics. That said, one of the more intriguing aspects of TRPF to me is the role that crises play in acting as what Marx calls a 'counteracting factor.' Assuming that the theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is true — as Smith, Ricardo, Marx, et al. believed was an empirical phenomena — giving rise to crises, crises in turn destroy superfluous (i.e., unproductive) capital and labour, creating unemployment and a reserve army of labour, which both drives down wages and decreases the labour force, allowing capital to increase profits even if the tendency of the rate of profit falls in the long term.

Perhaps this is one of the things that make capitalism appear like a perpetual growth/profit-making machine, as well as more stable than it truly is. This seems to be somewhat similar to Chris Harman's take on the TRPF, i.e., that crises are the prime counteracting factors mentioned by Marx, with recoveries being limited in effectiveness over time due to a combination of things like units of capital become larger and more interlinked (the bigger they are, the harder they fall) and increases in the level of unproductive labour in both the private and public sector (the former due to capital attempting to defend and expand markets in unproductive ways, waves of speculative investments, top-heavy corporate hierarchies, etc.; the latter due to government spending via the military, stimulus measures, etc.).

The real limit to crises as a counteracting factor, however, may be labour itself, specifically labour time, which capital tries to increase in order to extract more profit (surplus value) from the labourer in order to compensate for a falling rate of profit and the fact that much of this labour is itself superfluous, i.e., labor time that "consists in the production of values that do not reenter the capitalist reproduction process" (Jehu). But a person can only work so much, and if the labour itself is 'unproductive,' increasing it only serves to lower the rate of profit in the long term. This, in turn, creates the conditions for future (and potentially more severe) crises. One possible solution on the road to a post-capitalist society, then, may actually be an overall reduction in hours of labour:

The distribution of the mass of profit produced by productively employed capitals is, in part, settled by competition between the class of owners of capital. Under conditions of a general and comprehensive reduction of hours of labor, productively employed capital can increase their profits by reducing the expenditure of labor in unproductive forms, such as the state sector. While the state is incapable of increasing itself, by increasing its unproductive consumption of the surplus value produce by productively employed capital, i.e., by raising taxes or borrowing.

In the first place, a general and comprehensive reduction of hours of work — e.g., from 40 to 24 hours — must result in a reduction first of the state sector. In the second place, it must result in massive shift of the employment of labor from unproductive capitals (e.g., finance) to productive capitals. The losers in such a reduction would be first the state, second those capitals producing for the state (defense contractors) and financing it (Wall St.). By contrast, the productive employment of capital becomes more profitable, although the actual quantity of surplus value produced is smaller. Although less actual surplus value is produced, less also has to be shared with a mass of unproductive capitals and the bloated state.

This must increase demand for the productive employment of labor power, along with an increase in the wages. The rise in wages would in turn force productively employed capitals to further rationalize expenditures of labor through methods that improve the productivity of labor. Although employment is rising, along with wages, the actual improvement of the productivity of labor compels the further reduction of hours. In this way, there is both a rapid increase in the material living standards of the mass of society and more disposable time.

Reducing hours of labor not only means free disposable time for the mass of society, it pays for itself by compelling capital to revolutionize the labor process and increase the efficient employment of existing labor power. In Capital somewhere, Marx argues the capitalist class is, historically speaking, only the stewards of the total capital, who used their position to the disadvantage of the mass of society. This might not have been obvious in his day, but with the professional class of managers who have since arisen and now shuttle between Washington and Wall Street, and the resulting division of ownership from effective control of capital, it is clear this is all that class ever was. Paris Hilton’s family has long since retired to the vocation of coupon-clipping, while her functions have been assumed by these parasites.

Pretty interesting stuff. Definitely a lot of food for thought.