LabourStart headline - Source: The Times

More... (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/business/international/labor-wants-its-say-at-davos.html?_r=0)

DAVOS, Switzerland — Philip Jennings, a union leader from working-class Wales, has been coming to this Alpine ski resort for two decades to rub shoulders with the bosses of the world. His message has not changed.

“The world needs a pay rise,” Mr. Jennings said on a Davos panel last year. Some executives in the room rolled their eyes, others smiled politely. Did he want to go back to the 1970s, one journalist inquired. Did he understand basic economics? Mr. Jennings, who has a master’s degree from the London School of Economics, is general secretary of UNI Global Union, which represents 20 million service workers in 150 countries. This year, as he again carries labor’s message to Davos, he arrives with some rhetorical wind at his back.

President Obama last month called the stalling of social mobility “the defining challenge of our time” and vowed to help unions “to organize for a better deal for workers and better wages for the middle class.”

Pope Francis has questioned the idea of trickle-down economics. Even John Cridland, the head of Britain’s biggest business organization, the Confederation of British Industry, has scolded companies for not paying employees enough.

snip

“Here in Davos,” Mr. Jennings said, “we do actually have a seat at the table, and they have to listen to us. At least once a year.”

So, this fellow has been going to Davos for 20 years representing labor and he's learned nothing? Perhaps he just likes a swank party. But now it's different because he has "rhetorical wind at his back"? Ho ho, that and a euro will get ya a bad cup of coffee. Labor cannot talk to capital except from a position of strength and labor's forces are decimated and demoralized, we are in a bad position to be demanding anything. capital may listen but it will be laughing up it's sleeve until labor shows it's strength on the ground.