Socialist Seattle Pol Off Deep End

[acesfull86]

Link (http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/seattle-city-councilmember-elect-shares-radical-id/nbxbC/#cmComments)

SEATTLE —

Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state

“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night.

This week, Sawant became Seattle’s first elected Socialist council member. She ran on a platform of anti-capitalism, workers’ rights, and a $15 per-hour minimum wage for Seattle workers.
On Monday night, she spoke to supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company pensions.

Now Boeing is threatening to take those jobs to other states. “That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it's going to devastate the state's economy,” she said.

Sawant is calling for machinists to literally take-possession of the Everett airplane-building factory, if Boeing moves out. She calls that "democratic ownership."

“The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don't need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do,” she said.

Sawant says after workers “take-over” the Everett Boeing plant; they could build things everyone can use.

“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.

----------------------------

Got my LOL for the day. Forget buses, why not just make...like...art, man. I love how she just takes for granted that this would all be a piece of cake.

[jpx7]

Read about this yesterday; I think it's awesome.

[sturg33]

LOL

[Julio3000]

Link (http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/seattle-city-councilmember-elect-shares-radical-id/nbxbC/#cmComments)

SEATTLE —

Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state

“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night.

This week, Sawant became Seattle’s first elected Socialist council member. She ran on a platform of anti-capitalism, workers’ rights, and a $15 per-hour minimum wage for Seattle workers.
On Monday night, she spoke to supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company pensions.

Now Boeing is threatening to take those jobs to other states. “That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it's going to devastate the state's economy,” she said.

Sawant is calling for machinists to literally take-possession of the Everett airplane-building factory, if Boeing moves out. She calls that "democratic ownership."

“The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don't need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do,” she said.

Sawant says after workers “take-over” the Everett Boeing plant; they could build things everyone can use.

“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.

----------------------------

Got my LOL for the day. Forget buses, why not just make...like...art, man. I love how she just takes for granted that this would all be a piece of cake.

I love it how you just take for granted that Boeing's not utterly full of ****.

[BedellBrave]

Whether Boeing is full of excrement or not seems somewhat beside the point.

[acesfull86]

Whether Boeing is full of excrement or not seems somewhat beside the point.

Right

[Julio3000]

LOL

Ha. You of all people, LOLing at someone else's pie-in-the-sky political ideals.

[sturg33]

Ha. You of all people, LOLing at someone else's pie-in-the-sky political ideals.

Dude… you so just got me

[Julio3000]

Whether Boeing is full of excrement or not seems somewhat beside the point.

Is the point "ha ha, look at the funny socialist*"? If so then, yes, I did.

So what she said is unrealistic on a number of levels. OK, fine. But the implication is that the poster uncritically assumes that Boeing's conduct—as a stand-in for American corporate/political culture overall, even?—is just the natural order of things, rather than an extreme position in its own right.

*who seems to be an actual example of the breed, which leads me to wonder if some of y'all will consider comparing the frequency of accusations of "socialism" with the incidence of actual socialists.

[acesfull86]

Is the point "ha ha, look at the funny socialist*"?

I'm just glad I found this gem. Should provide plenty of LOL's for the rest of her term.

Having trouble seeing what is extreme about Boeing's proposal. Boeing offered long term job stability + a $10,000 signing bonus + increased 401k contribution to its employees in exchange for ending the companies' pension plan (for younger workers) + a pay raise limit + an increase in health care costs to the employee (where have I heard this recently). The contract was put to a vote andthe vote didn't pass by about a 2:1 margin. Now Boeing is exploring other options as to where to build its products, both in and out of the US, assuming they can't make a deal in Seattle. Do they have an obligation to provide the people of Seattle with jobs versus people in South Carolina, people in Japan, or people anywhere else? I guess this is the point where I side with Boeing. Maybe the Seattle workers are getting a crappier deal than the one they've had, but if people elsewhere (let's say in SC, where Boeing has an assembly line) are happy to take the deal being offered, I don't know why I should care more about the Seattle workers than the Carolina workers.

[acesfull86]

link (http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/20/seattle_socialism_sawant_has_some_bad_ideas.html)

By contrast, this from Sawant is some real socialism. Boeing is getting a bunch of orders for its new 777X planes. The company tried to use the lure of building those planes in Washington State to get the machinists union to agree to some concessions in other areas of negotiation. The machinists said no. So on the face of it, 777X production is going to end up somewhere else. Sawant thinks the union should counter by seizing the means of production.

Can Boeing's front-line workers actually retool an airplane factory and turn it to bus production and win contracts to sell buses that raise enough revenue to keep everyone employed? Only time will tell for sure, but in the real world the answer is "no." This is exactly what you need executives for. Retooling plants, establishing relationships with suppliers and customers, understanding the size of the market for buses, and all that other stuff is a nontrivial task.

[Hawk]

The Boeing Dreamliner assembly is housed in the city where I live in SC. The factory is non union (right-to-work state) and the land and taxes were/are pure sweetheart. Business is business. The state wanted Boeing bad.

Boeing is like an adrenaline shot to a local economy -- a fair number of high income jobs, many local, some contracted in (helping the housing market) ... but the term is unspecified. If you are willing to play that game and understand and accept the risk of being burned, so be it.

[BedellBrave]

Is the point "ha ha, look at the funny socialist*"? If so then, yes, I did.

So what she said is unrealistic on a number of levels. OK, fine. But the implication is that the poster uncritically assumes that Boeing's conduct—as a stand-in for American corporate/political culture overall, even?—is just the natural order of things, rather than an extreme position in its own right.

*who seems to be an actual example of the breed, which leads me to wonder if some of y'all will consider comparing the frequency of accusations of "socialism" with the incidence of actual socialists.


I wasn't asking you if you got ace's point - I assumed you did. I was just stating that your post was beside the point. But to answer your question Julio, yes, that was what I took ace's point to have been particularly in light of the title of the thread and him not stating otherwise.

But as to the implication, warranted or not, that you drew, I ask, what's wrong with Boeing's conduct in this case? If memory serves me correctly from my days interacting a bit with Boeing, I always got the impression they were a good company to work for. Course that was years ago and only anecdotal.

[The Chosen One]

Speaking of socialism... I happen to know somebody personally that just gave away money to a bunch of lazy freeloaders. :icwudt:

[goldfly]

How silly

I mean, the city council member views life different than you do aces

that is hilarious

thanks for posting so i could laugh at someone thinking that life should be different than the bull**** system we have now where more people could be better off than the system in place now

[acesfull86]

How silly

I mean, the city council member views life different than you do aces

that is hilarious

thanks for posting so i could laugh at someone thinking that life should be different than the bull**** system we have now where more people could be better off than the system in place now

Yes...workers taking over the factories and plants they work in by force would surely make for a better country. :facepalm:

[BedellBrave]

Well couldn't they manufacture pixie dust instead of fuel-guzzling, pollution-generating, planet-destroying jets?

[jpx7]

Well couldn't they manufacture pixie dust instead of fuel-guzzling, pollution-generating, planet-destroying jets?

No: the Pixie-Dust copyright is currently owned by GlaxoSmithKline, and they're very litigious. They could maybe make a generic, though, such as Pigsies' Genuine Power-Powder or Sprites-Meal.

[BedellBrave]

Anybody got any reason why Boeing's conduct is wrong here?

[jpx7]

Anybody got any reason why Boeing's conduct is wrong here?

It really depends on your definition of "wrong" and in what context you're considering "wrongness" — regardless, within the capitalist system, it is certainly the natural, obvious, and expected conduct for a large corporation.

Hawk is right when he writes: "Business is business." That's why I think the system is atavistic and iniquitous and we should be seeking something better for our species, instead of just being "willing to play [the] game" and allowing ourselves and our communities to be held hostage to the profit-crazed whims of an uncaring oligarchy.

[BedellBrave]

I'm fine with others defining it as they'd like. I'm just trying to figure out why Boeing's offer was "wrong," "bad," "unreasonable," or however someone wants to negatively describe it. From what I'm reading it sounds reasonable. From what I've known of them in the past I have thought them to generally be a good company to work for. In other words, I'm looking for specifics. Or is this just a knee-jerk, "big businesses are all wicked and bad" response? If it is that, a good discussion/debate is doubtful.

[jpx7]

That's why I think the system is atavistic and iniquitous and we should be seeking something better for our species, instead of just being "willing to play [the] game" and allowing ourselves and our communities to be held hostage to the profit-crazed whims of an uncaring oligarchy.

Looks like the old Patriarch of the West agrees with me (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/26/pope-francis-capitalism-tyranny):


"As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems."

[BedellBrave]

He would, he's a Jesuit.

[Julio3000]

I wasn't asking you if you got ace's point - I assumed you did. I was just stating that your post was beside the point. But to answer your question Julio, yes, that was what I took ace's point to have been particularly in light of the title of the thread and him not stating otherwise.

But as to the implication, warranted or not, that you drew, I ask, what's wrong with Boeing's conduct in this case? If memory serves me correctly from my days interacting a bit with Boeing, I always got the impression they were a good company to work for. Course that was years ago and only anecdotal.

This deal in particular? It doesn't seem bad, considering. The union had a pretty reasonable case in front of the NLRB before, though, and that's part of the context of this dispute.

Of course, part of the context of "considering" is that the playing field is, and has been for decades, tilted against labor.

Of course, business is business. There's nothing dirty about the deal Boeing offered. I mean, it's a dog, but Boeing is holding most of the cards—but that kind of speaks to the point of my post. My point, as I'm sure you know, was about what we take for granted. The OP seems to take for granted that the game, as it were, is not rigged . . . or perhaps that the WAY the game is rigged represents the natural order of things, rather than being a product of intense (and arguably immoral) design.

[Julio3000]

He would, he's a Jesuit.

How do YOU feel about it?

[BedellBrave]

How do YOU feel about it?

About unfettered capitalism? Or about the pontiff's 84 page document?

I haven't read the document and honestly, I likely won't. Not enough time to do everything. I do want to be cautious about judging it completely through a secondary news article.

That said, I have some sympathy with a critique of capitalism. Not sure exactly though what he means by "unfettered." Is there such an animal? Also, I think every economic system in a fallen world will be open to critique. And that his concern about "unequal distribution of wealth" is a concern that is applicable even to communistic systems as they actually work out in reality.

I also wonder what his solution is? My suspicion is that it involves more than what your run of the mill anti-capitalists envision. I suspect the Pope understands that hearts need to be changed by supernatural grace.

But let me also say that I agree with the Pope that the church should be known for its commitment to Micah 6:8. And that the RR often isn't sufficiently, imho. Though if my own anecdotal evidence is any indication, that is changing, for there is a growing concern for holistic ministry.

[acesfull86]

My point, as I'm sure you know, was about what we take for granted. The OP seems to take for granted that the game, as it were, is not rigged . . . or perhaps that the WAY the game is rigged represents the natural order of things, rather than being a product of intense (and arguably immoral) design.

Boeing holds the card because they own the property. If the workers in Seattle don't like their terms, there are other capable workers in other cities and countries who are perfectly willing to accept those terms. Should Boeing be forced to remain in Seattle and give the workers what they want at the expense of workers in South Carolina? I'm not sure how else the "game" should be "rigged." I know that people taking over private property that isn't theirs to live out some utopian fantasy isn't the answer. (Ironically, the workers would need someone to be the executives to successfully carry out that idea, the very kind of people the socialist politician feels are not needed).

[Julio3000]

Boeing holds the card because they own the property. If the workers in Seattle don't like their terms, there are other capable workers in other cities and countries who are perfectly willing to accept those terms. Should Boeing be forced to remain in Seattle and give the workers what they want at the expense of workers in South Carolina? I'm not sure how else the "game" should be "rigged." I know that people taking over private property that isn't theirs to live out some utopian fantasy isn't the answer. (Ironically, the workers would need someone to be the executives to successfully carry out that idea, the very kind of people the socialist politician feels are not needed).

So instead of the utopian fantasy, let's just cheer for the race to the bottom, like there's some virtue in it. Cool.

I read the same Matt Yglesias bit that you posted earlier. I agree with it, for the most part. Is her "proposal" unworkable? Sure it is. On the other hand, it's a perspective of the (genuine) left, and I think there's a place for it in our discourse. I hope that she, benighted though she may be, gathers enough support to be scary and push the conversation back towards the middle.

The machinists are choosing between X% of something, or 100% of nothing. I don't envy them the choice. A $10,000 signing bonus is peanuts in comparison to the benefits the union is being asked to give up. Let's not pretend that Boeing is being generous. If I were a person working on this pay scale (http://www.iam751.org/pages/currentwagecard.htm)—and bear in mind it's only the older workers who are at the top end of the scale here—I might be a little frosty being asked to give up a defined pension and accept 1% COLA every 2 years when I see the Boeing CEO's compensation increase 20% last year, and HIS $3M/year pension, even after the rollout of the 787 was such a disaster. Oh, but they're fungible and he isn't? I think that's a questionable assumption.

Should Boeing be forced to remain in Seattle and give the workers what they want at the expense of workers in South Carolina?

No. But that isn't to say that there aren't ways for the equation to be balanced differently, or that one cannot reasonably object to Boeing's conduct. There was a thread a while back about how large German companies are required to allot a certain number of seats on their boards to representatives of labor. That might make for a less zero-sum, oppositional situation.

Aces, do you think it would be good for the folks in Charleston if the the machinist's union dies on the vine? Right now, the company is motivated to treat the Charleston workers well because they don't want the union to get any leverage organizing the plant.

[BedellBrave]

In and of itself I'm not sure what is wrong with that pay scale.

[Julio3000]

In and of itself I'm not sure what is wrong with that pay scale.

I'd say it depends on what job you're doing and where you live. It's worth noting that the biggest issues in play are benefits, not pay, and the pay-related issues have to do with rate of advancement and COLAs.

FWIW, I think it's unrealistic for them to expect to keep the defined-benefit pensions. That's not to say that I disagree with their fighting for them.

[BedellBrave]

Looks like Charlotte may try to vie for this deal. WooHoo! 8,000 good jobs sounds good to me.

[Julio3000]

I guess we'll all cheer for our entries in the race to the bottom then. Charlotte! Charleston! Nagoya! Guangzhou Industrial Zone!

[BedellBrave]

You can look at it that way if you'd like. I look at it as 8,000 good jobs in a region that could use a good industrial component following the demise of the textile industry. These would be better than textile mill jobs. Better than a ton of other jobs. Certainly better than unemployment. Look down on it if you'd like as you cheer for a heavier-handed, governmentally involved, industrial system that gives you your Utopia.

[Oklahomahawk]

Bedell, just curios, what did think about Rick Santorum's comparing himself and his fights against Obamcare to Nelson Mandela's struggles against apartheid??? I believe knowing the kind of person you are that I already know the answer to this, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

[BedellBrave]

Par for the course with Santorum. Idiotic on multiple levels.

[Oklahomahawk]

Par for the course with Santorum. Idiotic on multiple levels.

:rock: Great post Bedell, how much longer till the Repubs reclaim their souls and kicks these effing idiots (on a Biblical scale by the way) to the curb? Conservative America still has a lot of say, I just wish they quit trying to say it through these numb nuts.

[BedellBrave]

Still hoping Charlotte has a shot at getting Boeing to set up shop in these parts.

[Oklahomahawk]

Still hoping Charlotte has a shot at getting Boeing to set up shop in these parts.

That would be sweet!!! How many jobs are we talking...

[BedellBrave]

From the reports I've read, around 8,000.

[Oklahomahawk]

From the reports I've read, around 8,000.

Wow, that's great man!!! Good luck to you!! I wish OK could get more jobs and job sources to come in here, but even if they did they'd all be in OKC and Tulsa

[Hawk]

Looks like Charlotte may try to vie for this deal. WooHoo! 8,000 good jobs sounds good to me.

We gon' be afightin

[BedellBrave]

Where are you from Hawk?