Once again, if we had German style, sector wide labor agreements in America -- everybody in the same geographic area doing the same job legally mandated to work under a single labor agreement -- no more problem with Walmart or with any union busting company lowering standards (scabs are not even possible when everyone must work under a negotiated labor agreement).

The country should be ripe for it. 50% of people are reported to wish they were working under union contract. 20$ are earning less than the minimum wage under L.B.J. -- when the economy is almost twice as productive, per person, since then (you dentist wants twice as much for the same work as then because the country is twice as rich). The Democrats only help the common man a little -- very little -- the Republicans hurt us a lot. Time for labor to wake up to the possiblity of using the vote to take over the country.

Denis Drew
ddrew4u@aol.com

Safeway got hurt bad, but in the end, they also got what they wanted. This is a loss for the UFCW. To paint it otherwise is to fool ourselves. We need to regroup and carry the fight for health care elsewhere, never forgetting what we learned in SoCal.

Bob Muehlencamp, who was a labor liason to the Dean campaign and has been an organizing director (with Carey's Teamsters and with 1199P, I think, before then) points out in presentations he does for union strategic planning meetings that there is no "natural" pay rate for any kind of job -- that is, there's no market-based reason why supermarket clerks get a living wage and good health care while convenience store clerks get the minimum wage -- the only difference is union market density (the percentage of workers in a sector who are organized). Supermarket clerks are organized, convenience store clerks aren't. As market density slips in supermarkets, worker power falls and wages and benefits will suffer.

Nothing is more important than figuring out how to organize mega-employers like Walmart. Unfortunately, they know it, and will fight to the death to crush their workers.

Nothing may turn out to be easier than organizing the whole country at once -- not just Walmart -- via federal legislation. Americans have no idea how ODD! it is to be less than 9% organized in private business compared to something like 90% overseas. Americans are not even aware that 20% of their number now earn LESS! than the minimum in 1968.

Tell them these things. Tell them that legislation is the quick and easy remedy and try not to get trampled on in front of the voting booth. Someone or some organization has just got to make it an issue -- don't wait on Democrat candidates; the best talk of a 1956 minimum replay while productivity has more than doubled since then.

Germany did it by legislation post-war to make up for lost time -- the rest of Europe having long since been solidly Unionized. Guess who made German do it?: us. :-)

Denis Drew
ddrew4u@aol.com

Denis, the German model is not all you crack it up to be.

Germany's unemployment rate rose to 11 percent in January from 10.4 percent the previous month.

Some 4.6 million people were out of work.

The number of jobless is a continuing embarrassment to Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who once promised to cut the number of jobless to 3.5 million. Schroeder has pushed through limited economic changes in an attempt to cut the cost of the country's social-welfare system to business and to make it easier for small businesses to fire people.

The difficulty of shedding employees in a downturn is often cited by economists as one reason companies won't hire more people in good times.

We have 5.6% unemployment. All the increases in pay will be offset by increased taxes to support all the new unemployed

Ted:

You have some point, but you should be aware that the German unemployment rate in calculated differently than the U.S. rate. In particular, it includes "marginally attached workers", who are excluded in the U.S. figure. I believe the standard U.S. figure is U-3, whereas the equivalent of the German figure is U-6, though I might be wrong on those designations. Of course, the German politicians are now considering changing the way their unemployment rate is calculated, to make in commensurable with "international standards."