Leo Gerard: I’m Tired of Hearing about Stimulus

/11 Comments/in /by

I’m at the New American Economy Conference, watching Leo Gerard, the head of the Steelworkers, talk about the need for a manufacturing plan. He has quoted Jeff Immelt and Alan Mulally talking about the need for a concerted focus on manufacturing in the United States.

One point he made is that by framing economic recovery in terms of “stimulus,” rather than a manufacturing plan, you imply a one-time lightning strike, rather than the plan that Immelt and Mulally–and the Steelworkers–are calling for.

Update: He went on to say, “When I was a kid if they asked your for 15% interest, they’d arrest you. Now, they make you Employee of the Year.”

image_print
11 replies
  1. Jim White says:

    I caught a part of Thom Hartmann’s show this morning. He was contrasting how stimulus funds were used in the US vs. Europe. He said that in Europe (except UK) the funds primarily went to wages for workers, and that this has kept consumer demand up even when credit was completely dry. Here, of course, since the money went to the bankers while workers were laid off, demand has stayed low.

  2. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Excellent point. Leaving stimulus to one-offs implies that government’s relationship with business is distanced, at best, and the encounters as infrequent as possible. The reality is that the two inextricably intertwine every day, and that it’s business, not the public, that wins every day.

  3. 4jkb4ia says:

    The idea that the money didn’t go to keep people in the private sector employed is correct. But some of the public projects funded by the stimulus money did hire people.

  5. 4jkb4ia says:

    That was from federal contractors only. This USA Today story has the states claiming 380,000 jobs created or saved and the federal government 660,000 to 1 million jobs created or saved. There is no claim for the reliability of any of this, and some of the jobs saved are teachers and state employees so manufacturing isn’t involved.

  6. laurastrand says:

    Labor, the sleeping giant, is reawakening. When Leo Gerrard and Richard Trumpka Speak truth to power it warms my heart. When they call for a general strike, I’m in!

  7. gmoke says:

    I was a presentation on energy at the recent Harvard Business School reunion weekend. The panel consisted of HBS alums in the biz and the moderator was an HBS prof. When I was called on, I spoke about the fact that France, Germany, and Brazil had invested money in energy alternatives for decades, nuclear, wind and solar, biogas, and that they’ve already turned away from petroleum. They aren’t going back. What the panel heard was “industrial policy” and responded by telling me that the US doesn’t do industrial policy.

    Unless it’s by default.

    • PJEvans says:

      That’s why our economy fell off a cliff last year. Haven’t they noticed that?

      (I think people wanting to go to business school for graduate degrees should be required to work for two years between the bachelor’s degree and entering the graduate program, at a job that pays not more than twice federal minimum wage, just so they have a clue what it’s like for the majority of people in this country.)

      • thatvisionthing says:

        I just watched a program online (http://www.ucsd.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16272) — a recent talk at the University of San Diego by Dr. Paul Farmer on the topic of Sustainable Justice. I thought it was going to be about American criminal justice, but instead it seemed to be something of an off-the-cuff talk in the context of medicine and Haiti, where he had just flown in from. Farmer had spent a year in Haiti between college and medical school, and in a way that set the course of his life, working toward community and health care development in places like Haiti and Rwanda. Sustainable justice meant jobs and health care as human rights.

        I don’t know about other people, but when I watched his talk it was like my pores were drinking up purpose and accomplishment and connection — in short, work worth doing, satisfying and human and lifeful, as opposed to…well… Watching him I felt like Marlon Brando: “I coulda been a contender!” Instead of being a cubicle tuber, which is what I am.

        Part way through his talk he reaches for a plastic bottle of water and takes the cap off. Instantly I am back to the comment I wrote here before the conference, about the need for new jobs in cleaning up horrendous plastic pollution: http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/10/27/building-the-new-economy-conference/#comment-196205. I wonder how he would see that and what he and his partners could make happen.

        One of the last slides in his talk was a photo of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. An artificial line on a map is clearly recognizable as the real line between forested Dominican Republic and deforested Haiti. He talked about how, without the forest, the city now floods with even “just” a tropical storm, not even a hurricane. What’s true for Haiti is true for Appalachia. There is just so much work that needs to be done and so much rethinking. Our model of banks and corporations and capitalism is like cancer. In my original comment, I mentioned that a condition of incorporation in colonial times was that the corporation had to benefit the public good and was subject to public inspection of records (see table snagged from Thom Hartmann’s old website at http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2009/2/21/175240/955/211#c211). That requirement for public good got broken and instead now corporations are legally required to enrich their shareholders, measured in dollars. This truly, truly, truly needs rethinking. All the money in the world can’t buy a new healthy planet or restore lives lost.

Comments are closed.