2015 August – Party, Labor and Income Inequality

Topic of the Talk: The Democratic Party, Labor and Income Inequality

Roberto provided PowerPoint printouts. Due to file size limitation we are able to display only four out of 21 slides. For the talk Roberto didn’t wear a hat as President of the Sweetwater Education Association or San Diego Labor Council Executive Board member.

He started with a statement – “We’ll lose our way of life if we don’t act together. Middle class is systematically being dismantled.”

Viewed a Different Way – Top 1% Share of Total Pre-Tax Income, 1913-2006 (page 1): Top 1% share of total pre-tax income hit the highest at 23.9% in 1928, went down to the lowest 8.9% in 1976, then crept up to 22.9% in 2006.

What Happened Between 1928 and Today? – A graph for Union Membership Percentage of Employed Workers from 1900 to 1998 slide (page 2): A rapid increase from 1936 to 1945 and hit the highest at around 33% , stayed on the plateau until 1956. A steady drop ended at 14% in 1998.

Union Participation and Income Distribution – Unions and shared prosperity graph by Economic Policy Institute slide (page 3): Share of income going to the top 10% was lowest from late 1930s to early 1950s. Around the same period of the time the union membership was the highest. Since that period share of the top 10% has drastically increased and the union membership equally declined.

Robert Reich on Inequality in America: “Inequality is the result of policy changes that give tax breaks to the wealthy, protected them from inflation by keeping unemployment artificially high, and shifting the risk of doing business away from banks and business owners to the average American.”

Free trades are our decisions. Inequality doesn’t have to exist. We can bring the manufacturing back to the US; it all about decisions. Who makes the decisions? The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which consists of members of mostly conservative politicians and lobbyists, decides on which registrations to  introduce.

Some businesses are driven only by the profit. Uber is a good example. They don’t have risk on their side – no employee benefits, no capital investment on the vehicles,  no maintenance costs, etc. All the expenses are absorbed by Uber drivers. Uber takes only profit. Banks are another example. They created the recent massive mortgage crisis and thousands of people lost their home. The banks had changed the way to make home loans, they funded consumers regardless of their ability for the payments. They sold the mortgages to another party right away; so they wouldn’t have lost money on defaulted mortgages.

Some businesses are driven only by the profit. Uber is a good example. They don’t have risk on their side – no employee benefits, no capital investment on the vehicles,  no maintenance costs, etc. All the expenses are absorbed by Uber drivers. Uber takes only profit. Banks are another example. They created the recent massive mortgage crisis and thousands of people lost their home. The banks had changed the way to make home loans, they funded consumers regardless of their ability for the payments. They sold the mortgages to another party right away; so they wouldn’t have lost money on defaulted mortgages.

What can we do for the income equality? Roberto shared what Sweetwater Education Association has done. The superintendent and Sweetwater School District Board members had been pressuring the teachers for benefit reductions. When four district officials were indicted early in 2014, they saw an opportunity to fill the board with individuals who fight for them. Immediately they started recruiting and interviewing individuals. The union endorsed five Democratic candidates for five open seats. 40% of the union members are Republicans who wanted Republican candidates as well. They were suggested to find Republicans who are pro-union and anti-charter schools, they couldn’t find any. Four out of the five endorsed candidates won in Nov 2014 election. The point is when people work collectively we could win  a victory.

Democratic Club of Vista should hook up with North County labor unions and work together for our common goal – income equality.

Roberto’s Biography:

A high school teacher since 1987. He is currently President of the Sweetwater Education Association, the union that represents the over 1,800 teachers, librarians, nurses and educators of the Sweetwater Union High School District. He has primarily been a Social Science teacher (US Governemnt and Economics)  has also taught Spanish.

“Few careers are more rewarding than education. However, today public education faces major challenges. So called reformers, privatizers and profiteers from all sides of the political spectrum approach public schools as profit making opportunities and not as the education institutions that our students and communities depend on.”

“As a teacher, I must be a role model for my students and advocate for public education and educators in the community and the public arena. It’s the only way to ensure that the promise of public education for future generations is fulfilled.”

Roberto serves on the California Teachers Association State Council of Education. He is currently the Vice- Chair of CTA’s Political Involvement Committee as well as the Vice-Chair of CTA’s Association for Better Citizenship Committee, the committee that oversees CTA’s PAC funds.

In 2014 he began serving on the Executive Board of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council as well as the Central Committee of the San Diego County Democratic Party. In 2015, under Roberto’s leadership, the Sweetwater Education Association (SEA) was recognized by the San Diego Labor Council as Union of the Year and CTA presented SEA with it’s Local in Politics award.