Centrist Dems dodge labor bill...

Well, bummer.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19918.html

Asheville Citizen-Times article: Asheville to get early stimulus money

City to get early stimulus cash

$842,000 in homelessness and other aid

By Joel Burgess

The city will get one of its first doses of federal stimulus money with an $842,000 infusion meant to combat homelessness and help with community-building projects such as affordable housing, officials have said.

The City Council tonight will hear an update on how the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act will benefit Asheville. President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus measure last month.

In anticipation of the legislation, state and local governments including Asheville drew up wish lists for federal taxpayer aid. The city came up with more than $120 million in projects, such as a $40 million solar power plant and $15 million to widen Victoria Road.

This month, U.S. Housing and Urban Development announced the city would receive one of its first chunks of stimulus cash, and that most of it — $509,000 — will go to a homelessness prevention fund. The remainder of the aid will go to community programs selected by the council.

The money could signal the end of a trend of declining federal aid for such community programs, city officials said. Specifically, the homelessness money could mean fewer families end up on the streets relying on the public dole and private charities, said City Homelessness Initiative Coordinator Amy Sawyer.

“We're excited about prevention programs because it costs less to help someone maintain their housing than to help someone find new housing and address all the new things that come along with that,” Sawyer said. “It's more cost effective and it's less destructive to the families and the community.”

About 635 homeless people, or 28 per 10,000, residents lived in Asheville and other parts of Buncombe County in 2007, according to a national once-a-year count supported by federal housing programs.

That was well above the state average of 13 per 10,000 and the national average of 22 per 10,000, a 2007 study by the National Alliance to End Homelessness said. Since then, the number of homeless in Buncombe County dropped by 13 percent to 555 this January.

Sawyer credited the decrease to local programs meant to prevent homelessness and to quickly find housing for those who have lost their homes. The city and Buncombe County allocated more than $500,000 for the programs this fiscal year.

City staff is not yet sure of restrictions on how the money can be spent and hope to know more by April 1, Sawyer said.

Some of the best ways to use the funding would be to aid people with the greatest risk of losing their homes and who have children, said members of the NAEH. The Washington-based nonprofit suggests the money be used for people who have mental illness, have been homeless before or have other high-risk conditions.

The city's Community Development Block Grant will receive the remainder of the federal aid — $332,942. The council gives block grant funds to groups with programs who support the elected official's social goals, including building and maintaining affordable housing.

Last year, the block grant got $1.2 million, most of it federal money. But that money has been declining for the last several years, said John Sanchez, who helps administer the block grant for the city.

“With the new administration we have some hope that they can revisit those allocations. At least we are hoping that we will get the same amount of money that we got last year,” Sanchez said.

Other stimulus money that the city is set to receive includes:

$2.5 million for public transit.

$265,000 for police.

Additional Facts

Want to go?

The regular City Council meeting will be 5 p.m. today on the second floor of City Hall, 70 Court Plaza. For information, go to www.ashevillenc.gov or call 259-5601.

Citizen-Times article

This article was sent courtesy of Sarah Osmer.

March 5, 2009

Group formed to advocate for paid sick days

By Leslie Boyd

A coalition of more than 30 groups kicked off a campaign Wednesday morning to get paid sick days for workers in North Carolina.

The group, the NC Paid Sick Days Coalition, was created to push for passage of the Healthy Families and Healthy Workplaces Act (HB 177).

Sarah Osmer, executive director of Just Economics, a member of the coalition, said the bill would offer workers time to recover and keep them from infecting coworkers and customers.

“It's not just a human rights issue, it's a public health issue,” she said. “More and more people are having to make tough decisions about whether they should go to work sick. We know of people who have been fired for staying home sick. It's really a basic workers' right.”

Gregg Thompson, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, said a mandate for paid sick days could devastate some of the 7,000 North Carolina small businesses in his group.

He said businesses adjust employees' work schedules or otherwise help them deal with illness without penalty, but not all can afford to pay them for days off.

“With the economy the way it is, this is probably the worst timing that a piece of legislation like this could be passed, particularly on small businesses,” Thompson said, “because if you have five employees, that's 35 days a year that you're going to be paying for employers that aren't there and aren't being productive.”

Under the act, employers with fewer than 10 workers would have to provide four sick days; others would have to provide seven paid sick days.

But Rep. Alma Adams said the recession makes it even more critical to protect workers.

“In this economic climate, workers are just trying to hold on to their jobs,” Adams, a Greensboro Democrat who has introduced the bill, said at Wednesday's news conference. “They're under a lot of pressure to not lose that day's pay and to not risk unemployment.”

The N.C. Justice Center says 42 percent of the state workforce lacks paid sick days.

No other state has moved to mandate paid sick days, said Louisa Warren of the Justice Center, a progressive group that advocates for the poor and is coordinating this coalition. Washington, D.C., Milwaukee and San Francisco all have adopted such requirements, she said.

Diana Hatch, president of AARP North Carolina, said a growing elderly population will put more responsibility on their working children.

“Working people need a basic workplace standard of paid sick days so they don't have to choose between keeping their job and caring for an ill parent or relative,” Hatch said.

Jeff Shaw, a spokesman for the NC Justice Center, said more than 75 percent of hotel and food service workers, 75 percent of low-wage workers and 42 percent of private sector workers don't get paid sick days.

“That means the person who cooked or served your food could be sick but not able to afford a day off,” Shaw said.

Greg Borom of Children First of Buncombe County/Communities in Schools, another partner agency, said the bill also would allow parents to stay home with a sick child.

“It's best for children if a parent can stay home and take care of them,” Borom said. “Since our mission is to improve the lives of children, youth and their families, we signed on.”

Can Marx be considered in America?

While I might bring this up at one of our meetings, I will post these ideas below.

While I admire Marx's skepticism of an industrial economy and his rigorous analysis of "Das Kapital" (Capitalism), I wonder if his theories can be applied, or even considered, in America.

We (this is not say our group, rather a general we) have already established that Adam Smith (On the Wealth of Nations -- the bulwark of Capitalism) has been well received in our American experiment. But has Marx been equally considered? Should he?

While We (this is to say America, "We the People") are in some ways an industrial nation --and Marx's preoccupation was industry-- our unique heritage would seem to me unfit for application of Marx's theories.

There are certain traditions in America, political, cultural, social, that I believe would prevent any application of Marx's economic model. These being in no particular order and by no means standard:

Individualism-- While some might consider this to be a negative feature, I intend to cite individualism as a positive aspect of our national culture. Within individualism, there is a flourishing of creativity and spontaneity.

Vague industrialism-- Though there are industrial centers throughout America (less these days), our history is less industrial than most European countries that captured Marx's tradition. Marx doesn't account for Our American variety.

An undercurrent of community-- This is to me the most important piece of our American tradition. This feature would seem the point where Marxian theory could be introduced, but I might argue that it is also the point where Marxian theory would be most rejected.
This American communitarianism is different from Marx's communism. I imagine this community consisting of mutually respected and respectful individuals who are too stubborn and too creative to believe in any one philosophy (Marxism, Capitalism).

What this has to do with our Issue Workshop, I am not quite sure. I thought I would try laying a few things down for discussion.

On Estranged Labour by Marx

Here is one explanation of how/why our economic system leaves such a large majority of the population scrambling to live.
This explanation helped some things “click” in my head after hearing all the statistics on how minimum wage barely allows people to subsist even working over 40 hrs/week and after hearing Susan Kask speak about the economy and supply/demand. I thought some of you might like to hear it as well.
*Keep in mind this is just my understanding from the reading and the discussion in my class plus my own views of the situation and some background from other readings/authors. So feel free to add comments, corrections, and questions. Also if you economic students want to add some of the pertinent knowledge you are getting (either connected to this post or in another post) I would love/appreciate that. *

From the discussion of Marx’ “Estranged Labour”:
As humans naturally exist in the physical world they must work to live a.k.a. turn raw resources into food, shelter, medicine, etc. In this situation an individual makes something which is hers/his to use to live.
However in a capitalistic society a change takes place. Instead of
an individual making something she/he needs > to live,
the individual makes something > to get money > to live.
This middle-man, money, is introduced. An abstraction, which while having a practical function, Marx says leads to some not so great things:
The worker is estranged from his labor her/his product (Marx says some things about the product then having and external/alien existence which confronts the worker- I don’t fully understand the implications of this).
But basically labor becomes a commodity, the worker becomes a commodity to be bought and sold (and what’s even worse is that the worker is the one selling themselves, putting themselves in this situation).
Think about what Susan was talking to us about while you are reading this. -In this system there is competition; businesses are competing to get customers by trying to offer the lowest price.
Businesses have two basic costs: resources and labor
All the businesses will be paying essentially the same for the resources so the way to cut prices is by paying less for labor.
-If you think through the cycle wages would just keep dropping. But at some point, you might say, wouldn’t the workers stop being willing to work for less pay?
-So another element in this system is expendability: there are always more people waiting to fill your place and probably at a lower pay.
So then wages can continue to fall.
*unless: the government steps in and says ‘whoa you have to pay people at least this amount which is an amount they can live on!’ > minimum wage<


Marx is saying this is all happening because as a wage earner the worker is not a human but a commodity.

Also, from the information we’ve been looking at it seems that most people get sucked into this and don’t have much of a choice, why is that?
Marx says that once a worker becomes a wage earner she/he no longer create what she/he directly needs to subsist but rather the means to get that- “life itself appears as only a means to life”. The means (the $) is dependent on the employer. Because of this “labour is therefore not voluntary but coerced, it is forced labor”
Workers (that’s us) may feel we are free. But if our work (the products we make) does not belong to us and our pay is dependent on someone else (so we can’t just decide to do something different at work, whether it be creative/positive or purposefully vengeful, because your employer might fire you or not give you the raise that, as a single mother of three dependent children working for minimum wage, you might really need) are we really free?

So we need to either a) make sure the government is making sure workers are treated as the human beings they are and given a pay truly suitable to live on or b) as Marx insists, create a new/different system.

We are working on “a”, with the living wage campaign, however Marx would say that the negative effects of the system with continue; workers will continue to be exploited because the two classes, “the property owners and the property-less workers”, still exists so a master-slave relationship is still in place, the property owners benefiting from the relationship at the cost of the workers.
*keep that in mind*

Also here are my teacher's notes(Jessica Mayock) pertaining just to that essay.

I hope all this is helpful and/or sparks some thoughts…

there are three basic levels to the estrangement of labor:

(1) Estrangement between worker and his product: the worker uses his own life-activity, energy, and time to create the product and, whatever the product may be, it is essentially his life-energy put into an object. The product is a physical manifestation of his own life-energy. It is like a part of him now lives in this object, since he has conferred life on it through his work. When he is working for someone else (i.e. for wages and a boss), this product belongs to someone else, so the worker is never able to experience it as his own-- this means that something that is really a part of him, made with his own life energy, "confronts him as something hostile and alien" (as Marx says). The product of labor is the externalization of his life-energy; any life that this object has was given to it by the worker, only now this part of him seems like it only exists outside, like it never came from within him.
(2) Self-estrangement: this means that the whole process of alienation described above happens through the worker's own activity-- it is not only that someone is "doing this to him" but that he is being forced to do this to himself (this is why Marx makes such a point to show that labor is coerced, rather than voluntary).
(3) Estrangement on the level of species-being: human beings naturally work. Our free, conscious, life-activity is labor-- this is how we use natural resources to support our lives. Humans are also naturally social, and work together to do this. This working situation, brought about by competition, capitalism, and private property, creates a situation where human beings no longer feel themselves when doing their work, which is their natural activity, after all. Instead, they only feel themselves in "animal functions", like eating, sleeping, procreating, etcetera. This alienates human beings from one another, and most of all, from their true nature as free, conscious, working beings.

Food Spending

Curious as to how this might effect donations to food programs. Will people just keep donating the stuff they dont want.




Check it out:
Consumers Cut Food Spending Sharply

American Diet Changing Out Of Economic Necessity

Notes from DSS visit with Economic Services Program Administrator Tim Rhodes

Tim Rhodes- the coordinator of public assistance programs in the Economic Services Division of the Department of Social Services.

Although we received a generous packet of information from Tim last night, he mentioned a few things worth recording on our blog.

From the DSS Economic Services Division Public Assistance Programs Flyer:

• Emergency Assistance (EA) is typically a one time payment for families in some crisis
• NC Health Choice for Children is the state affiliate of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)

Three most funded entitlement programs (in descending order)

1. Medicaid
2. Food Assistance/Food Stamps
   
3. Work First (Cash welfare) -- is no longer entitlement
   

From Graphs

Medicaid

• Approximately 15% of the total population of Buncombe County (BC) are Medicaid recipients (32,000 receive medicaid out of the 220,000 residents of Buncombe county)
• Due to the economic crisis, companies are eliminating their health insurance programs to eliminate and/or consolidate costs, resulting in an increase in the utilization of medicaid assistance.
• Mediciad reimbursement rates have not been keeping up with inflation or assistance rates As a result, hospitals take balanced or lower numbers of medicaid patients in comparison with privately insured patients to cover the slow/lacking reimbursement rates of medicaid, in order to cover hospital costs.
  

Food Assistance

• In 2008, BC saw largest increase in number of Food Assistance (FA) recipients
• Currently, there are approximately 23,000 BC residents receiving FA
• Increases every month
• The percentage of recipients of FA relative to the total population is increasing
• There is, approximately, a 25% increase in employed persons receiving FA
• Every $1 of FA that enters into the BC economy generates another $1.73 in the services it employs (grocery stores, truckers and transportation, etc.)
  
• Congress is continually expanding food benefits, and will continue to do so through the Farm Bill, which greatly determines where the funding will come from for FA

  "The food stamp programs mirror the national economy"- Tim Rhodes
  

Work First

• The Work First cash assistance program is the third largest program in the DSS. Eligibility for the program is as follows: benefit from the program is on a sliding scale based on income, and if the monthly income falls below a certain point, you become eligible for the program support.
  
• The Work First program can only be received for a maximum of five years
• Though most receive for only a few months
• Decline in government spending likely due to rearranging of funds
• moved to other areas of need
• Reform in 1996 (under Clinton) eliminated welfare entitlement, required that all recipients must be in job training within 12 weeks of receiving first welfare check
• Due to this reform, a large amount of money that previously was supplied into an all inclusive welfare check is being relocated through the program to help pay for uniforms for jobs, cars, and other work related necessities. This spending is regulated through the program instead of by the individual.
• 720 people in BC are on Work First, and 75% of these recipients are children no longer living with their parents. Welfare is still an entitlement for children living along, despite the 1996 welfare reform.
  

General Notes

• Those leaving welfare in BC will receive, on average, $7.55 as an hourly wage
• BC pays for 50% of DSS workers, government pays for 50%
• Government payments will increase to 100% due to stimulus package
• DSS has contractual relationships with organizations like OnTrack, ABTech's ASPIRE program, etc.
• DHHS = department of health and human services
• TANF= temporary assistance for needy families. This is the term used today to describe the welfare system put in place after the 1996 welfare reform.
• Welfare recipients going to get a job usually don't join unions
• BC has the highest cost of living outside of the triangle area of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill
• EBT cards= Electronic Benefits Transfer. Automation of food stamps. The Farm Bill will hopefully expand pilot programs to offer fresh food for recipients, allowing for use of EBT cards at farmer's markets and community gardens
  

Responses
--Unfamiliar with NC Justice stats and vaguely familiar with Just Economics
--Impressed with our group and what we're doing.
--We could use charts to figure out how much each individual was receiving to paint more of a picture of how an individual is trying to live. Filling the gaps will be very important. How "safe" is this safety net?
--Stigmas. EBT cards. How much should the government help? What is the majority opinion of Americans today? Government vs. Employer.