Progressive Thinking

The new “gig economy” has people working as free-lancers or independent contractors. Companies do not have to provide benefits and do not have to follow labor laws. This type of system shifts the risk to workers and the implications for workers and the economy can be great.

ALMA, WI - “If my company followed the rules, they couldn’t survive,” my niece Becky told me as we traveled home from our “Small Business Saturday” shopping trip.

Small retail businesses are owned by local folks and regularly use local workers. The money we spend in our local communities usually stays local.

But in this changing economy, sometimes your small business is not local. Sometimes the company is not even American.

Becky works for a small company that makes “apps” for use on computers or mobile devices.

The company is headquartered in Porta. That’s not a city in Wisconsin but in Portugal. The company hires workers from four continents including Peru, Taiwan, Germany and three employees in the United States.

My niece is a Wisconsinite. She graduated from a Central Wisconsin high school and her folks still live on the farm in Wood County. Becky spent several months in Portugal learning the company business. Now she works out of a Twin Cities co-op type office, which is essentially a basement, converted to free-lancers office space.

She could live and work anywhere in the world that has a good [unlimited data and consistently high speed] Internet connection.

Becky is a free-lancer, a self-employed independent contractor. Her company does not have a Human Resources department because they don’t have employees. Those who work for the company are all on their own. “Internet nomads” Becky says.

What does this mean? And what does Becky’s experience have to do with the way work and workers are changing?

America’s system of work is built on the premise that workers and employers share a social contract: employers gain profits through workers and, in return, workers are compensated and secure through wages, benefits and labor laws.

Health care, unemployment, worker safety protections, sick leave, injured workers’ compensation and retirement savings are all part of this social contract.

But for millions of people who work in the so-called “gig economy” the employer does not hold up their end of the bargain. By dropping benefits and not following labor laws, a company can lower its labor costs – a lot.

Robert Reich, President Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor, recently released a short video describing the problem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Snob8-6xM&app=desktop). “In five years over 40% of the American labor force will be in such uncertain work,” Reich says.

I believe it. Just in my family, over half of the “twenty-somethings” are self-employed or temporary workers.

Reich says the change in the economy “shifts all of the risk to workers. A downturn in demand or sudden change in consumer needs, a personal injury or sickness can make it impossible to pay the bills.”

Becky likes the flexibility of the new economy. She is willing to buy her own health insurance if she gains freedom to work when and where she wants. She argues small digital companies could not survive if they followed the labor laws in each of the various countries that make up their workforce. “They only have three American workers,” Becky said. “Imagine how hard it would be to follow the rules in a dozen different countries.”

Some digital companies are not so small. According to the Washington Post, this year Uber – the new economy’s answer to taxicabs – has over 160,000 workers in the United States.

Author Steven Hill wrote about this phenomenon in a new book and for Salon.com: “In a sense, employers and employees used to be married to each other, and there was a sense of commitment and a joined destiny. Now, employers just want a bunch of one-night stands with their employees, a promiscuousness that promises to be not only fleeting but destabilizing to the broader macro economy.”

The implications are enormous. Our state is struggling with the problems even now. Several proposals have been floated at the Capitol to change the injured workers’ compensation insurance system. However, if more workers were a part of this system, the health of the funds that support the insurance would improve.

As Becky and I grappled with the policy challenges, I realized there was no simple answer. But our conversation did help visualize the goal.

“There has got to be a way,” Becky said. “To keep the flexibility for companies and protect workers.”

MADISON - In the 1990s the late sociologist and senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase “defining deviancy down” to describe the tendency of societies to respond to destructive behaviors by lowering standards for what is permissible.

Today it’s clear the same thing has happened to political representation. Here in Wisconsin, we’ve unquestionably grown more tolerant of political corruption, and the same probably goes for the whole country. All across America, standards for what it means to be represented have been lowered. We still have the habit of calling elected officials our “representatives” even though we are convinced they don’t care what we think, put their own interests ahead of the country’s and are slaves to wealthy donors.

We are considered to be represented even though we have elections for Congress and state legislatures where one party gets the most votes but the other party wins the most seats.

Supermajorities of voters in cities and small rural towns, in Republican and Democratic strongholds alike, have made it clear they think there is too much money in politics. Their “representatives” think there is not enough, and went to work changing the law to allow vastly larger political donations with considerably less donor disclosure.

Voters crossed party boundaries to show support for increasing the minimum wage. Their “representatives” ignored their wishes. Voters cast ballots in favor of Wisconsin accepting federal funds to expand health care coverage. Their “representatives” did the opposite, rejecting the federal money.

They not only disregard what voters want. They actively work to make it harder to vote.

It’s clear the representation that is a central feature of any true republic has been diminished, demeaned and devalued in today’s America. It’s equally clear that supposed representatives will not undertake the restoration of authentic representation. This work will have to be an undertaking of the supposedly represented. Standards for what it means to be represented will have to be raised. Intolerance of corruption and what currently passes for representation will have to grow. And we need to question everything about how the system works, because it obviously isn’t working for most of us at the moment.

With the advanced information technology we now have, why isn’t thereautomatic voter registration? Why do we still have to vote on Tuesdays? Why do we have winner-take-all elections? Why do voters have to choose just one candidate for an office? Why can’t we rank all the candidates in order of preference? Why do we still need primary elections and general elections? In this computer age we could save a lot of money by having instant runoffs.

For that matter, why do we have just one representative in each office? If one candidate gets 55% of the vote and another gets 45%, why pretend the top vote-getter “represents” everyone? Computer technology could easily be put to work in the halls of government to allow both to serve as representatives, with their representation of the voting jurisdiction instantly apportioned according to the percentage of the vote each received. That way, the wishes of all those voters would be reflected in decisions made by governing bodies, not just the wishes of just over half of them.

While we are questioning the system, we also have to question our own habits. Why do we call elected officials our “representatives” if we do not feel they represent us? Why do we call office holders our nation’s or our state’s or our community’s “leaders” when they are supposed to be taking their cues from us? Why don’t we recognize ourselves as the leaders and them as our servants?

Really, why?

MADISON - There was an insightful and thought provoking story in the New York Times the other day by journalist Alec MacGillis about why the poorest parts of the country are inclined to support the politicians who are most hostile to any form of government assistance to the poor.

Democrats may not want to hear it, but MacGillis is speaking directly to them when he says: “The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests. But this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic that’s taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the Democratic Party’s growing conundrum with working-class white voters. And it also keeps us from fully grasping what’s going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.”

Democrats used to appeal to rural voters but don’t anymore, and this fact makes it next to impossible for them to construct coalitions broad enough to produce governing majorities.

If the Democrats are to avoid going the way of the dinosaur, they have to solve the rural riddle. There are countless clues to be found and just as many potential solutions to be tried. Here are five to start with:

1. Restore home rule. Republicans used to be for local control, now they are controlling the locals. If local communities want to put rules in place to protect their air and water and landscape from sand mining or put limits on high-capacity wells or manure spreading by large-scale animal feedlots, let ’em. Give ’em back control over their schools, their local zoning, their taxation. Let ’em manage their affairs.
2. Keep rural schools open. A local school is a rural community’s bedrock, even to a greater degree than in urban or suburban areas. The rural school is a hub of community activity. Everyone goes to the school play or the high school football game. School district consolidation and school closings have hit many rural communities with the force of a bomb. Anyone who cares about the vitality of rural communities knows that extreme measures need to be taken to keep rural districts viable and their community schools operating.
3. Rethink bypass-happy highway planning. Most every major highway project done any time in recent or distant memory that reaches out into rural areas has featured bypasses of small towns. Think about the impact this has on those communities. Their family-owned cafes and coffee shops and restaurants close. Their main streets die. Shaving a few minutes off your or my travel time can be a death sentence for a small town. Rural communities don’t need multi-lane monstrosities with clover leafs and traffic circles. They need high-quality, well maintained paved roads. Most city folk have no idea how many country roads are still unpaved to this day and how many of the paved ones are rutted and chock full of potholes.
4. Universal access to high-speed Internet and mobile phone service. Look at a map showing which parts of the U.S. have access to broadband. The urban centers do and the rural areas don’t. The telecommunications industry and its apologists in public office often are heard saying that programs are in place to address this disparity. But the fact remains that in 2015 over half of all rural Americans lack access to high-speed Internet. Most can’t get reliable cell phone signals either. How can you start a business and compete in today’s economy without access to these services? High-speed Internet and mobile voice are to the 21st Century what telephones were in the 20th, namely essential communications technologies. Essential technologies that remain out of the reach of most rural people.
5. Stop means testing. Making everyone pay for government programs when only a few end up being eligible to receive the benefits may not be the cause of the growing division and political polarization in American society, but it surely has contributed to the problem and continues to aggravate it. The point MacGillis makes in his article about how many rural voters oppose programs to help what they regard as the “undeserving” poor is an incredibly important point for Democrats to ponder. For decades now the Democrats have ignored the political law of universality: That the most widely supported and successful government programs are ones where everyone pays and everyone benefits. When the Democrats won the hearts of a majority of people in the past, it was because the party had a big hand in creating things that tangibly benefited everyone or at least directly touched every American family. Things like Social Security and Medicare, rural electrification, the GI Bill and the interstate highway system. Today’s Democrats seem to want to means test everything and target assistance to particular constituencies, which makes their programs highly vulnerable to the divide-and-conquer tactics of the Republicans.

Doing these five things would be enormously helpful to rural areas. But today’s GOP won’t do any of them. They won’t do the first four because today’s breed of Republican is philosophically at odds with the measures required to accomplish those aims. In fact, they are moving in the exact opposite direction. And they won’t do the fifth because it is politically advantageous for them to be able to pit the poor against the nearly-poor.

If these five steps are to be taken, it’ll be the Democrats taking them. If enough of them wake up to the need . . . and the opportunity.

Before I get to my thank you notes for Thanksgiving, I wanted to share with you two postings by our research director, Mike Buelow.

He noticed a couple bills that are wending their way through the legislature, and both represent dangers to the children of Wisconsin. But they are backed by powerful interests.

The first one would allow a child of any age to go out hunting. This would overturn the current law, which requires a child to be at least 10 years old. Other aspects of the bill would also increase the chances of something going terribly wrong, but the NRA and some hunting groups support it, as you’ll see here:

Bill would remove age, weapons restrictions in hunting program for children.

The second bill would lower the age limit for kids using utility vehicles, and it would also up the horsepower of ATVs. This bill is backed by Polaris Industries, which manufactures the vehicles. The CEO of Polaris, by the way, has given a lot of money to Walker. See how much by clicking here:

Polaris Industries backs lower age limit for rec vehicles.

So it’s business as usual in Walkerville.

But it doesn’t get me down because I’ve noticed a ton of opposition to this anti-democratic way of governing everywhere I go in Wisconsin.

And I’m thrilled to be working with so many great pro-democracy activists in this state. I thank many of them here:

Thankful on Thanksgiving to advocates for democracy in Wisconsin

I’d like to thank you, too, for reading our postings and for supporting our work. You make it all worthwhile.

Have a nice Thanksgiving!

MADISON, WI – On Christmas Eve 1998, I woke up to find out that my good friend and classmate at Thomas More High School, Jennie, had been killed by a drunk driver the night before. It was a devastating blow to each of her friends and everyone who knew her. It was a horrible, preventable tragedy and something that shaped each of our lives going forward. If I could have done something to bring my friend back, I would have. Unfortunately, stories like this are not uncommon in Wisconsin.

Sadly, seventeen years later, stories like Jennie’s are still happening because Wisconsin’s laws are woefully inadequate in addressing and preventing drunk driving in Wisconsin. With nearly 26% of adults admitting to driving while intoxicated, Wisconsin continues to top the national charts with the highest rate of drunk driving. More alarmingly, first-time OWI offenders are estimated to have driven under the influence at least 80 times before their initial conviction.

The use of ignition interlock devices (IIDs) has shown to be successful in changing offenders’ behavior. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention IIDs reduce drunk driving recidivism by 67%. These devices separate drinking from driving, and are proven effective in stopping drunk driving.

Today, I circulated the Drunk Driving Prevention Act (LRB 3902) for co-sponsorship which would require ignition interlock devices (IIDs) for all first-time OWI offenders. This legislation will catch us up to the modern world, reduce drunk driving, and ensure there will be a clear, personal consequence when someone is convicted of driving under the influence.