Obama Administration Celebrates UK Labour Day by Protecting US Workers

Here in the UK, we're enjoying a long weekend in celebration of the international movement to protect workers rights. The Labour movement (as distinct from Labour, the political party) has had a massive impact on working conditions across the industrialised world, from regulating an 8 hour working day to restrictions on child labour to minimum wage and the right to unionise. Workers can no longer be discriminated against, in many places, on the basis of race, age, gender or (more recently) sexuality.

In the USA, Labour day doesn't happy until the first Monday of September. I guess the good people of America felt a little uncomforable celebrating their freedoms on the day appointed by the Second International in protest against the slaughter of pro-Labour protesters in Chicago. But in any case, President Obama has honoured the true spirit of International Workers day by the simple expedient of taking concrete steps to ensure companies comply with existing labor laws.

In a move that will affect most American corporations, the Labor Department plans to require companies to prepare and adopt compliance plans aimed at ensuring they do not violate wage, job safety and equal employment laws.

The effort, aimed in part at reducing the incidence of employers not paying overtime and improperly classifying workers as independent contractors, will require them to document many of their decisions and share that information with their workers and the government.

In announcing the department’s intentions on Thursday, Deputy Labor Secretary Seth Harris said his department wanted to foster a culture of compliance among employers to replace what he described as a “catch me if you can” system in which too many companies violated employment laws.

This is important to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I think that people in general focus too much on imposing new legislation or regulation, and not quite enough on using the existing ones well. The Bush administration managed to do a lot of damage, in particular to environmental protection and worker's rights not by overturning laws protecting them, but by a kind of malign neglect. That kind of think - non-enforcement of longstanding laws - doesn't often make the news, but it can radically transform the landscape in insidious ways.

And secondly because I think that some of the tactics this reform is aimed at, for instance, treating people who are essentially full time, permanent workers as contractors to avoid offering them benefits, are a small part of the reason why the recovery has so far been slow to result in much job creation. If employers genuinely don't feel ready to hire again, and feel nervous of commitment in an unstable economy that's perhaps understandable - but it isn't a license to ignore the law.

Nick Clegg Speaking to Democrats Abroad

And speaking of my wacky friends amongst the Liberal Democrat contingent, I would be remiss if I didn't let you all know about our event with their Esteemed Leader next week.

Nick Clegg will be joining Democrats Abroad members for a special one-night-only staged interview and Q&A on September 16th. This is part of our "Leaders and Influencers" series meeting with leading figures from British politics.

There are still some tickets left for Democrat Abroad Members. Get more info and book here:

Nick Clegg Event

If you aren't a Democrats Abroad Member, but you are an American living overseas, why not join?

Next month (October 15th) we'll be hearing from a decidedly different political figure, the man who some call the architect of New Labour but a friend of mine calls "The Devil Himself" - Alastair Campbell.

Personally I'm looking forward to hearing from both of them (and was very happy to be able to organise both) but can't imagine that the two talks will have much in common, not least because actual serving party leaders tend to be sparing with the expletives.

Do you reckon we should give Alastair a swear jar?

Book here:

Alastair Campbell Event

SCANDAL: The Expenses Crisis and UK Politics

Having been largely absent from the blog for a little while, I sort of feel guilty about neglecting my hoards of readers (well... stream. Trickle.l... Well... Christine, mainly. Sorry Christine...) so thought I'd try to make it up to you with thoughts on a few different issues.

First, obviously, I couldn't possibly ignore the current tidal wave sweeping British politics - the scandal over MP's expenses. For my American readers, basically what has happened here is that widespread abuse has been discovered in which a large number of MPs from all three major parties have been claiming taxpayer money for a range of absurd items (yes, as you may have heard, one Conservative MP claimed money for the cleaning of his moat), some have been caught claiming money for mortages long since repaid, and others have been caught out doing up one property at the taxpayer expense and switching to claim the other as their scond residence and refurbishing that on our dime as well.

Today the Speaker of the House, Michael Martin, was forced to resign after weeks of controversy stemming from his apparent failure to in any way control the expenses management before the scandal broke (it falls under his purview) or to competently cope with it once it did.

But the Speaker is, frankly, the least of our problems here. The sentiment in the country is volatile - there has already been a lot of discontent here with a Labour government that generally feels past its sell-by date. This was already massively compounded with anger over the economic situation (and Gordon Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer for near two decades under Tony Blair, so he can't escape responsibility). Now all this has been compounded by a strain of understandable populist outrage.

What bothers me most here is how sorely I have personally been made to look a fool. After all, I have been standing up for the integrity of politicians with cab drivers and coffee-house servers for years. Whenever (as happens frequently) there is grumbling about politicians who are supposedly only doing it for the money or for their egos, I have pointed out tirelessly that:

1) Most politicians could easily make more money in business.
2) The reason they don't do that is because most politicians I know are genuinely invested with a sense of desire to do some good for their communities/ constituents/ country.
3) Yes, politicians do have massive egos, but so do most successful people. And anyway...
4) Political life can be the most ego crushing thing in the world - because part of your job is to get attacked by the public every time you speak, and quite often you fail in the most spectacular fashion (losing and election, a ministerial post, etc.) in front of everyone you have ever met.

A lot of this is still true - and although a lot of MPs appear to be guilty of nasty shenanigans, many are not - but it's not an argument that suits the public mood right now.

Nor is it especially one I feel like making. Sometimes anger is appropriate. Voters have every right to feel it.

This is a bizarre scandal in that it affects all the political parties, so although it is likely to hurt the government most deeply, it tarnishes the whole system at a exactly the moment when people were already feeling like their politics was unresponsive and unrepresentative.

The fear is that this will lead not just to a loss for Labour, but to a general downturn in voter participation and/or an uptick in the number of people supporting offensive non-mainstream parties like the BNP.

Or perhaps the moment has finally arrived for the Monster Raving Looney Party? Our political system could hardly look much more foolish than it does today.

No, I'll hold out for more and better mainstream political leadership. Might try holding my breath until I turn blue.

Imbyism - A Word is Born

So I have been mulling my thoughts about the current state of British politics, and have been searching for a word to define the pattern that seems to be cropping up. My sense is that more and more, political life here in the UK is motivated by small local groups who just want to hold on to stuff they have that they like.

Don't take away our post office!

Don't close our hospital!

Here in Walthamstow we are currently fighting to prevent closure of (I kid you not):

• Our local museum
• Our local hospital
• Our local cinema (already closed, we're trying to get it back)
• And our local post office (also already closed, we're trying to get it back)

There's this sorrowful sense that loads of services we love and appreciate are being taken away from us - and this seems to be happening in local communities across the country.

I call this Imbyism. You know, like Nimbyism - Not In My Backyard - which is the phenomenon where people protest the arrival of things they object to.

In My Backyard-ism - Imbyism - is my word for protesting and fighting to keep the things in your neighborhood that you like.

And if I'm right that it is the underlying tenor of politics in the UK right now - then that does not bode well for Labour. They really ought to start giving people some stuff they want. Or at least stop taking it away.

No I am Not Gordon Brown, Nor Was Meant to Be...

If, like most sensible human beings, you haven't been following the Derek Draper/Guido Fawkes/Damian McBride story, I can hardly blame you. The Guardian has a useful summary and timeline here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/14/damian-mcbride-email-smears-row1 A while back, though, I promised to write a little bit about the Labour party - so this seems like a good chance.

On some levels, I feel a certain amount of pity for Draper and McBride here - after all, the (trulyoffensive and wrong-headed) e-mails were intended to be private. They were batting around ideas the stupidity and suicidal nature of which must have become eminently clear to them long before the leak, since the "Red Rag" site was never created and the false rumors never circulated.

Why, then has the media and the opposition clamped their jaws around this incident like determined pit bulls?

Well for two reasons - the same to reasons that Labour looks increasingly unlikely to win the next general election.

1) No one seems to know what principles Labour stands for anymore.
2) No one seems to be leading Labour as a party.

If I told you nothing other than those two facts, plus the inevitability of a general election next year, by a process of scientific deduction you could surely distill the likelihood that the party would revert to attack politics in the hopes that might get them through. (And incdientally, the argument that "Right Wing Bloggers Say Mean Things About Labour" will not earn you a get out of jail free card on this. If you don't know why, go away and think about it, then come back to me.)

The media had already diagnosed the disease, so they were on the lookout for the symptom - so many of the stories dominating the headlines right now are really thinly disguised fin de siecle stories.

Expenses fiddling? It's about forgetting what you stand for.
Infighting? It's about leaderlessness.

And the rot goes deep - it's deeply felt in the party's most loyal activists, who are angry, disillusioned, frustrated and desperate for leadership. For many, it was the war in Iraq that first gave them that hollow feeling - the empty sense that their party no longer stands for them. For others, it's been the steady erosion of civil liberties. For some, the disastrous decision to scrap the 10P tax rate (if Labour's for raising taxes on the poorest workers it's hard to think of a core principle left).

Is it too late to pull out of these doldrums, this morass, this deadly lethargy?

Maybe not. There's only one certain cure I know for such catastrophic flailing.

Leadership. Specifically, bold leadership. Someone needs to draw a firm, clear line under all these petty failings and launch the ship towards some uncharted waters.

Gordon Brown, that's your cue.

If I were you, I'd start with an apology. It would might go a little bit like this:

"I didn't write the e-mails in question, I didn't receive them, and I didn't even know about them until the rest of the world did. But I can't say that personally I did nothing wrong here.

I was in the wrong. I was wrong, as the leader of this Party, to allow anyone in my employment for one moment to believe that we would want to win in this way.

Let me correct that error right now. This Party cares about this country. We seek to maintain our majority in the next election, of course. But even more than that we seek to deserve it.

Personal attacks, smears, lies, and innuendo have no place in this Party. They have no place in our politics. The challenges that we face are too great, the moment is too important, for pettiness, viciousness or games.

To every member of this party, those who canvass in rain and cold, those who have kept faith with us through the darkest days, I apologise that your leaders have not always lived up to the example that you set for us.

And to all Britons, I promise you this: that in the coming year we will never again forget that your needs are more important than ours."

It's a Liberal Conspiracy!

My article meditating how British political activists still haven't quite grasped teh lessons of the Obama campaign has now been posted the website Liberal Conspiracy, for your reading pleasure.

A snippet....

While Barack Obama has moved on to a serious if difficult effort to cope with the economic crisis and some real movement towards the investment in infrastructure, health care and energy independence he promised during the campaign, it feels like the British debate has scarcely moved past this nonsensical “who is the British Barack Obama” argument.

The launch of the (excellent) Fabian Society book, The Change We Need, recently brought this navel gazing to a new peak.

In recent months I’ve been meeting with a lot of British candidates and political organisers who seem to believe that if only they could copy one easy thing from Obama’s efforts, all would be well. But they also need to be careful not to learn the wrong lessons from this success.

Here are the top five things I think British left of centre politics still gets wrong...