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August 27, 2007 at 05:52:42
The War on Working Americans - Part I by Stephen Lendman Page 1 of 4 page(s) |
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As Labor Day approaches, what better time to assess the state of working America. It's under assault and weakened by decades of eroding rights in the richest country in the world once regarded as a model democratic state. It's pure nonsense in a nation always dedicated to wealth and power, but don't try finding that discussed in the mainstream. Today, it's truer than ever making the struggle for equity and justice all the harder. That's what ordinary working people now face making beating those odds formidable at the least.
In a globalized world, the law of supply and demand is in play with lots more workers around everywhere than enough jobs for them. It keeps corporate costs low and profits high and growing with Business Week (BW) magazine reporting in its April 9 issue "the share of (US) national income going to corporate profits (compared to labor) is hovering around a 50 year high." BW then quoted Harvard economist Richard Freeman's research paper saying only "a global pandemic that kills millions of people" could cause a labor shortage and elevate worker bargaining power.
There's little in sight, and the result is a huge reserve army of unemployed or underemployed working people creating an inevitable race to the bottom in a corporatized marketplace. It harms workers everywhere, including in developed nations. They're outsourcing good jobs abroad to lower wage countries and pressuring workers to do more for less because they've got little bargaining power to fight back. More on this below.
Organized Labor in the US - Its Rise and Decline
Organized labor's rise began modestly and was fragile in the earliest days of the republic. It gained strength in good economic times, then lost it in downturns like the depression in 1873. By the 1880s, things were better as the nation underwent rapid industrialization. With it came rising prosperity and workers wanting a share of the benefits. They turned to unions for help with skilled artisans leading the way helping the unskilled as well in their efforts to organize.
New labor organizations arose, older ones expanded, and as they did, they grew more active and militant. It led to the "great uprising of labor" in 1886, including the landmark Chicago May 4 Haymarket Riot protesting police violence against strikers the previous day. Its impact was hugely negative at first. It forced organized labor to regroup and settle in for a long period of recovery.
This was at a time the incipient labor movement was over two million and rising beginning with its organizing efforts launching it in the 1870s. By the 1880s, it had enough strength to stage huge strikes for better pay and working conditions like the struggle for an eight hour day that had 80,000 strikers parading peacefully down Chicago's main Michigan Avenue on May 1, 1886 in what's now regarded as the first ever May Day Parade.
Workers were helped from community-based emerging independent political parties sensitive to their rights. That's unheard of today in an age where no effective political party stands for working people despite Democrats and Republicans saying they do. Workers are now on their own. They're left to struggle in a global marketplace with pathetically little help weak unions can provide.
Earlier in the 19th century, the first national union arose as workers began asserting their rights. It was called the National Labor Union (NLU), emerged after the Civil War, but was short-lived. Next came the Knights of Labor in 1869 with a mandate to protect all workers including women and blacks after 1883. They were represented by industry groups rather than trade and skill level that was common until then. Its goals were high but achievements few at a time of widespread worker repression in the 1880s. It led to its decline as a more resilient union emerged the result of disaffection with the Knights.
It was called the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and was founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886 to replace its predecessor, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. The ill-fated American Railway Union (ARU) followed in 1893, the largest industrial union of its day for a time, and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) that at its peak in the 1920s had 100,000 members.
The Wobblies are still around 102 years after Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs and others founded the union in 1905 as a commitment to working people in their struggle with corporate employers. It's motto was "an injury to one is an injury to all," its goal was revolutionary, and it's still true to its root ideology today as stated in the current IWW Constitution:
"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people.....Between (workers and employers) a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the (unfair) wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth....It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism....By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old."
That philosophy under dedicated men like Haywood, Debs and others set the Wobblies on a collision course with government and big business that tried to crush it. During WW I in 1917, it was vicious under Woodrow Wilson's Justice Department (DOJ). It used the repressive Espionage and Sedition Acts to raid and disrupt union meeting halls across the country. It's the same tactic used today against Latino immigrants and Muslims in the concocted "war on terrorism" and the one against undocumented workers.
In 1917 and later, Wilson's DOJ acted much the same way arresting 165 Wobbly leaders on the grounds they hindered the war effort by using their First Amendment right to speak out against it. They were tried near war's end in 1918, all convicted, and given long prison terms under a Democrat President thought of reverentially today. Bill Haywood was luckier. After conviction, he was released on bail and fled to the Soviet Union where he remained until his death, but the IWW was never again the same.
They were hammered again from 1918 - 21 during the infamous Palmer Raids under Wilson Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. He targeted radical left wing groups like the Wobblies at the time of the first "Red Scare" after the 1917 Russian Revolution. It launched J. Edgar Hoover's career in the DOJ Bureau of Investigation's new General Intelligence Division that later became the FBI in 1935. The IWW is still around, still dedicated to its founding principles, but it's worldwide membership is only around 2000, mostly in the US.
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War on the working class
Great due diligence! It looks like you did your home work on the labor movement in America. Corporate America is also doing their homework and they have the brightest minds working very hard to destroy and completely subjugate the middle class and anyone else who may be below their station in life. The have our government in their shirt pocket and together they are waging a war not just against the working class but against democracy and capitalism, because when the working class is beaten down so low they just wont buy anything or even be able to make their mortgage payments. Corporate profits will tumble, panic will set in and 1929 will revisit us. America desperately needs a pro labor president in 2008 hopeful Edwards or Obama will get elected. Hillary Clinton shares the same ideals as George Bush and should be dead last in the polls. Hillary and George want America to be ran like cotton plantations were 200 years ago. Americans who are fed up with no representation in the workplace should form consumers unions and use the internet to boycott certain corporations who treat its workers poorly or throw too much weight around in Washington. Our purchasing power is still a valuable weapon it will bring corpoations to their knees. by Gary Denson (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 283 comments) on Monday, Aug 27, 2007 at 10:14:15 PM  (0+)
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Mr. Lendman
An outstanding article. Reagan destroyed the Unions with the help of the Unions. When the Comptrollers struck, every Union crossed their picket lines, from teamsters driving semi-trucks to the pilots flying planes. If all the Unions had banded together and shut the whole nation down, the Unions would be alive and well. Here in Oklahoma it is even worse. We have one real newspaper which is owned by Eddie Gaylord, The Daily Oklahoman. This newspaper is so pitiful it ran a daily front page editorial attacking President Clinton for over a year. It s so bad that Columbia University rating the largest two hundred newspapers in the United States rated The Daily Oklahoman dead last in every catagory. If the news media was not bad enough, we just passed "The Right to Work" Law here in Oklahoma which outlaws unions for all practical purposes. We are headed for another Great Depression and we are being led by the giant corporations and they will make another financial killing as they did in thirties. by pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 972 comments) on Monday, Aug 27, 2007 at 11:37:30 PM (0+)
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Why I don't like Unions
I don't like Unions because I have to pay Union dues. I have to go to work and then get my pay-check, to see money taken out for State Taxes, Federal Taxes, Social Security, IRA, and then my Union Dues. Well where is my check? Can't seem to go along with the idea, when if by chance I could get a loan to start my own business, I have to please customers and the Unions who might be eyeing my labor for their rewards? When it comes right down to it, it is the employers labor, involved just as much as the workers labor. Frankly if I offer a job for so much and the worker agrees, where is the problem? Why do I need some worker to tell me how to run my business? Now you Union People think about that for a moment, and consider it when you decide to start your own business. Do you want someone telling you how to run your business? I don't think so. Do you want to have less money in your paycheck each week because of Union Dues, which in my opinion is nothing but another name for a tax? Or shouldn't the American Government doing things to promote the economy so business owners and workers both benefit? That's the reason we have democracy so we can vote to see who will help us. Unions if you think you can do a better job, then start the Union Party, and get elected into office, besides your Union Trade Offices. Become representatives in government. You will find that Unions do not work fairly, no matter how bad you perceive things becoming now. In fact it will be the Mom and Pop shops who really hold the American Rug to the floor. Not the corporations, not the stock market, and certainly not the Unions. by Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 930 comments) on Tuesday, Aug 28, 2007 at 2:41:21 AM (0+)
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Democracy
The American people are so ignorant. Almost every article I read people refer to America as a Democracy. America is not a Democracy nor has it ever been. America is an oligarchy in the form of a Republic. Democracy is government of the people, by the people, and for the people. America's republic is a fascist plutocracy. America is a government of the super rich, by the super rich, and for the super rich. The only country that has anything resembling Democracy is Venezuela where they have national referendums, communal councils directly under the people's control, and a large number of workers cooperatives. They also have a lot of grassroots organizations in Venezuela. America has been corrupted by the selfish capitalist values of greed and economic individualism. Its time for the working class in America to rise up against the corporate capitalists and finally overthrow our corporate government and those behind the scenes who control it. by Ty (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 888 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Aug 28, 2007 at 9:21:41 AM (0+)
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Corporations
Corporations are not waging a war against capitalism. Corporations are the very essence of capitalism. They are however waging a war to prevent democracy and socialism. Capitalism and Democracy cannot coexist because the interests of the capitalist class go against the interests of the working class. Since there are a lot more workers than there are capitalists the workers would come out on top in a Democracy and the capitalist system would fade away and be replaced with a socialist system where the working class would have democratic ownership over businesses and the means of production. Don't support Edwards or Obama. They are corporate shills just like Hillary Clinton and George Bush. There are only 3 candidates in the two major parties who are anti-war. They are Kucinich, Gravel, and Paul. Of those three only 1 is a champion of the working class, is a union member, and knows what's its like to be poor and is committed to ending poverty. His name is Dennis Kucinich. Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate worth voting for. Besides being pro-peace and against poverty, Kucinich is also committed to Upholding the rule of law, supports a single-payer not-for-profit healthcare system, ending the "war on drugs", ending the "war on terror", environmental restoration, use of clean and renewable energy sources, ending all free trade agreements and withdrawal from the WTO, an independent investigation of 911, impeachment of Bush and Cheney, ending travel ban and trade embargo against Cuba, progressive taxation, and free and fair elections. by Ty (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 888 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Aug 28, 2007 at 11:20:26 AM (0+)
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Unions
If you don't like unions then just don't join one. If you don't want other people telling you how to run your business then you should work for yourself by yourself. by Ty (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 888 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Aug 28, 2007 at 11:33:02 AM (0+)
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Reply: I am but a pin!
Thanks Man, that's exactly what I do! I work for myself; without the help of Unions the liars, or the US government the liars. HA. Best self I could ever find. Unions need a reunion? United needs a reunited? Got me! I don't need anyone telling me how to live or what I need. My labor is mine not the Unions, or the Capitalists. My enemy is myself. My fault is being caught between the liars. I am a compass, the pin holding the arrow that ever turns according to the direction, and upon my arrival I am still the pin. by Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 930 comments) on Thursday, Aug 30, 2007 at 6:29:49 AM (0+)
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Ikster
By all means if you do not want anyone representing you for higher wages, retirement, job security and health care, please do not join a union; go to work for Taco Bell, McDonalds or WalMart and enjoy yourself. Unions made this country great and now the the radical right wing's attacks on the Union are destroying the middle class as never before. "Right to Work" is right to starve and you have the right to go to work for a non-union company, but when the workers of company vote to go union, please do not accept any befits the union achieves for your field of work. It would be hypocritcal of you; a little like Senator Craig, Tom Delay, Cunningham, and dozens of other right wingers. The Republican Party is now the official hypocrite party. by pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 972 comments) on Wednesday, Aug 29, 2007 at 12:08:05 AM (0+)
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