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The Secret War Against American Workers
The Unemployment Story No One Notices
Juanita Borden, 39 and jobless, patiently waits as her résumé methodically works its way, line by line, through a fax machine at a state-run job center in downtown Philadelphia. Lying open before her on a round conference table is a neatly organized folder. "This is my résumé and everywhere I've been faxing to. This is how I keep track of what day I've sent them on, so I can call and check back," she says, leafing through pages of fax cover sheets. "I usually give five business days before I inquire whether or not they've received it and whether or not they're interested."
Juanita was fired last October, when her employer found out that her driver's license -- a job requirement -- had expired. "It was only a matter of twenty-six dollars. I was under the impression that it expired in November of '08, but it was actually November of '07, and because I hadn't been driving I wasn't aware of it." The one occasion on which she was required to drive, though, she couldn't, and that was all her employer needed to fire her for failing to fulfill her employment responsibilities. She has since renewed her license and says with an air of futility, "I'd like to have my job back if they would give it to me."
She hasn't been asked back and, despite her persistent efforts, she hasn't received a single call from a prospective employer either. "The good thing," she says, remaining remarkably buoyant despite her misfortune, "is that usually when I interview I get the job. So... I'm hoping for an interview soon." Until then, her carefully managed folder serves as a small measure of control over an otherwise steady drift into poverty and homelessness.
Juanita isn't the only one at this job center on the precipice of acute need. And she isn't alone in relating a story about being fired for what would seem to many a frivolous reason. Chris Topher, 25 and making his first visit here, was axed in March of last year. The telecommunications company he had been working for sent him packing when, as he tells it, he installed cable equipment a customer hadn't ordered. It didn't matter that the mistake was on the work order Chris was given. "It was the best job I had since I graduated high school and I've had a few: Turnpike Commission, working in a Senator's office. I've had some nice jobs, but that one, I enjoyed it the most."
And there was good reason to enjoy it. Chris pulled down $1,200-1,300 every two weeks in addition to receiving a full benefits package. He thought of contesting his termination, but at the time it looked like a long, uphill battle that he wasn't eager to take on. It's a fight that, in hindsight, he thinks he could have won and that his employer probably knew he would win as well. "And that's why I believe I was approved by my employer for unemployment," he says.
Under unemployment eligibility requirements, an employer must certify whether an employee committed a "fault" on the job and was therefore terminated. If an employer indicates that no fault was committed and the employee meets several other requirements, including being physically able to work, states grant an unemployment claim. In other words, Chris's former employer granted him a small concession, while otherwise turning his life upside down amid the worst job market since 1983.
"Unemployment is the pits pretty much," says Chris, whose unemployment compensation is significantly less than half what he made as a cable installer. Still, he's better off than Juanita, who has applied for unemployment twice and been denied both times. She is now appealing, but her employer is conceding nothing. In a recent arbitration hearing, Juanita says, her former supervisor claimed that, if she had only told them about her expired license, they would have allowed her renewal time. If only.
Now, Juanita lives with her brother and his wife, but they, too, have financial problems. "My brother is working part time and it's driving him crazy, because it's causing money problems between him and his wife," she explains. "And with me being there," she hesitates, "...it's a little constrained."
Ratcheting Up the Fear
The mainstream media has generally sketched a picture of a labor market in which, under the pressure of an economic meltdown, workers succumb to two types of downsizing. In one, a fierce recession forces businesses, desperate to cut costs in terrible times, to lay off workers. They, in turn, face grim prospects for gainful employment elsewhere. In a kinder, gentler version of the same, employers, desperate to cut costs in terrible times, offer -- or sometimes force workers to take -- "furloughs," salary cuts, union give-backs, four-day work weeks, or un-paid holidays rather than axing large numbers of them.
In this case, tough as it may be, workers benefit, retaining at least some of their income, while businesses wait out the recession. In both cases, businesses are largely depicted as unenthusiastic dispensers of pink-slips. Managers and bosses are just facing up to an unpalatable reality and unavoidable pressures imposed on them by the worst economic moment in recent memory.
A visit to a job center is hardly a scientific survey. The experiences of Juanita and Chris, along with those of other unemployed people I spent time with while in Philadelphia, may be purely anecdotal evidence. But they do raise questions about a subject of no small importance, and it's not one you're likely to read about in your daily paper -- not yet anyway. If a deepening recession weighs down and threatens businesses, some of those businesses are undoubtedly also making convenient use of the times to do things they might have wanted to do, but were unable to do in better conditions.
In some cases, under the guise of "recession" pressure, they may be waging a secret war against their own workers, using even the most innocuous transgressions of work-place rules as the trigger for firings -- and so, of course, putting the fear of god into those who remain. In this way, company payrolls are not only being reduced by mass layoffs, but workers are being squeezed for ever greater productivity in return for lower wages, worse hours, and less benefits. The weapon of choice is the specter of unemployment, a kind of death by a thousand (or a million) cuts.
Companies stand to gain a lot these days from such small-scale but decisive actions. After all, they reap a double benefit. Not only do they pare down the size of their payroll, often without needing -- as in Juanita's case -- to consent to unemployment compensation, but they also contribute to a climate of intensifying fear. Workers who remain on the job are now not only on edge about lay-offs or scaled-back hours, but also know that a late return from a bathroom or lunch break might mean being shown the door, becoming another member of the legions of unemployed -- now at 12.5 million and rising fast.
This dynamic is, of course, hardly new. Countless critics of working conditions have written about it since the dawn of the industrial age. But at the moment, even as the latest unemployment figures make screaming headlines, this is a subject that seldom comes up. Consider, though, that in December, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, settled 63 outstanding class-action lawsuits that alleged massive wage and hours violations. Fearing termination, Wal-Mart workers, according to their testimony in the lawsuits, labored through lunch breaks and past their scheduled hours for just above minimum wage pay, with little hope of getting enough hours to qualify for the company's health benefits.
As a condition of the settlement, Wal-Mart will pay out as much as $640 million to those workers. If corporations were able to exert such coercive power when the unemployment rate was around 5%, what can they do in a job market in which 14.8% of the population can't find adequate work?
In fact, the world's largest retailer is one of the few American corporations doing well in dark times. While retail sales slid almost everywhere, the company's same-store sales went up 5.1% in February (when compared with February 2008 sales). Yet, in that same month, it announced a move to "realign its corporate structure and reduce costs." It cut 700 to 800 jobs at its Wal-Mart and Sam's Club home offices, in effect acting no differently than any of the companies being battered by the deepening recession.
Free-Firing Zone
Rodney Green, a soft-spoken 52-year-old, comes to the job center three times a week to search on-line job listings. He describes his decades-long drift from full-time employee with benefits to marginalized temp-worker with no benefits and, finally, to the category of unemployed for an extended period.
From the late 1970s until the early 1990s, he worked for Bell Telecommunications, where he earned a good salary and full benefits. Since Bell laid him off, he's worked periodically as a forklift operator for various companies, getting temporary placements through an employment agency. Most recently, he earned $12 an hour working for a deli meat and artisanal cheese producer. No benefits were provided. A year's work, he explained, would mean a week's vacation, "but they don't keep you that long. They lay you off or rotate you into another job before then."
Today, as he's discovered, even such temp jobs are becoming scarce. "In the eighties, it wasn't as bad as it is now," he comments from the unemployment heartland of what, in 2009, is a deeply de-industrialized Philadelphia. "The city had jobs, but then the jobs moved to the suburbs. Now they're moving overseas. Back then, say, you applied for a job, maybe fifty others applied, too. Today, that same job, you're going to have hundreds -- I mean, a thousand for that one job. It's hard. It's depressing."
For the past year and a half, Rodney has been collecting unemployment periodically, and in that time, he hasn't landed a single interview. Recently, because the Bush administration finally acquiesced to grassroots and Congressional pressure to lengthen unemployment benefits, he received a thirteen-week extension, providing him a little cushion (unlike equally interview-less Juanita). "That helped me a lot. Times are hard right now. I hear there are over four million people collecting unemployment. That's kind of high."
If Juanita and Chris are casualties of the intensified war of attrition businesses are quietly waging on workers, Rodney represents a deeper unraveling of jobs and job security, thanks to a globalized economy in which the hard-pressed workers in this country are pitted against cheaper labor pools in Latin America, South Asia, China, and even the American South. In such a job environment, what is one to do?
Someone I interviewed prior to my job center visit described her reaction when she heard that her company had recently closed a plant in the Midwest: "The first thing I thought, and I felt bad for thinking it," she recalled, somewhat sheepishly, "was that means more work for us -- at least for the time being."
Her comment speaks volumes, as does her request not to be identified. Who needs union busters, patrolling shop-stewards, or legions of high-paid lawyers fighting wage and hours claims when a worker is so anxious about job security that she responds positively to the laying off of those she imagines as potential competitors? When employees police their own behavior for fear of the axe -- monitoring their time checking email or using the bathroom -- bad times distinctly have an upside for management.
In this job environment, it's easy to turn not just on others, but on yourself. Reflecting on what she will do without a job and unemployment benefits, Juanita wonders if the problem isn't the economy, but the choices she made in life. "I left home when I was sixteen and lived in my own places, had my children, and got married," she says nervously, continually folding and refolding a local newspaper. "I should have gone to school and did a lot more things to make myself more marketable earlier in life. Now I'm left having to start over again."
A look at corporate opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), whose passage in Congress is a central demand of organized labor, offers a glimpse of how persistently companies seek to disadvantage their workers. EFCA would allow workers to form a union when a majority of them sign union cards in a given workplace. "Card check," as it is frequently called, enables them to organize unions without the need for an election. In a November column surveying the business elite's response to the Act, Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist Thomas Frank wrote: "Card check is about power. Management has it, workers don't, and business doesn't want that to change."
In Frank's estimation, the current struggle over EFCA is the latest incarnation of a constantly evolving struggle between workers and employers. For the under- or unemployed crowding into this center in Philadelphia, the current recession isn't a time-out from the normal struggle, it's more like a new open season for corporate attacks on them.
Right now, for Juanita, Chris, and others at this center, there are actually two wars going on, and only one of them seems to have caught the attention of labor and business reporters. The headlines about the first read: Desperate Companies Forced to Cut Jobs. But many here seem to be experiencing a second war in which businesses are using bad times to act in ways they couldn't in the best of times.
Shouldn't reporters be heading out in search of this one-sided, covert struggle? Isn't it time for the second business war of our moment to make a few headlines of its own?
44 Comments so far
Show AllThere is but only one solution for workers--Stand Together -- Unionize!
There is but only one solution for We the People--Stand Together--REVOLUTION!
Unity or continued and more blatant slavery.
I think a more powerful message would come from the Consumers.
Stop shopping at Wal Mart.
BOYCOTT these companies. Boycotts will work better in the down economy than they did when every business had an abundance of customers.
The war against the American workers is not so covert. In fact it's pretty clear and easy to see. The author should also write about the H1b Visas which are like bullets from a gun. Everyone issued kills a job that an American could have had. He should be writing about the outsourcing of jobs from America to countries with lower wages. All of these are examples of how the middle-class is being weakened because of the actions of our political leaders. It’s a war but most of the middle-class doesn’t even know it. That’s the biggest problem.
Hoa binh
H1B Visas are being issues because our best and brightest now go to Wall Street to lose the world's money, while in other countries the best and brightest are going into medical or engineering schools. People in America are way too fixated on making money.
Actually, one reason people aren't going into engineering, medical, or any other scientific field is because they are far more difficult to get through than business school is. Couple that with the money factor, i.e. business grads tend to make more money for the work they expend in school compared to the technical and medicasl fields, and there is your answer. Get the most money for the least amount of effort or work. I don't mean to sound nasty or imply that Americans are lazy, it's just an observation I have made over the years.
That's probably true...I suppose being an engineer or doctor actually requires intelligence and hard work, whereas even a retard like Bush can get a MBA and start an energy company.
LOL, you got that right! Of course, Bu$h's gentlemans C's didn't come from hard work and study, he was too busy with Skull & Bones to waste time on something as trivial as working. Poppy arranged for those "passing grades" with a little help from his friend$ doncha know.
Workers of the World, Unite!!!!!
The war against the US middle class and working class started going full bore during the Reagan administration. Reaganites saw the end of the Cold War approaching and looked forward to the day that most of the world would become a playground for US corporations, allowing not just the exploitation of resources, but the use of foreign factories with slave labor and the possibility of selling to sufficient new consumers that US middle class consumers would no longer be indispensable. That is why the Reaganites began the defunding of the US middle class, finding it no longer necessary to the success of US mega-corporations and wealthy elites. Bush just about finished the job and so far it is not looking that much better under Obama.
"Bush just about finished the job and so far it is not looking that much better under Obama."
For Christ's sake, be fair. You just posted how the republicans have been doing this for 28 years, now, and you think that Obama is going to turn that around in 2 MONTHS? And don't forget, the stupidity of the Reagan era has become the "common sense" that so many people, including those in office, think is something other than the suicidal nonsense it really is. You've got democrats who think that Reaganomics is the way things should be, for the love of God!
If you are THIS impatient without even giving the new president any time to do things, then you are really being unrealistic. There are nearly 3 DECADES of damage to be undone, and he is only one person. And until we FORCE him to tell big business to fuck off, he won't.
It's like FDR, who said that he agreed with populist and progressive ideas, but he had to have the people MAKE him put them in place. WE have to do our part and MAKE the new administraion go further than they ever intended to. WE have to MAKE them do the right thing for the majority of us, not the few with money and greed. WE have to MAKE them go further to the progressive side than they ever thought possible. WE are the real leaders of this country, and it's time that WE took our job seriously.
You have to give it YOUR part, not just complain that Obama hasn't delivered you to the promised land. Regardless of what the republicans have said, he is not the promised one, WE are the ones who have to put things right again. Unless WE kick some serious ass, nothing will change. We are up against HUGE money and they will not just give up that power without us TAKING it from them. Do your part, write, email, call, and generally bitch to those who are supposed to be on OUR side. If they aren't work to get others put in office who ARE. Then bug the snot out of them. It's OUR job. WE have to take it seriously.
The presence of Geithner and Summers in their positions in the administration sure makes it difficult to be optimistic. They loom like giant dark clouds over hopes for more progressive economic policies.
" WE have to MAKE them do the right thing for the majority of us, not the few with money and greed. WE have to MAKE them go further to the progressive side than they ever thought possible. WE are the real leaders of this country, and it's time that WE took our job seriously."
Kivals, you are painfully correct. At this point in time, the Dems are to the RIGHT of where the repugs were in the 1950's and 1960's. This is what Obama, as a politician must appease. I must make the point that I was never a real fan of Obama, but, he was the only realistic choice between possible hope or certain fascism (McCain/Palin.) At least we got what we have, and it wasn't really that big of a victory, at least as far as popular vote goes, so we should count our blessings that at least we have something to work with.
Obama inherited probably the biggest mess in the history of this country. Yes, it will take time, Obama is BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE, and by all means, WE ARE IN THIS TOO. IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO HOLD OBAMA'S FEET TO THE FIRE, JUST AS WAS DONE WITH FDR. If we do OUR job, maybe there is a fix to our current FUBAR nation.
Not to be picky, but that was me responding to Kivals. Thanks for the agreement.
No question the employment situation and public-dialogue orientation have long been slanted against the worker. In addition, 'personal responsibility' has been so crammed down people's throats as to be the most frequent excuse for the rapacious practices of companies and those officials hired by them to advocate for management interests and discount labor interests.
Commenters on sites like this should start filing comments in local newspapers as well, to 'take the fight to the enemy', as so many local news sources are right-wing when it comes to labor issues.
What can make one furious is the recognition that one of the primary purposes of creating a corporation is to shield its managers and owners from personal responsibility. To be pro-corporate is to be anti-personal responsibility. All this horse manure from the corporatists about "personal responsibility" for the little people is pure hypocritical propaganda, meant to fool the poorly informed.
Comprehensive lists need to be compiled,of the Overlord class,and tradesmen should refuse to service these bloodsuckers.Let them unplug their own crappers,etc.
If a campaign of refusal to serve these pondscum doesn't improve conditions dramatically-it's time to "go to the mattresses. Revolt,or slowly but surely have the life and spirit sucked out of us.
Another great example of the cruel class war waged by capitalists against workers since the dawn of the capitalist era.
"WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE -- YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS."
From the Communist Manifesto of 1848 by Marx and Engles
"Sicko" showed me what working conditions are like in France.
I don't know about you, but it gripes me to hear someone say, "it works over there but it can't work over here".
it's difficult for me, as i read this story, to avoid thinking about my work in the 70s trying to organize people into either forming a union or hanging onto the union they had. so often i heard comments like, 'they will never make back the money they will lose in this strike.' or 'who needs a union? i work hard, i will always find work and make good money at it too.' it is this go-it-alone smugness which killed the union movement and which now is reaping its grim and inevitable price.
It was a lie perpetuated by the righties who wanted to play divide and conquer games on us. Reagan came along at a time when we were at least TRYING to get along, and his message was bluntly "we are not a society, we are a group of individuals. Go ahead and hate whoever youwant to hate, it's your right to do so". And ever since the republicans and some democrats as well have been harping on the "we are all individuals, not a society" crap, much to our detriment.
The truth is that if it weren't for unions, we would still be living with no vacation, 14 hour days, no leave of any kind, no health care, and no hope of anything other than a miserable life. The righties have tried to get us back to that place, and have come way too close for my liking. The breaking of the unions and our ability to form one has been instrumental in that.
The only chance that any of us have for that better life, some kind of job protectin, wage protection, and any other benefits we can get is to reunionize. Take a look at any other place, or even in our own history, and tell me that things were better off when we had no unions. It will be a lie, and we both know it.
Why people thnk that they can make a better eeal for themselves by themselves is beyond me. They are up against, in many situations, corporations that have multi million dollar lawyers specifically to KEEP them from getting anything beneficial. Those who think they can do better alone are fools who never got the point of banding together for your own strength. They seem to never have heard of "strength in numbers". The companies have numbers, it's important that we do too. Or we are screwed and so are our children and their children. And we owe them more than slavery and indentured servitude.
the longer i live and the more i see, the more convinced i become that the group called the human species is in reality two species: the makers and the takers.
"I should have gone to school and did a lot more things to make myself more marketable..."
This kind of thinking is the problem - since when do people get an education just to make themselves 'more marketable' - more attractive to the owners? If people geared their education towards making themselves into better CITIZENS and better human beings, then maybe we wouldn't be in such a fix.
H1B Visas should be outlawed - made completely illegal. Don't tell me there aren't already plenty of Americans who could do all these jobs! Besides, think of the 'brain drain' to countries that NEED their own 'best and brightest' to improve their own societies. One of the most egregious practices is having American workers train their H1B-Visa replacements - and that goes on all the time! In fact, I can't think of any reason to have 'guest workers' coming to the US - not until we have full employment - and that includes emptying the prisons, many of which WANT more prisoners working in 'slave labor' - prisons themselves are big business, and THAT is unconsionable in itself. It gives incentives to those who lie and cheat to lock up as many people as possible for non-violent crimes, plus creating a social expense that is unsustainable. If anyone deserves to be in prison, it's the criminal class that brought our country down.
Full employment was one of Adam Smith's requirements - the one item that is NEVER mentioned by his fake-adherents. Full employment should be the first priority of any nation, with the next being full utilization of the work force to provide every possible necessity for a succesful and prosperous society - exports should only involve 'surplus' - and imports should only be for those items that cannot be produced in-country. Wage arbitration is NOT an acceptable alternative. Allowing capital to move without restriction while preventing migration is another unbalanced situation. Common sense is so uncommon!
Thanks to the acolytes of Grandpa Caligula (Reagan), the USA finds itself in a bad flashback of the Robber Baron era. So the Secret War against workers is no surprise whatsoever. What one hopes for is that enough of the populace has finally gotten wise to their tricks, and to paraphrase The Who, won't be fooled again.
"Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining profit with individual responsibility." Ambrose Bierce
Is it any wonder why so many drug dealers are on the streets?
Swing Shift Blues by Alan Dugan
What is better than leaving a bar
in the middle of the afternoon
besides staying in it or not
having gone into it in the first place
because you had a decent woman to be with?
The air smells particularly fresh
after the stale beer and piss smells.
You can stare up at the whole sky:
it's blue and white and does not
stare back at you like the bar mirror,
and there's Whats-'is-name coming out
right behind you saying, "I don't
believe it, I don't believe it: there
he is, staring up at the fucking sky
with his mouth open. Don't
you realize, you stupid son of a bitch,
that it is a quarter to four
and we have to clock in in
fifteen minutes to go to work?"
So we go to work and do no work
and can even breathe in the Bull's face
because he's been into the other bar
that we don't go to when he's there.
I'm not sure if its humans in general who have this tendency, but I just don't get how quickly you can forget the past. As SOON as the general public can buy any car, sofa or pair of sneakers they want, ALL of the work unions and people have done is forgotten, you have no values. I grew up hating "the company". My grandfather was president of a union, and every day he worked to keep their jobs, to keep fair wages, and make the company responsible for keeping employees employed. Its based on paying people a "living wage" so they can raise a family. Apes raise families and provide for their survival, shouldn't we? I'm having doubts when I realize NO ONE REMEMBERS the strikes, the defiance, the only thing that has ever worked in America to force the rich to give barely a living wage to their workers who keep them in multiple homes. I do realize that in this country where the average person believes that they can network their way to the top, and will sell out everything to get there, there will be disloyalty and butt-kissing that has become a religion. It's not really a surprise. I would just like to scream, "You were alive when unions stopped the enslavement of the human race, and just barely. Your father could put food on your table because of unions." Please read A People's History by Howard Zinn, I think the APES have...
Yes, I do remember. I'm 73 and recall very well when the labor vote counted for something. My father worked to organize several unions. I grew up thinking that damn scab was a single word.
The rich conservatives have never forgiven FDR for giving rights to the working people. Most people don't even know that they were against child labor laws since, according to them, it took away the freedom of children to help support the family. Reagan was the darling of the right when, in 1982, he trimmed the taxes for the rich. Bush did even more.
Some shocking numbers:
In 2004, 1% of the people in this country had 34.3% of the wealth. The next 9% had 36.9% and the next 10% had 13.4%. The poorest 80% of people had 15.3%. These numbers are from the Economic Policy Institute.
http://www.epi.org/
Most of the numbers are displayed in a pie chart at:
http://www.inequality.org/
Click on "By the Numbers" and look at the graphs and pie charts.
Bush's tax cuts caused more wealth to "trickle up". So much for the right now claiming the Obama wants to re-distribute wealth. Bush did it for years.
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines06/0405-12.htm
The Economic Policy Institute has a series of books entitled "The State of Working America" for different years. Their web site also has more information. It's a little hard to get through.
I think they're trying to fire me.
When United States becomes a functioning democracy, these issues will find a just resolution. Until that time comes there but a few options.
At the risk of being somewhat off-message, should as many of us who are "able-bodied" be working at all? I ask that because we seem to be producing enough goods and services to sustain us while essentially 15% of us "work force" eligible are not in the game at all.
The "Puritan Work Ethic" is so strong that it is difficult for us to imagine a society where everyone who is "able-bodied" is "earning their keep." But to a degree, we've done that already. Not more than a century ago, anyone over the age of 12 (younger in some cases) was considered part of the work force universe. The elderly were the responsibility of individual families and charities prior to the New Deal. Why should this new era of technology be treated any differently?
I'm not saying that 15-20% of us should just sit on our asses and collect living stipends. But the financial bubble has distorted our collective concepts of worth and productivity to the point that the only "worthy" pursuits at our most elite Universities were those that would land one in the middle of the geat money making engine that we all assumed Wall Street was. I shudder to think about how many talented teachers, engineers, writers, biologists, etc. abandoned their natural strengths to grab a degree that would pay off their college loans as quickly as possible.
In the near term, more of us currently unemployed and underemployed will return to some form of profit-producing work, but not all of us. I, for one, would welcome what "free marketeers" derisively call "make work", but perhaps there are other ideas or concepts that could actively engage the unused skills, knowledge and interests of those of us who feel economically abandoned. After all, Einstein thought many of his great thoughts while essentially being a filing clerk in a patent office.
If we had four day work weeks there would be enough work for everybody. There would also be three days a week for self-development, education, family care or business development. Health care costs would go down because many ailments are stress related and oil imports would be cut by 20% as most people would be commuting one less day.
France tried this and productivity went UP, not down and France didn't vanish. Why is the U.S. always at the ass end of any social improvement anyways?
Revolution....Unionize.....down with the corporations.....workers unite. Sounds like I've heard all this before. Perhaps the Russian revolution?? Now that event really made a lot of progress for the Russian people, didn't it? There is no question that men and women organizing their efforts to improve working conditions in this country provided a valuable service. However, it wasn't long before corporate America realized that their employees flourished and were significantly more productive when they were fairly compensated with reasonable working conditions and having the reassurance of job security. As a result, I must point out that we as a Country and Society became second to none sharing wealth with most of our citizens. The growth of the largest middle class in the history of the world...a model that attracted immigration from all parts of the globe. Citizens who were willing to educate themselves and put in a good days work for a respectable amount of pay shared in the American dream. This formula created a win win situation for both sides. Unions out live their usefulness once workers reach the level of a fair days pay for a fair days labor. They have clearly displayed how power and greed corrupted their leadership. A perfect example of union failure is our public school system, under their watch our education system has fallen from its leadership roll in the world to become a national embarrassment.
After all labor without production is worthless. Do you really think that bringing back the "marxist" philosophies will solve todays crisis in America?
All this talk of down with the corporations and up with the worker results in a divisive environment detrimental to all involved. A balanced equation is what's needed and our representatives in Washington on both sides of the isle are too busy fighting their own greedy war for their piece of the American Pie. Until we put an end to the bullshit in Washington we will be reduced to a jobless unproductive society of losers.
Are we playing blame the teachers again? If the teachers union is so powerful how come the schools are always the crappiest buildings in town? When does the the Pentagon have to sell cookies in order to buy stationary?
The right hates unions and they hate teachers unions the most because strong educations are a vaccine against authoritarian BS. That's why the GOP has worked for thirty years to defund and shut down public schools while claiming that schools gave everybody "equal opportunity."
Tell us what a wonderful job corporados are doing for America today? How many people worked their last day on friday? How many tens of thousands?
My first job was in Las Vegas,when Nevada was a Union state. I was sixteen and grumbled a bit when I had to pay a hundred to join the Teamster's Local #14 to go to work but I was soon to see that it was worth it! The Local worked for me and interceded between me and a asshole supervisor who had it in for me because my father{who worked at the warehouse part-time,his main job was L.V.F.D. Captain}went over his head to the owner to get me the job. The Teamsters did a great job on my behalf. I have lived in Vegas for fifty one years and when Nevada changed to "right to work" state, employers got the whip hand and employees got it in the ass. My wife used to sit on Jimmy Hoffa's lap when she was a little girl when he visited Vegas in the early sixty's and we both think he was a great man much maligned. We need a new Hoffa to lead the labor movement. It's time to fight back and using some of Mr. Hoffa's tactics would show we're fed up and "WE'RE NOT TO TAKE IT ANYMORE"!!
It's no secret to the working class.
The trouble with revolutions is that they don't occur until people are desperate, then all hell breaks loose. Let's not wait to insist on change until partisan paramilitary groups have taken over the government.
I don't want to live in a place like France during the French Revolution, still less Russia during their revolution.
These people had had a belly full and believed they had no alternative. Many people in this country are desperately poor and it is going to get much much worse. We are ripe for a Lenin or a Robespierre---or a Hitler?
If you think the Hitler part is not possible Consider Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Bremmer, Donald Rumsfeld, not to mention the hundreds of lawyers eager to tell these outlaws anything they wanted to hear.
And let's not forget the hard right shift over the last thirty years.
"Consider Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Bremmer, Donald Rumsfeld, not to mention the hundreds of lawyers eager to tell these outlaws anything they wanted to hear."
I hope you don't consider any of these fucks to have the kind of charisma powerful enough to take power like that.
No, not the charisma, but the ambition, and the amorality. I could never understand Reagan's popularity: short on brains, compassion, but apparently irresistibly charismatic to some people.
a couple points 1) if you don't like being a worker, then start your own business. Stop demanding the corporations meet your every need. Start your own corporation. You take the risk, you borrow the money. You take on all the liability. I am not a corporation lover by any means. But I am sick of hearing all these gripes from people glorifying workers. There are way too many workers in America that can barely read. If you want more, do it yourself! 2) anyone care to debate the good that Amnesty will do to and for the glorified "workers?"
You fail to notice that 80% of the wealth in the US is held by 5% of the people. Starting your own business with no assets and the congress working for the corporados isn't going to do most of us any good.
Corporations and their defenders are flat evil. The rich are no smarter or harder working; they just have the keys to the bank.
I want to be in charge of my destiny. I don't want to have to beg the gov't for anything. Maybe it is time some of the unions bought the struggling companies and then they can run them and show us all how.
Socialism = poverty for all us regular people. But, the rich you hate will still be rich. Even in commie russia the elite rich kept their money.
Try running a business and you'll see the truth. You'll see how difficult it is to get hard-working, honest people. The false assumption here is that all workers are so hard-working. Sure there are some good people, but many workers in this country are WAY too entitled, sometimes even just plain insubordinate. I'm all for respecting workers, but it needs to be a two way street.
Sorry Bub, but if your employees rip you off it's only fair play. After 40 years of attacking the wages and rights of average workers employees should steal business owners blind.
What does your average no-health-care, no job security, no retirement and no housing security employee owe you? Nothing. If they get sick or hurt it's the curb for them. They SHOULD steal you blind while they have the opportunity.