(I'd like to welcome Hegemommy to the MN Progressive Project ranks. I think you'll appreciate her posts on the nexis between politics, law and business. - promoted by The Big E)
How do we reward steadily increasing profits, even in the face of widespread economic downturn? If you're Thompson-Reuters you eliminate about 10% of your staff.
In the face of nearly a billion dollars of profit in the last fiscal year, and hot on the heels of $61 million in bonus payments, Thompson-Reuters let go 120 workers in what the company said was a response to the "changing landscape of the legal profession."
In many ways the legal landscape is changing. The widespread economic downturn has many lawyers rethinking the benefit of the billable hour as clients are no longer willing to pay $200 for a phone call. But like many other white-collar professions, more and more legal jobs are being sent overseas meaning that local attorneys are now competing for jobs with call-centers overseas. The result has been the emergence of a permalancer culture in the law--an entire workforce of highly educated, highly trained workers forced into independent contracting jobs for $26 an hour.
That means Thompson-Reuters has joined the ranks of those lowering the bar for good jobs for Minnesotans. This matters in a metro-area with four lawschools producing hundreds of new attorneys every year. The tighter the competition for legal jobs the more these workers will spill into other professions, squeezing from the top down any available jobs. The result is to squeeze the worker of every stripe in order to maintain multi-million dollar payouts to management, appearances be damned.
It's a business model that hasn't received much attention as of late, but one that ruled the day during the previous decade. Given the current public distate for blatant corporate greed, news of the layoffs does feel a bit gauche, which makes only fitting the fact that news of the Thomspon-Reuters layoffs breaks just as buzz of a Coleman political comeback picks up. So while Thompson-Reuters may claim that this move is in response to a changing economic climate, remember that it's really just business as usual.
John Marty may have the key element to a successful race by championing the cause of providing health care. John Marty champions single payer health care which lowers health care costs by using a single insurance plan, run by the government. By using cross country comparisons, we know that private market health care insurance adds a roughly 50% burden to health care. Before the economy blew up, health care was listed as the second most important issue behind Iraq for Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. Corporate media has mostly treated this issue as invisible. With the economy taking jobs, that means missing or very expensive health care coverage. With the economy needing more jobs, the high burden of health care insurance is huge discentive to add jobs.
In choosing a candidate, people look for representation on the issues, for trust and integrity to keep one's word, for the ability to do the job of governor well and for the ability to run a campaign well. John Marty is correct in saying that the values and issues that he has championed have now become popular, John Marty has a long record that demonstrates trust and integrity, with long experience in the legislative process, including oversight of the executive branch work. People who work with or for him, have spoken well of him as a leader. So the place where John Marty should be making his case is proving that he has the ability to run a campaign well.
"I have got the courage and the integrity to do what's right, to stand up for making sure that we get health care for everyone. even if the insurance industry fights it, even if the pharmaceutical industry says they are not going to accept it!
We need to look at what people need, what is important in people's lives:
good jobs, healthy communities, safe communities
a good health care system, a good education system, a clean environment!
Those are basic basic! essentials that everyone of us needs. And our kids are going to need them. And our grandkids are going to need them.
We can't have a governor who says. "Well. you know - we'd like do that, someday, we would like to give health care for everyone." We have to recognize the time is now! We have to fix the problems now! We don't need a tinkering governor, we need a Floyd B Olsen!
On 2/25, I went to the single payer healthcare hearing before committee in the Minnesota house. I was amazed how Republicans were allowed to waste the pro single payer side testimony time with questions, when there were no questions and no challenges from our representatives on the opposing side. Ordinary people who traveled great distances at great expense were cut off while paid lobbyists who were there everyday were not. Hmmmmm. So I solicited the complete testimony of a very persuasive small business owner, Bob Ciernia. I added the highlights. For reasons, of front page space, I am providing the second half of the testimony first.
One of the reasons I have been reluctant to hire additional employees is the fact that I would then be forced to choose between further reducing the health benefits my siblings and I currently have, and finding the money to cover the additional cost of insuring an employee that might easily cost $15,000 or more depending on their age and family situation. Neither choice looks palatable, and there is no doubt in my mind that my company's health care premiums are the primary reason preventing me from hiring an additional employee.
I wouldn't mind paying these costs so much if my investment were buying a health care system that created healthier, longer-lived people. But when I read that, in overall life expectancy, the United States ranks #37, behind not only Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all the countries of Western Europe, but also behind Costa Rica and South Korea AND then I read that the US spends twice as much money per capita on health care as any of these countries, I am left to wonder what I am getting for my money. The life expectancy of a person born in Japan is 82 years, in the U.S. it is 78. At my age of 60, those 4 years are starting to look statistically significant.
It also bothers me when I read that the CEOs of our larger insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device companies earn tens of millions of dollars a year. Those are my premiums paying those salaries and I don't understand how that is not breaking trust between business and society... clearly, regulation is in order. While there is no doubt that the current CEO of United Health Group is not being paid $125 million a year as was the case in 2005, his is only the most egregious example of a system gone bad. The health insurance industry may be generating huge profits, but it is strangling the rest of the economy and preventing small companies like mine from growing.
In my opinion, we need a single payer, universal health care system. Medical care exists to improve the quality and quantity of life. Our insurers and the medical system as a whole have weighted too heavily the need for generating profit... and are crippling the growth of all other business sectors in Minnesota as a result. I think it is time that as representatives of all the people of Minnesota you correct that imbalance. If you are serious about helping businesses and putting people to work, addressing the health care issue is one of the best ways to do it. A vote for single payer, universal health care coverage will result in a Minnesota that has healthier people, healthier businesses, and a healthier economy.
A business should be competing at being the best at what it produces. In other countries, businesses do not bear the cost of health care, the government does! Business owners, just like other people, are also facing that inadequate health insurance means bankruptcy or no health care. Minnesota's businesses are now saying health care is the biggest issue. Kudos to Lori Sturdevant, Star Tribune for great coverage:
•On Monday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty told an audience of manufacturers that he knows just what they need: a batch of tax cuts totaling more than $270 million over two years. The biggest piece of that proposal would slash the corporate income tax rate from 9.8 percent to 4.8 percent over six years.
•Moments after Pawlenty left the podium, results were unveiled of a survey of 400 Minnesota manufacturing CEOs commissioned by Enterprise Minnesota, the former state agency formerly known as Minnesota Technology. The poll asked, what's your biggest business problem? No. 1: high health care costs.
General Motors was the first business to call for government directly providing health care in the Washington Post:
"GM is the canary in the coal mine for Medicare and everyone else," said Sean P. McAlinden, chief economist at the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research. "There are many, many more companies out there in trouble because of health care costs than just the auto, steel and airline industries."....
But the figure that prompted Wagoner to raise his voice is $1,500. That is the amount of money added to the price of every single vehicle to cover health care, a cost that his foreign competitors do not bear.
At a time, businesses need a boost, shifting the burden of health care to government could be the best boost of all. The real punchline is that by taking out the high administrative cost of private health insurance, we would be able to provide universal health care with the same amount of money that we are paying now:
For the second year in a row, the Twin Cities region stayed at the top of MarketWatch's list of best metro areas for business, based on results from a variety of sources. While a number of other players shifted around in the standings, and a couple fell out of the top 10, Minneapolis-St. Paul lost a little bit in the scoring. But the area still outdistanced its closest competitor, Boston, by more than 20 points.
No doubt this will be touted by supporters of Gov. Tim Pawlenty as proof that his regressive tax policies are good for the business climate in Minnesota, and thus good for Minnesotans as a community. But wait -- there's more:
Many of the region's companies are home-grown and have thrived in the environment. UnitedHealth, for example, was started in 1974 and now boasts $80 billion in annual sales.
Other companies have deeper roots, such as Traveler's in St. Paul, which got its start in 1853. It's been sustained in part by a highly ranked school system and the network of higher-education providers in the region.
"It's a very educated workforce," said Andy Bessette, Traveler's chief administrative officer. "The people here, the school systems, are very good."
There are two important nuggets buried in that quote. One is that the most successful businesses in Minnesota are not recent immigrants brought here by favorable conditions instituted by the Pawlenty regime -- they're homegrown and stay here regardless of the policies of the current Governor. The second is that education is the great equalizer -- the thing that gives Minnesota the best-educated workforce in the country, and the thing that enables companies to say "well, yeah, the winters suck, but...."
That's an important "but", and it's the result of a decades-long commitment to quality public and higher education -- the same education systems that have experienced large cuts in Local Government Aid under Tim Pawlenty, resulting in painful property tax increases to pay for school levies.
Credit goes where credit's due -- and in this case, that's most definitely not Tim Pawlenty.
