Doug McIntyre, the morning radio talk show host on KABC 790 in Los Angeles, has several times made an observation that your faithful correspondent has decided to co-opt.
But first some background information. For most of his life, yours has not been a supporter of labor unions despite the fact his grandfather, grandmother (ILGWU), uncle (Teamsters), brother (IATSE), father-in-law (Teamsters) and lovely wife (AFL-CIO) were/are either union members or union supporters. My only contact with a union was twelve years ago at the shop I was then working cut the machinists' wages 20% because the owner was an incompetent and greedy bastard. There was a union certification election for the International Association of Machinists (a bad choice in my opinion, though I voted in favor of certification). The certification failed and I left the shop for another (non-union) shop for less money. But I was, and am, working for a greedy bastard who has some modicum of knowledge about how to run a machine shop.
Having written the above boring preface let's go back to one of my favorite sayings. "The trouble with socialism is socialism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists." And thereby lies (or is it lays?) the tail (or is it tale?). There will be, I predict, a new age of unionism. And I, for one, will support it. Individual initiative, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, nose to the grindstone, all sound great if one is given the chance to act as an individual, has a bootstrap or a grindstone. The problem is with capital and the fact that it is the capitalists who drive wages down or eliminate jobs through either outsourcing work or hiring illegal immigrants.
There are two cases in point that illustrate the problem. Housing construction and meat packing. The trades involved in housing construction used to be good paying jobs. Carpenters, roofers, dry wall hangers all made good livings. And by good livings I mean the ability to support a family of one wife and 2.2 children and buy a house and not have to clip coupons out of the local newspaper to buy groceries. Now those jobs have been taken, in the Southwestern US, by illegal immigrants who work much cheaper, but who, because of their lower wages, live ten men to an apartment designed for three and are willing to do so because Mexico is such a cesspool. Meanwhile, the union carpenters, roofers and drywall hangers are collecting unemployment because they're been displaced by people who are in the US illegally.
Meat packing (the slaughtering and butchering of beef, pork, lamb and poultry) used to be one of the highest paid blue collar jobs simply because of the danger involved in the activity. The advent of illegal aliens has driven the wages way down. No longer can a meat packer expect to live a working middle class life. He finds himself at the bottom of the rung in income for the same reason that the roofer does.
These are jobs that Americans are willing to do (despite the statements of President Bush). They are jobs that Americans have always done. But they are jobs that, because illegals have undercut the prevailing wage, that Americans can no longer afford to do. The result is that you have fifty year old men attempting to learn new. low paying trades, attempting to go into real estate or just giving up in despair.
The free trade freaks and elitist conservatives sound the clarion of College Education. Let's face it. Not everyone wants a college education. Some people are perfectly happy laying a good roof, doing a good job of framing a house or building a road. And besides, a college education guarantees nothing unless one desires to become a bureaucrat. Boeing, for example, has been known to outsource its engineering to India resulting in the laying off of aeronautical engineers in the US. Canadian film crews make television programs that are supposed to represent US life in Canada. I am waiting for the day when some one like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity goes to his contract negotiations and finds that he's in a bad spot because the radio network has decided to replace him with someone with conservative views who works out of Vera Cruz or Bombay. Then the screaming will start.
The point of all this bloviation is simply this: Considering the fact that the differences in income between those who run businesses and those who actually put out the sweat of labor continues to grow because the businesses do not give the working stiff a square deal the working stiff will kick. Businesses deal from the bottom of the deck by using either illegal immigrant or off-shore labor. There will come a day when the clerk at the Wal-Mart who used to make a good living as a proper gardener (not just a lawn chopper), the son of an illegal immigrant meat cutter working as a meat cutter, will decide that he or she is getting a raw deal; the aerospace worker will see an American airliner being built in China. And they will all consider the possibility of collective bargaining. And on that day the big businessmen will wake up, and while drinking their morning latte' (and what kind of man drinks latte' in the morning instead of black coffee or whisky?) he read in the business section of the local rag that a Wal-Mart in Iowa has voted for the certification of a union, and he will know that a new age has dawned. Once a Wal-Mart has unionized it's a waste of time sticking a finger in the dike. The union tide will be unstoppable. And the guy or gal spitting out their latte' in surprise will have no one to blame but themselves because they created the new san culottes.
The only question will be, "What kind of unionism?" There are three possibilities. Guild unionism, trade and industrial unionism, and the One Big Union. I prefer guild unionism simply because I am proud of my artisanship. Too many knuckleheads have gotten into my craft, and it wouldn't be a bad idea if there were a body to separate the wheat from the chaff. The second option is the One Big Union, which, while smacking of socialism (which I dislike) gives the worker a voice that the ballot box does not. Nothing gets a politician's attention like the loss of money and production on a nationwide scale. The least attractive option is trade and industrial unionism (the AFL-CIO model) simply because it is the most open to corruption and co-opting by politicians and businessmen.
Is it good for America? Well, is a working force that can honestly afford to live comfortably and well good for America? Or are an upper and working class based on the nineteenth century British model good for America? Or is wage slavery good for America? I think the first option the more classically American.
And while I'm stealing, in part from Doug McIntyre, I might as well steal something else while I'm at it.
The United States is a signatory to the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which establishes what amounts to a Common Market between Canada, the US and Mexico. The result has been many US jobs being exported to Mexico and a few to Canada. Now President Bush (and to be truthful, despite his war on terrorism he's wearing out his welcome here at Bloody Nib Manor because he's not maintaining the home turf as he should) is pushing a thing called the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). It would establish a larger free trade area than NAFTA. If CAFTA is approved in Congress the next step is HAFTA because the average American working stiff is going to hafta try to get a job at McDonald's to keep body and soul together because his job went to El Salvador.
No comments:
Post a Comment