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Who Can Believe How Far We’ve Fallen?
How many stockbrokers, lawyers, bankers, accountants, or aluminum siding salesmen would turn down a big, fat pay raise if it came with strings attached? What if accepting that raise was contingent upon future new-hires being denied the opportunity to earn those same wages? Would they make a personal sacrifice for these unsuspecting, future employees—reject a pay raise as a matter of principle—or would they take the money and run? My guess is that most would take the money.
And yet we hear the pejorative term “sell-out” applied to union negotiators who agree to two-tier arrangements. Under a two-tier wage/benefit schedule, new-hires can never receive the same compensation as those employees already on the payroll. We hear “sell-out” applied to the UAW (United Auto Workers), and, unfortunately, we hear it applied with little or no understanding of how ferociously the union resisted it, or how forcefully the two-tier configuration was crammed down their throats.
Look at the record. First of all, no one but organized labor categorically opposes the two-tier system. That’s because only organized labor has the ideological and institutional solidarity to generate that opposition. Second, unions are known to have risked their own economic well-being by designating the two-tier as a “strike issue.” Again, how many bankers would put themselves at risk to help future bankers? And third, the history of collective bargaining shows that those unions who accepted the two-tier were dragged to that decision, kicking and screaming.
I’ve sat at the bargaining table when the two-tier was broached. It’s an insidious negotiating device. To begin with, the company comes at you with a steamroller. They paint a dreadful economic picture, one colored with dire scenarios of massive takeaways, lay-offs, even plant closures. In the case of the UAW, the companies’ woes were already public knowledge. Everyone knew Detroit was getting creamed by Japan, and that the UAW had lost over a million members, reducing it to a shell of its former self.
Management tells you that they’re sinking, that they need help, that they need a lifeline. It’s terrible news. The picture is dark; prospects are dark; the meeting room itself seems to palpably darken. Then, suddenly, a ray of light….when they announce that there’s a way out of this mess, a way that won’t require paycuts, or penalties, or furloughs, or layoffs, or increased medical premiums.
If the union will allow the company to low-ball all future employees, the company will promise not to penalize any existing employees. Simple as that. Everyone not only gets to keep all the goodies they currently have, but there might even be a modest pay raise in the piece. All they have to do is allow the company to change the way they compensate new-hires. But the company also somberly warns the union: If they reject this two-tier proposal, those necessary cost savings will have to come out of the membership’s own hide.
When the union presents its standard objections—that these draconian steps aren’t necessary, that they’re contrived, that they aren’t fair, that they’re un-American, that they’ll be resented, etc.—the company reminds us that no one presently on the payroll, not one single person, will be affected by this arrangement, that it only applies to hypothetical workers, to “fictitious” workers, to workers who don’t technically even “exist.”
They make it sound eminently reasonable. They remind the union that if any potential new-hire examines the contract and doesn’t like what he sees in the two-tier arrangement, he’s free to walk away and find work elsewhere. After all, it’s a free country. No one’s going to be forced to do anything or sign on to anything that doesn’t make absolute sense to them. In other words, it’s your classic win-win situation.
But make no mistake. By acknowledging that the beleaguered UAW had its back against the wall, no one is suggesting that the two-tier is defensible, because it’s not. Indeed, it’s unfair, it’s extortionate, it kills morale, it erodes solidarity, and, ultimately, it betrays you, because even after you agree to it (against your better judgment), the company continues to chip away at your wages and benefits—as if you never agreed to anything.
The two-tier is an abomination. But the problem isn’t how to identify it; the problem is how the heck do you stop it from finding its way into a union contract.
The job declension that exists today resembles something like this (listed in declining order):
-Full-time, fully paid and fully benefited workers
-Two-tier workers (lesser pay, lesser benefits)
-Common jobs (mediocre pay, occasional benefits; Walmart)
-Perma-temps (sufficient hours, no benefits)
-Temps (spotty work, no benefits)
-Undocumented workers (less than federal min. wage, no benefits, victimization)
-Part-time workers (supplemental income, no bennies)
-Day-laborers (low pay, no bennies, no guaranteed work)
-Panhandlers
Clearly, those who have it best are the men and women employed in full-time jobs at decent pay with good benefits (e.g., union workers in a big-time manufacturing plant). Correspondingly, those who have it the worst are the guys, usually Spanish-speakers, who hang out at Home Depot looking for pick-up jobs.
That top category, where people make decent wages and enjoy good benefits, used to be considered standard procedure in America. No one really felt it was that big a deal. After all, good jobs were what this country was supposed to be all about. Today those “regular” jobs are considered a luxury. That’s how far we’ve fallen.
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40 Comments so far
Show All>>How many stockbrokers, lawyers, bankers, accountants, or aluminum siding salesmen would turn down a big, fat pay raise if it came with strings attached? What if accepting that raise was contingent upon future new-hires being denied the opportunity to earn those same wages? Would they make a personal sacrifice for these unsuspecting, future employees—reject a pay raise as a matter of principle—or would they take the money and run? My guess is that most would take the money.<<
This is precisely what has occurred between Harley-Davidson and their unionized workers. New hires get no benefits and half the hourly wage of the existing union members. The union sold out new hires for a promise not to move the York plant to another state as well.
True, but that only highlights the reality that Unions are much like the rest of the world, some good but a few bad along the way. At least the plant is still there.
If you are a union member, tell your union leaders to stop sending your money to the Democratic Party and start redirecting those funds to OWS to sustain them through the winter.
Do you think your union leader would say (and mean): "OK, I'll get right on it"?
I can tell you my Union leaders have been at the top of the heap in donating to the Democrats. So lets just say union leadership in most of the big unions are disinterested in hearing suggestions from members.
I wouldn't say we have fallen. It's more like we've been pushed. This is all in the effort to destroy unions by dividing the workers. Once the top tier people are gone there's no need for a union anymore.
The fall of the empire was greatly accelerated when the Supreme Court gave birth to a new kind of citizen. The corporate citizen. The Constitution will be used to take care of the needs of this citizen. The we of we the people is a lower tier citizen now.
Hoa binh
You let it happen. Yes, a little push here and there - which you didn't challenge. You didn't challenge it because it wasn't happening to you personally. Yet. You could still shop, buy a car, a house, a vacation, collect points. On top of that, there are the millions of terminal idiots who joined in screaming about the luxurious wage-bennie packets of other workers, IOW, taking the side of the corporate muggers instead of defending their own rights. None of what is happening today is a surprise, None of it, except how eager you were to accept the blackmail, to blind yourself to the process. All the signs were there 40 years ago, before the SC decision about corporate personhood, and no one stood up for one another in time. People like Macaray tried to warn you, but you ignored them for too long. You think that making a lofty declaration about Supreme Court decisions answers the issue? When the entire system has been coopted by the corporate marauders, do you really expect justice? From the likes of Thomas, Scalia, Alito??? (that's been 10 years ago now) And then you appear to accept the situation. Why aren't you adding yourself to the legions of clear-eyed defenders of justice pouring into Wall Streets all over the country? Insincerity will kill you now.
The SC declared corporate personhood in the late 1800's.
You use the word "you" a lot. No need for all that finger pointing and brow beating.
Let's not forget that with the TARP bailout the executives were not made to take ANY pay cuts because (according to republicans) "they had a contract". Yet with the auto industry LOANS the union members had to make concessions (as well - under contract).
It is all, ALEC lead, Koch supported, union-busting all over again.
We are the 99%
Some of the comments here posted seem to me to be blaming the victim. Rather than smugly criticizing the people for not waking up quickly enough (or not yet), I think it would work better to let bygones be bygones and try to bring people who are just getting there into awareness of what the situation and conditions are now.
People can be against 'em even if they weren't yesterday, and we don't have to know for sure what exactly the right thing to do is. I think it would be good to welcome them.
How very optimistic of you. Rise up on your hind legs. Stop being a victim.
“While there is a lower class I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free” -- Eugene Debs
That goes for being a victim too.
"years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth..."
King Debs
He started out as a union organizer during the famous Pullman Strike of 1894
On July 9, 1894, a New York Times editorial called Debs "a lawbreaker at large, an enemy of the human race"
The US army killed 13 strikers.
Debs got socialism in prison from pamphlets mailed to him by dozens of socialists.
He was a co-founder of the IWW
He was imprisoned for a speech in Canton, Ohio, urging resistance to the military draft of World War I.
He got almost a million votes while in prison.
The most popular socialist in US history.
Finger pointed at you, three fingers pointed back at myself.
I think it would be far better in the long term for bargaining committees resist 2 tier deals even if it means accepting pay cuts for current workers. Of course it is easier to bring a deal to the membership that hurts future workers than one that hurts voting members, but in the end 2 tier deals destroy organized labour.
Here is the outcome of Reagan's policies. Turn people against each other and this is what happens. I remember telling people how his policies were going to tear this country apart, and I told them exactly how, too. They called me a traitor, and told me to leave the country. Now here we are with this country torn apart by those very policies, and yet these same people, if they aren't suddenly on my side about this (and have been forever, too) STILL worship Reagan like a God.
Money or humanity. You can't treat both with equal importance, and money had BETTER lose every time. In the world Reagan gave us, money wins EVERY time.
The country was torn apart under Pres Johnson and Nixon. It had only really been "together" for about 25 years, and that's counting McCarthyism as "together."
Reagan's policies were a counter-revolutionary reaction against the New Left & countercultural youth's defeat of Johnson & Nixon and their short lived victory over the Company and the MIC
Unfortunately, the counterrevolution concentrated political and economic power like never before, and the company is like the terminator, back and stronger than ever with its very own computerized assassins.
3 decades and counting of Company Presidents.
And if you don't think Obama is Company, you don't think.
You were right all along WJM, which is why you should LEAVE THE COUNTRY! :)
Though I support unions and am of the working class, i am getting a little tired of hearing about how hard these men have had it. Since the Reagan era women have been in dire poverty expecially single mothers, the very group singled out by the right as villians. And this macho line of crap that ended welfare under Clinton was embraced by many men in Unions and many working class men who thought Reagan was just fine becouse he was such a cowboy. The Republicans used and manipulated the working class with theri cowboy meme just like it did the smokers with the Marlboro Man and the boys ate up all that misogyny. Now it comes back to them too. Well if you had paid attention to what feminists were telling you in the 80's we might not have wound up here. We were fighting the vicious right then as now and only now that it has affected so many men do we begin hear a push back. Still women are the minority of commenters here and everywhere. The Repugs are masters at yanking that macho chain and all the boys jump and so do the women who think that their salvation is in paying obeisance to these guys.
Bingo! I totally agree. I also believe that the feminist movement was partly a corporate ploy to flood the labour market with excess workers who could be paid less and drag down pay for everyone. Foolishly, the men turned against the women, blaming them for their labour troubles, failing to see the manipulation behind the ploy instead of fighting alongside for everyone's rights to fair compensation.
The so-called main-stream 'feminist' movement primary focus has been so-called 'reproductive' [& 'gay'] rights & freedoms via the Democrat party. YET- Lets take a clear issue which affects so many professional women workers [in the inner-city primarily Black & Brown women], but is the current Democratic Admin's official policy- IE: RTTT & NCLB. If you do a search you'll be find few if any main-stream women's rights groups seem to have any official position regarding the negative impact that RTTT & NCLB is having on teachers [& their unions] which is largely, if not primarily, a woman's profession- as well as the negative impacts on communities & families of the affected students!
However too many unions, including teachers unions [at least at the leadership level], seem to be unable to break away from their adherence to the Democrat party- which is Not to say they should then jump over to the GOP whole-sale, blindly & willy-nilly. The Labor movement has to disconnect itself from this phony Corp controlled Dim vs Repug 2 party duopoly - & even form its own political movement whose duty is to represent the just political interests of working people & all people!
Your next wake up call is looking at the salaries of deans at your local STATE universities. Shocking comparisons to professor salaries, student loans, and what the students have to go through to stay in college, and then get a job. AmericanT cause it won't be fair.
The really great thing about this article was the detailed and very accurate breakdown of the worker caste system in the US; it was a good example of hard to find content that is more likely to appear (and so is easier to stumble on) at Common Dreams than at other Sites. American workers really are compartmentalized into these categories; America has created the most extensive and economy-destroying class system for workers in the history of the world.
But there are a few other categories that even this list left out. These categories are all below the panhandlers so I’ll start with them and add in the missing ones:
--Panhandlers / Dumpster Divers
--Most likely permanently unemployed and living (generally very frugally) off savings or help from friends / relatives
--Most likely permanently unemployed and living (secretly) in vacant, foreclosed houses; moving from one to another such house as necessary.
--In Jail on purpose for the basic necessities and the health care.
--Homeless and doomed to get very sick and lose a lot of years off the lifespan.
Don’t underestimate the importance of the panhandling! Be excited about panhandling and dumpster diving! Panhandling has become the de facto, real American jobs program for the 21st century! Between panhandling and dumpster diving, maybe the US can prosper after all despite being dominated by failed far right politics and economics! Belief in panhandling and dumpster diving allow all of us to have a little hope in the future and to be less saturated by the doom and gloom mentality! If you count panhandling and dumpster diving as employment (which the Bureau of Labor Statistics does because those activities are self employment, laugh out loud) then the unemployment rate drops very nicely! Better still, count those activities as BOTH employment and as businesses and now there are a lot more business start-ups! Thanks to the panhandling and the dumpster diving America will have a dynamic and innovative economy after all!
The really bad thing about this article was that no mention was made of the Social Democratic countries (Germany, the Scandinavian countries, France to a large extent, etc.) even though they are the most successful countries precisely because no one handles labor issues better and precisely because there is far less of a worker class system in those countries. When social democracy was invented roughly 120 years ago one of the most important objectives was to prevent citizens in general and workers in particular from being subject to a caste (or class) system (such as the one in America today) where some are treated well but others are treated like garbage up to and including permanent unemployment (and including the other things I added to the list above).
So all joking aside, the fact that many American “labor leaders” and even labor writers never talk or write about social democracy signifies an astonishing ignorance. Or perhaps they have been paid off to keep their mouths shut about it? Or threatened? Just what is the excuse for social democracy being given the silent treatment all the time?
In truth the American people and the American worker are in this fight by themselves.
As some posters point out, many fall for the us vs. them theme put out by political party's, etc. Some forget that it isn't only the bankers and "rich" that are the problem. Look across the board. "salaries of deans at your local STATE universities. Shocking comparisons to professor salaries" is a very good example of what is flying under the radar.
Great article, I love the job "declension."
I can believe how far we've fallen, because NO ONE is talking about the problem since the problem has been creeping up on us for over 200 years.
Do you really think you know what democracy is?
http://voltairez.hubpages.com/hub/Am-I-The-Last-American-Who-Believes-In-Demcracy
I hope Mr. Macaray's screenwriting career is prospering, because that's one sector that still has a future. (Whether the products of that industry are actually contributing anything socially useful is open for debate.) The key problem we face in this era of globalization is the lack of American jobs. Unless we embrace a new vision of work and justice, the era of the great American middle class is over. Lots of socially useful jobs could be done if we only had the right worldview (and the will to pay for it): more teachers, nurses, and staff for schools and hospitals, more child care and elder care workers, recreation and parks personnel for after-school and evening recreation, etc. Of course, the occupations I just named provide services for people, rather than stuff for them to buy, and would be more efficiently delivered by the public sector than by private for-profit companies.
Mr. Macaray's discussion of the stratificaton of the working class is useful in reminding us of how hard our task of uniting "the 99%" actually is. Unions are in a tough spot when negotiating these days as well. That's why a universal perspective is needed that goes beyond the particular plant or sector. That's why universal health insurance is needed, so that one's health care doesn't depend on one's employment status. That's why we must defend the environment and end the wars of the empire. That's why we need an ethos of social solidarity, or what used to be called socialism/social democracy/democratic socialism. Which side are you on?
How much greed is good?
Depends on who you ask. To some, enough to pile up over $2 TRILLION that they refuse to reinvest in this country. To others, enough is never attained. And to some of us, ANY amount is too much.
On Grave Defilement Day 50 years from now, long after the last baby-boomer has turned to compost, they will recall these two-tier labor agreements, along with the other sins of their fathers, as they pee on our mortal remains.. .
Guess who is 'surplused' forever when there is any tempory layoff. Two tears, eh?
Would you trade your land for some shinny glass beads? Would you think me crazy if I proposed that the current situation in U.S. America is a great opportunity for the common people? What is our shared history? Do you really understand it? In a word it is exploitation. The native inhabitant, black slaves, and the impoverished European immigrant workers,were all terribly exploited. The great opportunity I suggest is two fold. One, this is a chance to see with usually clarity our place in the world, and the true nature of the workings of our economy. Wall St, Federal Reserve system, corrupt government, the war machine (MIC), and our own place in it. Two, out of this new awareness, a chance to change for the better.
Why do we dance to their tune? Why do we sell our precious limited lives for a few glass beads? In the past,and most of us to this day believe we have no choice, but is that really so? Do you need to do banking with a multinational corporation? Do you need a new car every year? Do you really need to buy every new gadget, and follow every new trend sold to you by today mass marketing machine? How big of a house,or a TV do you need? The current troubles may represent the common peoples best opportunity ever to break free of the centuries old economics of total exploitation. Our efforts and the fruits of our labor should be ours, and if someone wants to trade for them, it should be a fair trade. Create beautiful live in your own communities, keep the fruits of your efforts in your own communities. You only have one life,it should not be spent slaving for,or being a lackey for some new corporate world order. This is our chance to shine a light onto the dark side , to renounce it,and reject it. Starve the beast, just say no, and take ownership of your lives back so that you and yours benefit from the fruits of your efforts.
THANK YOU.
Economics 101 – Capitalism benefits only the capitalists, Socialism benefits all of society. Americans don’t get it because they’ve been indoctrinated into ‘capitalism good – socialism bad’. If we had true socialism, where the workers controlled the means of production, unions would not be necessary. Collective bargaining has morphed into begging, and accepting two tiers within the ranks of a union signifies the end of solidarity. All respect for unions was lost when there was no national strike after Reagan fired PATCO. That was the beginning of the end and the capitalists knew it.
Well Said, Mr. Macary !!!!
Say it AGAIN !!
Once a two tier system is installed the company has every insentive (intention?) of doing everything in their power to make those upper tier workers miserable so they will resign.
What did the unions get for this "trade-off"? More money for the older workers? I can't fine a mention of anything else in this article.
A few seats on the Board of Directors would seem in order. And lower wages ought to be accompanied by serious profit sharing, like splitting up at least 25% of the profits. Now that the unions are supportint off-shoring it would seem that profits will be very good.
I notice in your declension you leave out independent professionals (doctors, lawyers, accountants) and the self-employed.
Isn't this the exact same tactic being used by the US Government to get senior adults behind changes in Social Security?