Feb 11 2010
The Fire this Time: Progressive Strategy on Jobs Part 3
We are in a new economic era in which structural joblessness and under-employment will be our central challenge. The previous New Deal and Great Society remedies are not sufficient to deal with this challenge because they rely on the private sector as the engine for mass employment.
As I explained in my first post, the private sector is not likely to create a significant amount of jobs for some time (see also here), with elevated unemployment for several years to come. We need a new economic program for creating jobs and generating mass prosperity that grapples not only with the immediate crisis but also the long-term stagnation of real wages for Americans.
We also must face the realities of the political landscape, as I argued in my second post, which has been deeply affected by the economic crisis, and are reflected in the difficulty of moving a progressive agenda through Congress in 2009.
During the 1930s, there was a mass movement led by a tremendous burst of industrial unionism. Similarly, during the 1960s, there was a mass movement led by African-Americans struggling for civil rights. The policy and political advances of the New Deal and the Great Society would not have been possible without the power generated by the organizing and mobilizing of millions of workers in the 1930s and communities of color in the 1960s.
The driving force – the social agency – that will push forward the agenda that can meet the challenge of structural joblessness and under-employment will be the jobless, the underemployed and the financially distressed. This constituency is to the 2010s what industrial workers were to the 1930s and African Americans were to the 1960s. There is no progress without a mass movement. And there are no mass movements without a driving force.
Learning from the past, we need to formulate a campaign strategy today in anticipation of an emerging mass movement tomorrow, built on organizing and mobilizing this constituency so that it can be that driving force.
Our best assessment at this moment is that the combination of populist outrage at corporate America in general and big financial institutions in particular, along with the fierce urgency of job creation will be the galvanizing context we currently lack. This suggests strongly that progressives working on advancing a jobs agenda, such as Jobs for America Now, should cooperate with Americans for Financial Reform and others working to reform Wall Street wherever possible.
So, what specific steps can we take now to organize our campaign in line with this assessment?
First, we need to organize Jobs for America Now as a long-term campaign. We will fight intensely for the maximum legislative gains possible in 2010. Subsequently, we will make every effort to frame the 2010 elections around the jobs crisis. But, we need a campaign trajectory that reaches way beyond one year, building on the premise that the jobs crisis will be prolonged and that it will be the central organizing context for progressives.
At the same time, Jobs for America Now needs to build on the excellent organizing and mobilizing of current legislative issue campaigns, particularly Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and the Main Street Alliance.
Second, the field apparatus and activities should not be constrained by legislative targets. We should start from the premise that we are building a fifty-state field campaign for the long term; a field campaign that allows for the maximum participation and coordination of groups and constituencies; a field campaign whose primary goal is putting people into motion against our corporate opponents and for government initiatives to create jobs; and a field campaign that integrates grassroots and netroots organizing in new ways.
Given this goal, decentralization and local initiative are keys to an effective field campaign. The mass mobilizations of immigrants in the past few years are one harbinger of kind of activities we need to encourage. In a word, we should focus on enabling and igniting the sparks of a future mass movement. Learning from the history of the 1930s and 1960s, we cannot predict in advance where the local mobilizing and organizing will take off and reach national prominence.
Third, we need to assemble a centralized communications war room, with the staff and resources capable of fighting the battle of ideas with our corporate and conservative opponents in the national media and online; and advancing and legitimizing our long-term agenda of public initiatives and job creation. Unlike prior issue campaigns, we need to invest heavily in our communications capacity from the start. Here, we are not talking primarily about paid advertising, but about assembling an apparatus capable of seizing upon opportunities to make our opponents toxic, and continually inject our frames and messages into public discourse.
Integrating field and communications in a long-term effort to enable a mass movement around jobs and economic justice is what it will take to change the relations of power and create the political space for Congress and the Administration to act boldly and accountably by enacting our progressive agenda into law.
Alan Charney is Strategy and Policy Director at USAction.
The strategy we need is the one summarized by Samuel Gompers in the 1890s: “as long as there is one person who seeks employment and cannot find it, the hours of work are too long.” Dean Baker has outlined a 21st century version of the strategy in his book, False Profits, an excerpt of which can be read at Yes! Magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/between-overworked-and-out-of-work
Instead of having 10 percent unemployment, what if we worked 10 percent fewer hours?
By Dean Baker
“One way to view a period with an extreme shortfall in demand, like the housing crash recession or the Great Depression, is as a period in which we don’t know what work we want people to do. Given the levels of demand in the [current] economy, 10 percent of the workforce would go unemployed. We can develop stimulus packages in an effort to find at least somewhat useful ways to employ our excess labor force. If good projects can be placed on the stimulus list, this route can be an effective way to reach full employment.
“However, we can also go in the opposite direction. If we lack enough useful ways to employ our workforce, we could simply work less. Instead of having 10 percent of the workforce unemployed, we could have the whole workforce employed, but working 10 percent fewer hours. If everyone got paid the same as when they worked 10 percent more hours (a situation that we can bring about using government money, because of a shortfall in demand), everyone should be better off and we will have eliminated unemployment. The real world will never be this simple, but we can follow this logic to try to bring the economy to full employment by shortening working hours and leaving total pay unchanged.
“Reducing unemployment through a reduction in average work hours can be accomplished by giving a tax credit to employers to give their workers paid time off, which can take the form of paid family leave, paid sick days, paid vacation, or a shorter work week. This tax credit would both provide short-term stimulus and an incentive to restructure workplaces in ways that are more family friendly. It is likely that many workplaces will leave in place changes enacted to take advantage of this tax credit long after the credit has expired.”
Work time reduction heralds an alternative political economy, one based on life, leisure, friendship, citizenship and culture, not money.
Alan, please know that every unemployed American who has searched the web for information, legislative updates, calls to action, dates and logistics for mass marches on Washington has come upon the JobsForAmericaNow.org website at some point. There are millions out of work who are desperate and praying for some organization to take the lead in organizing the movement and forcing Congress to act on their behalf.
What is Jobs For America Now offering them, in terms of resources, information or leadership? NOTHING. Its website is nothing but an SEOed placeholder. A cruel joke. Your “Call to Action” was posted on December 16th for heaven’s sake. Are you even aware of the legislative status of unemployment benefits as of now, in February, 2010?
Your Feb. 11 post on TrueMajority,org reveals your true goals, and the fact that ‘Progressives’ operating in the Beltway have no inkling about or interest in creating jobs. Unemployment for you and your affiliates is not about middle class families living in campers in the woods, it’s about politics. You said it yourself:
>>First, we need to organize Jobs for America Now as a long-term campaign. We will fight intensely for the maximum legislative gains possible in 2010. Subsequently, we will make every effort to frame the 2010 elections around the jobs crisis. But, we need a campaign trajectory that reaches way beyond one year, building on the premise that the jobs crisis will be prolonged and that it will be the central organizing context for progressives.<<
Jeez, it sounds like you’re rooting for prolonged unemployment as a progressive leverage point for long-term political gain! You might temper such perverse enthusiasm in your next post. Though I don’t guess it will appear on JobsForAmericaNow.org which is, truly, so feeble that it actually insults those who truly need jobs in America. Now.
Meanwhile, until Progressives start to actually work for Americans, you are no more effective than the most obstructionist of GOP senators and you have no more hope of re-election in November than they do.
Alan,
Please consider posting to your blog the entry previewed and linked to below. The entry adapts and expands on my February 6, 2010 guest-entry on popular blog Zero Hedge. An excerpt from the new entry has been noted approvingly by Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi.
My guest-entry on Zero Hedge:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-jobs-plan-wed-get-if-leading-innovation-scholars-and-growth-economists-werent-bei
To learn about Zero Hedge, see this feature story from the September 27, 2009 issue of New York magazine:
http://nymag.com/guides/money/2009/59457/
Matt Taibbi’s approving note (i.e., “call out”):
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/02/17/feeling-low/comment-page-2/#comment-7336
The title of my new entry:
Catalyze the Creation of Many Jobs in the U.S.? End the Reign of America’s Kleptobankers? The Fledgling Customized-Education Industry is the Best Bet to Do Both, Findings of Top Researchers Indicate.
Among the researchers: Clayton Christensen, Paul Romer, Paul Krugman and Mancur Olson.
The full text of the new entry:
http://www.opportunitv.com/2010/02/17/canonical-findings-top-researchers-customized-education-catalyzing-creation-of-many-jobs-ending-reign-of-kleptobankers/
About me:
Set out to become a comedy writer, recognized the need to develop a comic persona, settled on an approach for doing so. A byproduct of taking said approach: a business plan for establishing online markets that provide people with new and improved ways to customize education, and to showcase and earn money from expertise. The plan has been praised by analysts at Microsoft, Amazon.com and top venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson??? The plan is adapted and expanded on at OpportuniTV.com. More about my background, including my approach to developing a comic persona, appears in footnote [1] of the Introduction page.
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Contact me with any questions, etc.
Best regards,
Frank Ruscica