Right-to-Work is not the only issue in Indiana

Despite its monopolizing politics in Indiana for the last few months, so-called Right-to Work is not the only issue in Indiana. Yes, believe it or not, there are other pressing issues for working people in the Hoosier state, and it’s only the organized sector of the workforce that has that much to lose from Right-to-Work—at least in the short run. Providing an economy to put the unemployed back to work is still an issue, for, despite some recent job growth, there still aren’t enough jobs available. And if my friends and I are any indication, among those unemployed left-outs are still going to be a large number of college graduates, “overqualified” denizens of the work force who, for a number of reasons, are still going to be excluded—allegedly underexperienced or lacking any proper experience, persons with the “wrong” degree, and older workers. I knew a lot of them when I was test-scoring, a job that, while requiring a college degree, provided only around four months’ work, and paid only $10 an hour. In fact, for many of us long-term test scorers (I was one for ten years, before being unceremoniously denied further employment), we had to take pay cuts just to keep the jobs! When, for example, I started the job in 2001, I was paid $10.50 an hour, with regular raises that, by the end of 2005, put me up to $11.50 an hour. (In those years we also had six-eight months of work per year.) Then the company that hired us through temp agencies for these jobs started demanding various pay cuts, with the temp agencies then providing these reduced-pay jobs to us on a take-it-or-leave it basis. But having nowhere else to go, we had to take it. Workers who had been making $15-16 an hour were now reduced to $10; all of us, veterans and novices alike, the same $10 an hour.

As for Indiana’s WorkOne state employment agency, we’re often classified there as “unskilled labor” despite our college educations. (Or is it because of our college educations in a state with abysmally low educational attainment, with most jobs at a low-skill level, which just makes us college graduates too “unmanageable” for such jobs as are available!) Needless to say, given the general unimaginativeness of Indiana’s state agencies, WorkOne simply considers many of us college graduates not as potential high-skilled workers, but simply lacking in the “relevant” skills supposedly needed now, and so comes to the conclusion that we’re just “unskilled labor.” As good examples of just what prevails here in this regard, see my article on Indiana’s Brain Drain for the online Examiner newspaper, www.examiner.com/x-19063-Indianapolis-Economic-Policy-Examiner, and my article on WorkOne in New Politics online, http://newpol.org/node/564. And Indiana wonders why the state faces a chronic Brain Drain!

And to top it off, unemployed workers in Indiana will face a cut in unemployment benefits starting July 1, 2012. During 2011’s fight against Right-to-Work, despite the Democrats’ absence that denied the Indiana General Assembly a quorum, the Republicans still managed to legally pass a bill authorizing such cuts without a quorum, and Republican Governor Mitch Daniels gleefully signed the bill into law in front of 250 protesting workers! Little good it does us unemployed to hear the refrain from those who’ve been constantly preoccupied with Right-to Work, “I lobbied against the cut in unemployment benefits.” Despite their lobbying, the bill passed, became law, and we, the unemployed, will pay the price, not the employed. And of course, despite all the lobbying, the importuning of state legislators, despite the massive show of bodies at the Statehouse both years, Right-to-Work still became law; the next step will now be to get enough legislators elected in 2012 to repeal the law in 2013. Hopefully, they will also repeal the cut in unemployment benefits, but maybe not. But for us unemployed with few prospects for employment—which, again, I emphasize, includes a lot of college graduates—that’s an issue far more important, with far more immediate effects, than Right-to-Work.

Indeed, considering that Indiana’s unionization rate is only 11.3% of the workforce (Bureau of Labor Statistics; that’s lower than the national rate of 11.8%), and only 8.2% in the private sector (Steven Greenhouse, “A Gathering Storm Over `Right to Work' in Indiana,” New York Times, January 2, 2012), many Indiana workers were victims of the “race to the bottom” that’s taking place across the country even before Right-to-Work. They’re already facing those wage cuts, cuts or elimination of benefits (when they exist in the first place, which is increasingly rare), uncertainty of employment, either too little work of massive forced overtime, that Right-to-Work opponents predict will come about. The dire effects boding ahead because of Right-to-Work are already there for many employed workers, and were there even before the passage of Right-to-Work. So, even if things could get theoretically worse in the future, they’re already bad enough now, and if they do get worse, couldn’t get much worse than they are now.

Then there’s Indiana’s disgrace of a social safety net, symbolized and enhanced in its horridness by the FSSA, the state’s Family and Social Service Administration umbrella “social service agency.” Consider that an unemployed worker with a family makes too much money even on unemployment benefits to qualify for needed financial assistance! Consider that TANF benefits in Indiana are only $290 a month! And consider the wretchedness of Medicaid coverage to begin with, compounded by the fact that I don’t know of a single health provider or pharmacist I’ve encountered who has a good word to say about FSSA. Or consider the horridness of Vocational Rehabilitation or the Department of Mental Health, which, in terms of my experience trying to find employment through both, are but conduits to the fast-food and other low-paying service industries. And both will regard a college degree as either a barrier to employment or an irrelevancy, because, if you need Vocational Rehabilitation or mental health services in the first place, you must be congenitally stupid! And of course, Indiana’s mental health system, never very good in the first place, has gotten even worse under the brunt of cutbacks in funding. Not to mention inept case workers who will deny one’s eligibility for welfare benefits for specious reasons and truly stupid mistakes, as happened to me twice in less than two years, first in October 2009 and again in June 2011. And even though I won my benefits back upon appeal, it took six months both times, and required additional intervention from my State Senator’s office, before the FSSA restored what was rightfully mine in the first place. Then there’s the denial I faced in 2004, finally winning back my benefits a year later, which wasn’t even, formally, for specious reasons—the rationale for denial being unfathomable even to the FSSA representatives, as my lawyer and I had presented an airtight case demonstrating that all relevant documents had been properly submitted to my then-case worker, who evidently ignored them, with this even approved of by her supervisor.

The upshot of all this being that it we are really concerned about the working class we must be concerned about the working class as a whole, and the whole comprises not only those who are organized and employed, but those unorganized and employed, underemployed, and unemployed, as well as those on welfare—all workers, or potential workers; for the unemployed and those on welfare are not a motley group of lumpens fit only to discard—they themselves are able people without the ability to demonstrate their worth and productive value. Given that, the overriding focus on Right-to-Work is to tacitly elevate above the rest of the working class those who are employed members of labor unions, for this is the sector most directly affected by Right-to-Work—indeed, in the short run, the sector within Indiana’s workforce that’s solely affected. Thus, the overriding focus on Right-to-Work is far too narrow. Which means it is a niche issue (nothing wrong with that!) belonging to one sector of the working class, which must then be combined with the niche issues of the other sectors of the working class to make a cluster of issues that encompass the needs of the working class as a whole.

Nor was passing Right-to-Work the only stupidity committed by the Indiana General Assembly. On the day after the Indiana Senate passed Right-to-Work, January 31, 2012, it passed the “education” bill requiring so-called “creation science” to be taught in all Indiana schools, although not necessarily in the science classes. Given past court decisions, that bill is likely to be ruled unconstitutional; although given the decisions made by the Roberts Supreme Court, it’s all too possible that the Supremes will ignore precedent and embrace “creationism” as also a valid subject to be taught in Indiana schools—and thus, in schools across the country. The only saving grace to the “creationism” bill mandating the teaching of the creation fables of the various religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism specifically mentioned—thanks to the pluck of Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson (D-Bloomington), the creation story of Scientology must also be taught! And it passed, there being no way to keep teaching Scientology out of a bill specifically mandating the teaching of the various religious creation stories. As Tony Ortega put it in the February 1, 2012 Village Voice, “Indiana Senate Votes to Teach Scientology in Schools,” “That's right -- kids in Indiana may be learning about Xenu the galactic overlord, spaceships shaped like DC-8s, hydrogen bombs in volcanoes, and the disembodied souls of space aliens that attach themselves to us until one uses the exorcism techniques of Dianetics!” [Emphasis in original] Well, if you can’t do anything else, leave ‘em laughing when you go!

Of course, Indiana schools are bad enough already, a major contributor to the general low-skill level of the Indiana workforce overall, and a prime contributor to Indiana’s per capita income falling six years in a row, 2005-2010; and with the third slowest personal income growth in the nation from 2000 to 2010, just over 3%, and well below the national average of 3.95% (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis). According to STATS Indiana, prepared by the Indiana business Research Center at the Kelly School of Business, Indiana University, the Hoosier state ranked 42nd in per capita income in 2010, down from 33rd in 2000. Philip Powell, Associate Professor of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington stated to the Indianapolis Star in 2009: "We're stuck. We're stuck because we don't have the knowledge base we need in the labor force. A lot of that is because of our really mediocre primary and secondary educational system." A big reason so much of the Indiana economy is dependent on manufacturing is that Indiana's workforce is largely unskilled and uneducated. Only one-third of its workers have high school diplomas or GEDs, and only 28 percent have college degrees, compared to 39 percent nationally. (George Fish and Dave Fey, “Mediocrity—a Hoosier affliction,” Bloomington (IN) Alternative, July 11, 2009, http://bloomingtonalternative.com/articles/2009/07/12/10039)

So, while Right-to-Work is important, it’s not the only important issue for working people in Indiana. Yes, it’s a bad law; yes, it should be repealed; and repealing it should be a priority, but not the sole priority—there are still many issues besides Right-to-Work needing to be addressed for the benefit of all Indiana working people, employed and unemployed, union and non-union alike.