From The RampartsJunious Ricardo StantonLabor Day 2008“Very few Americans experience the power of a union anymore. U.S. unions today represent just 7.8 percent of all private sector workers. Organized labor can't stop wages from falling; hours from increasing; jobs from being offshored; or health and pension benefits from disappearing. Conditions in unionized garment and meat-packing factories here have regressed to the point where they actually mirror those described in muckraking exposes of a century ago. It's the lack of countervailing union power that best explains the widest income inequality in the advanced industrialized world, the most limited workers' rights, and what is easily the meanest and the crummiest welfare state. In Europe, where unions are on the defensive but haven't lost the capacity for large-scale resistance, labor activists refer ominously to ‘The American Disease.’”- Robert Finch, What's the Matter with U.S. Organized Labor? http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/yates300306.htmlAs many AmeriKKKans enjoy the day on an officially recognized holiday commemorating the struggles of organized labor; it is ironic that AmeriKKKan workers have lost ground and are experiencing not only protracted wage stagnation and regression, but also impotency within the union movement. Over the last three decades organized labor has taken it on the chin, hard. Unlike the popular stereotype and myth of the hard fighting unionists, modern organized labor has punked out in the face of corporatist anti-unionism. The supreme irony as we “celebrate” Labor Day 2008 is, during the past several years production and corporate profits in AmeriKKKa have increased substantially while union membership and activism have plummeted. “Yet working Americans are more productive than ever. Putting aside the current cyclical downturn, the men and women who routinely keep this country running have been working harder and smarter. Since the mid-1990s, the growth of output per hour—or productivity—has undergone a resurgence, and the folks responsible are the 140 million Americans who go to work every day. When it comes to efficient, profitable production, the men and women of the American workforce have a lot to be proud of. But when it comes to being rewarded for the work they do, the skills they have sharpened, and the contributions they make…well, that’s a different story.” http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/swa08_00_execsum.pdfThere are a myriad of reasons for the increase of productivity and profits and the decrease in union membership and power: government policies like NAFTA, advanced technology and automation, outsourcing and sending US manufacturing overseas, the shift to a service economy, deregulation of major industries such as the airlines, capitalist bloodletting and corporate takeovers to name a few. But organized labor did some things to sabotage itself and undermine its own future. Many of us remember how organized labor sat on the sidelines and allowed the Reagan administration to browbeat, decertify and crush the Air Traffic Controllers Union. Many think that was a pivotal moment in ownership- management and labor relations. The government took the side of the owners and the unions did absolutely nothing. The fact the air traffic controllers could be called a white collar union as opposed to a rough and tumble trade union like the Teamsters was all the more significant. The government had been after the Teamsters for years and routinely threatened their leadership via Congressional and “Justice” Department investigations. The Teamsters Union for the most part kept up the fight. But the air traffic controllers did not fit the mold of the tough negotiating smash mouth unionists. The fact the AFL- CIO leadership and their rank and file members failed to support the Air Traffic Controllers in their very public fight with Reagan demonstrated to the right wing just how vulnerable and politically unsophisticated organized labor was. Organized labor remained silent as the Clinton administration continued the corporatist policies of Bu$h senior which continued widening income gaps between workers and management. While Clinton is credited with improving the US economy, many workers did not share in the boost. It was Clinton who fast tracked NAFTA and deregulated the banking industry, policies which played a major role in today’s economic quagmire.“While the tax, trade, wage and benefits policies were being implemented top down during the two decade between 1980-2006 under four presidents from both parties, deregulated corporate policies and practices that further contributing to the growing income inequality gap were being simultaneously overhauled from the bottom up, shifting from full-time, permanent jobs to part-time, temporary, and independent contract work. Growing consistently since the 1980s, more than 44 million of the 137 million employed workforce in the US, close to one third, are now part time, temporary, and contract workers earning 60-70% of the pay of full-time workers and typically 20% of the benefits. Management-promoted de-unionization policies launched in the 1980s resulted in the decline of union membership from 22% of the workforce in 1980 to barely 7% in the private sector in 2006. Two decades of corporate job outsourcing policies sent millions of high-paying, liberal benefit jobs in manufacturing, technology, and business professional services overseas, a loss filled with lower paying domestic service jobs - frequently part-time, temporary, and contract jobs. Corporate fringe benefits policies shifted fundamentally during the same period, resulting in the dismantling of more than 100,000 traditional pension plans and their replacement with cheaper cost 401-K plans; the discontinuance and/or shifting of costs of health insurance plan coverage; widespread unilateral corporate elimination of retiree health benefits; reduction of paid vacation and other paid time off; and other similar company-driven cost reduction measures. The two approaches - corporate policy changes at the company-industry level and government policy changes - worked in close concert with each other. Government tax, depreciation, and free trade policies provided significant financial incentives to corporations for expanding offshoring jobs and consequently dismantling and transferring abroad much of the manufacturing sector in the US.” Deregulation: Global war on labor by Henry C K Liu www.atimes.com/atimes/global_economy/ij13dj01.htmlIt’s ironic we are celebrating a holiday commemorating the struggles of organized labor when in fact organized labor has been the target of a decades long collusion by the government, its corporatist backers and union leadership (knowingly or often unwittingly) itself to destroy all their predecessors struggled, fought and worked so hard for. Typically as many AmeriKKKans cookout, gobble food and swig all types of libation, mindlessly watching hours of television oblivious to what is going on, conditions worsen. Enjoy your “holiday”.
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