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| Today was Labor Day, a day to remember the now largely defunct "labor movement." Once upon a time, workers started meeting to discuss how they were being used up by "fatcat capitalists" who grew rich using people as tools. They formed unions, strategized, and withheld their labor as a means of exerting pressure on their bosses to provide a living wage, job security, and other benefits which make life in industrialized society bearable. The bosses retaliated with physical force and other forms of legal injustice, but in the end the workers won shorter work days, higher wages, and the 5-day work week. Most of this happened about a bazillion years ago, back in the early 20th century. Since then, there's been a lot of backsliding. WalMart, the largest employer in the United States, actively supresses any attempt by its 1.2 million workers to unionize. More and more businesses utilize part time schedules and temporary employees as ways of getting around the necessity of providing essentials such as health insurance and pension plans for the workers they exploit. Government fuel subsidies and the work of the IMF and WTO make it profitable for corporations to "ship jobs overseas" where human rights abuses keep the cost of doing business attractively low. In a country where private prisons is one of the only growth industries, it seems inevitable that most manufacturing jobs will one day be replaced by labor camps staffed by political prisoners so that corporations can "stay competitive." (A political prisoner will be anyone who questions the policies of the government.) On a more heartening note, Sarah and I saw Harvey Pekar speak, albeit from separate seats because it was standing room only.  |
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