Northwest labor press., January 20, 2017, Page 8, Image 8

PAGE 8 | January 20, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
THE OBAMA YEARS
From Page 1
Obama swept into office at the height
of a global financial crisis, and had a
broad public mandate for “hope and
change.” But caution, delay, and his own
choices squandered much of that poten-
tial. Two years of a Democratic Congress
were followed by six years of near-total
gridlock, after the GOP retook the House
in the 2010 elections and the Senate in the
2014 elections. And Senate Republicans
blocked more presidential appointees
than ever before in history. Dogged op-
position also made every budget a budget
battle. “Debt limit,” “sequestration”, and
the “fiscal cliff” became words of the day.
But it wasn’t the GOP that made Obama
appoint Wall Streeters like Larry Sum-
mers, Timothy Geithner and Rahm
Emanuel to top posts, or take forever to
use executive power.
Executive power became the only way
to enact an agenda for the last six of his
eight years in office —through how he
interpreted and enforced existing laws,
and the extent to which he was able to
make policy by executive order. But even
there, Obama’s record proved to be one
of caution and delay: Reforms advocated
by organized labor were held up for years
only to finally be enacted too late to take
effect before he left office. An exception
was Obama’s use of executive orders on
immigration — after Congress failed to
act. In 2012, Obama ordered a halt to de-
portation of undocumented young adults
who’d entered as minors, and in 2014, an
executive order allowed undocumented
parents of U.S. citizens to apply for work
authorization and relief from deportation
if they could show they’d been in the
country for at least five years.
As Obama heads into retirement, polls
say the public mostly likes him person-
ally, but doesn’t think he got much done.
Only 32 percent say he kept his cam-
paign promises in general; and only 44
percent say he tried to. Maybe the public
was paying attention. Read on.
The stimulus that failed to stimulate
Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) just four
weeks after inauguration, but as labor leaders warned, it was too small to turn
the economy around. Congress had authorized $700 billion to bail out banks
just months before, but Obama told Congress the stimulus bill must cost no
more than $800 billion, and must include tax cuts he’d promised. If ARRA
produced hardly any jobs, that’s because it wasn’t a jobs bill: Tax cuts were two-
fifths of its cost, and their impact was barely felt. The average worker got an $8 a
week reduction in income tax withholding. Only about a tenth of ARRA’s price
tag went to traditional job-creation efforts like infrastructure spending. Much of
the ARRA would be best described as relief spending, like longer and more
generous unemployment benefits, increased Medicaid funding, increased food
stamp benefits, and one-time $250 bonuses for Social Security recipients. It
helped people in need, but didn’t put them back to work. The ARRA’s $50 billion A green retrofit of the
Portland federal building
in aid to the states prevented teacher layoffs — for a year. When it expired,
was one of just a few local
hundreds of thousands of public employees were laid off, further depressing the ARRA projects that cre-
recovery. Unemployment was 8.9 percent when Obama signed the ARRA in ated jobs.
February 2009. By the end of the year it was 10 percent. Obama ignored calls by
organized labor for a second stimulus with more infrastructure spending. And by January 2010, his attention shifted
to deficit spending. His Simpson-Bowles commission looked at ways to cut programs like Social Security and
Medicare. Their recommendations, politically toxic, were never adopted.
Obama the insurance reformer
Running in 2008, Obama repeatedly talked of his plan for a “public option,” a government insurance offering that
would compete with private insurers in new government-brokered insurance exchanges. But in office, he never
once advocated for the public option. So the most basic feature of Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care
Act, is that it requires all otherwise uninsured Americans to buy private insurance on publicly regulated state-level
exchanges, or else face a tax penalty. Mid to low income earners get a subsidy. The poorest get Medicaid (except
in states that refused federal money after a Supreme Court case.) Insurers can’t impose lifetime caps, or refuse to
insure people with “pre-existing conditions,” and must make preventive care and birth control available free of
charge to the insured. Children can stay on their parents plans til age 26. Small businesses get a 50 percent tax
credit for providing insurance. Big businesses get a tax penalty for not providing insurance. And an array of taxes
helps pay for all this, including an extension of the Medicare tax to “unearned” investment income and to high-
income earners. Obamacare is mindbogglingly complex, but that’s it, in a nutshell. And labor was largely left out.
Neither Obama nor those who crafted the Senate bill that became Obamacare consulted the union movement. As
a result, Obamacare is written as if its authors were unaware of the union health and welfare trusts that provide
health insurance to as many as 20 million union members, retirees and dependents. If union small employers
participate in union health trusts, they don’t get the Obamacare tax credits, but their nonunion competitors do on
the exchanges. Obamacare is even set up to penalize some union health trusts for being too generous: The so-
called “Cadillac tax, “ if it ever takes effect, would charge a 40 percent excise tax whenever premiums exceed
$10,200 a year for individual coverage or $27,500 for family coverage. [It was scheduled to take effect in 2018,
but was delayed by a 2015 act of Congress until 2020.] Unions fought hard to eliminate the Cadillac tax. Obama
administration officials fought hard to keep it.
Obama the free trader
As a candidate in 2008, Obama said he’d renegotiate NAFTA. He didn’t mean it
even then. As a leaked memo at the time reported, Obama’s senior economic
adviser Austan Goolsbee told Canadian consular officials in a private meeting in
February 2008 that Obama’s protectionist rhetoric about NAFTA was more
reflective of political maneuvering than his policy plans. Once in office, Obama
never tried to renegotiate NAFTA. Instead, he got Congress to ratify NAFTA-style
trade deals that George W. Bush had negotiated with Korea, Panama and
Colombia. He then put enormous effort into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a
trade deal that was to be his legacy. TPP was negotiated in extreme secrecy, with
labor left out in the cold. In impact, it would have been NAFTA times four,
bringing low-wage human rights abusers like Vietnam and Malaysia into a Pacific
Rim common market where investors would be protected, but workers not so much. Obama worked very hard to
get fast-track legislation approved (whereby Congress ties its own hands and agrees to vote trade agreements up or
down quickly with no amendments.) TPP’s failure to win passage – a defeat for Obama – was the biggest victory
for NAFTA critics since the derailment of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle in 1999.
Obama the timid executive
The U.S. government buys half a trillion dollars of goods and services from the private sector each year, so
executive orders on procurement policy can have far-reaching effects on corporate behavior. In his first few weeks
of taking office, Obama rescinded a George W. Bush executive order that banned all-union project labor
agreements on federal construction projects and another that required federal contractors to post notice about
how union-represented workers could avoid paying union dues. But otherwise, Obama took his time in using the
executive order to help working people. In 2011, it was announced that Obama was considering an executive
order to require companies with federal contracts to disclose their election spending, but he backed off when the
business lobby opposed it, and took no other significant procurement action in his first four years. In his second
term, he issued a raft of pro-worker executive orders. Executive orders in 2014 required federal contractors to pay
at least $10.10 an hour; and prohibited contractors from discriminating against gay or transgender workers, or
retaliating against employees who discuss their compensation. But Obama waited so long that many orders don’t
take effect until this year, and aren’t likely to continue under Trump. For example, a 2015 order guaranteeing
workers under federal contracts up to seven paid sick days a year didn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2017. Another order
requires contractors to tell the government if they’ve been found guilty of egregious violations of safety and labor
laws during the previous three years; it took effect last October.
Obama the reluctant enforcer
Presidents appoint and oversee those who interpret and enforce the laws,
including workers rights and safety laws that are vital to the wellbeing of
working people. Top union policy advisers gave Obama’s team a book’s worth
of suggestions that mostly gathered dust the first four years. A number were
enacted in his second term, but so late they don’t take effect until Obama’s out
of the White House. OSHA’s silica rule is an example: Up to 2.3 million workers
in construction, shipyards and other industries breathe in tiny particles that can
lead to fatal illnesses. Prevention is straightforward, but OSHA delayed action
for decades. Obama officials said in 2009 that a new silica rule would be one of
their regulatory priorities, but not until the AFL-CIO and several senators
It took public shaming by
publicly shamed the administration did it go the final mile. The rule finally took Senate Democrats before
effect in June 2016 — but OSHA said it won’t begin enforcing it until 2017 in Obama would move to
construction, 2018 in general industry, and 2021 in the fracking industry. Then protect workers from sil-
there’s the overtime threshold for salaried workers, last updated in 2004 under ica, which can lead to fa-
tal diseases like silicosis,
Bush Jr. Millions of low-wage “managers” can be made to work unlimited
above.
overtime if they’re salaried and make at least $23,660 a year. The Obama
administration raised that to $47,476, but waited so long to do so that its fate is in doubt. It was supposed to take
effect Dec. 1, but businesses sued to stop it, and it’s held up in the court. Now Trump appointees will be in charge
of defending it, yet Trump’s nominee for Labor Secretary vigorously opposed it. The Obama administration did get
one important rule change on its watch: In 2011, the administration determined that 2 million home care workers
are entitled to the protection of federal minimum wage and overtime laws. The administration wasn’t in a hurry
to implement that either, but it went into effect in 2015.
The NLRB: The Obama-era mouse that roared
Led by Obama appointees, the National Labor Relations Board truly became the mouse that roared during the
Obama years. Against unprecedented opposition from business groups and Republicans in Congress, the tiny
agency strived mightily to fulfill its mission of protecting the right of private sector workers to organize and
bargain collectively. It sped up the timetable for union elections. It added interest payments and adverse tax
consequences and look-for-work expenses to backpay awards when companies illegally fire union supporters. It
required employers to provide employee email and phone numbers, not just addresses, during union campaigns.
It ruled that graduate student employees have the right to unionize. It found that franchisers like McDonald’s can
be held responsible for lawbreaking by franchisees. It ruled that workers have at least some right to criticize their
employers on social media like Facebook. It even had the audacity to declare illegal a Boeing decision to locate a
factory in South Carolina – because it was motivated by a desire to punish union workers for striking.