Labor needs to pull their heads from a very dark place and look at what they are up against when going after the infrastructure jobs. One concern is there will be a hard fight to keep the jobs prevailing wage because if Donald Trump’s six people have their way, all jobs will be privatized
Don’t look for help from the top Democrats, like Chuck Schumer, he received $575,000 fro Goldman-Sachs and $220,000 from Blackstone. He also voted for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, helped design the 2008 big bank bailout and opposed efforts in this own political party to raise taxes on private equity and hedge funds. He is no friend of labor. Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has ties to Blackstone.
Nancy Pelosi says the Democrats are willing to work with Trump on infrastructure, despite knowing what Trump and his administration are planning. There is big money to be made for companies like Black-Rock, the world’s largest investment company; the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a Wall Street trade group. American Water, a private water company, two private trolling companies and free market proselytizer Heritage Action for America. These companies are guaranteed in their contracts a minimum revenue stream, and if people cannot pay their water bills a lien can be placed on their homes, putting them at risk of losing their homes.
How do cities and states get in this financial place where they will sell or privatize their assets? Well, one doesn’t have to look any further than the American Legislative Exchange Council (A.L.E.C.). A.L.E.C. has a long history of writing and getting its legislations on the agendas of city councils and county councils. A.L.E.C. does this to set the stage for infrastructure privatization by depriving the government of key revenue sources. A.L.E.C. has gotten laws passed that makes it harder for cities and counties to raise taxes and creates a situation where the government has to resort to public-private partnerships or just sell public assets.
The people in Trump’s government who will advise him in how to pull this off are Gary Cohn, whose previous job was with Goldman-Sachs; DJ Gribbin, who was director of Macquarie Group; Jeremy Katz, who worked with GCM Grosvenor; Stephen Schwarzman, the current chief executive officer of Blackstone, he wasn’t required to leave his current job to join Trump’s cabal; Abebayo Ogunlesi, the current chair and managing partner of Global Infrastructure Partners; and James Ray, previously with KPMG, a public-private partnership.
There is a lot of money to be made and they are just salivating at the thought of all this money, and the trail of this movement leads back to the Koch Industries. Towns, unions, and states know who your enemies are, and be prepared to fight back before everything is lost.
To change the abundance of labor in the world is to put more money in the pockets of the laborer to buy the products their fellow workers are making. Otherwise, when there are more products than money, there is slump in the economy. Austerity policies, low wages and automation (robots) were also of concern in the 1950s when Henry Ford II, CEO of Ford, took Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union, on a tour of a new engine plant.
Ford gestured to a fleet of new machines and said, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union leader turned to Ford and said, “Henry, how are you going to get robots to buy your cars?”
This type of change in the labor has created a new type of working class that swings from task to task in order to make ends meet while enduring the loss of labor rights and bargaining rights. They are called “precariat” workers, a group of workers who live on the verge of collapse due to the instability of the nature of their job…