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- Recherche universitaire,
institutionnelle et d'ONG
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01. Actualités
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| Julie Light, CorpWatch
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| par R. Kamel et A. Hoffman, tiré de The Maquiladora Reader (American Friends Service Committee)
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| U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), National Administrative Office (NAO)
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| Observatoire européen sur les relations industrielles
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| par Juan Forero, New York Times
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| Alien
by the Editors
The New Republic online
Post date 01.15.04 | Issue date 01.26.04
For all its flaws, President Bush’s new immigration plan has one virtue : It recognizes that the U.S. economy rests on a two-tiered system. For years, economists have noted that the eight to ten million undocumented workers currently in the United States play a vital role in making the country tick, taking jobs most Americans don’t want and arguably contributing more than they receive from the nation’s health care, welfare, and Social Security systems. And yet, those workers are also preyed upon by unscrupulous employers ; worse, because of their illegal status, they make slow progress, if any, toward incorporation in America’s cultural and political systems. "We see millions of hardworking men and women condemned to fear and insecurity in a massive, undocumented economy," Bush said last week while introducing the plan. "Our nation needs an immigration system that serves the American economy and reflects the American dream."
Indeed. But Bush’s proposal does just the opposite. It essentially sets up a guest-worker program, in which employers, after verifying that there are no domestic takers for a particular job, can advertise for foreign workers, whether already here illegally or still in their native country. They can then sponsor a worker for up to three years, renewable once, after which he or she has to return home.
The plan’s shortcomings are obvious : Because the workers are sponsored by their employers, they cannot switch jobs once here unless they want to reapply for sponsorship, in the meantime risking deportation. And, because it registers them in the "system" and presents the risk that, after three years, they will be sent back home, the plan is unlikely to appeal to the millions of workers currently here illegally. "It’s essentially akin to turning themselves in, and many or most are not going to sign up for that," says Josh Bernstein, director of federal policy at the National Immigration Law Center. In other words, current illegal immigrants, realizing that job flexibility and an unlimited stay—provided they’re not caught, and they rarely are—is better than coming out in the open, will likely choose to retain their undocumented status.
But worse than the plan’s impracticality is its disingenuousness. While ensuring that businesses have a steady flow of low-wage workers, the proposal does not, as Bush claims, give those workers a shot at the American dream—in large part because it doesn’t give them a shot at becoming Americans. Under Bush’s plan, an immigrant could only become a citizen by applying for a green card. But there are a mere 5,000 green cards handed out each year to low-skilled workers—and there are millions of illegal immigrants in unskilled jobs. So, of those workers who come forward and register, only a tiny fraction will become citizens and be allowed the chance to plan for a life for themselves and their families beyond a three-year, employer-controlled sponsorship. The vast majority who don’t come forward will be relegated to second-class status, working legally but almost completely disenfranchised from America’s political institutions and civil society, much as some five million guest workers were under the "Bracero" program during the 1940s and 1950s.
To make things worse, in proposing his own plan Bush has overlooked two complementary, bipartisan bills already under debate in Congress that do establish a clear path to citizenship—albeit only for certain illegal immigrants. One, the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security bill (AgJobs), supported by Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican Larry Craig, would provide legal status for temporary agriculture workers, who can then apply for permanent residency. The other, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM), co-sponsored by Republican Orrin Hatch and Democrat Richard Durbin, would allow immigrants who entered the country illegally as children to apply for legal residency upon graduating from high school.
The only hurdle to getting these bills passed, say proponents, is convincing the congressional leadership (which must take into account a powerful anti-immigrant minority) to bring them to a vote—exactly the sort of thing that presidential lobbying could achieve. Instead, this being an election year, Bush has trotted out his own proposal. Unfortunately, this makes it less likely that either AgJobs or DREAM will pass. Bush, eager to get his own bill made into law, will be loath to lend political capital to someone else’s idea. As at so many junctures in this administration, Bush had a choice between what was good for the country and what was good for him politically. It wasn’t even a close call.
the Editors
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| Deutsche Welle
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| Anthony Giddens, Telos-eu.
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| Controversial Overtime Rules Take Effect
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published : August 23, 2004
he Bush administration’s new overtime rules go into effect today, but the Kerry campaign has already begun attacking the overhauled regulations, saying they will hurt millions of American workers.
Urging President Bush to scrap the rules, the Kerry campaign and organized labor say the regulations will exempt up to six million additional workers from receiving overtime pay by redefining which workers qualify for time-and-a-half pay when they work more than 40 hours. But the administration asserts that no more than 107,000 workers will lose their eligibility, while 1.3 million workers will gain the right to overtime.
In essence, the hundreds of pages of new rules redefine the criteria for which administrative, professional and managerial workers qualify for overtime, among them nurses, chefs, pharmacists, funeral directors, claims adjusters and restaurant managers.
Senator John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, devoted his political party’s weekly radio address on Saturday to assailing the new rules, making clear that the Democrats view them as an issue to exploit when many Americans are worried about the economy and stagnating wages.
"Why would anyone want to take overtime pay away from as many as six million Americans at a time when they need that money the most ?" Mr. Edwards said. "And why would anyone support this new rule which could mean a pay cut for millions of Americans who have already seen their real wages drop again this year ?"
That follows attacks by Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, who said last month, "The new overtime regulations represent a shameful assault on the paychecks of hard-working Americans at a time when they are already putting in more hours, paying more for everyday costs and saving less than ever before."
To turn up the volume on the issue, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. says it will hold a news conference today and will distribute several million fliers saying Mr. Bush has given its corporate friends a gift that will cut the paychecks of millions of Americans.
The administration asserts that the new regulations are needed to replace vague, outmoded rules that have spurred many lawsuits as employers and employees tussle over which workers are exempt and which are not. The administration argues that the overtime rules are clearer, will be easier to enforce and will reduce expensive litigation that hurts business and the economy.
"We view this as a step in the right direction for bringing clarity and certainty to this area of the law so there can be greater compliance," said Alfred Robinson, director of the Labor Department’s wage and hour division. "And that’s good for employers and employees. I’d rather focus on that than the spin and the politics."
Critics of the new rules say they are another example of the Bush administration’s taking regulatory steps that please businesses, which have lobbied for years to revamp the overtime regulations.
The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, has issued a report, which many Democrats have relied on, concluding that the rules will exempt about six million workers from overtime coverage. Among those, the institute said, are 1.4 million low-level salaried supervisors, 130,000 chefs and sous-chefs and 900,000 workers with graduate or college degrees who will now be considered professional employees.
The administration has accused the institute and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. of engaging in a partisan campaign of misinformation on the issue.
Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who has failed in repeated attempts to win passage of a bill to roll back the rules, said he would introduce new legislation to try again.
"This strikes right at the heart of a fundamental labor right," Mr. Harkin said. "These vague regulations will hurt rather than help Americans with their overtime pay, while the administration’s public posture is all smiles and happy talk."
Michael Eastman, director of labor law policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said companies were not seizing on the new rules to try to deny overtime pay to many workers. He praised the administration’s efforts, saying the regulations sorely needed to be overhauled.
"It’s a very easy issue to demagogue and to frighten people with claims that the worst will happen," Mr. Eastman said. "It’s taken a lot of courage for this administration to take this kind of unwarranted criticism from labor unions and other opponents.’’
Overtime, which is governed by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, is a complicated area of law. Senior managers do not qualify for overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours, but the more difficult questions involve whether low-level, salaried supervisors are to be viewed as managers who do not qualify for overtime or as workers who do.
The new rules set forth criteria, like what responsibilities supervisors have and whether they have the power to hire and fire, to determine who is eligible.
The rules largely exempt workers earning more than $100,000 from overtime pay, although those with union contracts calling for overtime will continue to be eligible.
Three former Labor Department officials under President Bill Clinton and the first President Bush concluded in a report that the regulations would hurt American workers. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. financed their study, but the three authors, led by John Fraser, former director of the wage and hour division, insisted that they were independent.
Mr. Fraser called the rules "a very big deal." Their report said that but for a provision involving very low-paid supervisors, every change the Labor Department made had expanded the reach and scope of rules that exempted workers from overtime coverage.
In a rebuttal, the Labor Department has said the studies concluding that six million more workers would be exempt were based on faulty assumptions and partisan thinking.
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| Corporate Bill for Slavery
By John S. Friedman
Nation
March 10, 2003
On February 26 for the first time a judge will make substantive and procedural rulings on a probable eight lawsuits that are at the cutting edge of the movement to compensate African-Americans who still suffer from the effects of slavery and institutionalized racism. There are at least thirteen plaintiffs, all descendants of slaves. Thousands more could be added. One of the plaintiffs is 71-year-old Hannah Hurdle-Toomey. Her father (who was 87 at the time of her birth, in 1932) was born into slavery on a North Carolina plantation in 1845 and sold at auction when he was 8. "We literally built this country," says Hurdle-Toomey. "It’s not just a question of money. We want recognition—something other than Black History Month." Diane Sammons, a lawyer for the plaintiffs who specializes in human rights law, called the court action "the beginning of a process that will probably wind up in the Supreme Court and which eventually could be as significant for African-Americans as Brown v. Board of Education."
The federal class-action lawsuits—the first three were filed about a year ago—are against companies on behalf of potentially all slave descendants. The attorneys are claiming "unjust enrichment" and a breach of human rights laws. They are not asking for payments to the plaintiffs. Instead they seek corporate accountability for profits made from slavery, unspecified damages and the establishment of a fund for the healthcare, housing, education and economic development needs of African-Americans. They also want a full investigation of the financial underpinnings of slavery. A principal motivation of the reparations campaign and of the lawsuits is the lingering sense that America has never fully examined the economic powers behind slavery.
On the other side of the lawsuits are seventeen powerful corporations. They include financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and FleetBoston ; insurance companies (e.g., Aetna and New York Life) ; railroads (Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific and CSX) ; tobacco companies (R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson) ; and a textile manufacturer (WestPoint Stevens). The lawsuits claim that predecessors of the financial institutions loaned money to slaveowners and handled the monetary transactions of slavery ; that insurance companies insured slaves and slave ships ; that railroads forced slaves to build and run rail lines (a railroad rulebook prescribes thirty-nine lashes for recalcitrant slaves) ; that tobacco companies used slave labor in the tobacco fields ; and that textile companies profited from cotton cultivated by slaves and sold the coarse garments slaves were forced to wear.
The number of corporations that benefited from slavery and that could be sued may reach more than a hundred, according to Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a lawyer who is a plaintiff and who almost single-handedly has uncovered the information linking corporations to slavery. "These companies have become multibillion-dollar interests in large part due to the practice of stealing people and stealing their labor," she said. "Justice requires that they atone for these wrongs by paying restitution." (Prior to her recent research, the reparations movement was focused almost solely on restitution by the government.) Additional corporations could include utility companies that used slaves to lay gas lines beneath Southern cities like New Orleans and mining companies that forced slaves to dig for coal, according to USA Today reporter James Cox, who has researched the subject extensively. Media companies like Gannett, Knight Ridder and the Tribune Company have been linked to slavery because their predecessors published ads for runaway slaves. Nor are universities exempt. Advocates are discussing whether schools including Harvard, Brown, Yale and the University of Virginia should be sued because many of their original benefactors were allegedly wealthy slaveowners.
Top Bush Administration officials might be asked to testify as the lawsuits progress. William Donaldson, the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, was CEO and chairman of defendant Aetna when the company issued a public apology for writing life insurance policies on the lives of slaves, and John Snow, the new Treasury Secretary, is the former chairman of defendant CSX.
Most of the corporations refused comment on the lawsuits. But their statements suggest a long legal battle. For instance, a spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase said that after the appearance of an earlier article [see Friedman, "Chase’s Historical Ledger," October 9, 2000] his company undertook "an extensive review of its internal archives and public records with the help of an archival expert to look for any evidence or proof of the allegations. We found nothing to indicate any such transactions took place. Consequently, we feel the allegations are without merit." A Norfolk Southern Railway spokesman said : "We don’t think it’s right to use the courts 140 years after abolition to attribute the wrongs of slavery to modern day people and businesses. We will try to defend our employees, customers, and shareholders."
A Union Pacific spokesman said, "What happened 150 years ago under different social circumstances, morality, and law has no connection to today’s Union Pacific." On the insurance front, "Our archival records show that our predecessor company, Nautilus Insurance Company, wrote policies on the lives of slaves in 1846 and 1847. The trustees of Nautilus properly voted to end the practice in 1848," said a spokesman for the New York Life Insurance Company. "We fully expect to prevail in the courts."
Two of the biggest legal hurdles faced by those arguing for reparations are whether the plaintiffs have the legal standing to sue and whether the statute of limitations has expired. They argue that the slave descendants have standing, that slavery, as a crime against humanity, has no statute of limitations and, in any case, that there are exceptions to the statute. Bolstering their contentions are Holocaust-related cases in which corporations contributed to reparations funds for Nazi-era slave labor. (One of the lawyers for the plaintiffs represented victims in some of those cases.)
The judge who will hear the consolidated cases is Charles Norgle Sr. of US District Court, Northern Illinois. Appointed by President Reagan, he is considered by Illinois civil rights attorneys to be one of the most conservative judges on the court.
While the federal lawsuits have moved forward, state and local initiatives have been passed, including a California law in 2000, sponsored by former State Senator Tom Hayden, that requires insurance companies to divulge information they have pertaining to slavery. Recently, a law passed by the Chicago City Council took effect requiring all companies that do business with the city to disclose involvement in or profits from slavery. "This is about setting American history straight," said Robin Brown, an aide to Alderman Dorothy Tillman, sponsor of the bill. "This country can’t heal until it faces what it did to slaves and African-Americans."
The lawsuits that will be heard in Judge Norgle’s court open a new chapter in African-American history. But whether they lead to corporate accountability, compensation and a thorough investigation of slavery may not be known until higher courts decide.
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| Observatoire européen sur les relations de travail, novembre 2002.
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| Evaluation pays : les Etats-Unis déclassés par Oekom
Oekom Research base son évaluation de 31 pays sur un ensemble de 150 critères sociaux et environnementaux, chacun des deux domaines comptant pour 50% de l’évaluation totale. Une mise sur écoute facilitée, le contrôle par le FBI et la CIA des lecteurs de la presse critique, la non-ratification du protocole de Kyoto...Ces points critiques ont conduit l’agence de notation sociale et environnementale allemande Oekom Research à classer les Etats-Unis en 25ème position, soit un recul de huit places, lors de la réévaluation annuelle de sa notation des 30 pays de l’OCDE, plus la Russie. Ce classement est utilisé par des fonds de retraite européens.
« Quant vous achetez aujourd’hui un livre d’un auteur de gauche ou qui est critique sur la guerre en Iraq, il se peut que le FBI et la CIA enquêtent sur vous. Les banques, librairies, hôpitaux et entreprises de carte de crédits sont tenus, d’après le « Patriot Act », de communiquer les informations sur leurs clients, » explique Oekom Research dans un communiqué. Il ajoute que des pays comme l’Espagne ou l’Italie ont également adopté des mesures visant à combattre le terrorisme, mais que contrairement aux Etats-Unis, ces mesures n’ont pas conduit à une restriction des libertés individuelles.
La grille d’évaluation d’Oekom prend en compte sur un plan social, le domaine des « Institutions et Politique ». Il comprend notamment un critère « Système politique et Droits fondamentaux » qui est le plus important. Le critère « Pollution de l’environnement », qui comprend les critères sols, eau, biodiversités, émissions, énergies et déchets, compte pour 70% de l’évaluation environnementale. A cette grille, s’ajoutent des critères d’exclusion comme la peine de mort, la corruption ou l’énergie atomique.
La nouvelle notation des pays de l’agence munichoise sert de référence à une dizaine de fonds de retraite européens qui investissent selon les critères du développement durable. Ces fonds représentent un volume de 300 millions d’euros. « Les fonds américains ne sont pas (encore) représentés, » note Marnie Bammert. A ce propos, elle rapporte que cette nouvelle notation, a provoqué des réactions aux Etats-Unis puisqu’elle conduit à se se priver des bonds d’états américains qui représentent un des investissements les plus sûrs. « Personnellement, je répondrais que chacun décide selon ses valeurs. Celui ou celle qui critique la politique de sécurité ou la politique intérieure des Etats-Unis peut ne pas vouloir souscrire aux bonds d’états américains. De surcroît, il existe d’autres obligations tout aussi « sûres » », juge Marnie Bammert.
La France a amélioré sa position passant de la 13eme place à la 7eme et arrive dans le peloton de tête, conduit par la Norvège où figurent les pays scandinaves. Outre le fait que les droits fondamentaux sont respectés et que le système de santé fonctionne bien, l’agence a pris en compte l’introduction des 35 heures et les bons standards de sécurité au travail ainsi que la signature de tous les traités internationaux. Les émissions de GES ont même été légèrement réduites. L’énergie atomique demeure le principal point noir.
Oekom Research a placé l’Allemagne en dixième position et elle gagne deux places. L’agence note que le pays a pu réduire de 19 % ses émissions de gaz carbonique, grâce à la nouvelle législation favorisant notamment les énergies renouvelables et la mise à l’arrêt des usines de l’ancienne RDA. Mais, dans le critère pollution de l’environnement, le plus important pour la notation environnementale, l’Allemagne n’est qu’à la 17ème place. Commentaire de l’agence : « L’Allemagne (...) à l’échelle mondiale est loin de pouvoir justifier sa réputation de numéro un mondial de la protection de l’environnement. »
Claire Stam
Mis en ligne le : 25/06/2003
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| Observatoire européen sur les relations industrielles
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| Observatoire européen sur les relations industrielles
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| Paradis fiscaux et zones franches
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| The Economist
TRY calling a German bureaucrat after 3pm and the chances are that you will get no answer. But the Berlin branch of the Federal Employment Agency has recently been open as late as 10pm, weekends included. A dozen employees, surrounded by brown folders, are busy typing data into computers. “We have no choice but to get this done by the end of the year,” says one. The scene is replicated in 180 job-centres across Germany: thousands of staff are working extra shifts to prepare the launch on January 1st of “Hartz IV”. This law, based on the work of a commission led by Peter Hartz, Volkswagen’s personnel director, is Germany’s most important labour-market reform since the war.
The law’s underlying concept, “sanction and support”, has worked in other countries. It cuts benefits for those not willing to work, but should help others to find jobs more quickly. Yet no chief executive of, say, a large bank, would do things in quite this way: bringing in a new financial product that relies on unproven technology, and at the same time merging with a shoal of smaller firms.
The long-term unemployed have been taken care of by two branches of the welfare state. If you never worked, your city paid means-tested welfare. If you had a job for long enough, the Federal Employment Agency paid unemployment aid for life, at a rate just over half of previous net income. But this gave little incentive to look for legal work. So the government is merging the two benefits into a single, means-tested benefit for all long-term unemployed. Monthly payments for a single household in western Germany will be €345 ($470); in the east they will be €331. In both cases, recipients get almost as much again in rent and heating allowances.
What sounds straightforward in theory is complicated in practice. For a start, details of the Hartz reforms have kept changing. To counter protests, the government was making final adjustments as late as September. That left only a few months to prepare for the launch of the new system.
Meanwhile, job-centres and municipal welfare offices did not know enough about their clients to determine eligibility under the new rules. They have sent out 16-page questionnaires to some 3.8m long-term unemployed and welfare recipients, asking for information about everything from the income of other family members and personal savings to health insurance and special dietary needs.
Data-gathering on such a scale is quite a feat, but the calculation of benefits is even harder. Coding German social-security law is a programmer’s nightmare. It proved possible to meet such a tight deadline only because Prosoz, a German software firm, had already developed the core of the application. New software technologies were used to produce a service accessible via the internet. For the first time, Germany will have a near-complete database of its less fortunate, making it easier to evaluate training and to detect fraud.
The biggest challenge is to merge parts of the job-centres with the welfare offices. In most places, they will jointly administer the new benefit and help clients find work. But the two bureaucracies have different cultures: one is hierarchical and has focused on paying benefits, while the other sees its main task as social caretaking and has a reputation for independence.
So far, the whole operation has gone surprisingly smoothly. With a week to go before the deadline, 94% of the questionnaires sent out had come back, and benefit statements for 2.2m households had been issued. The computer system, after crashing repeatedly in October and proving unable to deal with complex cases, is more stable. Better still, the threat of not getting the new benefit has prompted many unemployed to look harder for work.
Yet much could still go wrong. Many of those who have had benefit statements claim that the calculations are wrong. Some fear that protests against Hartz could revive, or even turn violent. And it remains to be seen if the software will make the correct payments. Pessimists expect a technical disaster comparable to Germany’s ill-fated road-toll system for lorries. Worse, unemployment may go up before it goes down, because welfare recipients who can work will now be classed as unemployed.
The stakes are high. If Hartz IV succeeds, Germany will have taken a big step towards helping its army of long-term unemployed off the dole and into work. If it fails, there will be pressure to break up the Federal Employment Agency, or privatise it. And the popularity of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s government, which has risen, could plummet. That may be why Mr Schröder has said that, if anything goes wrong, it will be the fault of Wolfgang Clement, his economics minister.
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| Carter Dougherty, New York Times
Frankfurt, Dec. 29 - Hans S. spends a lot of time these days with a yellow paperback, thickened by paper clips and dog-eared pages, that helps him grope his way through Germany’s labyrinthine system of unemployment benefits. At the end of the maze, though, Hans knows those benefits will soon be a lot slimmer.
A computer specialist, Hans was recently laid off from a medium-size company near here, and asked that his last name be withheld as he plans to sue to get his job back. His wife, Sabine, has been unemployed for over a year and will lose her benefits entirely when Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s groundbreaking changes to the country’s unemployment benefits kick in on Jan. 1.
The changes will cut by more than half the amount of money that once came into Hans’s home, thanks to a thriving German economy and a generous state, from a comfortable 2,350 euros, or $3,200, with Hans employed and Sabine collecting benefits, to around 1,050 euros, with only Hans receiving benefits.
"I find all this an absolutely unfair system now," Hans said. "I paid taxes for years to finance social assistance, and now it’s gone."
Multiply this situation by a few million, add a measure of frustration and resignation, and that about approximates the mood of the German work force this holiday season, mulled wine and roasted chestnuts aside. At the start of the year, 4.5 million unemployed Germans, 10.8 percent of the work force, will enter a new world of dwindling benefits.
"This is the end of the Germany that I grew up with," said Martin Bongards, an unemployed sociologist and activist in the town of Marburg, north of Frankfurt. "This country I knew no longer exists."
The labor reforms Mr. Schröder’s government has put into place over the past two years, named after Peter Hartz, the Volkswagen executive who designed them, are an overhaul of a 40-year-old system that guaranteed security and even prosperity. And Hartz IV, the final phase of the transformation that the government passed last year, will be the rudest of awakenings.
"Hartz IV is not a send-off for the whole system, but it is the biggest reform we’ve ever had," said Klaus Zimmermann, president of the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. "It’s the most drastic for people in terms of its consequences."
In a nutshell, Germany will try to dole out money only to those unemployed who truly need it, using a series of income tests. And the state will compel those without jobs, under threat of withdrawing all benefits, to do some kind of work.
After jobless Germans use up normal benefits, whose duration and generosity vary depending on how long a person has worked, they will get only the Hartz IV benefits: 345 euros (about $470) a month in western Germany, and 331 euros in the East.
Recipients of this money, should they fail to find other work, will also be forced into "one-euro jobs," essentially low-paid state make-work schemes that require little white-collar skill.
Posters and stickers pasted in train stations and on bus stops all over Germany these days tell the furious reaction of a population weaned on cradle-to-grave security and comfort: "People must be able to live from their work! They must be able to live without it too! Away with Hartz IV!"
"It’s a very disgruntled mood, even aggressive at times," said Harald Rein, a counselor at the Frankfurt Center for the Unemployed, a city-financed advice office. "But people are trying to fend for themselves."
Hans, the computer specialist, criticizes Mr. Schröder’s government for this approach, which he regards as a betrayal: he voted for Mr. Schröder, a Social Democrat, in 2003. But he says that Hartz IV, with its treatment of people who have fallen on hard times, reminds him of trips to the United States and its frayed social safety net.
"It’s going to be like San Francisco, where you look out your window and see people living in cardboard boxes," he said. "It’s coming."
Yet the anger has not bubbled into the political realm. In August and September, unemployed people and their supporters streamed into streets all over Germany to protest the changes. These "Monday demonstrations," which consciously echoed the 1989 marches that toppled the communist regime in East Germany, nipped at Mr. Schröder’s heels for a few weeks as left-wing activists contemplated founding a new political party. But the furor eventually petered out.
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| Jobless Recovery Remains Puzzle to Experts,
Says Nobel Laureate
By Alwyn Scott
Seattle Times
January 7, 2004
The global economy is on many people’s minds these days as job growth languishes, headlines announce layoffs, jobs shift overseas and governments hammer out free-trade agreements that further open the world to globalization.
Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, has criticized much of the thinking about the boom period of the 1990s. He saw it up close as head of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers during much of that roaring decade. During Stiglitz’s recent visit to Seattle, we asked him whether the economic changes of the 1990s threaten U.S. workers in decades ahead. Here’s an edited transcript.
Q. We hear a lot about how globalization and deregulation are moving well-paid jobs overseas. Does that explain the jobless recovery ?
A. Only in part. This is an unusual recovery, and I think even labor economists are finding it puzzling. The normal jobless recovery is really the following : Firms prefer to go on overtime before they start hiring workers because they’d rather pay a worker time-and-a-half than put up with the training cost and anxiety of hiring. That is why, typically, employment lags in a recovery.
What happened last quarter is that the number of hours worked was down by almost 1 percent. In a jobless recovery, the typical pattern is that hours worked go up because jobs aren’t being created. This is a recovery in which hours worked aren’t going up. That suggests it may not be recovery.
You’re getting firms trying to squeeze more and more work out of workers, working fewer and fewer hours.
Q. Is that just cyclical or a long-term trend ?
A. There was a trend in the ’90s of ruthless cost-cutting. It may not be able to be sustained. The workers that you fire _ lay off _ you’re going to have to retrain and rehire them eventually. The economy will grow again. There has always been a recovery. So I take that as a premise.
But that means it’s a shortsighted strategy, where you see the profits today because you’ve gotten rid of a cost. You don’t see the future expenditures and you hope maybe those future expenditures will be hidden by the fact demand will be high, prices will be high. So nobody will notice that. But you will undoubtedly need to be paying more for training workers.
Q. Now that white-collar and tech jobs are moving overseas, is the U.S. on a slide out of productive technical work ? Is it going to accelerate ?
A. What we’re seeing is a recognition that there were some service jobs that are mobile. The computer programmers, the high-tech jobs that are going to Bangalore (India), or the call centers. But those are a small minority. The hamburger-flipper jobs, we are going to keep those. Because those have to be flipped at home. But also the CEO jobs have to stay here. It does raise the question. I don’t know the answer.
Q. Boeing is planning to outsource not just their manufacturing but also design work to Japan and Italy. What will be left in America _ CEOs and a handful of factory workers ?
A. The airline industry is peculiar because of the offset structure. ("Offsets" refer to locating factories in other countries to encourage sales to that country.) But in general, I think we will find our niches and they will find theirs. And there is always going to be an anxiety as we go through that process. And in that process, it isn’t obvious that we will be as relatively high-income as we have been in the past.
For instance, it could be that Italians, somehow because of their schools, wind up being better at designing lots of things. In that case, these high-end people will be moving to these countries that have the design.
Overall though, the United States still has the strongest university system in the world. I think that that has been an enormous pull for people to come here.
Q. Do you think the strong U.S. university system could lose its lead ? China and India are attracting Ph.D. students who up till now have been coming here.
A. There is enormous inertia in the centers of intellectual strength in research universities. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia. Even in bad times, they get the best students, and because they get the best students they get to hire the faculty.
The answer is : It can change. If we underfund our universities, which we have been doing, people can go abroad. Cambridge and Oxford have lost an awful lot of people to American universities.
Other countries are realizing you can become a center of intellectual strength. You can buy a center of intellectual strength. What makes America more precarious is that we aren’t producing at the high school and undergraduate level enough science majors to feed ourselves.
Q. How much of job cutting was "ruthless business" by companies saying "We want to do this," and how much was imposed by market forces and because everyone was doing it ?
A. Both are at play. Most companies are under shareholder pressure to get the stock price up. It used to be that they could resist that shareholder pressure and say, "Look, we’re going to create value in the long run."
I think what happened in the ’90s was the stock-option movement meant the CEO’s incentive was particularly myopic. He wanted the stock price up. So he wasn’t telling his shareholders, "Look, I know what is good for the company in the long run." He said, "My strategy is to get my share price up today." If that meant lying, that was fine. Distorting information.
You get this system that was going on : The analyst came up with expectations, and you had to meet those expectations, and the job of the accountant was to move money around on the books to make sure those expectations were met. Everyone knew they were moving money around on those books.
Q. Is globalization a zero-sum game or is there some way all nations can benefit ?
A. The general principle of trade is everyone benefits. Now, there are many circumstances where that general principle doesn’t work, particularly when you don’t have free and fair trade rules.
Countries are not being given the choice of rules. You say you have to open your markets. If you don’t, here will be the consequences. The consequences are so dire they open their markets.
At that point, goods start flowing in. The guys who are buying the goods see (a benefit) from subsidized American corn or milk. But the people who lose their jobs are worse off.
If society as a whole isn’t able to create new jobs, what you’ve done is move people from low-productivity jobs to unemployment. And that’s not good for growth. That’s not what’s supposed to happen.
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| Yves Petignat, Le Temps
TRAVAIL. Un nouveau poste à l’étranger entraîne la création de deux autres en Allemagne, estime une étude de Mc Kinsey menée auprès de 5000 entreprises de taille moyenne.
« Les entreprises allemandes peuvent créer en Allemagne ces prochaines années un million de nouvelles places de travail si elles utilisent à fond leur potentiel », estime Jürgen Meffert, directeur de McKinsey et auteur d’une étude sur « Le patronat en Allemagne » publiée vendredi.
Selon celle-ci, chaque place de travail créée à l’étranger par une entreprise moyenne allemande, pour autant qu’elle soit en bonne santé, a entraîné la création de 2,5 emplois au pays. L’étude a été menée auprès de 5000 sociétés de toutes les branches, ayant un chiffre d’affaires situé entre 50 millions et 3 milliards d’euros. Les résultats montrent que 40% d’entre elles ont, entre 1998 et 2003, installé en moyenne 166 places de travail à l’étranger, ce qui a entraîné 431 nouveaux jobs en Allemagne. Par contre, lorsque l’entreprise va mal, pour 28 emplois créés à l’étranger, elle en détruit une centaine dans son pays d’origine. Au total, les entreprises allemandes qui se sont étendues à l’étranger ont développé en moyenne 172 emplois en Allemagne contre 113 en Chine, en Europe de l’Est ou aux Etats-Unis.
Miser sur la valeur ajoutée
Les 5 millions de chômeurs allemands et le recul du salaire réel ne proviendraient donc pas des phénomènes de globalisation ou de délocalisation des entreprises, mais des pertes de parts de marché et de la faible consommation intérieure. Ainsi, le secteur électrique allemand est passé de 11% à 5,2% du marché mondial entre 1992 et 2002, l’automobile de 13,6% à 12,8%.
« Les entreprises qui ont des objectifs clairs pour leur internationalisation et l’innovation travaillent de manière profitable et croissent rapidement », dit McKinsey. Cela suppose qu’elles soient proches des nouveaux marchés non seulement par la distribution, mais aussi par la production, l’approvisionnement et de plus en plus par la recherche et le développement. Cette tendance incite la maison mère allemande à se concentrer sur des produits à plus haute valeur ajoutée. « Beaucoup d’exemples de réussites montrent que les entreprises innovatives peuvent être concurrentielles même en produisant sur sol allemand », estime Jürgen Meffert.
Une autre étude de l’Institut allemand pour les études économiques (DIW), montre aussi que, loin d’avoir engendré une concurrence de type « discount » pour les industriels allemands, l’élargissement de l’Europe aux pays de l’Est a créé un véritable appel d’air pour leurs produits allemands : les exportations vers ces pays ont été multipliées par quatre depuis dix ans.
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| Francfort, 25 juin 2004, 2 pages
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| Georges Marion, Le Monde, 18 mars 2005
Le "sommet de l’emploi" entre le chef du gouvernement allemand et les responsables démocrates-chrétiens a confirmé le consensus droite-gauche sur les problèmes sensibles.
Jeudi 17 mars, après plus de deux heures et demi d’entretien avec Angela Merkel, présidente de l’Union chrétienne-démocrate (CDU), et avec le Bavarois Edmund Stoiber, président de l’Union chrétienne-sociale (CSU), M. Schröder, flanqué du vice-chancelier ministre des affaires étrangères, Joschka Fischer, a pu confirmer qu’en dépit de différences d’appréciation multiples l’Allemagne était entrée, de facto, dans un régime de grande coalition informelle où droite et gauche gouvernent de concert pour gérer les problèmes les plus sensibles.
Le déploiement des forces politiques ne semble plus permettre d’autre solution. Au Bundestag, ce sont les sociaux-démocrates du SPD et les Verts qui disposent de la majorité ; au Bundesrat, la chambre des Etats, ce sont la CDU-CSU et les libéraux du FDP qui leur font contrepoids. Entre batailler jusqu’à la paralysie mutuelle ou tenter de s’entendre jusqu’aux élections, qui redistribueront les cartes, la classe politique allemande a fait, jeudi, le choix du réalisme.
La journée avait commencé avec, au Bundestag, une déclaration de M. Schröder faisant le bilan des réformes lancées il y a deux ans et regroupées sous le titre générique d’"Agenda 2010". Dans un long discours au ton conciliant, le chancelier s’est félicité de son action passée, critiquant ceux qui appelaient à plus de dérégulation mais admettant que, face à 5,21 millions de chômeurs officiellement enregistrés, quelques coups de pouce conjoncturels supplémentaires seraient les bienvenus.
La principale mesure annoncée concerne l’impôt sur les bénéfices des entreprises, qui, grâce à un taux passant de 25 % à 19 %, économiseront quelque 6 milliards d’impôts. Cette réduction, que le patronat demandait depuis longtemps, fera passer de 38,7 % à 32,7 % le taux moyen d’imposition des entreprises allemandes, en dessous des moyennes constatées en France ou en Italie, mais largement au-dessus de celles des dix nouveaux adhérents de l’Union européenne, facilement accusés en Allemagne de "dumping fiscal".
Conformément aux souhaits du ministre-président de Bavière, M. Stoiber, le chancelier a aussi accepté une baisse de 10 % de la taxe professionnelle pour les entreprises familiales transmises par héritage. Soixante-dix mille entreprises sont dans ce cas chaque année en Allemagne. Le gouvernement étudiera dans les prochains mois une réforme d’envergure de la fiscalité, particulièrement compliquée, qui pèse sur les entreprises.
ÉLECTIONS RÉGIONALES
Toutes ces mesures, qui seront financées par la suppression de quelques-unes des nombreuses niches qui parsèment le système fiscal allemand, devraient, selon leurs partisans, être utilisées pour réinvestir, créer de l’emploi et faire baisser le chômage, objectif auquel devraient également contribuer les 2 milliards d’euros qui seront mobilisés pour financer des travaux d’infrastructure dans les transports.
Prenant à leur tour la parole, les responsables de l’opposition chrétienne-démocrate se sont déclarés d’accord avec les mesures annoncées, tout en déplorant qu’elles n’aillent pas assez loin. Mais le fond était visiblement à la conciliation, ainsi que l’a illustré le discours de M. Fischer, acéré sur la forme mais destiné, pour l’essentiel, à tendre la main à l’adversaire, assurant que de nombreux problèmes pouvaient être réglés en commun.
Ainsi encadré, le "sommet pour l’emploi" de l’après-midi ne pouvait pas mal tourner. Sans doute ne résoudra-t-il pas les problèmes qui se posent, mais cet accord infor-mel constitue une pause bienvenue pour les deux parties. Le chancelier et l’opposition ont désormais les yeux fixés sur les élections régionales de Rhénanie-du-Nord - Westphalie, région de 18 millions d’habitants que la gauche contrôle depuis trente-neuf ans. Si, le 22 mai, elle perd les élections, ce que laissent entendre les sondages du jour, la droite disposera d’une majorité des deux tiers au Bundesrat. Elle serait alors en position de ligoter totalement le chancelier.
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| Benoît Romain, Fondation Jean-Jaurès, 4 décembre 2005
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| Luis Ernesto Derbez, l’Express, 30 mai 2002.
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| In September’s Wake : Uncertain Conditions Prevail
Spring 2002
Volume 9, Issue 1
Lessons from Crisis : New York City Nonprofits Post-September 11
by Dennis Derryck and Rikki Abzug
Daycare and after-school programs shut tight. Switchboards at hospitals and clinics were down everywhere—and patients couldn’t reach offices even if those health operations managed to open with skeleton crews. Meals on Wheels stalled. Volunteer recruitment—except for emergency relief—ground to a halt. Meetings, events, and fundraisers were canceled. Programs and buildings were destroyed. Workers were distraught or absent. And some of our neighbors died.
Yet, even before September 11, New York City nonprofit organizations were not strangers to crisis. Whole sub-sectors of the nonprofit world exist to deal with other peoples’ crises—from poverty to political persecution, from hurricanes to heart disease. Organizations (and sometimes the whole sector) have learned from their own scandals and financial crises. But to what extent New York City nonprofit organizations were prepared to deal with the crisis of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11 was an empirical question that demanded immediate attention. Further, the lessons learned by New York City nonprofit organizations needed to be gathered to afford some semblance of precedent for a country and sector previously insulated from such terror.
As much of the American public rallied around the government, which rallied around the airlines and financial world, we wondered who would rally around the neighborhood-based nonprofits. We embarked on our own down-home, seat of the pants study designed specifically to give voice to organizations often overlooked as victims themselves. What follows is a snapshot of New York City’s nonprofit organizations struggling to get back on their feet after the one-two punch of terrorist attack and free-fall economy.[1]
By design, it documents only the first two months of relief and recovery—beginning approximately two weeks after the Towers fell. This preliminary data offers tentative yet substantive suggestions for crisis management (and organizational damage containment) at the organizational, organizational network, and inter-sector levels. We started with the voice of immediate impact and will continue to track these organizations through the intermediate and long-term. We are hoping that now, and in the future, this voice will be heard at the table of re-envisioning and will inform discussions of organizational emergency preparedness.
Impartial Impact
The immediate organizational impact of tragedy was swift, hard, and widespread—almost every organization we contacted in the month after the attacks reported some level of impact. Our research suggested that financial and personal resources currently available to nonprofits are no insurance against or insulation from catastrophic events. Indeed, initial impact seemed impervious to organizational age, budget size, staff size, type of organization, sources of funding or revenue—whether government contracts or fee-for-service were prevalent, for instance. Almost 80 percent of responding small and medium-sized New York City nonprofits reported being impacted by the events of September 11 ; just under a quarter of those responding had sites below 14th Street in Manhattan—right by Ground Zero.
Once we moved beyond the immediate impact (in both distance and time) we started to see signs of differential recovery and differential adjustment to the newly austere climate. Seventy percent of our small and medium-sized nonprofits (average age of 34 years, average size of 65 staff members, average budget of $5+ million) that were impacted saw signs of recovery within two months, yet some organizations closer to Ground Zero are still struggling to survive. For every news report of an American Red Cross or Salvation Army flooded with donations, we found small human service organizations flooded with new demands at the same time facing staff and hour cuts. For every large cultural institution rethinking major capital projects, we found small museums and arts organizations cutting staff and programming.
While the initial external shock of the attacks altered almost all organizations’ operating climates to some degree, the intermediary impact of the bleak economy is starting to have rather targeted effects. For the city’s large nonprofit institutions, continued public and private support is easing the transition to the new economic regime ; for the small and mid-sized nonprofits, the safety net is less evident.
Inter-organizational Ties Prove Important
Contrary to popular press, some monies for recovery did become available relatively quickly. For nonprofits providing services, the September 11th Fund made both grants and loans available through three coordinating organizations with traditions of assessing organizational needs. The New York Community Trust, Seedco, and the Nonprofit Finance Fund were ready to cut checks for organizations with demonstrated need. But these resources were not highly publicized, so knowledge of such pools of funds became a critical factor in gaining access. One sure route to this knowledge was inter-organizational connections to those groups in the know—often umbrella groups.
Umbrella and other intermediary organizations immediately sent out communiqués to their networks through phone, fax and e-mail trees to assess damage and need. Umbrella organizations were able to match one organization’s needs (for temporary space, for instance) with another organization’s resources. Foundation grantees often had access to knowledge and additional funding from their foundation grantors. All of this left the unaffiliated small and medium-sized organizations still reeling from the immediate impact.
It could also be argued that organizational networking and affiliation might have provided respite from the very uneven change in client participation that we discovered in our study. Just under half of responding organizations (46 percent) reported a change in client attendance or participation rate. Almost 30 percent reported an increase in client participation, while three-fourths reported a decrease in client participation (the numbers do not add up to 100 percent because some respondents saw increases in some programs and decreases in others). Organizational resources did not necessarily match the new needs—the organizations seeing the most new clients were not necessarily those with enough staff to handle the volume. Affiliation and communication with other organizations could have further matched client demand to organizational supply. Indeed there were some feelings of ill will when the Red Cross tried to recruit new caseworkers without first exploring options of partnering with neighborhood nonprofits that had caseworkers available.
The short-term costs of non-affiliation clearly included delayed or no access to recovery resources—including funding and extra staffing. The long-term impact of non-affiliation continues to plague these organizations in issues as diverse as contracting negotiations, supplier negotiations, knowledge sharing and leverage, and advocacy. A major implication of these observations is that nonprofit organizations need to consider the benefits of affiliation, federation, networking, and knowledge sharing so they do not have to face crises alone.
Further Limitations : Tight Margins and Contract Restrictions
So what does the economic future look like for small and medium-sized neighborhood nonprofits ? It’s not pretty, according to the source. Almost 60 percent of the organizations in our sample agreed that the World Trade Center attack had had an economic impact on the agency. Another 28 percent weren’t sure (only 12 percent did not believe that the attacks had an economic impact). Almost 40 percent of organizations defined this economic impact as immediate loss of revenue, loss of fee-for-service, or low to no attendance. Decreased ability to fundraise was cited by 31 percent of organizations. Delays in funding and checks were cited by 33 percent of organizations—often leading to cash flow problems. Financial losses across our survey respondents were reported in the thousands, tens of thousands, and millions of dollars.
We should also note that since performance-based government contracts are reimbursed after services are provided, any interruption in such service can have tremendous financial impact. Two-thirds of the organizations in our survey stated they have such government contracts.
The dollar losses would be particularly hard-felt by those nonprofit organizations that operated on extremely tight margins even before September 11. Most nonprofits (some by contract) have little or no cash reserves or fund balances from year to year. Many report yearly deficits. Indeed, deficit spending is too often a characteristic of a relatively healthy nonprofit in a healthy economy.
Deficit spending with suspended cash flow (due to the absence of fee-paying clients or inability to complete line-item budgetary requirements for client volume), no access to bridge capital, and a deteriorating economy are three factors that when blended are a recipe for disaster. That recipe has been mixed many times in the nonprofit sector in New York City since September 11, with critical city human services at stake even as the demands from terror victims and recession victims grow.
Indeed, just over a third of our respondent organizations noted a new population in the community now seeking the organization’s services and over a quarter reported that these demands were for services not currently provided. These new clients’ needs include : jobs, housing, placement for orphans, counseling, mental health care, pastoral care, information, education, and resources in Spanish. With organizations unable to finesse the funds to cover the services, the big question becomes how to pay for services for which no likely contracts are forthcoming ? Loans and grants have traditionally provided the answers to these types of shortfalls and both have become available from some of the September 11 funds. The Nonprofit Finance Fund expanded its mission to allow for direct grants to cover organizational loss. Of course, loans have been more plentiful than outright grants and may turn out to be quite dangerous for small nonprofits due to unforgiving reimbursement structures.
So what recourse should these organizations have under the terms of the contracts that bind them ? For organizations to rebound from crisis, flexibility and organizational slack are keys to shock absorption. Contracts that stipulate by line items rarely allow the creative problem-solving necessary to respond quickly to turbulent environments and therefore end up leaving organizations vulnerable. Rethinking the structure of contracts to allow creative problem solving and the ability to respond to a rapidly changing environment is one concrete suggestion to come out of our inquiry. Couple this reform with increased access to forgiving loans, or better yet, pools of grant money, and nonprofits will find the road back to health a bit less daunting.
The Role of the Board in Crisis
Whose responsibility is it ultimately to get the organization back on the route to financial stability ? That’s where the board comes in. Boards will likely have to consider the impact of the crisis on mission, programs, funding, and so on. In fact, the Alliance For Nonprofit Governance published a comprehensive checklist for boards in the face of crisis that was available on their Web site within a few weeks of September 11.
Our survey results suggest that boards of our small and medium-sized neighborhood nonprofits may not have been as proactive as is recommended in times of crisis. While 38 percent of responding organizations responded that their boards had met as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center, that leaves over 60 percent whose boards did not meet as a direct result of this crisis. We expected that more boards would have met. When can an organization call on its board for help, if not in a crisis ? And if the board is to lead the organization through crisis, it must be there to help execute real-time decisions.
Gleaning Lessons
In a world where neighborhood-based nonprofit organizations increasingly operate close to or even over the margin, dependent on monies from on the one hand "clients" and on the other hand government contracts, it should not surprise us that these organizations were no more insulated from devastating market forces and concomitant rigid government demands and delays than their for-profit counterparts. Yet Congress has not been contemplating a bailout of the nonprofit sector. So what can be done short of a full-tilt government bailout ? We recount our recommendations at three levels : organizational, organizational network, and inter-sector.
Our research suggested to us that resources available to nonprofits (the various funding streams and personal relationships) are no proof against catastrophic events. Organizations that had existing affiliations to a larger network of organizations certainly used the connections to find assistance. A key lesson then is that nonprofit organizations need to consider the benefits of affiliation, federation, or networking as well as active governing boards so they do not have to face crises alone.
From the vantage point of organizational networks (including the affiliated organizations and nonprofit intermediaries, such as funders) we can make further suggestions. The resources available to nonprofits to recover from such substantial revenue loss are quite limited. The enumerated limitations, however, provide a blueprint for potential management and policy changes to better ready the sector for future disaster. Nonprofits cannot easily raise prices, productivity, roots (to move to greener pastures), or even debt. Loans to replace losses will be neither forthcoming nor fortuitous until we can more generously account for the true assets of the organizations and the sector. Further, in critical times, we must acknowledge that grants, and not loans, may be the only way to get nonprofits back on the road to sustainability. Intermediary organizations (foundations, associations) serving individual nonprofits or networks of nonprofits need to recognize this circumstance and be prepared to offer grants to ensure recovery.
Finally, our survey of organizations in crisis is also quite revealing of these same organizations in stasis. In stasis these nonprofit organizations are increasingly structured between the poles of for-profit client contracts and performance-based government contracts—truly inter-sector. Our neighborhood nonprofits increasingly operate like businesses, with earned income generated through fees for service (almost two-thirds in our survey) and performance-based contracts (two-thirds). The government finances few of the services provided under these contracts up front, so cash flow remains an ongoing problem in the absence of reserves and the ability to borrow.
Many performance-based contracts are designed for harder to serve populations. Nonprofits are now seeing new clients who do not meet traditional qualifications and the resources that organizations have cannot be used to serve this newer population. If, for example, an organization is seeing new clients with depression and anxiety, yet it does not have the funding (often contracts) to hire mental health professionals to deal with these new populations, then the organization must either borrow from other program areas and less restricted funding, or turn away these newcomers. Yet these organizations are the last to turn people away. In serving this new population, organizations are competing against themselves and having to make choices that they should not have to make. When funds are diverted from existing programs to service new immediate demands, the existing programs are handicapped.
What recourse should these organizations have under the terms of performance-based contracts ? Our final suggestion is to advocate for reforms in contracting regimes to afford organizations the critical resources to retool, recover, and respond quickly and creatively.
We hope that the information provided here will help inform the way we all think about building capacity within the sector—there is still much to learn. Just as management schools and theories are extolling the virtues of flexibility, networking, and organizational learning in readying organizations for quickly changing operating environments, nonprofits are finding themselves less able to adopt any of these practices. Certain characteristics of funding encourage and cause rigidity, such as the new performance contracting and the more longstanding traditions of providing highly compartmentalized funding and chronically overlooking the need for adequate organizational slack and infrastructure. As we have seen here, networking and flexibility keep organizations informed and more powerful with regard to managing the context in which they work.
Joint the discussion !
Endnotes
1. The full report, "The WTC Tragedy Ripple Effect Devastates Neighborhood Nonprofits," covers study methodology, frequencies of impact, covariates of impact, and an extended discussion of lessons gleaned. We received 123 usable surveys by November 10, approximately two months after impact, for a response rate of about 20 percent. The profile that emerges is one of neighborhood organizations largely founded in the 1960s with substantial numbers of staff employed to manage and administer government and fee-for-service contracts, in the name of providing essential human services to communities. For a complete methodology description see (www.newschool.edu/milano/reb...)
2. This survey is indebted to funding by the Packard Foundation and partnerships with New York’s Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, the Hispanic Federation, the NYC AIDS Housing Coalition, the Environmental Justice Community, Youth Organizations NYC, the Supportive Housing Network, and the Haitian American Alliance, all of whom gave generously of time and technology.
(back to text)
About the Authors
Rikki Abzug is an assistant professor of nonprofit management and Dennis Derryck is professor of professional practice at the Robert J. Milano School of Management and Urban Policy at the New School University located in New York City.
Copyright 2002. All rights reserved by Third Sector New England, Boston, MA. The Nonprofit Quarterly features innovative thinking and proven management practices in the nonprofit sector. For reprint permission or subscription information please e-mail subscriptions tsne.org.
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| par H. LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor, Boston
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| Diego Cevallos, Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), Mexico City.
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| Confédération internationale des syndicats libres, rapport
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| William Pratt, FAZ Weekly
Official describes first day as ‘relatively normal’ despite small demonstrations agaiinst Hartz IV law
The protest group had a major goal for its followers to achieve on Monday. ”Cripple all ‘job agencies’ and ‘personnel service agencies,’” it urged readers of an Internet site.
The group’s call was directed at one of the national government’s cornerstone labor-market reforms known as Hartz IV. The organizers planned to make their protest heard in the government’s labor offices in more than 40 cities on Monday. ”On this day, the disciplining, the disenfranchisement and the debasement of millions of jobless citizens will become bitter reality as a result of Hartz IV,” the group said.
But the call issued by the group known as ”Agency Shutdown” largely went unheeded as the issue that triggered huge demonstrations in the summer lost its drawing power. Government officials estimated that only 700 protesters gathered at branches of the Federal Labor Office across the country.
Officials had been planning for the worst around Germany. The branches were well guarded by police with dogs and clad in riot gear. In Berlin’s Wedding district, a working-class neighborhood known for its high unemployment, some of the approximately 200 demonstrators gathered at the branch got into shoving matches with officers when they tried to push their way into the building.
But, overall, few problems were reported. ”The new year is getting off to a relatively normal start,” said Heinrich Alt, a member of the Federal Labor Office’s board.
The source of the interest on Monday is an attempt by the coalition government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to bring new life to a labor market that averaged 4.381 million unemployed people last year, the highest total since 1997. The reform put together by Peter Hartz, the personnel director at Volkswagen, is based on the principle of ”support and pressure.”
The pressure side of the program involves the reduction of taxpayer-funded benefits paid to people out of work for more than 12 months to the level of welfare. This benefit will amount to €345 ($461) a month in the west and €331 in the east on top of money to pay the rent and heating costs. As another form of pressure, the law requires the unemployed to dig deeply into their savings before they become eligible for the payments. Roughly 2 million long-term unemployed people and about 1 million welfare recipients will receive the financial aid.
The system of support will come from a new emphasis by government officials on helping the unemployed find work. One official now will oversee about 150 job seekers instead of several hundred. But this system of support also includes a form of pressure. The unemployed person must accept any legal employment offered. People who refuse jobs face reduced benefits.
As a result of the changes, Economics Minister Wolfgang Clement expressed optimism. ”The trend reversal on the labor market that all of us want so much is now possible,” said Clement, a Social Democrat. And he forecast that the jobless rates would begin to sink by the second half of the year with the help of the world economy.
But Alt was not as hopeful in his prediction about the direction of the jobless figures, saying he did not expect to see a ”decisive move up or down” in the totals.
The major problem associated with the program’s launch was a software error that delayed the transfer of the money to some recipients. As a result, about 300 people had to pick up cash payments on Monday and the others received the money by bank transfer later in the day, said Frank-Jürgen Weise, the head of the Federal Labor Office.
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| Observatoire européen sur les relations industrielles
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| Observatoire européen des relations industrielles
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| Epilogue dans l’affaire Kasky contre Nike
L’affaire Nike-Kasky a trouvé un terme le 12 septembre 2003. Nike a annoncé avoir conclu un accord avec ce citoyen californien qui, depuis 98, poursuivait la compagnie pour publicité mensongère à propos d’une campagne de relations publiques sur les conditions de travail chez ses sous traitants.
L’affaire avait mobilisé de nombreuses entreprises puisqu’elle posait une question fondamentale : l’information sur la politique sociale et environnementale d’une entreprise peut-elle être assimilée à de la publicité et donc attaquée comme telle ? Dans un premier temps, les tribunaux californiens avaient donné raison à Nike mais la Cour suprême de l’Etat s’était prononcé en faveur de Mark Kasky en reconnaissant la légitimité de son action. Le groupe de " sportswear " avait alors saisi la Cour suprême au nom de la protection de la liberté d’expression des entreprises. Celle-ci s’était déclaré incompétente, en juillet 2003.
Trois mois plus tard, l’affaire se conclue par un accord entre les deux parties qui ont estimé de concert " qu’il est plus utile de renforcer les dispositifs de surveillance des conditions de travail chez les sous-traitants et d’améliorer ces conditions de travail que perdre encore temps et argent en procédure."
Nike s’est engagé à verser 1,5 million de dollars pour aider à la mise en place de programmes d’audits ainsi qu’à financer des programmes d’éducation et de crédits pour un minimum de 500 000 dollars, sur les deux prochaines années. L’intégralité des 1,5 million de dollars a été versée à la Fair Labor Association, une organisation américaine qui rassemble des entreprises, des universités, des associations de consommateurs et des ONG et dont la mission est de travailler sur l’évaluation des conditions de travail et l’amélioration des pratiques chez les sous-traitants de ses adhérents. Les dirigeants de cette organisation ont déclaré que " cette décision montre l’importance qu’il faut accorer à un contrôle indépendant des conditions de travail chez les sous-traitants. Elle va contribuer à apporter des améliorations concrètes pour les ouvrier de ces usines et elle est aussi bénéfique pour les consommateurs puisqu’elle va contribuer à améliorer le reporting dans ce domaine."
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| Observatoire européen sur les relations industrielles, septembre 2002
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| On the Department of Labor’s proposed overtime regulations
by Ross Eisenbrey
Senator Dorgan, thank you for inviting me to testify today. It’s an honor for me and for the Economic Policy Institute to present our views to you and to your colleagues.
I applaud your attempts to enact the Harkin amendment and to block the Department of Labor’s overtime proposal. The proposed regulation would be the biggest roll-back of worker rights in half a century and will have profound effects on the pay and work hours of millions of Americans.
When the Department of Labor issued its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at the end of March, we tried to understand how it could conclude that only 644,000 employees would lose their right to overtime pay. The proposal makes sweeping, radical changes in the law, but the regulatory analysis does not reflect them. We asked the Department and its contractor for explanations, but could not get answers to our questions.
So we analyzed the changes ourselves, with the help of a team of experts, and prepared an estimate for the effect of the proposed rule on a subset of the working population, employees in 78 of the total 257 occupational categories identified by the Department of Labor as having substantial numbers of white collar (office or non-manual) employees.
Our conclusions are very different from those of the Department. We estimate that in those 78 occupations, over 8 million workers will lose the right to overtime pay. We also discovered that the Department’s claim that 1.3 million low-income workers would benefit from the rule is false. The Department knows its claim is false, yet Department officials and their allies in Congress continue to cite it as if it were true.
Why do our numbers differ so greatly from what the Department of Labor has reported ? Briefly, we think the Department’s analysis has three major flaws :
1. The Department does not estimate how many employees will lose overtime protection, but rather only estimates how many employees who are currently receiving overtime pay will lose it. While approximately 80 or 90 million workers have overtime protection, only 11 or 12 million at any one time are actually working overtime and being paid for it. Because the overtime premium works as it was designed to, and discourages employers from assigning overtime to non-exempt workers, removing overtime protection will result in many employees working overtime who don’t work overtime now. Congress and the public should be concerned about the loss of overtime protection, not just the loss of overtime pay. The Department’s estimate that 644,000 employees will lose overtime pay implies that more than 5 million employees will lose overtime protection.
2. It fails to analyze the effect of most of the key changes in the regulations. DOL does not calculate how many employees will lose overtime protection because of the following changes :
The proposal eliminates the requirement that professionals and administrators consistently exercise independent judgment and discretion. DOL opinion letters and many court cases identify this as a key test in determining whether workers are the kind of professional or top administrator who should be exempt or have less authority and – however highly skilled or well-trained they might be – should have the right to overtime pay. See, for example, Hashop v. Rockwell Space Operations Co., 867 F. Supp. 1287 (S.D. Tex. 1994), involving space shuttle ground control instructors, and cases involving trucking company dispatchers and entry-level architects and engineers listed on page 24 of GAO’s September 1999 report, Fair Labor Standards Act : White Collar Exemptions in the Modern Workplace. Based on this requirement, DOL opinion letters have denied employers’ requests to exempt employees in a wide range of occupations, from executive secretaries and mortgage loan officers to engineering firm designers and human resource generalists.
The proposal eliminates the provision in current law that distinguishes between “staff” jobs that are exempt and “line” or “production” jobs that have overtime protection. Numerous DOL opinion letters and cases involving employees ranging from police and firefighters to paralegals and parole officers have denied employer attempts to exempt employees because they were non-exempt line or production workers. See, for example, Dalheim v. KDFW-TV, 918 F.2d 1220 (5th Cir. 1990), where the court found that producers and other employees in the departments responsible for the production of newscasts were non-exempt.
The proposal undermines the educational requirements that are a key part of the professional exemption. Whereas current law has, in rare instances, permitted employers to deny overtime protection to a highly skilled and experienced employee who does not have the advanced degree generally required to qualify as a learned professional, the proposal allows employers to substitute work experience “for all or part of the educational requirement.” Rather than exempting what the Department has termed the “occasional chemist,” in reality the proposal allows every employee working in a professional field (and the number of such fields is constantly expanding) to be deemed a professional and denied overtime pay if they have enough work experience. DOL assumes in its regulatory analysis that six years of job tenure is the equivalent of a college degree and estimates that 44 out of 100 non-degreed employees working in the learned professions will be exempt. DOL neglects to calculate how many such employees there are or which professions are affected and to what extent.
The primary duty test, which applies to each of the three exemptions, is rewritten to make it easier for employers to exempt their workers. Under the proposal, exempt executives, for example, must have only “a” primary duty that is executive. Current law requires that executive tasks must be “the” primary duty of the exempt employee. Moreover, the 50% “rule of thumb” is eliminated, allowing employers to label a small part of an employee’s job the “primary duty.”
The new “highly compensated” test will allow employers to deny overtime pay to employees whose primary duty is not administrative, professional, or executive. Rather, employees who perform any “office or non-manual work” and are guaranteed “total compensation” (not necessarily a salary) of at least $65,000 a year, will be exempt if the employee performs any exempt duty or responsibility. Thus, any “highly compensated” employee who does “work in areas such as tax, finance, accounting, auditing, insurance, quality control, purchasing, procurement, advertising, marketing, research, safety and health, personnel management, human resources, employee benefits, labor relations, public relations, government relations and similar activities” will be automatically exempt.
3. The Department did not apply the changes in the rule on an occupation-by-occupation basis using the methodology established by the Department and GAO in 1999. No attempt was made to estimate the effect of the rule changes on social workers, paralegals, respiratory therapists, reporters and news announcers, bank loan officers, or any of the other scores of occupations DOL examined in detail in the past.
In the months since the comment period closed, the Department has said a number of things about the effects of the proposed rule that downplay the extent to which the proposal will weaken or eliminate overtime protections but which are at odds with its text and with the regulatory analysis.
Most notably, the Department has argued that the proposed rule makes no changes in the professional exemption that will affect nurses and other health technicians, no changes that will affect police officers, no changes that will affect cooks, and none that will affect secretaries. Each of these claims is wrong.
To be exempt, nurses, like all professionals, have had to meet strict educational requirements under current law. Under the proposed rule, as both the text of the rule and the regulatory analysis make plain, work experience may be substituted “for all or part of the educational requirements” for any learned profession, including nursing. Once an employer determines that an R.N. with only a two-year degree has substantially the same knowledge as an R.N. with a four-year degree, it will be free under the proposed rule to exempt him or her and refuse to pay overtime.
It will also be much easier to establish that “a” primary duty of a nurse is administrative or executive. An otherwise non-exempt nurse who spends 90 percent of her time performing patient care could still be found to have a primary duty that is administrative or executive, especially since the administrative duty tests have been substantially weakened.
Police sergeants and other low-level police supervisors are likely to be exempted as executives under the proposed rule. The “staff vs. line” dichotomy that helped establish the overtime rights of police officers has been eliminated. Overtime exemptions under section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA are not based on job titles or broad occupational class ; rather, they depend on the tasks and functions each individual employee performs. Each officer’s duties will be reexamined if the proposed rule becomes law, and if but one primary duty is determined to be supervisory or administrative, the officer will lose overtime protection. Thus, the fact that a sergeant performs non-manual work like walking the beat during 90 percent of his work hours will not matter if he has a primary duty of supervising two other officers or performing non-exempt administrative work.
Under the proposal, highly compensated police officers will not even have to have a primary duty of performing exempt work. If they perform any “office or non-manual work” and perform any one exempt duty of an executive, administrator, or professional — no matter how little of their time is spent doing it — they will lose the right to overtime pay.
Police departments have sometimes tried to exempt officers who teach in police academies, but have been prevented because the instructors did not exercise sufficient independent judgment and discretion in how they taught their courses. Because the proposed rule eliminates the requirement for independent judgment and discretion, those officers will lose their right to overtime pay under the proposed rule.
The Department claims that under the proposal, “only chefs with a college degree in culinary arts qualify as professionals.” But the rule clearly states — and the regulatory analysis supports — that work experience or training that comes from non-college sources can be substituted for all or part of the educational requirements.
Likewise, the proposal encourages employers to treat all of the various medical technicians, from respiratory therapists and physical therapists to physician assistants and radiology technicians as exempt professionals even if they do not have four-year college degrees in their professional field. The proposed rule explicitly allows physician assistants with 2,000 hours of patient care experience and one year of professional course work to be exempted as professionals.
Finally, the Department has claimed that even highly compensated “teamsters,” autoworkers, plumbers, carpenters, and various other construction workers “will maintain their entitlement to overtime” because their work is not office or non-manual work. Some members of these trades and occupations do, however, perform office or non-manual work during at least part of their workday or workweek. A tool-and-die maker who designs and draws up plans for a new tool, for example, performs non-manual work. The proposal does not set any minimum percentage of time that must be spent doing non-manual work to be subject to exemption and loss of overtime pay under the highly compensated test.
Most of the public’s attention — and Congress’ as well, has focused on how the rule will eliminate overtime protection for nurses, firefighters, and police officers. Most of its impact, however, will hit office workers in the insurance industry, the financial industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and other industries that don’t catch the public imagination. To give you an idea of the scope of these sweeping changes, I have attached a partial listing of the soon-to-be exempt occupations identified by employers in comments submitted to the Department after the proposal was issued. We excerpted this list from just a few of the thousands of comments submitted ; the ultimate impact will be much broader.
Because the Department’s regulatory impact analysis is flawed in so many ways, its numbers have no credibility. EPI’s study demonstrates that the paychecks and work hours of millions of workers are at stake in this rulemaking. If the Department wanted to preserve the current law’s overtime protections, it would have to withdraw this rule and rewrite it. The Department should eliminate loopholes and clarify the rules in ways that preserve or expand overtime protection, rather than weaken it. There is no reason for workers to sacrifice their right to one of this country’s bedrock entitlements.
The Harkin amendment, which permits changes in the rule to guarantee additional overtime protection for low-income workers, while prohibiting changes that would eliminate protection provided by current law, is clearly the best answer for America’s working men and women.
Ross Eisenbrey is vice president and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
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| Opinion pieces and speeches by EPI staff and associates.
[ THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN THE MONTEREY COUNTY HERALD ON OCTOBER 1, 2004. ]
Phony ’flextime’
By Lonnie Golden
Taking away overtime pay rights from potentially millions of Americans was just the first pitch. Now the Bush administration is launching another pre-emptive strike on American workplace standards. This time, it is promoting proposed legislation in Congress it claims would give ’flextime’ and ’comp time’ to employees. One big problem — the bills being promoted by the president’s campaign have virtually nothing to do with true ’flextime,’ nor would they deliver more time off.
Flextime is a work scheduling arrangement by which employees are granted some discretion to set their own daily starting and finishing times of the work day, usually around core hours when all employees must be present. This flexibility is invaluable to employees with children in school or day care, for example.
But one of the bills in Congress proposes a ’50-30’ biweekly ’workweek.’ This would allow employers to schedule their hourly workers for up to 50 hours in a given week and not owe time-and-a-half pay for any of the 10 hours of overtime work, provided the same workers are scheduled for no more than 30 hours in the following week. Not only would this exacerbate the current trend of most workers’ wages falling behind inflation but it is also more likely to introduce unwelcome irregularity to employees’ lives. The proposed bill does not grant employees any power to determine which additional days or hours they will work or have off, or even when they start or stop their workday.
The ’flex’ in this proposal all flows to the employer.
Both Senate and House versions of proposed legislation come with sheep’s clothing — seemingly innocuous provisions that would allow private sector employers to substitute compensatory time off, or comp time, for overtime pay. Unfortunately, any cost-conscious employer will soon discover it can limit labor costs and pump up profit statements by shifting overtime work to those willing to accept time off instead of pay. Worse, employers will be legally entitled to force employees to use comp time credits at times they don’t wish to.
Worse still, the proposed bills allow employers to veto an employee’s use of accumulated comp time credits if they feel it would somehow interfere with business operations. A worker will be out of luck if the year ends and the employer has not yet found a ’convenient’ time for the worker to use his accumulated hours. Making work schedules more employee-friendly is a goal that policy-makers should pursue. They could ensure that overtime is limited in both length and frequency and is entirely voluntary (except, of course, in emergency situations) by granting workers the right to refuse overtime and to receive some reasonable advance notice.
Some options are available that would encourage flexible daily work scheduling. Bush’s version isn’t one of them.
Lonnie Golden is an research associate with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
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| Augustin Landier et David Thesmar, Telos-EU, juin 2006.
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| Benoît Romain, 5 septembre 2005, 4 pages.
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| Anne-Bénédicte Hoffner, La Croix
Le débat sur les délocalisations ne faiblit pas. Hier, l’Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (OFCE), organisme de recherche lié à l’Institut d’études politiques et présidé par Jean-Paul Fitoussi, présentait le dernier numéro de sa revue trimestrielle, entièrement consacré au triptyque : « Attractivité, délocalisations et concurrence fiscale ». Ses chercheurs y livrent une analyse assez détonante, dans un contexte où les appels aux assouplissements du code du travail se multiplient. À leurs yeux, tous les pays d’Europe - y compris les nouveaux entrants - « ont à perdre à la baisse du niveau de protection sociale et des revenus » à l’Ouest.
Comme à leur habitude, les chercheurs de l’OFCE ont renouvelé leurs critiques contre ceux qui voient dans le chômage français ou allemand un problème « structurel ». Le sénateur UC Jean Arthuis, qui présentait, il y a quelques jours, la version actualisée de son fameux rapport de 1993 sur les délocalisations, est de ceux-là. « La panne française en matière d’emplois et sa vulnérabilité face aux délocalisations tiennent avant tout au retard pris dans les grandes réformes structurelles et à une obsolescence, sinon de son modèle, du moins de certaines de ses composantes qui l’empêchent d’être performant », écrit-il dans son rapport. Il se fonde pour cela sur une étude commandée à un cabinet de conseil : les chefs d’entreprise interrogés indiquent en effet que « le premier motif de délocalisation est lié, avant le coût du travail, à un besoin de flexibilité impossible à satisfaire en France ». Le sénateur, président de la commission des finances, recommande donc un assouplissement du droit du travail et, en corollaire, « une profonde modernisation des aides » et de l’ANPE.
À l’inverse, l’OFCE appelle les pays européens à renoncer à la concurrence entre eux et à ne pas « se résigner à un partage des activités » : aux pays de l’Est les activités employant une main-d’oeuvre qualifiée et à ceux de l’Ouest celles intégrant des hautes technologies. « Les tenants de ce modèle considèrent que les salariés qui perdent leur emploi bénéficieront en échange de produits importés à bas prix, et maintiendront donc leur pouvoir d’achat », résume Henri Sterdyniak, directeur du département consacré à la mondialisation. Problème : les victimes de restructurations ne peuvent retrouver d’emploi, les activités non qualifiées ayant quitté le pays, quand, en haut de l’échelle, « les plus aisés, en faisant jouer la concurrence fiscale », font peser un risque sur le financement de l’assurance-chômage.
S’ils partagent avec Jean Arthuis l’idée selon laquelle il convient de maintenir en Europe de l’Ouest des secteurs employant de la main-d’oeuvre non qualifiée, les chercheurs de l’OFCE s’en distinguent sur les moyens à mettre en oeuvre. Son président, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, s’insurge contre ce « syllogisme selon lequel le problème des pays riches est d’être riches ». « Le problème n’est pas celui de la protection sociale, assure-t-il. Même si les pays d’Europe centrale et orientale avaient le même dispositif que le nôtre, leurs coûts de production resteraient bien moins élevés. » Le plus dangereux pour la France ou l’Allemagne serait donc de se lancer dans une concurrence avec leurs voisins de l’Est, en réduisant soit les salaires soit les taux d’imposition. Directeur du nouveau département de recherche consacré à l’innovation et la concurrence, Jean-Luc Gaffard en est convaincu : « La flexibilité des rémunérations n’est pas porteuse de croissance mais plutôt de récession en raison de son impact sur la demande. De même, affaiblir l’offre publique pèse sur la croissance. »
Les pays européens doivent, au contraire, définir une politique économique ambitieuse et surtout « concertée » : pôles de compétitivité pour rendre « coûteuses » les délocalisations, aides ciblées aux PME innovantes, ou encore soutien aux secteurs en difficulté. « S’ils veulent rester riches, les pays riches doivent avoir une stratégie », résume le président de l’OFCE. Et si, comme au Royaume-Uni, ils font plutôt le choix d’une politique libérale fondée sur plus de flexibilité, ils ne doivent pas oublier « que la croissance est la condition de son acceptabilité.
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| Le quotidien de L’Expansion, 20 septembre 2005.
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| Le Monde
Face aux difficultés économiques croissantes, le chancelier propose une réduction drastique des durées et montants des indemnités. Les syndicats dénoncent un "démontage social".
Son entourage l’avait déjà annoncé, mais Angela Merkel, présidente du Parti chrétien-démocrate (CDU), l’a encore confirmé : le groupe parlementaire que forment son parti et la CSU bavaroise votera unanimement contre les projets de réforme de Gerhard Schröder dont le Bundestag a commencé l’examen vendredi 17 octobre. En face, la mobilisation n’est pas moins résolue : après bien des débats internes, sociaux-démocrates et Verts voteront en faveur des textes gouvernementaux, comme un seul homme ; quant au chancelier, il s’est fait représenter par Jacques Chirac au sommet européen pour être là. Compte tenu des intentions de vote exprimées, et sous réserve que tous les députés soient présents lors du scrutin, la majorité gouvernementale devrait, cette fois, n’être que de neuf petites voix.
Les deux projets de loi les plus importants visent à réformer le marché du travail et le mécanisme de distribution des allocations chômage. Avec la réforme de la santé votée il y a trois semaines, et, bientôt, celle des retraites, ces deux derniers sujets font depuis des mois l’objet de constantes discussions au sein d’une société qui voit avec inquiétude augmenter les difficultés, les déficits publics et le taux de chômage. Les députés sont aujourd’hui invités à adopter une réforme de l’Office fédéral du travail (l’ANPE allemande qui, pour la circonstance, changera de nom) afin que le nouvel organisme puisse traiter plus énergiquement les dossiers des chômeurs, les inciter, sinon les forcer, à prendre un emploi qu’ils pouvaient jusqu’ici refuser.
Désormais, les allocations chômage pourront être amputées de 30 % s’ils maintiennent leur refus ; sous certaines conditions d’âge, l’indemnité pourra même être totalement supprimée ; elle pourra, en revanche, être partiellement maintenue si le chômeur accepte un "petit boulot" mal payé.
LE PATRIMOINE DES CHÔMEURS
Un autre texte prévoit de raccourcir la durée de couverture des allocations ordinaires pour chômage de longue durée ; au-delà, les allocations de relais, qui existaient jusqu’alors, seront réservées aux "chômeurs dans le besoin" et alignées sur le montant de l’aide sociale, soit 345 euros à l’Ouest et 331 euros à l’Est. Désormais, l’évaluation du patrimoine du chômeur, corrigée de diverses variables liées à l’âge ou à la nature du patrimoine (logement, assurance-vie ou assurance soins, plan épargne, etc.), entrera dans le calcul de l’indemnité.
Toutes ces conditions auront été âprement débattues - et combattues - par une partie des députés sociaux-démocrates qui ont déployé maints efforts pour sauvegarder la protection sociale. Une obligation de soutien réciproque entre parents, enfants et même petits-enfants avait ainsi été évoquée en cas de chômage de longue durée d’un membre de la famille. La disposition a finalement été abandonnée. Pour s’attirer le soutien de ceux qui, au sein du groupe parlementaire social-démocrate, renâclaient, le gouvernement a également amendé son texte de façon à ce que les employeurs ne puissent pas obliger les chômeurs les plus démunis, menacés de perdre leurs prestations sociales, à accepter un emploi à un salaire de dumping.
Ces garanties, qu’à l’aile gauche du SPD on nomme parfois un "pis-aller", sont précisément ce qui justifie le rejet du texte par les députés de la CDU. Pour la majorité d’entre eux, l’Allemagne souffre de rigidités sociales et bureaucratiques aggravées par la mauvaise conjoncture. Si les barrières protectrices qui ont fait l’Etat-providence allemand sautent, pensent les conservateurs, les chômeurs seront forcés de prendre un travail, et le patronat, délivré de contraintes financières dissuasives, sera plus enclin à créer des emplois. Du côté des syndicats et de la gauche sociale-démocrate, le problème n’est pas de limiter les prestations sociales mais, seule solution pour contrer l’explosion des coûts, de créer des emplois.
Or, constatent ses dirigeants, les nombreux avantages accordés ces dernières années au patronat ne l’ont pas incité à créer des emplois ; de la même façon, la baisse des prestations versées aux sans-emploi n’a pas empêché le chômage d’augmenter.
Entre ces conceptions radicalement divergentes, Gerhard Schröder navigue à l’estime, modifiant des structures économico-sociales héritées d’une période confortable révolue, tout en agissant avec circonspection. Cette prudence relative n’est cependant pas toujours convaincante. Mercredi, devant le congrès du syndicat de la métallurgie IG Metall, le chancelier, venu crânement défendre son programme, s’est fait copieusement huer.
Le lendemain, le président du syndicat, Jürgen Peters, menaçait, sur un ton particulièrement violent, de "ne plus être disponible en tant que partenaire politique" si les sociaux-démocrates continuaient sur la voie de ce que les syndicats dénoncent comme un "démontage social".
Georges Marion
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| REPORT : 2003 PROXY SEASON EXPECTED TO SET RECORDS,
WITH CEO PAY AND GLOBAL WARMING AMONG TOP ISSUES
Continuing Tide of Shareholder Advocacy Felt in Full After Business Scandals ;
Labor, Religious Groups Help Blur Distinction Between "Traditional" and "Social" Resolutions.
WASHINGTON, D.C.//February 12, 2003///The 2003 proxy season is on track to be a record year for shareholder advocacy "in terms of the number of resolutions submitted, the number of resolutions likely to come to vote and, possibly, the level of shareholder support. As of February 1, at least 862 shareholder proposals had been filed at publicly traded U.S. companies, compared with just 802 in all of 2002, according to an Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC) and Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) report issued today by IRRC, ICCR, the Social Investment Forum and CERES.
Among the fastest-growing issue areas for resolutions include concerns about excessive CEO compensation, global warming, dividing the positions of CEO and chairman, and sexual orientation anti-bias policies. Entitled "2003 Shareholder Proxy Season Overview : Social and Corporate Governance Resolution Trends," the new report notes that filings of corporate governance resolutions rose sharply to 625 by early February 2003, compared with 529 in all of 2002. At least 237 social and environmental resolutions had been filed by mid-February, up slightly from the number at this point last year.
IRRC Director of Social Issues Services Meg Voorhees said : "In what is a major trend, shareholder advocates concerned with their portfolio companies’ social and environmental performance increasingly are reaching the conclusion that these policies cannot be considered in isolation from the companies’ governance practices and structure. This is evident in relation to such issues as CEO pay and global warming."
"We see that 2003 is shaping up as the most active year ever for religious shareholder advocates in the United States," said ICCR Executive Director Pat Wolf. "So far this year, members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility have filed 140 resolutions with 92 companies."
SIF President Timothy Smith said : "It is clear that 2003 will be remembered as the year when investors decided to stand up and be counted, using their voice and vote to call for strengthened corporate governance and solid corporate citizenship. Investors are moving from passive holders of stock to becoming active and responsible owners … understanding the leverage they have as individuals and institutions who have invested their capital and faith in these companies."
"Climate-change risk is not just an ’environmental’ issue ; it is directly related to the bottom-line viability of several leading American industries, including oil, utilities and autos," said CERES Executive Director Mindy Lubber. "In the wake of scandals at Enron and other corporations, investors are now wide awake to the issue of risk, and the awareness that all too many companies are not doing enough to assess, report and mitigate these dangers to shareholder value. The increasing shareholder focus on climate-change issues shows how such ’hidden risks’ can no longer be swept under the carpet by unresponsive managers."
SOCIAL/ENVIRONMENTAL RESOLUTIONS
The leading categories for social shareholder advocacy in 2003 are the environment (particularly global warming), where 58 proposals have been filed so far, and global labor standards, with 27 proposals filed. Concerns over healthcare and drug development, equal employment opportunity (particularly the push for sexual orientation anti-bias policies), and tobacco have inspired numerous resolutions this year. New proxy issues for 2003 relate to the global AIDS crisis and sustainability reporting. This year, religious investors affiliated with ICCR once again have filed proposals related to "glass ceiling" concerns at major corporations and at defense contractors concerning their foreign military sales and involvement in space weapons programs.
Key trends among social/environmental resolutions include :
Climate change. Environmental resolutions totaled 58 as of late-January 2003, compared to about 60 at the same point in 2002. The most growth was seen in relation to global warming-related resolutions, which have climbed from the 21 filed last year to 25 so far this year. Religious investors, investment firms specializing in socially responsible investment, public pension funds, and environmental groups have filed the proposals asking a variety of firms "including the leaders in such industry categories as autos, utilities and oil companies "to take action on climate change issues.
Sexual orientation anti-bias policies. Galvanized by the November 2002 majority vote at Cracker Barrel, shareholder proponents of sexual orientation anti-bias policies have filed 19 proposals so far for 2003 meetings, up from nine in 2002. New York City pension funds proposed 11 such resolutions for 2003, six of which have already been withdrawn after the funds determined that the companies involved had revised their policies.
Support level for social/environmental resolutions. If last year is an indicator, 2003 could see more unusually high votes for key social proposals. In 2002, average support for social issue proposals climbed to 9.4 percent, the highest level in 10 years. More strikingly, over 14 percent of the proposals voted on got at least 15 percent support, the highest proportion in at least a decade. Proposals that did particularly well in 2002 were those asking companies to expand or report on their fair employment policies or to report on their greenhouse gas emissions.
For details on 2003 social/environmental resolutions, see the full text of the report at http://www.hastingsgroup.com/2003Sh....
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE SHAREHOLDER RESOLUTIONS IN 2003
The business scandals of 2002 did not significantly affect the number of proposals submitted last year since most proxy submission deadlines already had passed by the time the most notorious cases came to public attention. But investors’ ire was clearly reflected in high support levels during 2002 for virtually all proposals "including several being voted on for the first time. Proponents this year, especially labor union funds, are on a pace to break all records. With the SEC sensitive about shareholder concerns, it is expected that there will be fewer omissions and more proposals negotiated or voted upon in 2003 "and perhaps another record-setting year in voting support.
Excessive CEO compensation. Last year, resolutions related to traditional anti-takeover and board issues accounted for most governance resolutions "57 percent of all the proposals submitted. So far in 2003, executive pay issues are the overwhelming focus, accounting for a remarkable 44 percent of all the governance proposals. Last year’s campaign to convince companies to expense stock options garnered substantial support "averaging 29.3 percent "at two companies that brought it to a vote (Clayton Homes and SWS Group). The SEC has reversed its original ruling that the proposal could be omitted on ordinary business grounds, and an astounding 101 such resolutions have been filed this year, almost exclusively by labor funds.
Separation of chairman and CEO positions. While proposals related to director independence currently lag last year’s numbers, a surge has emerged in resolutions asking companies to separate the positions of chairman and CEO "27 have been filed so far, compared with just four for all of 2002. Three of those four were voted on last year, receiving average support of 35.8 percent of votes cast. The 2003 proposals have been submitted primarily by the AFL-CIO and various labor union funds, and some individuals.
Offshore tax havens. A new proposal this year asks several companies that are currently incorporated in offshore tax havens to reincorporate in the U.S. They include Carnival, Cooper Industries Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand, McDermott International, Schlumberger Ltd., Transocean and Tyco International. All the resolutions have been submitted by labor-related funds.
For details on 2003 corporate governance resolutions, see the full text of the report at http://www.hastingsgroup.com/2003Sh....
ABOUT THE GROUPS
The Investor Responsibility Research Center (http://www.irrc.com) is the world’s leading source of impartial, independent research on corporate governance, proxy voting and corporate responsibility issues. IRRC’s mission is to provide the highest quality research on companies and shareholders worldwide. Today, in fulfillment of that mission, IRRC provides research, software products and consulting services to over 500 subscribers and clients representing institutional investors, corporations, law firms and other organizations. Founded in 1972, IRRC has more than 80 professional staff members. IRRC offers guidance and advice on proxy voting, enabling clients to make informed, considered decisions that reflect their investment philosophies. IRRC also offers company profile information for portfolio screening and other purposes.
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (http://www.iccr.org) has been a leader of the corporate social responsibility movement for the last three decades. ICCR is an association of 275 faith-based institutional investors, including national denominations, religious communities, pension funds, endowments, hospital corporations, economic development funds and publishing companies. ICCR and its members press companies to be socially and environmentally responsible. Each year ICCR-member religious institutional investors sponsor over 100 shareholder resolutions on major social and environmental issues. The combined portfolio value of ICCR’s member organizations is estimated to be $110 billion.
CERES (http://www.ceres.org) is the leading U.S. coalition of environmental, investor, and advocacy groups working together for a sustainable future. The CERES Coalition is a network of over 80 organizations that includes investors, advisors, and analysts representing over $300 billion in invested capital.
The Social Investment Forum (http://www.socialinvest.org) is the national trade association for the social investment industry. It is dedicated to promoting the concept, practice, and growth of socially and environmentally responsible investing. The Forum’s more than 500 members include financial planners, community banks, mutual fund companies, research companies, foundations, and community investing institutions. The Shareholder Action Network (SAN) is a project of the Social Investment Forum in cooperation with Coop America. SAN (http://www.shareholderaction.org) serves as a clearinghouse of information and analysis to the socially responsible investing community on shareholder advocacy.
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| Peer Review Programme, Bonn
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| Le nouveau président de l’Europe a mis les pieds dans le plat. A l’occasion du lancement de la présidence britannique de l’Union, hier à Londres, Tony Blair a annoncé qu’il convoquerait, à l’automne, un sommet extraordinaire consacré à l’avenir du « modèle social eu ropéen ». Les chefs d’État et de gouvernement des Vingt-Cinq seront invités à Londres pour en discuter. Cette réunion informelle, dont la date exacte n’a pas été arrêtée, devrait supplanter le sommet d’automne habituel. « J’aurais pu trouver une entrée en matière plus facile, a admis Tony Blair, mais il me semble que ce sujet est au coeur du problème européen. Arrêtons de tourner autour du pot. »
Le premier ministre britannique a demandé, hier, à la Commission européenne, de rédiger un rapport sur la compatibilité du modèle social européen avec une économie de plus en plus globalisée. Ce document servira de base de discussion pour les dirigeants européens. Londres a demandé qu’il soit accompagné d’un rapport d’impact sur l’élargissement et l’économie européenne.
D’après Tony Blair, le modèle social européen, censé protéger les emplois, « ne marche plus ». La preuve : il a engendré 20 millions de chômeurs dans l’Union. « Il faut le modifier », estime-t-il. En lançant le débat, la Grande-Bretagne s’en prend indirectement à la France et l’Allemagne, deux grands États membres dotés de modèles sociaux ardus à réformer. « C’est difficile, reconnaît Tony Blair. Le chancelier Gerhard Schröder a essayé en Allemagne... En France, Jean-Pierre Raffarin a eu des ennuis parce qu’il a voulu réformer. Je crois qu’il vaut mieux agir collectivement. Ce sera plus efficace. » Fier de la réussite de son pays, notamment de la baisse du chômage, Tony Blair propose de devenir le guide des réformes sur le continent. « Je suis le président de l’Europe », a-t-il répété plusieurs fois hier, devant les commissaires, comme s’il devait se pincer pour y croire. « J’ai une mission, une responsabilité, je vais faire de mon mieux pour l’accomplir », leur a-t-il promis.
En cette période de crise, de tension maximale entre Paris et Londres, aborder le continent par le biais de l’Europe sociale n’est pas une garantie de succès. D’autant que Tony Blair a tendance à occulter l’acquis de la révolution « thatchérienne » dans sa réussite. S’il pose les bonnes questions sur l’avenir de l’Europe, en répétant que le problème du non en France ou au Pays-Bas n’est pas dû au « texte de la Constitution, mais au contexte », Blair occulte la faiblesse de sa présidence : l’absence de budget pour les années 2007-2013. Son veto au dernier compromis sur le budget, lors du Conseil européen de la mi-juin, reste dans les esprits. Les nouveaux États membres lui en veulent. « Pourquoi tout cet argent pour l’Afrique et pas pour l’Europe ? », interrogent-ils par médias interposés.
« Pourquoi cet attachement à un chèque de quatre milliards pour vous qui êtes si riches ? » La faiblesse de la présidence britannique se situe là. Un accord sur le budget n’est pas garanti dans les six mois.
Venue au grand complet à Londres, hier, la Commission a renouvelé son appel à un accord urgent sur les perspectives financières. « Il nous faut un accord pour éviter la paralysie de l’Europe, surmonter la crise, et garantir nos politiques clés », a insisté José Manuel Barroso. « Dans une Union à Vingt-Cinq, personne ne peut imposer son point de vue aux autres, a-t-il poursuivi. Je demande à tous les dirigeants européens de renoncer à leurs réflexes nationalistes, de faire des compromis. Sinon, aucun accord ne sera possible. » Debout à ses côtés, Tony Blair, lui a rétorqué, moqueur : « Bien essayé, José Manuel ! »
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| Philippe Ricard, Le Monde
BRUXELLES de notre bureau européen - La « stratégie de Lisbonne », qui porte l’ambition de faire de l’Union européenne la région la plus compétitive du monde d’ici à 2010, continue de susciter une grande cacophonie parmi les Vingt-Cinq. Les chefs d’Etat et de gouvernement ont confirmé, vendredi 5 novembre à Bruxelles, dans les conclusions du Conseil, leur intention de procéder, lors de leur sommet de printemps, au début de 2005, à la révision à mi-parcours de cette stratégie décidée en 2000.
La nouvelle Commission européenne, sous la présidence de José Manuel Durao Barroso, devra faire des propositions dès le mois de janvier en tenant compte du rapport que vient de rendre l’ancien premier ministre social-démocrate des Pays-Bas, Wim Kok. Mais ce rapport, qui a tenté de ménager toutes les susceptibilités, suscite de nombreuses critiques.
Le premier ministre néerlandais, Jan Peter Balkenende (centre droit), a affirmé que « la croissance et l’emploi sont au coeur du processus ». Mais ce constat partagé par tous masque des divergences multiples, qui se sont aggravées avec l’élargissement de l’UE, le 1er mai. « Il existe deux sensibilités qui s’opposent clairement », estime un diplomate : d’un côté, les pays libéraux, comme la Grande-Bretagne, les Pays-Bas, la plupart des nouveaux adhérents d’Europe centrale, qui pourraient se contenter d’une approche centrée sur la compétitivité économique ; de l’autre, la France, l’Allemagne, l’Italie et l’Espagne, la Grèce, partisans d’une démarche plus sociale. En 2000, le lancement de la « stratégie de Lisbonne » avait été le fruit d’un compromis entre l’approche libérale de Tony Blair et le volontarisme social de Lionel Jospin, les premiers ministres britannique et français. Quatre ans après, malgré un bilan très mitigé, la remise en question de cet équilibre suscite des réserves : « Certains s’en prennent à l’orientation libérale des discussions en cours, tandis que pour d’autres, cette réorientation est équilibrée, voire courageuse », indique un haut fonctionnaire de la Commission.
LES OBJECTIONS DE M. CHIRAC
Jacques Chirac a multiplié les objections. Pour le président français, « il faudrait compléter et enrichir cette réflexion en préservant mieux l’équilibre de ces trois composantes : économique, sociale et environnementale ». La France - et l’Allemagne, dans une moindre mesure - veulent mettre l’accent sur la politique industrielle, une dimension quasi absente des propositions de M. Kok : il s’agit, dit M. Chirac, de « lutter contre les délocalisations [et] d’affirmer la vocation au développement d’une industrie moderne en Europe ». Paris, associé à Berlin, Madrid et Stockholm, plaide en faveur d’un « pacte européen pour la jeunesse », alors que l’agenda de Lisbonne insiste sur l’urgence d’inciter les personnes âgées à travailler davantage : pour l’occasion, M. Chirac s’est rapproché de trois gouvernements de gauche : Suède, Allemagne et Espagne.
Tandis que Wim Kok conseille de se concentrer sur quatorze objectifs concrets, contre plus d’une centaine à ce jour, plusieurs délégations ont proposé d’élargir la problématique. Wolfgang Schüssel, le chancelier autrichien, a regretté, lors des débats, que « personne ne parle des politiques macro-économiques ». Les Allemands, sans être très précis, souhaitent aussi lier la relance du processus de Lisbonne à la réforme en cours du pacte de stabilité et de croissance : contributeurs net au budget communautaire, ils ont suggéré de déduire du calcul des déficits publics les sommes versées à l’Union par les Etats membres.
Autre sujet susceptible de diviser les esprits : comment obliger les Etats à tenir le cap, alors que les capitales ont eu la plus grande peine à concrétiser les engagements communautaires ? Sans parler de sanctions, le rapport Kok suggère de renforcer le rôle de la Commission, qui serait chargée d’évaluer chaque année les plans nationaux d’action élaborés par les capitales. Bruxelles pourrait être en mesure de classer les Etats membres, selon l’ampleur de leurs réformes. Néanmoins, l’idée d’un « pointage » régulier est rejetée par le Luxembourgeois Jean-Claude Juncker et par l’Allemand Gerhard Schröder : pour le chancelier, qui a bien du mal, dans son pays, à mettre en oeuvre les réformes de l’« agenda 2010 », ce classement reviendrait à donner des munitions à l’opposition.
A l’inverse, le premier ministre belge, Guy Verhofstadt, considère qu’il « faut une méthode plus contraignante ». Romano Prodi, le président sortant de la Commission, estime que celle-ci doit avoir davantage de pouvoir de coercition. Dans le même ordre d’idées, son successeur, José Manuel Durao Barroso, souhaite conforter les marges de manoeuvre de l’exécutif européen : l’ancien premier ministre portugais a exhorté ses anciens pairs à « reconnaître son rôle moteur » pour mener à bien ce vaste chantier qui, avec celui des perspectives financières de l’Union, va dominer le début de son mandat.
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| US Retailers Back Import Ban on Burma
By Edward Alden
Financial Times
April 15, 2003
US clothing makers and retailers announced on Tuesday their support for an "immediate and total ban" on all imports from Burma, a decision that could cripple one of the Burmese regime’s largest sources of foreign currency earnings. The American Apparel and Footwear Association called on the US government to declare an import ban because of continued human rights violations in Burma, and said the issue "should be met with condemnation not only from the international public community but from private industry as well".
The move follows decisions over the past year by more than 40 of the largest US clothing sellers to end their purchases of apparel made in Burma. May Department Stores, which owns chains such as Hecht’s and Lord & Taylor, became the latest company to do so last month, following decisions by groups such as Wal-Mart and Federated Department Stores, which owns Macy’s and Bloomingdales.
The actions on Burma are the strongest example yet of how pressure from anti-sweatshop and other human rights activists has forced retailers to change their buying practices even while governments have continued to encourage trade.
In 2000, the International Labour Organisation called on countries to consider new sanctions against Burma, urging members to ensure that their trade with Burma did not "perpetuate the system of forced or compulsory labour in that country". But the ILO’s call resulted in no new measures against Burma, despite a deterioration in its human rights record. Lorne Craner, assistant secretary of state for human rights, said in February the Burmese regime’s "disregard for human rights and democracy extends to every conceivable category of violation".
The US government imposed a ban on US investment in Burma in 1997, but the US remains one of the country’s five largest trading partners. From 1994 to 2000 apparel exports to the US grew by 800 per cent, accounting for about 65 per cent of Burma’s clothing exports. While the US administration says it supports sanctions against Burma, an outright ban on trade would probably fall foul of World Trade Organisation rules, because Burma remains a WTO member.
Some members of the US Congress have called for a ban on trade with Burma, but the measure has yet to be put to a vote. Despite Washington’s reluctance, actions by US retailers have hampered trade with Burma. Burmese clothing exports to the US dropped 27 per cent, from $411m to $303m (?280m, £193m), between 2001 and 2002.
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| Wal-Mart Workers Are Finding a Voice Without a Union
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE (NYT) 1135 words
Published : September 3, 2005
Having failed to unionize any Wal-Marts, American labor unions have helped form a new and unusual type of workers’ association to press Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to improve its wages and working conditions.
With its first beachhead in Central Florida, the two-month-old group is already battling Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest corporation, over what it says is the company’s practice of reducing the hours that many employees work, often from 40 a week to 34, 30 or even fewer, jeopardizing some workers’ health benefits.
Belva Whitt, a cashier who earns $7.40 an hour, said she had joined the new group, the Wal-Mart Workers Association, largely because she was unhappy with her wages and because her hours were reduced to part time from full time many weeks.
’’I’m a single mother trying to raise my son, so not having that money makes it hard,’’ said Ms. Whitt, 30. ’’Sometimes I have to decide, am I paying the rent or will I have food on the table ?’’
The association says it has nearly 200 current and former Wal-Mart workers and is growing by 30 workers a week. Members pay dues of $5 a month. In Florida, its membership includes workers from 30 stores in the Tampa, Orlando and St. Petersburg areas, and it is also seeking to enlist Wal-Mart employees in Texas.
The group’s sponsors include the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the Service Employees International Union, and Acorn, an advocacy group for low-income people. It has also received support from the Marguerite Casey Foundation, which helps low-income families, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, which promotes social justice.
’’We are building something that’s never been seen ; it’s neither fish nor fowl,’’ said Wade Rathke, a top Acorn official who is the chief organizer for the association. ’’We’re focusing on Wal-Mart because it is the largest employer in the area — and in the whole nation — and is setting standards that affect communities and employment relations across the nation.’’
The association’s workers, Mr. Rathke said, would seek to ’’aggressively engage the company on their rights and how they are treated.’’
The group is urging the State of Florida to grant unemployment benefits to workers whose hours have been cut back by Wal-Mart. It is arguing that workers who quit Wal-Mart because the reduced hours meant they were not earning enough to live on deserve jobless benefits. It also wants supplemental jobless benefits for workers with reduced hours who remain at Wal-Mart.
Dan Fogleman, a Wal-Mart spokesman, defended the company. ’’Our wages are competitive within the retail workplace,’’ Mr. Fogleman said. ’’We work hard to make health care premiums affordable.’’
He said the company’s associates, as Wal-Mart calls its workers, were free to form such an organization. But he said that Wal-Mart hoped employees would feel free to bring any concerns to upper management through what the company calls its open-door policy.
As for the reduction of hours, Mr. Fogleman said, ’’For years we have had a scheduling system in place that is designed to match associates’ work schedules to projected customer flow to our stores.’’
Warren May, a spokesman for the Florida agency in charge of unemployment benefits, said Wal-Mart workers who remained on the job might qualify for unemployment compensation if their hours were cut sharply. Mr. May said those who quit their jobs because of a reduction in hours might have a harder time winning benefits.
Carl Jones, one of the leaders of the new group, said Wal-Mart’s pay was too low, pointing to the $9.40 an hour he earns after five years as the lead shopping cart pusher at a Wal-Mart in Apopka, outside Orlando.
’’It’s really hard for me and my wife to make ends meet,’’ Mr. Jones said. ’’They treat workers like we’re just something there to be used and to get as much out of us as they can.’’
The association says Wal-Mart is betraying the desire of its founder, Sam Walton, to maintain a family-friendly company.
Ms. Whitt and several other members of the association say that Wal-Mart’s health plan has such high premiums and deductibles that they cannot afford to join it. As a result, Ms. Whitt and thousands of other Wal-Mart workers receive health coverage through Medicaid.
The Marguerite Casey Foundation has granted $250,000 to an Acorn-backed project that is in turn giving much of that money to the new association.
’’We want to broadly support economic justice,’’ said Chantel L. Walker, the foundation’s director of programs. ’’We believe that Wal-Mart could really make a difference because of the size of their work force and because of the leadership role they play.’’
The association is the latest attempt by labor and community groups to squeeze at Wal-Mart’s pressure points. In the past month, the food and commercial workers have led an effort, joined by the nation’s two big teachers unions, urging consumers not to purchase school supplies at Wal-Mart. Another group, Wal-Mart Watch, plans to announce a week of demonstrations and meetings nationwide in November to criticize Wal-Mart’s wages and benefits.
Labor leaders say they support the nonunion Wal-Mart Workers Association because with the company fighting aggressively against unionization, they recognize that it will be extremely hard to unionize any Wal-Marts.
’’This dovetails nicely with what we’re doing,’’ said William McDonough, organizing director of the food and commercial workers, which has sought unsuccessfully to unionize several Wal-Marts. ’’Our role is to help Wal-Mart workers get a voice on the job.’’
Mr. McDonough said his union hoped that Wal-Mart workers would grow so emboldened and that community support would grow so strong that unions could succeed at organizing some Wal-Marts in a few years.
The new association is not urging shoppers to boycott Wal-Mart.
’’I like Wal-Mart, I enjoy working for them,’’ Ms. Whitt said. ’’But what they’re doing is wrong. They need to fix it.’’
Photos : Carl Jones and Gloria Baker, who work for Wal-Mart, at the office of the Wal-Mart Workers Association in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday. ; Belva Whitt, a Wal-Mart cashier, says a reduced schedule has at times forced her to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table. (Photographs by Rob Mattson for The New York Times)
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| New York Times, Joseph Kahn, 29 décembre.
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| Maquila Network Update
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| Observatoire européen des relations industrielles
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