A Few Rays of Possible Sunshine, Greece & Ferguson, in a Darkening Sky

A few rays of sunshine were evident last week. It became apparent that eurozone finance ministers led by Jeroen Dijsselbloem were not completely successful in vanquishing the Syriza-led Greek government. Greece's finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, continues to insist he has not caved in on Syriza's campaign pledges to roll back troika-dictated austerity. Tomorrow, technical talks begin between Greece and the troika (James Kanter and Niki Kitsantonis, "Greece’s Tense Talks With Its Creditors Escalate to the Next Phase"). The troika says no money will be released until Greece makes good on implementing structural adjustment. Greece needs to makes payments on or refinance €6 billion this month. It is make or break time. Varoufakis got himself into some trouble when he suggested a referendum might be a possible way out of the impasse with the troika:

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Saturday, Mr. Varoufakis said Greece could call elections or a referendum in the event that its proposed overhauls are rejected by international creditors. As the Greek news media feverishly speculated over the weekend about a possible referendum on the country’s membership in the eurozone, the government accused the newspaper of distorting the minister’s comments, saying he had not suggested Greece would hold a referendum on the euro but on the country’s economic program and fiscal policy. 

Panos Kammenos, Mr. Tsipras’s junior coalition partner and the defense minister, also suggested on Saturday that a referendum could be an option. 

Antonis Samaras, the former prime minister, on Sunday rejected a potential referendum as a “very bad development,” saying it would allow the government to shirk its responsibilities. The criticism continued on Monday with central members of Mr. Samaras’s conservative party describing Mr. Varoufakis as “dangerous” because of both the referendum idea and his proposal to employ Greeks and tourists as undercover agents to bolster a tax evasion crackdown. 

Some officials of the Syriza-led government also expressed reservations about a referendum, which the prominent legislator Alexis Mitropoulos described as “naïve and thoughtless.” 

At his news conference late on Monday, Mr. Varoufakis denounced the way his comments had been presented in Corriere della Serra as part of a “process of misinformation.” Mr. Varoufakis said any reference that he made to a referendum had been entirely “hypothetical” because he was referring to the improbable circumstance that European lenders rejected all of Greece’s proposed reforms. 

Opinion polls consistently indicate that most Greeks want the country to remain in the eurozone, but a majority continue to back the government’s tough stance against creditors.

Varoufakis likely floated the idea of a referendum to Corriere della Sera in the hopes of creating a little leverage in the upcoming negotiations with the troika. But when he backtracked it made him look unprepared and vacillating.

The outcome Jeroen Dijsselbloem wants to see is Syriza implementing all the austerity diktats -- pension cuts, privatization, tearing up labor agreements -- as the troika dribbles out the cash in small allotments. This Varoufakis will not do. I am still confident of this. So some sort of rupture is coming, hopefully, by the end of this week. The troika is certain it can break Syriza. I think a referendum is a fine idea.

The second ray of sunshine visible last week was the Department of Justice report on the Ferguson Police Department in the wake of the Mike Brown shooting last summer. The DOJ lays out how Jim Crow works nowadays. "Driving while black" is a chief income source that suburban municipalities like Ferguson rely on to balance their books.

The first scalp of that report was raised yesterday (Eli Yokley and John Eligon, "Missouri Court Assigns a State Judge to Handle Ferguson Cases") when it was announced by the Missouri Supreme Court that the Missouri Court of Appeals would take over Ferguson's municipal court and "current municipal judge, Ronald J. Brockmeyer, who was repeatedly cited in the Justice Department report for abusive practices, announced his resignation after holding the position for more than a decade."

The problem is that what happened to Ferguson needs to happen in municipalities throughout the United States, and there is no indication that this is in the offing.

In fact, there is every indication that we are at the "creative destruction" tipping point in the United States. In by far the best story I read this morning -- the best, but easily the most depressing -- is Monica Davey's "Unions Suffer Latest Defeat in Midwest With Signing of Wisconsin Measure."

In describing Scott Walker's "shot heard 'round the world" declaration for a 2016 White House run, the Wisconsin governor presiding over the creation of a new right-to-work law in his state, Davey lines out the the present political history of the United States, the death of its unions, and the projected path forward for American-style neoliberalism -- full on cannibalization.

Key to Davey's synopsis of present political history is the GOP landslide of 2010 (At that time a national party that just two years earlier was thoroughly disgraced and in free fall successfully recreated itself by lurching hard to the right with its Tea Party re-branding, the core of which is white supremacy):

Central to the new momentum behind the laws were sweeping Republican victories in state elections in 2010, when the party got full control — in the chambers and the governor’s office — of states that included Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. Republicans made more gains in 2014, now controlling 68 of the 98 chambers around the country and the most state legislative seats since 1920. But it was the victories in 2010 that set off a new flood of right-to-work legislation in the Midwest, which had rarely seen it.

Soon after taking office, Mr. Walker pressed for a bill that cut collective bargaining for most public sector workers and removed requirements that they pay fees if they chose not to join unions that represented them. Republicans elsewhere followed suit, but not all of those measures flew through. Ohio, where Republicans had taken sole control of state government, passed a measure limiting collective bargaining, but it was rejected months later in a statewide ballot measure. 

Then, for right-to-work advocates, there came an even more memorable turning point: In November 2012, voters in Indiana (where a law was repealed in the 1960s) re-elected Republican legislative majorities even after labor leaders pledged to defeat them for passing a right-to-work law earlier in the year. On the same election night, voters in Michigan rejected a labor-backed ballot measure to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the State Constitution. 

“The combination sent a clear message to elected officials in the region: You can end forced dues by passing right-to-work, and voters will reward you for it,” said Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the National Right to Work Committee, who keeps a copy of The Indianapolis Star outside his office from the day after the law passed there.

A month after the 2012 election, the Republican-held Legislature in Michigan, a cradle of the American labor movement, passed a right-to-work measure, which was promptly signed by Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican who had said the matter was not on his agenda. 

Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, called it “a concerted effort by the folks who have a lot of wealth and power to get more wealth and power.” 

“They’ve had these plans a long time, and now they’ve come to fruition,” he said.

Now the path forward is quite clear: Right to work anywhere and everywhere. If you don't control the state legislature or the governor's office, pass it at the county level:

Battles over union fees are also emerging in other states. Republican legislators in Missouri and New Mexico are weighing similar measures. In Kentucky, where a split Legislature and a Democratic governor pose obstacles to a statewide bill, leaders in more than a dozen counties have approved or are weighing measures, officials there said on Saturday, and efforts in six other counties are awaiting final approval.

And in Illinois, a long-held Democratic territory with Democratic supermajorities in the legislature, the new Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, announced an executive order barring state workers who opt out of unions from being forced to pay fees based on a constitutional argument, offering a new model for states where split partisan politics have slowed right-to-work policies. 

Federal law already permits workers not to join unions. But these laws go further, permitting workers to not pay fees to them. Unions argue that the fees are fair for nonunion members who still benefit from the contracts they negotiate, and that without a requirement, their membership, financial support and very existence are threatened.

And where is the leadership of the international unions? Holed up in executive suites in Washington D.C. living well-remunerated lives of great privilege. Where is the plan to fight back? Don't hold your breath. There isn't one.