State of the American Worker: a panel discussion

today's panelist consists of John Hanley who is an international representative for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and was an active member of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union a reform movement within the Union he works directly for the general president as an international representative representative John Hammond chaired the Subcommittee on health care and Social Services in the Iowa House I&C philosophy professor Tony Smith who is co-director of the Merici bacon Center for Ethics and corporations and government will moderate so that further ado thank you for all coming this afternoon and I'd like to take advantage of my moderator role before handing it over to Joe to just mention a little bit about an issue that I'm interested in and that I've read some stuff about and we're eager to take turns throwing things out and be relatively brief so that we can have some a lot of discussion for most of the time this afternoon but one thing I wanted to talk about and throw out of a possible discussion later is what's called the team concept and this is the idea that you read a lot about in the business press especially but also in the mainstream media about about a major transition in the way that work is done in the United States and I think we're going to see a lot more of this talk I think it's going to be a crucial part of the Clinton administration agenda i robert righteous Secretary of Labor uses this talk a lot and the I basic idea here is to try to get beyond the old antagonism between management and labor in the manufacturing workplace and to enter into some sort of more partnership type of role and part of that is called well it's also talked about in terms of being a win-win situation where both labor and management win by rearranging labor roles and the basic idea is to move away from the old assembly line set up where one worker does one task over and over again the entire time and replace it with a team set up where a bunch of workers will rotate between different tasks and instead of having to follow orders down in a top-down fashion they will get to participate in the design of the labor process and so in return it's so the idea behind this is that this is a more productive arrangement of manufacturing and so management gets increases in productivity and in return labor gets a more creative challenging workplace where they have more participatory actions and they also win certain measures of job security as a result and this model was first introduced in Japan sometimes it's called the Japanese model but it's been introduced in United States as well and I suppose the Saturn plant by by GM and Tennessee is the best example of the best well known example of this okay well all I want to do today is just you just threw out five different ideas here about why when you read people talk about the team concept or the move to more participatory ways of setting up the workplace that you should also think just for a second that while the language here participation and empowerment and teams is a very positive language there may be a negative side to this story that doesn't get talked about in the business press and often doesn't get talked about in the mainstream press the first point I want to make is lots of times there's a concept of a two-tiered workforce here and typically what happens is we talk about certain central plants moving to a team concept where there's participation and job security the first thing to remember is that these plants that moving to us this model often depend upon a tier of subcontractors and work conditions in these subcontractors can be quite different and these things are connected I think a lot of people United States do not know that in Japan we hear a lot of talk about job security programs in Japan but only one-fourth to one-third of the Japanese workforce actually has job guarantees and the remainder of the Japanese workforce are subcontractors working in smaller plants without any of those things so if we're going to talk about whether the labor-management antagonism has been overcome we've got to look at the whole workforce and not just certain sections of the workforce the second point I wanted to make is that we're now seeing that some of these job guarantees are things that are very easily made when the firms are very profitable but that firms are on the verge of abandoning them when their profits start to sink and we've seen recently firms like IBM United States which for general decades and decades had made job guaranteed lifetime job guarantees to their workers of course to having massive layoffs now and according to Businessweek we're even beginning to see in Japan as the Japanese economy economy starts to take a downswing that workers who had been guaranteed job lifetime jobs that that is now being called into question so the second point I want to make is before we assume that this antagonism between management and labor has been overcome because workers get job lifetime guarantees we've got to be we've got to make sure that those guarantees really mean something third point I want to make is that the move towards a team set up and away from the assembly line set up is usually associated with an abandoning work rules job classifications and the seniority system and this has some problems if we want to evaluate the future of the workforce and the first problem is of course that when you get rid of work rules in job classifications and that means that management has the ability to assign workers to different places in the firm at will and that means there's a built-in mechanism here that management can you in principle to punish people from the workforce that it wants to punish if you have a plant where there are work rules and job classifications you have some protection or maybe maybe more protection than when these things are abolished and then if you start to raise issues about safety for instance at the workplace then management can say well you're a troublemaker we're going to assign you over here and you really don't have any recourse the second problem in about getting rid of work rules and job classification systems and seniority is that if you look at how traditional plants will run workers you know you you know what your have different physical and psychological capacities at different points in your work life right a worker in that in his 20s or her 20s or 30s can do different things and at a faster pace than a worker in his or her 40s or 50s or 60s this is uh Nan unfortunate physiological fact traditionally the way the job classification system worked is that workers would be able to transfer as they got more seniority and as they got older they would be able to transfer and into less grueling jobs went with the abandonment of job classification and seniority systems this isn't possible anymore and so a worker in his or her 40s 50s or 60s has to do the exact same job as a worker in his or her 20s or 30s and in many cases this is very hard to do if not impossible to do one thing that's also not known about the Japanese system is that the average age of a Japanese on a Japanese manufacturing plant is 10 years less than the average age of a worker in US manufacturing and that's because when a worker gets into his 50s or 60s they'll get a little tap on the shoulder and management will say you can't really do this job anymore can you maybe you should think about retiring and so the point I'm trying to make here is what does a lifetime job guarantee mean if the job is designed such that a normal average person just simply physically can't do it in his or her 50s or 60s having and having a legal guarantee to a job doesn't mean much and that's CIM stance and then the last point I want to make before I turn it over to Joe is that this move to the team structure and is also connected with an increase in the work pace and the business management literature is very upfront about this the mainstream media when they talk about this isn't quite as upfront about this in the traditional plant the average worker worked forty five seconds out of every minute that gave that worker 15 seconds to sort of catch his or her breath in the plant of the future the plant that were going to now the plant of the team concept or were those with that idea has been institutionalized the average worker works 57 seconds out of every 60 now this is a major this is a major change in what your life is like working an average of 45 seconds of per minute as opposed to 57 seconds per a minute the amount of added stress in the workday is increased tremendously we're having a tremendous problem of repetitive motion illness repetitive motion illnesses that that plague that is that is broken out is this is connected I believe to the move to the key team concept when you have 15 seconds a minute to sort of relax and catch your breath you'll in the long term will avoid injury and in a way that you won't if you're working 57 seconds out of every 60 and in Japan we have this phenomenon called Karoshi which is the sudden death phenomenon and a lot of people in Japan think that this level of stress over years leads to just on extent be explained otherwise than as a result of increased job stress at the workplace so my point here before I shut up is just to throw this out as things to discuss a talk about a think about when we talk about the future of work in the United States one big part of that is a move towards teamwork and participation cooperation all that sort of stuff and I think that there are positive things about this move but I also think there are negative things about this move that we have to think about too so I'd like to hand it over now to Joe Henry it's good to be here it's also nice to know that I get to come back to the school where I graduated from I got my four-year degree here and majored in psychology and did a little bit of industrial psychology study and I did learn some of these concepts when I was here also during that time I was working at UPS and I was wondering to myself why a company like UPS would not use some of these concepts in a way that we had learned to here at Iowa State and we found and I found out especially that companies like UPS and most major corporations are more concerned with making money than caring about their employees so the team the type of team concept that is used out there in in the different types of corporations you learn about it here and then when you go to these companies as engineers computer programmers or such as myself I stayed in my truck driving job at UPS you find out that these team concepts are used to take ideas from workers on how to increase productivity to liquidate any work rules that the employees may have and to basically force workers to do more per hour than before it's unfortunate that a lot of these major corporations don't use team concept the way that it's been written about in the books where everybody gets together devises ways to make the company more productive and make the make the employees feel like they're you know really contributing but it isn't happening UPS is a good example of that at UPS we have a teamster contract with them we represent 150,000 employees nationwide at UPS they have what is called core keeping our reputation for excellence which they bring workers into these committees and ask for their ideas on how to increase productivity increase service and how we can all just basically work together to to make the company sell itself to customers to business customers and truck and the driver set ups have done that the people inside the warehouse have done that but over the years their work has increased the number of jobs have went down people are doing more than working longer hours they're suffering from repetitive what was that trying to use repetitive motion injuries carpal tunnel or their risco bed and their back starts suffering injuries and you'll also find this in the computer program you feel - were the people who are professionals who get into these team concepts are forced to do more per hour or per minute and they they lose out so basically in regards to the team concept it's not a bad idea as far as what it's meant to do what it's supposed to do the problem is is that many companies within our country would use this to make more money they do not focus upon the employees and how it how to enrich the environment employees many companies in this country unfortunately as you may all be aware are more concerned about short-term profit then through long-term profit where we're actually enrichment does happen within the job environment and there are ways that could be found to increase productivity while at the same time not damaging the workers who work at that company so that in a nutshell is kind of where you know we are in the Teamsters Union we don't we don't feel that team concept is all that bad but we we want to monitor it and especially at companies like UPS it's been used in the wrong way we're not against it fully another thing to bring up to what the team concept is it's also used by companies to bust unions and that's very unfortunate how they do it is that companies will give people involved in a safety committee or a health and safety committee or some sort of productivity committee and this committee will find ways to again enrich the environment while at the same time making the company more productive but then the employer starts adding other things into these committees committees such as how to solve grievances without allowing union representatives to participate and eventually in some instances they attempt to convince the employees that the union doesn't need to exist within the workplace that the company can do a better job through this committee so and this has happened at some of the freight companies that the Teamsters represent the members have so we we have had to be very careful about these committees starting up they're not always bad but most the time they are bad because the companies have a tendency to use them for their own reasons so that is abortion with what Robert Reich is talking about one thing that I heard was interesting that he had said it a hearing was that he would like to see these committees establish more so in the workplace but he the ones that he has noticed to be most efficient and most effective have been in those workplaces where there has been a union because when a union the workers can get information on what the quality of work life committees are all about what are some of the danger points to look at and what are some of the good things that could be looked at in going into a committee with the employer to actually find ways in which to enrich the environment but not at the cost of the workers and at increasing productivity that would damage the workers body or or mental stability Johnny I want to come at this from a little different perspective and that is the state or the public employee because that's the area which I'm most familiar our title is the American worker and I'm gonna go to the Iowa publicly employed worker as focusing yeah I think as I thought tried to think about those Iowa workers I came up with some trends and the first trend is that state employees at least have no job security anymore there was a time I think when people thought if they were in public employment they had good job security they had good benefits but that is no more we've had over 1,000 layoffs in state government since August of 91 and all of that as a result of a series of events that I'll review for you I think most of you are aware I'll review them for you the second trend I think is hand-in-hand with that first one of the no job security more layoffs and that is the trend toward privatization and both of those trends actually are going on all over the country and state government as state budgets are stretched to the limits you see reports or I do at least from other states that the same thing is happening there's more layoffs more privatization now I happen to not have a problem with privatization in and of itself that is contracting out for services that normally government would provide for the people but what I do have a problem with is when that privatization means that employees are treated badly I last year in an appropriations bill after getting wind of the governor's plan to privatize some of the functions at the Veterans Home in Marshalltown I put language in the appropriations bill that said any contractor that contracts for specific services shall provide comparable wages and benefits that was taken out by the Senate and ultimately was left out I think what will happen and we don't know yet in Marshalltown is that those folks that were hired by a veteran's home who have now received their pink slips something like 150 I think in dietary and laundry area where they probably weren't making great wages already will be terminated and will be rehired by this company with lower wages and they will have lost growth in their pensions if they've worked for state government less than four years they will have lost their pension and probably will not have health benefits now I say I have no problem with privatization as long as you have comparable wages and benefits and I believe if if we believe what private business says they should be able to compete while still providing private comfortable wages and benefits because they claim they're more private business claims they're more efficient they don't have to go through all of them red tape they do have to make a profit but if they can reduce the red tape that government imposes on itself what they say should be a profit a reasonable profit so it should work that way but in fact I believe in most cases where there's been privatization of the functions of state government it has resulted in lower wages and benefits and that's going to be very difficult for the community of Marshalltown to deal with that because there are a lot of people there I think it'll happen in all nine of our state institutions eventually and we haven't been able to stop that the folks that contract for those services generally I suspect always would be non-union contractors who would not have the same kind of thing support for the employees as we have in state government well let me go back to that history of what happened over that of the last 18 months or so just to remind you you know well early in 1991 so it's actually been two years the negotiators for the negotiations for state employees in the five unions we actually have five state employee unions they went to arbitration arbitrators ruled in favor of the unions did you know under arbitration you pick one side or the other you don't pick a compromise because that would certainly encourage everybody to go out to the extreme and so the arbitrator picks the most reasonable of the two firewalkers and the governor's approach was 2% over two years in paid increases which was way out of line and everyone knew that and so the arbitrator's in each case ruled in favor of the unions the legislature then appropriated the necessary money to pay those additional wages the governor vetoed the appropriation and then said he didn't have the money to pay I'm not gonna be real nice to about the governor in here at the morning the unions went to a district court to challenge the governor's decision not to pay the wages as the final arbitrator arbitration at brood debora went to court district court ruled in favor of the unions the governor appealed to the Supreme Court the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the unions so at every step arbitrator the district court from the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Union the cost of this the legal costs of this was something like seven $50,000 to hear again and again that this was the correct decision so in 1992 we've gone almost a full year about that time so in 1992 the legislature again appropriated the money and by this time I think it was around ninety million dollars we had to appropriate to take care of two years wages because we had to deal with the back pay or fiscal 92 and the forward pay purposeful 93 and we did that and it has moved forward from there we had to raise the sales taxes you may recall to pay those back wages well under the public employee collective re a bargaining loss and trade offs were made back in the early 70s that said we won't have a strike provision but we will go to plan arbitration and that would be the final decision there was an effort to erode that law I think last year to the detriment of the the public employees but eventually they they did prevail this year I'm serving on the labor committee for the first time and I see all kinds of bills coming through the Labor Committee that are attempts to erode the authority of chapter 20 the collective bargaining law and to erode labor rights I don't know how those will fare I think they will probably fare better in the Senate than in the house but state employees I think overall are paid pretty well I looked at some comparisons with private employment in the state and public employment and I think overall they're paid pay pretty well we have pretty good benefits pretty good range of benefits were paid it theoretically at least on the basis of comparable worth and that was done back in 83 84 85 to get that accomplished comparable worth means you face the pay on skills effort responsibility in working conditions and that was an effort to bring women's type work up to the same level as those of male employees but sickly the governor has repeatedly attacked public employees in the state for abusing sick leave it is very generous but I think one explanation to that and women probably abuse it more than men and one reason is that there are children and women are the primary caregivers the governor has vetoed our family leave plan when our when it's been offered at the state level and someone does have to take care of children so I think it's something like 30 days a year simply benefits which is very generous health care benefits vacation flex time in some places child care only at the d-o-t with the Legislature passed a bill several years ago to create a child care facility on Capitol Complex a lot of women work at the Capitol Complex the governor vetoed that it did seem to us that it was appropriate for the state to lead the way in terms of providing benefits or access to quality child care but that was vetoed well today state employees I think have to work very hard there's understaffing there's large workloads I'm most familiar with the Department of Human Services because I do work on that committee chaired that committee for four years and now serve as a ranking member recently we heard that there were 300 positions in the our payment services that were being held open they were not being filled and everyone denied responsibility for having anything to do the decision to hold those positions open Department of management didn't know about it the department Human Services didn't know about it and yet the requests have never gone in to get those positions filled and those of you who may be tuned in to what's happening in Human Services around the state know that response is slower and slower to child abuse investigations the ability to do the things that Human Services workers out on the field expect to do is very very limited and yet there are 300 positions that are funded and they're not filled and that leads to burnout on the part of those who remain employed so those are some of the problems in in state government that I see we have in the state as a whole I think we have a bit of good news and that is that Iowa has a smaller percentage of our population that's uninsured for health care than many states and if you look at the nation with something like 37 million uninsured Americans that comes to about 15% of our population in Iowa it's somewhere around 9% it's for that reason that I've worked very hard to try to get universal access to health care in Iowa because I think we have a an easier problem to address and I on then we have nationwide I have not been successful I hope President Clinton is more successful than I have been on that issue I don't think it's necessarily appropriate that health care should be tied to employment rather it should be a basic right of all whether they're employees or not but most of the people most of those 37 million who are uninsured are employed or are family members employed persons let me make sure I got that right most of the 37 million are employed or else their family members of someone who's employed so they simply can't afford it or it's not available in their workplace it's an important issue for the American worker I think we need to keep on track about I'll stop there I have time for questions yeah well we got plenty of time here anybody like to share any ideas with us or ask any questions or get some discussion going yes well okay the problem is they pay their workers well well 52 52 percent of the workforce at UPS are part-time most of those part-timers make around $8 an hour they are only guaranteed 15 hours of work for a week and the reality of it is is that it used to be that the so called college student like myself when I went to college would work part-time at UPS and then after they got their degree in whatever would leave for something else what's happening though in our society the way the economics are right now with unemployment people don't want to leave those jobs because they cannot find jobs out there even with four-year degrees that paid $8 an hour those people who work at UPS want to stay with ups and see if do Trek UPS UPS's motto has always been you know that the people who work here you know make us they make our business and we care about our people that just isn't the case we're going into negotiations this year we did a survey of the membership throughout the country the top two issues amongst part-timers and full timers was the harassment and intimidation made by management the workers we we in a way we have a Japanese model working at ups workers are made to work very hard to do as much as possible within a certain period of time and and that goes on and on and on ups paints a good image of itself to the public and it provides good benefits to full-time people full-time people overall make around 15 16 dollars an hour and that's good the problem is the the survival rate for a full-time person is no more than fifteen or twenty years one of the big bargaining items for full-time employees packaged car drivers who you see all the time who I was are wanting to see a 20-year pension to be able to leave after 20 years because simply we cannot survive past 20 years it's not so much that it couldn't be a very good place to work it's just that they have taken some of these team concepts and used it today he'll they they made their workforce work very hard our union was very flexible and understanding that years ago but the problem is there are now problems and the people are working the people are made to work very hard and a lot of lot of work there's a lot of full-timers people go from part-time to full-time eventually end up with some sort of back injury or wrist injury during their career so it's not as rosy as people would think but nor are more most jobs in this country these days a lot of white-collar jobs these days I mean even at Iowa State University I would assume that the teachers here have to go through a lot of pressure the the guarantees are not there like they use and that's where the union you know the Teamsters union with ups errs we're going to attempt to negotiate language into the contract that protects the workers helps redefine the type of environment in which they work put limits the amount of productivity that they have to produce and and make ups the type of place that most people think that it is and and don't be surprised to hear that other companies that have such a rosy picture about how they treat their workers it's just the same way so that's hopefully that's an answer to your question the Garen discuss down exactly look look at Walmart look look at most computer programming jobs when I graduated 81 computer programming was was the job to go for what are you finding out with computer programmers now they apply for companies and maybe they don't get the job but they're told well you know you can do some contracted out work for us stay at home with your computer program some stuff for us we'll pay you so much money but we won't give you any health care coverage we won't cover you under workers comp and you know the dreams that students have had that they could leave the university after four years or after getting the PhD and to get a job that would that would pay 40 50 60 thousand dollars a year unfortunately it's not there anymore what's nice to know and it's good about unions is that union workers on the whole get paid a heck of a lot more the non-union workers at all different types of levels in all different types of areas blue collar workers white collar workers if you look down to the south freight drivers non-union freight drivers get paid on the average 22 to 28 thousand a year whereas the union freight driver gets paid 40,000 a year so there's a difference there and what's unfortunate is that white collar workers professionals are not even getting paid near that amount of money for their work when they graduate after four years and that is really unfortunate all the years you put into schooling and you do not receive that same amount of money unless you have you well I'd like to know some of that tooling actually some of that went to pay unexpectedly high Medicaid costs because Medicaid has like all healthcare you know has just gone out of control and since the state pays a big chunk in not medicated it did go there other places some well if you're talking about what happened sales tax you know about ninety million of them only went for that paying back with salaries and paying for words obviously but we also spent some to buy down our debt our gap deficit well it wasn't the governor actually fired the workers before the supreme court had ruled but I think he knew what was going to happen is that they were going that he was going to lose his case and he said he had to save back and he had to start early saving back in order to pay if he lost the case I at the time that happened so many of them were her Human Services employees and I watched that very closely and in fact a disproportionate number work I think it's something like seventy five percent and I encouraged our leadership to go to court and get an injunction to prohibit the governor from doing that to actually challenge his authority to do that I think it never has been clarified whether really has that authority the legislature has to pay for our own legal counsel because the Attorney General represents the governor except that in these instances the Attorney General refused to represent the governor because she said he was wrong and she had already given him that advice she could not have since she's in the executive branch she could not turn around and say well I'll represent the legislature against the governor then we wouldn't have to hire our own legal counsel and but that was very complicated legislature doesn't very often take on a lawsuit against the governor occasionally on eigen vetoes but not very often I think that's what we should have done to clarify whether he actually has the authority to move money around as he sees fit and save it for those purposes Ted this is a conscious decision impersonal market forces that are operating but one reason why the worker is getting the shaft is we have to compete in the middle class III but what can we do about it if we want to be competitive the middle-class worker well the conference okay I think there's two things to look at here for too long unlike the machinery in the cost of the plant workers have never been considered a fixed cost you've always been considered a variable cost meaning the cost of machinery is always the same when you start the plant or the cost of the computer basically or whatever whatever you need for your workplace but when it comes to paying wages to workers and paying for their benefits companies have always seen that cost is something that they can move up and down on well if we can pay a minimum wage let's do it if we compare them a little more let's can't let's do it but if our competition is paying less let's pay less there needs to be some sort of policy within our country that that states such as with the minimum wage which is extremely low right now is that workers deserve a certain level of decent pay they deserve national health care which our union as foreign has been pushing for and there needs to be jobs provided to anyone who's willing to work I mean a policy like that has has to be asked to be developed while they're Clinton in his administration will do it or not we don't know our Union though we I'd like to thank is on the forefront of that we've been pushing on that we endorsed Clinton we gave a considerable amount of money towards his campaign and other campaigns across the country last fall and we are continuing to educate our members in we are going to Congress to push them to move in the direction of those types of things another thing is that there is a responsibility for unions to look beyond the borders of their country and to organize workers and other countries were it has always been low wages in those countries look at Mexico right now now that we have this national american free trade agreement the reality is is mexican workers are going to be coming here driving trucks getting paid seven dollars a day instead of the seventeen or sixteen dollars an hour that are truck drivers get here what affects Iowa in particular is that has already been rumored that those meatpacking plants here will probably close down and move south and production will start up in the south and even across the border and then meat will be brought up here to Iowa to serve to those of us who have lost our jobs again it cannot afford to pay for it anymore so unions so getting back to what unions need to do is that we need to look beyond our borders we need to organize workers in other country and bring up that standard of living and with some success some successes have already happened so we need to move forward on that on the other side though the government needs to adopt policies that addresses the rights of workers we certainly don't have enough rights now and the reality to without a union when you go to work out there without a union basically when you go into your shop you lose all constitutional rights which is very unfortunate workers in this country without a union workers without doing representation basically you have no rights when they go to work for an employer they cannot control how much they get paid you cannot control the amount of work they receive they cannot control the amount of benefits they get so Joe's giving it on noble effort but I don't think your question can be answered during the limited time we have here I think it's a very complicated one but one issue that I think is very important recognizing that almost all income gains that the American worker has made over the last decade have gone into increased health care costs it's such an urgent problem that there's been no real income growth for the American worker they've only been able to through their employer if they get it that way keep up with the increased cost of health care so it's I think the most urgent matter we have on the table now is to get control over health care so that businesses even can save and be competitive in international markets they're they're losing that competition because of their cost of health care individuals are not being paid accurately because all of their increases are in health care the important matter yes supply-side economics Reaganomics they're all made to believe that competitive you know a competitive atmosphere would help health business and help working people well we we've had 12 years of that and wages have gone down and health care workers especially can't even get health care premiums my own daughter and son-in-law health care workers and their participation in their group plan has gone up to $500 a month Jackie I think she's right though about those regulations that have had a very adverse impact on small business that well we've become more aware of environmental impacts so we do environmental regulations and I don't think we want to stop that we've become more aware of safety standards so ocean comes in and I don't think we want to stop that so there are a lot of new regulations that we have been active that I think are very important to protect that American worker and how you do that and still protect small businesses is a fine balance but you know I've said over and over to businesses that if they can tell me of unnecessary regulations that are not there to really protect someone I'll get them repealed if if I had anything to do with it I've said back to the nursing home industry because they certainly do complain a lot but I can't get repealed its peril maybe but if it's a state regulation that's unnecessary we all feel the same in the legislature that we don't want all this burdensome regulation well there's thing to be said about regulation too Reagan thought in 1980 that the trucking industry needed to be deregulated the MA and pas trucking outfits who who employed 30 or 40 truck drivers were paying their workers a very decent wage they were paying about $12 an hour I think back then when some of the larger corporations you know moved for deregulating that industry what happened was it was the small freight shops that closed and over a hundred and eighty thousand trucking jobs were lost within that industry so you know deregulation you know you look at what happens in and what effect it has you have to look at the players and the move in this country again over the last 12 years is to use deregulation to hurt small business into her working people not to it we're opposing it right now we're frosene opposing the free trade agreement right now as it stands because Clinton has not brought up anything to protect American workers anything to guarantee that the environmental impact will will protect American workers and what I guess when I talk about American workers not you know I'm not just talking about Mexico in the United States I'm also talking about Canada because Canadian Canadians are very concerned about this free trade agreement I mean there governs their governments in favor of favor of it but the workers are very much against it because there just aren't any safeguards there's no protection bottom line that that agreement was made just just for the sake of cheap labor that's all of us so there needs to be some safeguards and we're going to continue to push what we have we've already met with our unionists already met with over 60 key congressional people to talk about the free trade agreement and other issues of concern and we've done that we started that in January we're not within this country I just like to have a quick point on this not good thing to I think it isn't just the case that this is going to have a negative impact on US jobs because you could still even if that were the case you could still make some sort of argument that maybe US jobs will come there wage rate will come down a little bit but Mexican workers wage rates will rise and maybe they'll meet somewhere in the middle and maybe that'll be better for everybody in the long run or something like that but that argument doesn't work because it's not only the case that these free trade agreements I'll go to negatively affect you wages but we can look at what's happened in Mexico since 1980 where there's been a tremendous increase in exports from Mexico to the United States already and a lot of free I love trade TAFs and so on between Mexico United States have already been eliminated and the word and the wages of workers in Mexico since 1980 have declined by a third so there's certainly no guarantee at all that as US wages go down the Mexican wages are going to go up and meet somewhere in the middle there's just no guarantee that's going to happen at all really quickly bring up saying this interesting - Mexico is also negotiating with other South American countries Central American countries to figure out on how they can provide business for them because Mexico is the only country that's limited to this agreement but that's not stopping Mexico from doing some game playing of its own with countries South a bit - to make money for them again off the backs of way I think we have time for one more question well the only way you're going to do it is with people in this country participating more within the political system and that again is what we're trying to do in our Union we cannot assume no member of our Union can assume that the government is going to look out for them without them pushing our agenda of working people's agenda so you know who controls the US government those who have the money right now but as time goes on through more lobbying effort effort through more participation within your Union if you belong to the you know going to a union with whatever group the dynamics of this political system can change well I strongly support that our campaign finance reform keep those Teamsters from giving five million dollars but also keeping the bankers and the insurance industry and others from they do if you're interested in this topic I'm sure it's gonna be covered in tonight's talk mr. Bartlett has his book what's wrong in America certainly his last chapter is about financing of the political system quick we're mocked by Wayne and then we'll call it off you know what's amazing is that other universities in the state are and they do receive better pay and what's unfortunate about the process of this institution is that they have a tendency not to look at the value of their own people and they're going to lose the value of their people by continuing by continuing to pay them less than the comparable wage and other institutions I'd like to thank both of our panelists at Johnny Hammond and Joe Henry and thank you for being such a good