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Monday, September 7. 2009
Labor Day
Today is Labor Day, when we celebrate the work ethic and the labor unions that made America great. Labor Day has been with us since 1885 when a machinist and secretary of the Central Union of New York, Matthew McGuire proposed the first Monday in September be dedicated to the workers of America. They had a parade and a rally, and of course a party.In the next few years cities and then states adopted the day as an official observance and the federal government followed suit. Today, 124 years later, we still celebrate the holiday, but few of us really observe what the day is all about. There will be speeches and parades, but for the most part U.S. citizens will be off somewhere enjoying what is considered the last day of summer.
Labor unions made America great. Unions created the middle class. Had it not been for the workers of the great factories and foundries striking for collective bargaining, more humane working hours, conditions and salaries just after the Industrial Revolution, there wouldn’t have been a blue-collar middle class in America.
The struggle for respect and equality continued on for years with the labor unions, well into the 20th Century. Corporations, the ones who funded government officials, had the local and federal government on their sides during the labor battles, but the workers persisted and by the mid 1950’s 36% of the American work force was represented by unions.
Today that figure is about 7%. Republicans are still intent on breaking the unions, removing them from the American landscape. During the bailout talks for the Big Three American auto-makers, Republican support for lending financial support the General Motors, Chrysler and Ford hinged on breaking the contracts with the United Auto Workers (UAW).The UAW, seeing the reality of the decline of the Big Three since the disastrous trade agreements that allowed foreign automakers easy (and unreciprocated) access to the U.S. market had been making concessions for years, but the right, long opposed to unions and collective bargaining, polluted the debate with lies about how much compensation union workers were receiving.
In what can only be described as astounding, the CEO’s of the Big Three stood beside the president of the UAW, Ron Gettelfinger, and told Congress that the wild stories about compensation circulated by the right were false and that the UAW had indeed made significant concessions to help keep the automakers alive. Too little too late.
One of the first acts undertaken by President Ronald Reagan after he took office was to stab the Professional Air Traffic Controllers union (PATCO) in the back. PATCO had endorsed Reagan for president in 1980 and in 1981 when the union demanded better working conditions and hours, calling for a limited strike, Reagan declared them outlaws and fired all the workers who didn’t return to their jobs.Unions have been in decline ever since. Companies, given government incentives to do so, have moved their factories and assembly plants to states without unions and of course to countries where workers make a fraction of what American workers earn, the Mexican maquiladoras being the most prominent.
The best-paid workers in Mexico work for the American (and Japanese and European) companies that own the plants and earn two dollars and hour. They get no “benefits” and they tend to work 60 hours a week or more, working six days per week. Many, if not most, of the workers are women and sexual exploitation is the rule, not the exception.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), first pushed by the Republicans and then endorsed and signed into law by President Clinton, has done much to help U.S. companies that operate maquiladoras move jobs out of the United States and into Mexico. Recent trade agreements with China have made it possible for American companies to move assembly plants to that country.
The result being, the blue-collar middle class had been in decline for the past 20 years. A nice how do you do for the people who built America and make it run. It’s about more than the unions and always has been. With the rise of the labor unions, non-union companies raised their salaries and added benefits to compete for the labor force. The unions were good for all American workers and we became a better nation as a result.Today, as we mostly ignore the reason for this holiday, we ought to ask ourselves, are we better off without a blue-collar middle class? I’m guessing most people can’t even grasp the concept of a blue-collar middle class, but 40 years ago that’s how the vast majority of us were raised. Our fathers and mothers worked at those jobs, were represented by the unions and life was good.
Today, we’re all wondering when we will get the pink slip. That’s a nice how do you do for the American work force on Labor Day.
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