Jacksonville, FL – As the partial government shutdown entered its 35th day on January 25, federal workers gave the country a lesson in the power of labor. Citing “a slight increase in sick leave” at two of the largest air traffic control centers on the eastern seaboard, the Federal Aviation Authority ordered a 90-minute ground stop for flights going into LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

Within hours, President Donald Trump announced an end to the shutdown, after taking a deal offered three weeks earlier by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. The deal to reopen the government and provide back-pay to the 800,000 furloughed federal workers did not include funding for Trump’s proposed wall along the southern border or any additional funding for border security.

Why did Trump, the self-styled ‘master of deals’ who staked his presidency on the construction of a border wall, fold like a cheap suit on Day 35? The president had paid a steep cost for this debacle from the beginning when he publicly agreed to “own” the shutdown. Poll numbers consistently showed a solid majority of Americans blaming Trump for the shutdown.

But the credit for ending the longest government shutdown in U.S. history belongs to the working class – not political grandstanding by congressional Democrats or even poll numbers.

Government shutdown and the working class

The partial government shutdown began on December 22, 2018. Funding for a number of key agencies expired, and President Trump refused to sign any bill from Congress that did not include nearly $6 billion in funds for a wall along the southern border of the U.S.

The impasse left 800,000 federal workers, the majority of whom are unionized, furloughed and without pay. Over half of these furloughed workers, 420,000, were legally required to continue working without pay because their particular jobs are deemed ‘essential’, like air traffic controllers and airport security. Predictably, as time went on, many of these workers stopped showing up entirely. Absenteeism became rampant in the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) airport security operations, where TSA agents are already some of the lowest-paid federal workers.

Unions representing these furloughed workers, like the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), led protests and pickets in Washington D.C. and across the country. These efforts drew support from the rest of organized labor, particularly in adjacent industries to those affected by the shutdown. Union leaders forcefully argued that the stress on workers created by the shutdown, along with growing absenteeism and short-staffing, created major safety hazards and risks for both employees and the general public.

The Trump administration added fuel to the fire with a series of insulting comments and condescending advice to struggling workers and their families. Trump, a billionaire real estate mogul, ludicrously claimed he could “feel their pain,” while later suggesting hungry furloughed workers should just tell their local grocery stores that they would pay “later” at the checkout counter. Wilber Ross, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, publicly said he “couldn’t understand” why federal employees were complaining instead of “taking out loans” to pay for their necessities.

Further highlighting the class warfare at work during the shutdown, Trump and several of his officials began floating ideas for reducing or eliminating federal employees’ pensions. These anti-worker comments and proposals proved the final nail in the coffin for many workers who may have bought into Trump’s cynical populist campaign message in 2016. It became all too clear that Trump serves the same class and interests that he himself comes from: billionaires, banks and corporations.

Federal workers and the strike weapon

Some liberal journalists and political commentators brought up the idea of a federal employee strike early on, which drew criticism from some labor leaders. Joe Burns, a former negotiator for the Association of Flight Attendants and a prominent labor writer, wrote on the Reviving the Strike Facebook page, “So the New York Times who would never support federal workers’ right to strike, publishes a piece by Barbara Ehrenreich saying federal workers should strike. How about leave it to federal workers to decide and not have them be pawns in the so-called ‘resistance’? I love striking but am sick and tired of folks thinking they can call strikes for other people.”

Burns is right to criticize the out-of-hand suggestion to strike by comfortable liberals without skin in the game. Despite heavy unionization, federal workers have tremendous legal restrictions on their right to organize – restrictions imposed by many of the same politicians these commentators support. They are legally prohibited from striking, and workers who engage in a work stoppage face serious charges and a lifetime ban on federal employment. Federal employee unions cannot bargain over wages and benefits, which are set by Congress, and the Hatch Act severely limits their ability to lobby or engage in any political action.

Leaders of AFGE, including their international president, got arrested protesting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Washington D.C. just a few days before the shutdown ended, but on the whole, the union has resisted calls for more radical action. Part of this comes from the devastating memory of Ronald Reagan busting the air traffic controllers’ strike more than 30 years ago, which signaled a wider employer-led offensive against labor in the 1980s.

But another aspect of AFGE’s reluctance to push back harder comes from internal divisions. Federal unions include law enforcement elements, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who outspokenly favored Trump in 2016 and actually supported the shutdown, despite also working without pay. Many federal employees, because of their proximity to the military industrial complex, tend to hold deep conservative beliefs, and union leadership has avoided challenging the backwards ideas of some members. As a result, some labor leaders saw a real risk that a large part of their membership would refuse to participate in a work stoppage or organized slow-down.

Labor militancy grows

But as the shutdown dragged into its fourth week with no end in sight, more militant voices in organized labor began proposing more drastic action. On January 20, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), Sara Nelson, issued a call for the labor movement to begin discussing a general strike in response to the government shutdown.

“There is a humanitarian crisis unfolding right now for our 800,000 federal sector sisters and brothers who are either locked out of work or forced to come to work without pay due to the government shutdown,” said Nelson at an award ceremony honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “We can end this shutdown together. Federal sector unions have their hands full caring for the 800,000 federal workers who are at the tip of the spear. Some would say the answer is for them to walk off the job. I say, ‘What are you willing to do? Their destiny is tied up with our destiny – and they don’t even have time to ask us for help.’”

Nelson ended her blistering remarks with a call for renewed militancy and solidarity. “What is the labor movement waiting for?” she asked. “Go back with the fierce urgency of now to talk with your locals and international unions about all workers joining together – to end this shutdown with a general strike.”

By January 25, the international president of the Communication Workers of America (CWA), Chris Shelton, pledged something similar. “CWA is ready to pursue every option available,” said Shelton in a press release, “up to and including participating in general strikes involving all working people if necessary: union members and non-union workers exercising their power to help end this damaging and dangerous shutdown.”

Withholding labor stops the shutdown

This growing militancy among many labor leaders set the stage for Trump’s retreat and the end of the shutdown. On January 25, federal workers officially missed their second paycheck since the shutdown began. That day, a critical number of air traffic controllers in Washington D.C. and Jacksonville, Florida called out sick, forcing the FAA to ground flights for 90 minutes. While an unknown number of controllers stayed home in Jacksonville, six of the 13 in the Washington D.C. facility, which handles one-fifth of U.S. commercial flight traffic, called in sick and could not be replaced.

While the air traffic controllers’ union leaders denied organizing a ‘sick-out’, the results proved the staggering power of workers withholding their labor. LaGuardia saw 47 cancelled flights and 580 delays, while Newark saw 40 cancellations and 300 delays. Kennedy Airport also saw 230 delays, and the combined effect was backlogged flights and chaos at airports across the country. It was the airline executives’ worst nightmare come true, which they expressed several times on conference calls with shareholders during the shutdown.

Hours later, the Trump administration bowed to pressure from congressional Republicans and business executives and agreed to end the shutdown. No $6 billion in funding for a wall. No increase in border security. Nothing. It marked the latest humiliating loss for the president, who had previously said he wouldn’t reopen the government without funding for a wall, and it was dealt out by workers.

Summing up the shutdown

Even as liberals tried to credit House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with ending the shutdown – or more ludicrously, the arrest of Trump associate Roger Stone earlier that morning – most media outlets couldn’t deny the decisive role played by labor. But what role was that?

The AFL-CIO put out a statement crediting workers for ending the shutdown, but it made no mention of the critical role of air traffic controllers withholding their labor. Instead, they credited “marching, rallying and protesting together.” That all happened, true, but it made no discernable impact on Trump’s calculus for 35 days. It’s an out-of-touch statement by more conservative labor leaders, like AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, who have generally rejected the strike as a viable weapon for decades, putting their faith in lobbying teams and elections instead.

No one knows precisely the level of organization among those air traffic controllers who didn’t come to work on January 25. It could have occurred, as union leaders claimed, as an inevitable “symptom” of going weeks without pay. But the most important lesson for labor doesn’t require any intent on the part of the absent air traffic controllers: The working class has the power to shut down the country by withholding its labor.

The deal to reopen the federal government restores funding for three weeks, expiring again on February 15. Trump claims that without a $6 billion deal on his border wall, he will shut down the government again. Many federal workers expect this to happen again, and that could mean organized labor faces the same dilemma of the past 35 days.

It will take militant leadership, stronger organization and a recognition of the power held by the working class to beat back Trump’s attacks on labor. The strike is back on the table for hundreds of thousands of workers. Public school teachers in West Virginia, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Arizona and Los Angeles have struck in the last year, with many breaking the law to do it and winning their demands. Charter school teachers in Chicago made history by striking and winning a great contract late last year. Hotel workers have struck to improve industrywide conditions and win recognition.

The shutdown shows us that it’s time for labor’s leaders to embrace the strike and fight back. And if they won’t, it’s time for them to get out of the way of the rank-and-file leaders who will.

Dave Schneider is a union steward for the Teamsters and a rank-and-file UPS worker in Jacksonville, Florida.

#JacksonvilleFL #US #PeoplesStruggles #AirlineIndustry #AFLCIO #FlightAttendants #PublicSectorUnions #governmentShutdown #Strikes #DonaldTrump #AFGE

Jacksonville, FL – AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees) held a rally and march to end the government shutdown on January 19. Over 10 unions were represented, including teachers, electricians and nearly a dozen rank-and-file Teamsters. Several speakers gave personal accounts of how they and their families had been affected. The 70 union members marched down to a busy intersection while chanting “End the shutdown, call the vote!”

Protesters held signs that read “29 days without pay” and “Do what is right.” They stood and waved to honking cars and semi trucks. Bike police couldn’t resist coming over to harass the members near the end of the rally, but protesters stood fast. Union members gave several testimonies to local media that covered the downtown rally.

Joyce Westley, CWA retiree, gave her thoughts on the shutdown: “I think it’s unfair to those workers affected because they are just being used as pawns. It is inconsiderate to those families, the hardships that are being caused. And not just for the workers who are going to be paid, there are more who will not get to be caught up with their money so I’m standing out here for them. I hope our congress; the senate and the president can come together to get this resolved. The wall – that’s not a major issue here. It's terrible to cause so much hardship for so many people. It needs to stop now.”

#JacksonvilleFL #PeoplesStruggles #furlough #governmentShutdown #Florida

Los Angeles, CA – With less than a 24-hour notice, about a dozen Chicanos and Latinos gathered in Los Angeles, January 9, against Trump’s proposed wall. Chanting, “Trump! El burro! No! Al muro!” (Trump the jackass! No to the wall!) and “When I say, ‘Trump,’ you say, ‘No wall!’ Trump! No wall!” the angry protesters gathered at the busy intersection of 4th Street and Soto Street in Boyle Heights. As they walked home, Roosevelt High School students and working-class families greeted the protestors.

“We are here today because we know Trump doesn’t support people like us,” said Noemi Galindo who herself is an immigrant from Mexico. “After today every time I see Trump, I’ll only see a burro!”

Among those gathered were members of Centro Community Service Organization (CSO), Padres Contra La Privatización del Este (Eastside Parents Against Privatization) and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). The emergency action was called on by the Legalization for All Network (L4A), which Centro CSO is affiliated with. Trump’s push for billions to build a border wall and to further militarize the U.S. border has resulted in a prolonged partial U.S. government shutdown.

“We have been fighting against deportations and against militarization at the border long before Trump,” said longtime Chicano revolutionary Carlos Montes. “We demand legalization for all today, and just as before, we say no Trump wall! Down with Trump!”

#LosAngelesCA #PeoplesStruggles #governmentShutdown #DonaldTrump #borderWall

“Our members put their lives on the line to keep our country safe,” said J. David Cox Sr., national president, American Federation of Government Employees.

“The harm to federal employees began at the first moment of the shutdown. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are working under sometimes dangerous conditions, including the plaintiffs who were forced to work overtime without pay,” said Heidi Burakiewicz, partner at KCNF DC. “Approximately 420,000 federal employees are continuing to work, but don’t know when they will get their next paychecks. This is not an acceptable way for any employer, let alone the U.S. government, to treat its employees. These employees still need to pay childcare expenses, buy gas, and incur other expenses to go to work every day and yet, they are not getting paid. It is a blatant violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.”

The lawsuit is brought on behalf of all ‘essential’ federal employees, those who are required to work without pay during the shutdown.

After the 2013 shutdown, approximately 25,000 essential federal employees, represented by KCNF DC, sued the government, arguing that the Fair Labor Standards Act requires that all employees, including federal employees, be paid on time for their services. In 2014, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims agreed and, in 2017, the court held further that the employees were entitled to twice their back pay because of the violation. However, even while the government is calculating the damages to those approximately 25,000 employees, the Office of Personnel Management has not required that essential federal employees be paid on time during the current shutdown.

#WashingtonDC #PeoplesStruggles #governmentShutdown #AFGE

San José, CA – Today, Oct. 15, right-wing Republicans in the House of Representatives stopped the House Republican leadership from trying to pass a compromise measure to re-open the federal government and raise its debt ceiling. This marks another step towards the first U.S. debt crisis in history.

On Oct. 17, the federal government will not be able to borrow more money to pay its bills. The federal government will only be able to pay out what it collects in taxes, plus about $30 billion in cash that it has on hand. In the two weeks after that, the federal government will run short of money to pay all its bills, with the most likely date being Nov. 1, when $55 billion in Social Security benefits, Medicare payments, and military pay, benefits and retirement benefits are due.

From now through mid-November, the federal government will have to postpone payment on about $100 billion in payments if the debt ceiling is not raised. This comes to almost 8% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP, the standard measure of the size of the economy based on production of goods and services) on an annual basis, enough to throw the economy in a recession even worse than the one following the financial crisis in 2008.

Background to the crisis

The looming debt crisis has several roots. The first are the budget deficits of the federal government, where it spends more than it collects in taxes, so it has to borrow the difference by selling bonds. The federal government budget deficit ballooned to about $1.4 trillion (or $1400 billion), equal to 10% of GDP, in 2009 because the deep recession lowered tax revenues and the federal government increased spending to bail out Wall Street and stimulate the economy. Since then, a combination of higher tax revenues, spending cuts and economic growth have reduced the deficit to almost $600 billion, or about 4% of GDP in 2012, a decline of 60% in relation to the size of the economy.

The total amount of bonds that the U.S. government sells to pay for the budget deficit is the public debt, which is now $16.75 trillion ($16,750 billion). The federal government has a self-imposed limit on the public debt of $16.7 trillion, which means that the government can no longer borrow more money. The reported debt is slightly higher than the limit because the federal government has been shifting money around to avoid running out of cash for the last five months.

While there have been disputes over the debt ceiling in the past, they have been largely partisan affairs that did not come close to forcing the government to actually delay payment. But the recent rise of Tea Party Republicans means that the Republicans, especially in the House of Representatives, are controlled by right wingers who are more than willing to shut down the government and even force the government not to pay its bills in order to achieve their goal of ending Obama’s health care reform known as Obamacare.

What drives the Tea Party

Many Republican members of congress were denying the possibility of a partial shutdown of the federal government right up to the point that the government shut down. Their behavior is similar to their stance on climate change – just deny that it is happening so one doesn’t have to do anything.

Digging a little deeper, one sees that the government agencies that were most affected by the shutdown, such as the Department of Education, Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Labor, are the programs most hated by the right wing.

There is also an extreme free-market logic among Tea Party Republicans that the government is bad for business and the economy and that a shutdown of the government will be good for business.

What is likely to happen

The world isn’t going to end on Oct. 17 if the debt ceiling is not raised. But the economic effects are already being felt, as the uncertainty of repayment of bonds after that date is causing the prices of bonds coming due soon to fall, which leads to higher interest rates. The interest rate on the shortest term U.S. bonds (called bills), which come due in 30 days, has now tripled and is higher than the interest rates on 60-day bills, which come due later.

While Democrats and the Obama administration are warning of the danger of default, which is what happens when the federal government does not repay its bonds or interest payment, it is hard to see how the government won’t give Wall Street what it wants. But there is chance that some bank or financial institution will find itself in a squeeze if the federal government doesn’t pay on time, triggering another financial crisis.

What is more likely is that the sudden drop in federal government spending will trigger a new recession. This could quickly feed upon itself in what economists call the ‘multiplier effect,’ where the individuals, businesses and institutions that aren’t being paid by the federal government then cut back their own purchases and payments, putting the economy into a downward spiral.

What a debt crisis would mean

If the House Republicans do manage to block any agreement to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling, the self-inflicted crisis will mark another step in the decline of the U.S. as a world power. Ever since World War II, the U.S. government has been both a protector of Wall Street and big business and the head of worldwide empire of pro-U.S. governments that protect U.S. financial and business interests, backed by the U.S. military.

From an economic point of view, the end in 1971 of the post-World War II system of fixed exchange rates centered on the U.S. dollar, called Bretton Woods, was an early sign of the decline of the U.S. relative to the rising nations of Europe and Japan. This was followed by the OPEC oil boycott in 1973, and then the U.S. military defeat in Vietnam in 1975, showing the rise of the Third World.

Today the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and coming U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan shows that the U.S., despite using hundreds of thousands of troops and spending trillions of dollars, is no longer to set up stable, pro-U.S. governments that can defend U.S. business interests. With the looming debt crisis, more and more governments around the world are losing faith in the economic power of the U.S. and the safety of U.S. government bonds. Foreign governments and investors now own more than $5.5 trillion of U.S. government bonds, and any sell-off in the bond market triggered by a debt crisis would quickly spread a financial crisis around the world.

But even if a financial crisis is avoided, a deep recession in the U.S. will also spread around the world. Europe’s economy is still in a depression with the euro-zone crisis and many economies in the Third World are slowing down already. Another worldwide recession, following so closely on the 2008-2009 so-called Great Depression, could again shake the very foundations of the world capitalist economy.

#SanJoséCA #capitalistCrisis #recession #RepublicanAgenda #TeaParty #governmentShutdown #DebtCeiling

In the first four years of the Obama administration, there were as many deportations of undocumented immigrants as in the eight years of Bush. Deportations under Obama are now on track to hit 2 million by the end of this year.

While the Obama administration claims that this crackdown is necessary to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR), it is pretty clear that the bipartisan CIR is dead for now. There is no bipartisan House bill, with the Republicans who were working with Democrats on a bill backing out. The federal government is partially shut down – not Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) repression though – and the gap between the Democrats and Republicans has never been wider. With the upcoming debt ceiling limit looming, Washington D.C. is all about the budget, not immigration reform.

The Obama administration is also claiming that it is focusing on criminals. But most of those deported have committed no crime. In addition, hundreds of thousands of undocumented parents of U.S. citizen children, and even more parents of undocumented children, have been deported, tearing apart families.

ICE is also doing another round of workplace audits, the so-called ‘silent raids’ that can force the firing of thousands of undocumented workers. While they are not deported, they are driven further underground. Further, their chances of legalization under a future CIR bill could be harmed, in that the current CIR calls for a continuous work record, which won’t exist for undocumented forced to work totally off the books and under the table.

There is a growing demand in the Chicano, Mexicano, Central American and Latino communities for the president to expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to all undocumented. Why is the government deporting people who might be eligible to legalize under a future immigration reform bill?

Ultimately, what is needed is legalization for all undocumented. But with no legalization law on the horizon, partial steps such as Deferred Action would help the undocumented. They would be able to work legally and would not be subject to ICE raids. Deferred Action also doesn’t have all of the bad elements of the Senate CIR bill, which would further militarize the border, increase workplace repression, reduce family reunification and end the diversity visa program that brings in about half the immigrants from Africa.

There are shortcomings to Deferred Action. While some states are trying to deny those receiving DACA driver's lice