More Concessions From The Cradle

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From the Anti Union Detroit News.........


Union labor under attack

Givebacks threaten workers' good life

By Ron French, Louis Aguilar and Brett Clanton / The Detroit News

Give back or give up?

Detroit, the cradle of the labor movement, is ground zero in a battle for the soul -- and survival -- of organized labor. Unions are losing pay, losing members, and even losing the sympathy of supporters like Roth to the corporations that employ them. Are the concessions being asked of the unions out of line?

Brandy Baker / The Detroit News

Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association members picket at Detroit Metro. A work slowdown by mechanics at Northwest in 1999 brought Metro Airport and the airline to a halt.


As a daughter of public school teachers in Brooklyn, Megan Roth once spent a month making signs, picketing and shouting slogans demanding better pay for her parents and their co-workers. "It was a blast," recalls the 43-year-old Southfield resident.

So when a striking Northwest mechanic handed her a pamphlet asking her to boycott Northwest Airlines, she read it intently. Then the financial adviser proceeded to check into her Northwest flight to Atlanta.

"I feel for them," Roth said. "But who is right or wrong? I honestly don't know how to answer that."

It's tough times for organized labor.

Membership is at its lowest in a century. Locally, teachers and auto workers are being pressured to take pay and benefit cuts. Mechanics for Northwest went on strike Saturday and watched helplessly as replacement workers took their place and members of other airline unions crossed picket lines.

Detroit, the cradle of the labor movement, is ground zero in a battle for the soul -- and survival -- of organized labor. Unions are losing pay, losing members, and even losing the sympathy of supporters like Roth to the corporations that employ them.
The cracks in the House of Labor are spreading well beyond the picket lines and union halls. Last month, 4.6 million workers from the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and the Service Employees International Union split from the AFL-CIO, the biggest rift organized labor has seen in 70 years.

If the power and popularity of unions continues to decline, "it will make an enormous difference to the average American," warned labor expert Harley Shaiken, professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "An erosion of unions today is an erosion of wages and benefits tomorrow."
Union leaders have not been able to organize workers fast enough to stem the losses. Labor groups have repeatedly failed to sign up workers at Wal-Mart stores or the foreign-owned auto assembly plants popping up throughout the South.

The threat of a strike no longer strikes fear in CEOs the way it once did.

A work slowdown by mechanics of Northwest in 1999 brought Metro Airport and the airline to a halt. Strikes in the 1980s and 1990s paralyzed airlines like Pan American World Airways.But when mechanics went on strike Saturday, Northwest shuttled in replacement mechanics and kept most of its planes in the air. Northwest wants to cut the number of mechanics in half and give remaining workers a 25 percent pay cut.

Members of other unions as well as passengers crossed the picket line, some for the first time.

Michael Raymore is a 28-year-old Detroiter who has grown up in a period of declining union clout.

"The idea of job security is too foreign for me to understand," said Raymore, a corporate trainer flying to Louisville on Monday. "I'm already on my second career, and I graduated from Western (Michigan University) four years ago.

"When I hear (strikers) say that their jobs and livelihoods are at stake, I'm like, 'Well, yeah ... whose job isn't always on the line?'"


'We've given enough'


Leaders of the United Auto Workers are meeting in Chicago this week to discuss giving ground on hard-won pay and benefits in order to help General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. survive. The companies are struggling with huge pension and health care obligations for current UAW workers and retirees.

"We've given enough, gee whiz," said Grant Muncy, chairman of UAW Local 211, which represents 2,800 workers at a GM engine plant in Defiance, Ohio. Employment at that plant has been cut in half in five years, and the union agreed to higher co-pays for prescription drugs and doctor visits in the last national contract in 2003.

The atmosphere at the annual conference was more somber than usual. GM and Delphi Corp., the Troy-based auto supplier, are pressuring the union for relief from rising labor costs now -- two years before their contract expires in 2007.

Small groups of men huddled in serious conversation, asking who had heard what and playing out various doomsday scenarios.

"The unions are going to survive," said Gerald Horton, 61, alternate committeeman at a Wentsville, Ohio, plant that makes GM full-size vans. "But they're going to get beat up."

Detroit Public Schools teachers are taking a strike vote today after the school corporation asked them to take a 2.5 percent pay cut and reductions in various benefits.

"I know everybody is taking a cut, but it has got to stop somewhere," said Patsy Bell, 55, of Detroit, who has a granddaughter and three nephews who live with her and go to Detroit's Vernor Elementary. She is worried that school won't start on time but supports the teachers. She doesn't think they should take a pay cut. She says the district's budget problems aren't their fault.

Bell, who is a union member as a housekeeper at Harper University Hospital, said she's saddened that unions seem to be losing their clout. "It's a shame," Bell said. "How many people fought and lost their jobs and were jailed ... for the struggle? We are going to go back five steps instead of going forward."
Fewer Americans have connections to unions than at any time since the beginning of the 20th century. Fifty years ago, 35 percent of American workers were union members. Today, union workers have dropped to 12.5 percent -- 8 percent when only private-sector unions are counted.

Difficult time for unions


Organized labor has faced tough times before. In the 1980s, companies demanded concessions from unions routinely. "But I don't think there has ever been as bad a time as this," said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial management at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

"In the past, there was always a sense that it was just a bad economic period and things would get better," Chaison said. "Now there is a real sense of gloom about the labor movement, a sense of disarray about what it is to do."
As membership has declined, so has unions' image in the eyes of the public. Labor organizations that once were seen as hero of the common man are often portrayed as greedy special interest groups.

"Consumers don't seem to care (about unions)," Chaison said. "A typical American worker would probably say unions were once effective voices in the workplaces, but in the face of globalization, they don't have a role anymore."

The threat of jobs moving to Mexico or other cheap labor markets has taken the teeth out of labor, Chaison said. "Traditionally, unions made demands and management reacted," he said. "Today, companies can just pick up and move (to a cheaper labor market)."

Northwest mechanics know that Jet Blue, for example, performs maintenance on its airplanes in El Salvador to save money. Northwest already outsources some of its maintenance.

"I think the days of big organizing and labor clout in the way that we usually mean by that phrase are pretty much gone," said Glenn McDonald, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and Strategy at Washington University in St. Louis.

"There are a few industries, like construction, where old-fashioned labor clout is still there. But most of the economy just doesn't work like that anymore," McDonald said.


What unions must do


To stay relevant, unions must do a better job of public relations, Shaiken of UC-Berkley said.

"The public has been inundated for decades by an anti-union message," he said.

If unions are to survive in today's competitive global economy, they must be willing to work with management in solving mutual problems, including recognizing that the health care costs are hobbling many employers, said Jules I. Crystal, a Chicago labor attorney.

"The unions have to go beyond the knee-jerk reflex that management is always wrong," said Crystal, a University of Michigan law school graduate who represents management in labor disputes. "They have to take a more flexible, innovative approach."

If unions fail to respond to today's economic pressures, Crystal said, "I think it is possible they will become even more irrelevant to employees and employers than they are today."

Chaison worries that unless organized labor finds new strategies, "they could represent just islands of membership. They'll get smaller and smaller."

Shaiken hopes that doesn't happen. "So much of what American workers enjoy today was pioneered by unions or given by companies trying to avoid unions. Pensions, paid health care, the 40-hour workweek, overtime pay, all were a result of unions in past generations," he said. "Labor is going through tough times, but there can still be solidarity."

Detroit News Staff Writers Richard A. Ryan and Christine MacDonald contributed to this report. You can reach Ron French at (313) 222-2175 or rfrench@ detnews.com.
 

[nais98]

Old school unionists will recognize the 40 year cultural PSYCH out that has led to this..............

Thursday, August 25, 2005


Community turns blind eye to demise of unions it spawned


By Laura Berman / The Detroit News

Maybe Michigan -- with its accelerating brain drain and declining job-base -- is becoming the Deep South of the North.

This state, which played a major role in spawning the nation's labor union movement, is now becoming a cutting-edge laboratory for the demise of unions.

What we built here is now getting busted here.

Even that phrase -- union-busting -- that once carried the full-force charge of an epithet has become a mild curse or even, in some circles, a term of approval.
The Teamsters, once the nation's most fearsome union brotherhood, slunk out of the AFL-CIO last month, at once weakening the nation's largest union and drawing attention to the consortium's modern toothlessness.
But the newly energized, modern science of challenging unions is fast becoming a Michigan export.

Frank Vega, who headed the Detroit Newspaper Agency during the 20-month strike that began here in 1995, now wields a publisher title in San Francisco, where his grit and expertise in management of labor relations were deployed in what were tense negotiations at the San Francisco Chronicle.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian, an alternative newspaper, reported July 19 that a memo from the publisher to management employees urged them to "not worry about sleeping quarters or food ... We intend to publish and distribute the Chronicle no matter what."

Ten years after the Detroit newspaper strike, when such hard-boiled tactics still carried the capacity to shock, Northwest Airlines is adopting the pattern without the social heat the newspapers took a decade ago.

Nobody's shocked now.
The pattern is set: Hire replacement workers. Hunker down for the long haul.

And keep flying, no matter what.

Travelers, with tickets in hand, nod and smile and in some cases wish the workers good luck. And then keep walking.
In more halcyon times, labor unions were full partners in Michigan prosperity and social progress: They helped raise much more than wages. They boosted the status of women and minorities, forged a new standard of health and dental care in southeast Michigan that created some of the best hospitals in the country, and bargained contracts that, at the stock market's inflated peak, transformed factory workers into 401K plan millionaires.
Whoosh. As Alice Randall, parodist of the most famous southern novel quipped, "the wind done gone."

Now, though, as the industries that relied on crafts and trades and factory workers dismantle the equipment and lay off workers, a company like Northwest Airlines is fully, extensively prepared to go to battle.

It's got the muscle, the jobs, the determination, and the public relations savvy to cast itself as beleaguered victim of unrealistic union workers. Most important, though, it has the tacit support of a community that no longer rouses itself in outrage -- even here, in a historic labor spawning ground.

Most of us will keep walking. And they'll keep flying, no matter what.
Laura Berman's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in Metro. Reach her at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.

 

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Wayne County ranks worst in the nation for foreclosures

Defaults soaring in state



Brian J. O'Connor / The Detroit News

February 27, 2006

DETROIT -- Katherine Ben-Ami closed on 11 homes a minute Wednesday.

If she were the world's fastest real estate agent, that would be good news, but the sad fact is Ben-Ami is an attorney for the Wayne County Sheriff's Office, and in 35 minutes she supervised the auction of 379 foreclosed Wayne County homes.

"Wednesday's always been a big day," she said, "but not this big."

For hundreds of people each week, Michigan's sputtering economy literally hits home.

After recording more than 9,000 foreclosures in 2005, Wayne County ended January with 3,364 homes in active foreclosure, the highest of any county in the nation by more than 1,000, according to statistics compiled by Foreclosure.com of Boca Raton, Fla.

While Wayne County is ground zero, foreclosures are rising throughout Metro Detroit and Michigan. Active foreclosures in Oakland and Macomb counties and the entire state have doubled in the past two years.

The numbers illustrate one of cruelest side effects of the region's economic troubles. Every repossessed home is a broken American dream for families, who lose not only money and a home, but also give up years of happy memories and hopes for a solid future.

The burgeoning foreclosure rate also takes a toll on the larger community.

Lenders, stuck with the homes, lose up to $50,000 per house as they clear them out at below-market prices. That can lower property values in neighborhoods, pushing more homeowners to move out, and eventually hurt property tax collections for local governments.

"Foreclosure depresses an area in a variety of ways," said LaSalle Bank chief economist Carl Tannenbaum.

And these days, southeast Michigan has plenty to be depressed about.

Taken together, Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties account for more than half of the state's 8,284 active foreclosures. By itself, Wayne records 40 percent of the state total.

"This is the worst I've ever seen," said Gary Meyers, a foreclosure specialist with Venturi Realty of Salt Lake City, who made his first trip to the Wayne County courthouse Wednesday. "I've been all over the U.S., and the most I've ever seen in a day is 30."

Job loss, overtime cutbacks and the state's moribund economy explain part of this trend.

Flat property values, a rise in risky loans and aggressive mortgage lending also play a role, experts say. But these problems alone don't explain why Wayne County homes are being foreclosed at a rate more than four times the pace in Oakland County, and more than seven times the rate seen in Macomb County.

Real estate and mortgage experts say much of Wayne's problem is caused by defaults in Detroit. The city suffers from high taxes and insurance, as well as many fee-laden, high-interest sub-prime mortgages. In addition, predatory lenders arrange mortgages for buyers who can't really afford them, while scammers engage in outright fraud when they take the mortgage money and run, leaving hapless buyers to lose their home.

"You want to buy my house?" asked the owner of a home on West Grand Boulevard during Wednesday's auction.

A few missed payments, a sub-prime refinancing and back taxes cost him his home.

The well-dressed, middle-aged General Motors Corp. line worker once owned the home free and clear. During a separation from his wife, he took out a 30-year mortgage but fell behind in the payments. He refinanced to a sub-prime loan charging 13 percent interest. But he had fallen behind on taxes, too, and now owes more than $64,000 to the lender, including $16,000 for taxes. Although he's declared bankruptcy, the home was excluded.

"My monthly payment went from $500 to $2,200 because of the negative escrow account," he said, asking that his name be kept out of the newspaper. He's selling the house, which he says is worth more than he owes on it.

"I've never tried to deny paying them," he said. "All of a sudden they want their money, and they're taking my house."

The first and most obvious reason so many homeowners are missing their mortgage payments would seem to be unemployment. Michigan posted one of the highest annual unemployment rates in the nation last year, and it's expected to keep edging up in 2006. But while disappearing paychecks are a factor, so are the shrinking paychecks brought about by cuts in overtime or total hours worked, experts say. Divorce or prolonged illness often lead to foreclosures.

"It's really three things: loss of income, reduction in income or substantial medical expenses," says Stuart Gold, a Southfield bankruptcy attorney.

Gold estimates that he sees 10 new clients a week, most of them rushing to forestall foreclosure.

"We've been in practice in southeast Michigan for over 20 years, and I think this is the worst I've ever seen it," he said. "It just seems to be increasing every month."

But just as much of a factor as job loss is the increase in loans for which homeowners borrowed up to 100 percent or more of the purchase price, or siphoned all the equity out of a property to pay off debts or get cash.

Then there are adjustable-rate loans, which ratchet up the monthly payment right behind interest rates, pushing a once-affordable mortgage payment out of reach.

These loans require little, if any, down payment and feature temporarily low interest rates help buyers get into a home they couldn't afford with a conventional loan.

"Many people are biting off more than they can chew," said Bettina Pearch, a counselor with Greenpath Debt Solutions in Allen Park. "I see a lot of people who are living for the mortgage. There's a lot of creative financing out there that is not really in the client's best interest."

Overly affordable loans leave buyers stuck if something breaks around the home or in their budget, whether it's a furnace, a roof, a medical emergency or a layoff.

Buyers often stretch finances to get into a home with a low- or no-down mortgage or a loan with initially low payments, and often don't have savings to fall back on. With little or no equity in the property, they can't borrow against the home for repairs or extra cash and can't refinance to put some breathing room in the budget.

Even selling the property is out of the question, since the owner would need to pay thousands of dollars in real estate sales commissions and closing costs just to get out from under the mortgage.

Budget counselors, lawyers, Realtors and lenders say they see many unprepared homeowners who don't realize just what they're getting into when they buy a house.

Many get tripped up by real estate taxes and homeowners insurance bills, often because lenders or brokers haven't explained the financial details. Under Michigan law, for example, the taxable value of a home is capped for homeowners, but the property is reassessed to reflect the market value when the home is sold.

Buyers who based their budget on those old, lower taxes are shocked when the newly adjusted bill shows up, often months after they've moved in.

Often, the lender demands a lump sum payment of a few thousand dollars for the tax escrow account, and raises the monthly escrow payment. If the buyer can't catch up, the lender pays the tax and moves to foreclose.

"Brokers are really trying to get people into homes," Pearch said. "Not everybody is destined to be a homeowner, nor should they be a homeowner."

Even with so many foreclosed homes, few actually sell at auction; most end up going back to the lender. In most cases, explained Ben-Ami of the Sheriff's Office, the homes are worth no more than what's due to the bank. At Wednesday's auction, three of the 379 houses brought bids -- all for just $1 over the amount owed.

"Last week, we sold one property to an outside bidder," Ben-Ami said. "When they find out what the people owe, they're shocked."

With the auction ended, she helped bundle the foot-high stacks of legal forms to be officially filed.

She would return Thursday to watch as another 148 homes went to foreclosure.You can reach Brian J. O'Connor at (313) 222-2145 or boconnor@detnews.com.

[nais98]

D-Boy - Factory State of Grind (Empire State of Mind/Detroit Version)

[nais98]

February 19, 2010   http://detnews.com/article/20100219/METRO/2190374

Metro Detroit area strains to help homeless

More find shelter in tents, vacant properties

CATHERINE JUN
The Detroit News

On most days, a white bus rolls down the streets of Detroit, and Tyrone Chatman peers out its window looking for homeless camping outside.

Chatman found remnants of a makeshift shelter on a recent wintry morning: blankets pulled over a playscape, covering a mattress, with clothing and baby toys scattered outside.

At the same time in northeast Detroit, workers for the Coalition on Temporarily Shelter search for families living in abandoned or condemned homes to offer them help.

"Because we do have so many abandoned and foreclosed homes, word gets around how you can get into this home or that," said Jessica Staton, a specialist at COTS.

At a time when foreclosures in the nation are forcing millions to find new living arrangements, the homeless are frequently turning to alternatives to overbooked and inadequate shelters. Some stake out vacant homes that serve as makeshift shelters in a pinch. Others congregate in encampments. This fall, an organized camp in Ann Arbor made headlines when its founder was arrested for trespassing on state property.

The number of homeless in Michigan grew to about 86,100 in 2008, a 9 percent increase from 2007. Statewide estimates for 2009 will be released in April.

But midyear figures indicate the number continues to grow, possibly at an even steeper rate, said Barbara Ritter, project director with Michigan's Homeless Management Information System. The national program gathers homeless data.

"It's a tough scenario if you find yourself homeless now," said Chatman, executive director of the Michigan Veterans Foundation, which runs a 104-bed transitional housing facility on Park Avenue.

Families jolt agencies

The growing number of homeless families with children, which jumped by 11 percent in 2008, has thrown some assistance agencies for a loop. The largest increases are in rural areas as well as suburban communities.

"We were used to those chronically homeless," not families, said Carrie Fortune of the Macomb Homeless Coalition. "That's kind of what we're struggling with at this point." In Macomb County, 824 children were homeless in 2009, Fortune said. That's up from 569 children in 2007.

Relocating to a shelter presents more challenges for adults with children. It's complicated to find them affordable housing that meets their space needs and is close to their schools.

"You're not going to put them into a typical two-bedroom apartment," Fortune said. For those in shelters, that means staying there longer than they should be, she said. In recent years, experts have tried to forestall the growing homeless problem by directing federal housing vouchers and subsidies to the homeless first, those on the verge second.

As much as $53 million in federal stimulus dollars flowed to Michigan for households on the verge of losing their homes. But the need exceeds the dollars, according to several administering the funds.

In Oakland County, more than 700 families qualified for homeless vouchers in the latest round of distribution. But there was only enough money to award 30.

The Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness is running a letter-writing campaign, joining national lobbyists to try and convince federal legislators to up homeless assistance funding to $2.4 billion in 2011, a 28 percent increase from 2010. This year's funding was raised by about 10 percent over last.

"That is a modest increase," said Jason Weller, executive director of the coalition. "We're still not talking about providing the services to everybody."

More 'are on the verge'

Housing experts emphasize the rising homeless counts don't include many of those living in unconventional shelters.

"We know there's much more people that are on the verge of homelessness or in a precarious housing situation," said Amanda Sternberg of the Homeless Action Network of Detroit. Official counts rarely reach those in abandoned homes or hotels, she said. The count in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park doesn't reflect that group.

In northeast Detroit, when Staton of COTS ventures through neighborhoods looking for homeless, she sometimes finds dangerous living conditions. Some families turn to abandoned homes for shelter, she said.

"A lot of times it's families who have recently been evicted and have no place to go," Staton said.

Structures vary, from those with collapsed ceilings, fire damage or mold to "abandominiums," a house in relatively better condition, she said.

Selena McClain, a 38-year-old mother of three children, was evicted, but she managed to gather enough money to keep her family in a motel in Southfield.

McClain lost her rental home in Detroit when the landlord went into tax foreclosure. Then, McClain lost her job just before Christmas, and she, her uncle and her children, a 5-year-old and 16-year-old twins, were evicted from a condo in Southfield.

"They don't really understand what's going on," McClain said of her children. "It's very, very hard, but I know things are going to get better for us."

'Steadily rising'

In Oakland County, the number of children who are homeless at a given time now ranges from 3,000 to 10,000, up from 2,000 to 7,000 three years ago, according to estimates by the Oakland County Task Force on Homelessness and Affordable Housing.

"It's been steadily rising," said Susan Benson, a director at Oakland Schools who oversees a program to help homeless students maintain their school routines. "Hopefully this will be the worst year and then things will turn."

Benson's office provides families like McClain's with clothing, school supplies and bus transportation as well as helping them sign up for federally funded free or reduced lunches at school. In some cases, counselors have discovered parents resorting to living with their children in cars, Benson said.

"We're swamped and we know we are serving the tip of the iceberg," she added, citing the high number of requests.

The Michigan Veterans Foundation now sets up dozens of additional emergency cots in the facility lobby each night. It is a preferred alternative to leaving people on their own outside, said Chatman, the executive director of the foundation.

Dan Betanzos cooks three meals a day for the approximately 100 veterans who temporarily live at the center. He lives there, too.

"I had nowhere to go; I had nothing," Betanzos said who moved there after being released from prison for drunk driving, something he now regrets.

"It's comfortable living conditions here, but still you want your own place," he said.

cjun@detnews.com">cjun@detnews.com (313) 222-2019
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