This was a big week for the "read that and try to deny there's a war on workers" type of story. Witness: I faced a toss-up whether to use the graph to the right showing both a huge
decline in wealth between 2005 and 2009 for white, black and Hispanic households and dramatically highlighting the racial gap in wealth, or the other big graph that came out this week, the one showing that
median income declined in 2010. Between declining wealth and declining median income, that's pretty full coverage in the economic pain department. Never mind the increased poverty rate.
Hamilton Nolan describes the current situation:
Historians tell us that the United States of America once boasted a fabled "middle" class of residents. They were not too poor; they were not too rich; they were just right. Crazy—but allegedly true.
That all seems so distant now. The socioeconomic distribution-of-wealth curve has gone from being a smooth one-hump camel to a gnarled two-hump camel. The idea that the bulk of the benefits of our nation's political and economic policies should go to a large group, rather than a small group, is distinctly foreign now. Why did we ever think that would work? I can't remember.
In other news
- A model union?
Decades of critiquing representations of bodies in fashion have not changed what we see on the catwalk; reforming the conditions backstage just might. Empowering models as workers could potentially help them stand up against other aspects of the industry, like unhealthy expectations about dieting.
Sara Ziff, a model working with Fordham University’s Fashion Law Institute, has formed a nonprofit group called the Model Alliance that hopes to give models a platform to organize for workplace protections. At a minimum, it would be a space for them to share information about how much jobs pay and agencies charge. Models are so disorganized as a work force that, when a class-action lawsuit brought by models against their agencies was settled at $22 million in 2005, the court couldn’t find enough models to claim the damages.
- The woman who was fired for donating a kidney to her son has benefited from the public outcry:
Officials at the aircraft repair training company tell WTXF-TV that Claudia Rendon will be paid her normal salary until another position opens up at the Aviation Institute of Maintenance. Rendon can then re-apply.
I'd say two things here. One is, if I were her, I'd be looking for another job rather than relying on this employer to re-hire her and treat her well away from the public eye. The other is, it's great that she has a paycheck. But people's ability to take family or medical leave without losing their jobs shouldn't rely on the chance that they'll get media attention if unfairly fired.
- We Party Patriots describes the taxpayer protections built into a bill on Project Labor Agreements (see here for a refresher on PLAs).
- There's a huge amount to take from Diane Ravitch's New York Review of Books review of Steven Brill's Class Warfare and Janet Grossbach Mayer's As Bad as They Say? Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx. At the forefront for me: Did you know that American education has practically always been in crisis? And which book do you think is getting more attention—the one about what rich people think should happen to education, or the one about how teachers and poor kids actually experience education?
- How do you get through college without a mountain of debt? There aren't that many options.
- Not content with prohibiting domestic partner benefits, the Michigan state House passed a bill prohibiting union dues deductions from teacher paychecks.
- If you're in the Washington, D.C. area, check out the Take Back the American Dream conference. To be held Oct. 3-5, speakers include AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and Rep. Keith Ellison, as well as familiar netroots names like Dave Dayen, teacherken and Raven Brooks.