{"id":7187,"date":"2011-10-31T08:25:52","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T12:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=7187"},"modified":"2011-10-31T08:25:52","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T12:25:52","slug":"plutocracy-graph-ows-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/plutocracy-graph-ows-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Plutocracy Graph & OWS Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"<\/a>[A US plutocracy graph (1979-2007); a map of occupations worldwide; and the occupation movement seen from the perspective of an independent healthcare union official<\/em>. IB]<\/div>\n
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John Borsos<\/strong> is vice president of the new, independent union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). He is a well-known California labor leader, and an advocate of militant, democratic member driven unions; he was an elected vice-president of the 150,000 member United Healthcare Workers \u2013 West, until replaced in Andy Stern\u2019s SEIU 2009 trusteeship. He was also President of the Sacramento Central Labor Council. Here he talks to Cal Winslow about Occupy Wall Street.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

John, Occupy Wall Street has come to California in a big way. What is your take on the movement?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s great. I think it\u2019s one of those steps outside of the institutional boundaries of the labor movement – by a broader left – that will end up energizing labor.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was thinking about this historically, you know there have been certain times when movements have emerged spontaneously, truly grass roots, from the bottom. These are the kind of eruptions you will find if you go back, for instance, to the eighteen nineties and Jacob Coxey\u2019s army of unemployed that marched across the Middle West; or the bonus marchers of the early 1930s, the World War I veterans who gathered in Washington, DC demanding relief, and battled General MacArthur; and, in a more organized way, perhaps, the Poor People\u2019s marches and encampments that Martin Luther King, Jr. led in the 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey were all somewhat tied to the labor movement but not in it. But I think that in fact they were harbingers of the more dynamic and militant labor movements that followed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the great energy of Occupy Wall Street and its manifestations across the country, including here in California, are really exciting. They call attention to the gross class disparities that really exist in this country; they do it in a way that hasn\u2019t been done in a long time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly they do this in a much more focused and convincing way than the mushy \u201cfighting for the middle class\u201d that has often been the mantra of the official labor movement in the country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What about the movement\u2019s slogan, \u201cWe Are the 99%\u201d, how do healthcare workers respond?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is very important. I look at the concentration of wealth this way – a statistic that is often cited is that the ratio CEO salaries in the United States to that of an average rank-and-file worker in the 1980s was 35-1. Today that ratio is more like 250 to one.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis plays itself out in the healthcare industry. It\u2019s happening everyplace, but I don\u2019t know if the labor movement has really embraced these facts, certainly not at the collective bargaining table.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Occupy Wall Street message has a sharpness that has been missing. I think the way that Occupy Wall Street is really focusing on this one percent is the clearest challenge Wall Street, etc., yet; it has helped to sharpen a much broader public debate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think that it is interesting to watch the Republican candidates, you know Romney Herman Cain in particular, talk about the left \u201cinciting class warfare.\u201d Well, there\u2019s been class war that\u2019s been waged in this country for decades now but finally some of those who\u2019ve been on the receiving end of that are standing up. And they are talking about things that are as close to a class conscious description or characterization of our society as we\u2019ve seen in a long, long time.<\/span><\/p>\n

I once heard you say Nursing Homes are the \u201csweatshops of the twenty-first century. And I know there are thousands of hospital workers in California who work at near minimum wages. How is this great income and wealth disparity reflected in your industry?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is outrageous. Especially at Kaiser Permanente, the huge hospital chain. You know there\u2019s this overall narrative that the American economy is suffering and, yes, that\u2019s true in some quarters but it\u2019s not true in healthcare and it\u2019s not true in banking. Now banking has been a focus of Occupy Wall Street but in healthcare where we represent people, it\u2019s just the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGeorge Halvorson, the CEO of Kaiser Permanente makes 8 million dollars a year! He has eight pension plans. This company that made $5.7 billion in profits over the past twenty seven months.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cKaiser\u2019s executives have received huge increases in salaries, bonuses and other compensation. Ben Chu, Regional president for Southern California was paid nearly $2 million last year, plus another half million in bonuses.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNevertheless, the company is raising rates for consumers, its millions of \u2018members\u2019 who will have to now pay more for their health costs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cToday, our members \u2013 nurses, techs, social workers \u2013 face\u00a0\u00a0unprecedented\u00a0\u00a0take-away demands at the bargaining table \u2013 take backs in pensions, in salaries, reductions in staffing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is happening right across the state. We\u2019ve been in a long, public fight at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, a public district hospital that pays its CEO close to $800,000 dollars a year he too has eight pensions \u2013 still the hospital district is demanding millions in concessions from workers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn both of these cases \u2013 though this is still a rarity in the labor movement, healthcare workers have been standing up and saying \u201cno\u201d to this.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a parallel thing to what\u2019s happening in Occupy Wall Street, that finally people are saying enough is enough – the disparities are unconscionable and they want to do something about it. They want to stand up and fight back.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had strikes in Salinas Valley and now three strikes at Kaiser Permanente. The most recent one was on September 22 when 4,000 NUHW members struck and then another 17,000 members of the California Nurses Association walked out in solidarity with us against Kaiser. By the way, CNA has been great in the occupation movements.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat strike was the largest strike in California healthcare history and the largest strike in Kaiser\u2019s history and it\u2019s quite the contrast with some other Kaiser unions that are rolling over and doing Kaiser\u2019s bidding in a \u2018partnership\u2019 that really subordinates the labor movement to Kaiser\u2019s corporate interests.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re fighting in opposition to that \u2013 right now in our fight with these managers against bad faith bargaining and their demands for outrageous concessions from our members.<\/span><\/p>\n

How do NUHW members feel about the occupations?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very positive. We\u2019ve been involved. Our members have gone in delegations to Occupy Los Angeles, we\u2019ve been to Occupy Sacramento, and we\u2019ve been to San Francisco and Occupy Oakland. So our members are doing what they can, they\u2019re actively supporting the movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI think it\u2019s because we have the same issues. I know there\u2019s this critique, whether it\u2019s deserved or not – I would say not – about the specificity of the demands and the critique offered by Occupy Wall Street movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut what people are hearing, what they\u2019re talking about is this enormous disparity in wealth, this enormous concentration of capital, all in the hands of the few. That\u2019s certainly what\u2019s happening in healthcare. That\u2019s what we see, and it\u2019s being generalized.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think that what this generalization, this debate is doing, for the first time in long time is expressing a working class political economy, one that really hasn\u2019t been pushed forward for a generation or more.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt begins a critique of corporate capitalism in its twenty-first century manifestation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt explains the cuts in public services and other social benefits including healthcare, the deprival of health care to millions, it explains the decline of the public school system, the inability of local government to provide the most basic services \u2013 things that communities should expect \u2013 libraries, swimming pools, social services. These are the things that are the fabric of what makes a functioning society. Occupy Wall Street explains why this system isn\u2019t working.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNobody really has been talking about what this concentration of wealth means on this level but now it\u2019s happening \u2013 and it\u2019s a critique of Obama from the Left \u2013 and it\u2019s happening in a way that communities all across the country can understand and participate in.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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