Happy Labor Day

[Guest guest]

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090805LA.shtml

 

Happy Labor Day

By Molly Ivins

Working for Change

 

Tuesday 06 September 2005

 

Time for labor - that means you - to unite.

 

Austin, Texas - Happy Labor Day, comrades. Hail to all who have

yet to be outsourced, downsized, zero-budgeted, streamlined, cut back,

laid off, globalized or otherwise pre-shrunk. Those of us who are

lucky winners in the employment lottery can still enjoy our stagnant

wages, disappearing benefits and collapsing pension plans. What, us worry?

 

Not that I want to start off one of my favorite national holidays

on a bummer note, but it's enough to make Joe Hill rise from the dead

yet again. One of the handicaps Americans have when it comes to

discussing labor is that about 90 percent of us think we're middle

class. Upper-class people are quite as likely to self-identify as

middle class as are working-class folks. And middle-class folks do not

think of themselves as " labor. "

 

How could you be part of labor when you don't wear a hardhat or

carry a lunch bucket? When you live in a suburb and own a bass boat,

as well as an SUV? When you wear a suit and tie or high heels to work?

When you're management, for pity's sake? Because that's what American

labor looks like now - just like you.

 

And American labor has some serious problems. Earlier this month,

Treasury Secretary John Snow observed, " The fruits of strong economic

growth are not spreading equally. " Yo. Phillip Swagel of the

conservative American Enterprise Institute explains: " The gains from

the recovery haven't really filtered down. The gains have gone to

owners of capital and not to workers. " I'd say so myself.

 

For starters, we have a growing economic underclass. In 2004, 37

million Americans - 12.7 percent of us - lived in poverty, the fourth

year in a row the numbers increased. Between one-fourth and one-fifth

of American children are being raised in poverty.

 

Next up, more Americans lack health insurance - 45.8 million.

That's the fourth straight year that figure has gone up, too. Six

million more people lacked health insurance in 2004 than in 2000. The

proportion of Americans with employer-sponsored coverage keeps

shrinking, and public insurance programs cannot make up the difference.

 

Meantime, the median income failed to increase for the fifth

straight year, the first time that's happened since the feds started

keeping records in 1967. Since the economy is " in recovery, " where's

all the money going?

 

Corporate CEOs moved up again, now making 431 times as much as the

average worker. Our friends at the Center for American Progress

calculate that if the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay had remained the same

as it was in 1990, 301-to-one, the lowest-paid workers in the United

States would be making $23.03 an hour.

 

There is no great argument over why these things are happening.

None of this is the result of any immutable economic law - it is the

result of deliberate government policies. Allan Lichtman, professor of

history at American University, wrote last month in Newsday: " Like a

master pickpocket, George W. Bush distracts the American people with

one hand, while reaching into their pockets with the other. The

distraction comes through the flash and bombast of explosive social

issues like abortion, gay rights, public displays of religion,

end-of-life decisions and creationism. ... The pilfering comes through

initiatives that take from working- and middle-class Americans and

give to Bush's corporate backers, to whom he has delivered the goods

big-time. "

 

Lichtman cites the media's preoccupation over whether Bush's pick

for the Supreme Court will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, while

Congress passed an energy bill with $14.5 billion in tax breaks, most

of which go to companies like Exxon, which last year alone made $25

billion and is swimming in cash on hand. He added:

 

* Just before Congress left for the summer recess, the

administration won passage of a free-trade agreement with Central

America that makes it easier for companies to outsource jobs and

investments, and that bypasses protections for workers and the

environment.

 

* Last spring, while the public focused on the Terri Schiavo case,

Republicans leaders passed a new bankruptcy bill written by lobbyists

for the credit-card industry. The credit-card companies stand to

profit from the new law by several billion dollars.

 

* Ditto the new prescription drug benefit " for seniors, " actually

written by and for big drug companies.

 

" What all of this really amounts to is a political revolution in

the United States, creating a form of conservative big government that

promotes not the general interests of ordinary Americans, but the

special interests of big corporations, " Lichtman wrote. " This creates

a sharply upward redistribution of wealth and power that threatens

long-term prosperity... . The revolution also is making government

costlier and less fair, stifling individual freedom and democratic

decision-making, and opening fissures between the wealthy and other

Americans. "

 

Personally, I think we should wait until after Labor Day, when we

take that last lazy lick off the ice cream cone of summer. And let's

get the mess on the Gulf Coast cleaned up, keeping in mind that a

fraction of the tax cuts Bush gave to the very rich could have paid

for new levees for New Orleans. And then, fellow workers, let's unite

and raise hell.

 

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