SHOCK & AWE IN WASHINGTON STATE
Boeing gets big handout, workers get pink slips
Workers need a second Battle of Seattle
By Kaz Susat
Seattle
The giant airplane and weapons corporation
Boeing announced late this spring that it is considering
developing a new airplane. If it goes ahead, the assembly plant
for this plane will hire 800 to 1,200 people.
Boeing hasn't definitely decided to build the plane. The
company has laid off over 20,000 people in the state of
Washington over the past 18 months. The state has a budget
deficit of $2.65 billion. Nevertheless, the legislature is
handing over billions of dollars to Boeing and other
bosses.
Boeing recently claimed that 20 states were competing for
the plant, vying for which would give away the most in order to
win it. It demanded that Washington state make drastic changes
in the "business climate" or it wouldn't even be
considered.
Democratic Gov. Gary Locke immediately fell into line and
called a second special legislative session, dubbed by even
mainstream media as the Boeing Session. The legislature had
just hammered out $2.56 billion in draconian cuts in programs
for the workers and the poor. That didn't stop them from giving
this corporate/military giant a $3-billion-plus handout in the
Boeing Session.
Cut unemployment insurance
State unemployment insurance is funded by taxing businesses.
In reality, these taxes are a part of workers' wages that is
diverted into a state-run insurance program. The program pays
workers a fraction of their previous wages when they are laid
off or the company they worked for folds.
A new law, written largely by business lobbyists, will cut
payments from the 200,000 businesses whose workers contribute
to the unemployment fund. The money not paid into the fund will
go to increase profits. They are stealing from workers to the
projected tune of $167 million a year.
Since less is going into the fund, less is going to go out.
Using creative accounting, this law changes the formula for
determining the amount of an unemployment check. Instead of
basing the benefit on the highest-paid two quarters of the
previous year, it will be based on an average of all four
quarters. Additionally, the length of benefits was cut from 30
weeks to 26 weeks.
These cuts will affect over 300,000 workers who recieve
unemployment checks. The unemployment rate for the state is 7.3
percent.
Seasonal workers will suffer the most. According to the
Seattle Post-Intelli gencer, the average benefit of fishers
will drop 23 percent, from $358 a week to $268. Fishing is
listed by the Labor Department as the most dangerous occupation
in the U.S. Agricultural workers will lose 17 percent, from
$237 to $191. Both these jobs have lots of downtime.
Worker's compensation for hearing loss was cut as well. Now
Boeing and other manufacturers can more easily and cheaply
deafen workers with their machinery.
"This is significant, and unprecedented, that we are going
after working people to solve the problems of business in a
recession," said Robby Stern of the Washington State Labor
Council. "Business is using the threat of Boeing leaving to
accelerate the race to the bottom."
But Boeing wanted even more. So the Boeing Session leaped to
comply. Another bill was hurriedly passed just for the company.
It will cut the giant corporation's business and operations
taxes by 40 percent, subsidize its research and development
costs, and give it breaks on property taxes. While this is
contingent on the new plane being assembled in the state, there
are no requirements that any of the parts be manufactured
locally. These tax cuts are estimated to be worth $3.2 billion
over the next 20 years.
What capitalist democracy looks like
Meanwhile, for poor and working people, the budget axe cut
deep. The state budget was cut by $2.65 billion. No new revenue
sources were considered. Schools, healthcare and basic services
were all on the block. In 2000, voters of Washington State had
passed Initiative 732, giving teachers a 2-percent annual raise
and reducing class size by hiring more teachers. State workers
were demanding parity.
Instead of a raise, teachers and state workers are facing
wage freezes and layoffs. The state plans to get rid of 1,150
jobs over the next two years. Charles Hasse, president of the
Washington Education Association, says most school districts in
the state will lay off teachers, cut programs or both. The
union says $600 million was cut from K-12 education. Tuition
for the state universities and colleges will rise 7 percent in
each of the next two years.
In 2001, Initiative 775 was overwhelmingly passed. It gave
26,000 state home health care workers the right to unionize.
Last year the Service Employees union led a sucessful
organizing campaign and the workers got a contract.
These isolated workers take care of elderly and disabled
people who wish to remain at home. For this physically,
emotionally and psychologically demanding work, home healthcare
workers earn $7.68 an hour. The contract won in 2002 would give
them a two-step raise totalling $2.02 an hour and make them
elegible for worker's compensation coverage for on-the-job
injuries. Some of the workers would have received
state-subsidized health care coverage.
But now they are getting nothing except the possibility of a
layoff notice, because health care to the poor is also being
cut.
The state's Basic Health Plan provides bare bones insurance
coverage to 122,000 low-income workers and their children. Yet
another voter-approved iniative, this one hiked taxes on
tobacco to raise the money to add another 50,000 families to
the plan. Instead, the legislature took the tobacco tax money
and will cut 22,000 families from healthcare coverage by
capping the program at 100,000 people. In addition, it will
start charging premiums of $15 to $25 a month per child. The
legislature's own figures admit 20,000 of the state's poorest
and most vulnerable children will be left with no health care
at all.
Counties and municipalities are cutting back as well. King
County, which includes Seattle, is laying off workers, closing
parks, deferring maintenance on roads, even cutting back
garbage collection in an effort to make up a $52-million
shortfall. Seattle School District just announced it is cutting
yet another $1 million from its budget. This is on top of
discovering an "accounting error" that showed the district was
$35 million in the hole.
The day after the unemployment insurance bill passed, Boeing
announced it was firing another 270 workers and sending their
jobs abroad. These are highly skilled, high-paid jobs writing
technical manuals, maintenance manuals and service bulletins.
"After careful study, we've decided to change the long-term
business model for that work by transferring it to companies
with a lower cost base," Boeing spokesperson Jill Langer
arrogantly told the Seattle Times.
Will handouts keep Boeing home?
Bosses and politicians claim the answer to unemployment is
to give the rich more. They claim looting the treasury and the
pockets of poor and working people will create jobs. They say
this stolen wealth will be invested.
Yet capital can fly faster and farther than any Boeing plane
or missile. It is this export of capital that is accelerating
the unemployment crisis at home and causing misery around the
world.
Organized labor is vowing a fightback, but so far is looking
to electoral changes in 2004.
It was Seattle that witnessed the birth of the
anti-globalization movement on Nov. 30, 1999. The Millenial
Round of the World Trade Organization ground to a halt and then
collapsed under the weight of tremendous, militant street
protests. As the pain of globalization comes home, those
stunning days will be remembered.
Reprinted from the June 26, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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