MUELDER: Labor unions built America’s middle class [View All]

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.galesburg.com/opinions/x1662361046/MUELDER-Labor-unions-built-America-s-middle-class



Laurie Muelder

By LAURIE MUELDER
GUEST COLUMNIST
Posted Jun 20, 2009 @ 06:34 AM

This month the current “economic downturn” will become the longest lasting since the Great Depression. The previous 10 post-war recessions averaged 10.4 months long; the longest lasted 16 months. The current recession is now in its 17th month and the labor market is still losing more than 600,000 jobs a month. The total officially counted as unemployed is more than 13 million.

At the same time the reports from Wall Street are rosy again. Flush with bailout money (our tax dollars at work) those presiding over the biggest institutions expect to make as much money this year as they did before this huge recession began. While the bankers, brokers and traders prosper the employment situation for the American workers, the people who actually make things, continues to worsen. And, for those still working wages are falling; as the job market worsens wages will fall more. This happened in Japan where wages fell each year between 1997 and 2003 leading to stagnation from which their economy still hasn’t fully recovered.

Consider the example of Wells Fargo Bank, recipient of $25 billion in TARP funds, which has refused to extend credit to Hart Schaffner Mark, the 122 year old men’s clothier, and as their main creditor wanted to liquidate the company eliminating 4,000 skilled jobs. This is the last major American company making high-end men’s suits — President Obama regularly wears them. According to one bidder for the company “you need real skill in manipulating the fabric and whatever you loose in higher hourly compensation you can more than make up in productivity if you can sell the product at a certain price point.” Congressman Phil Hare, D. Illinois, who was once himself a cutter and head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers local for 12 years, got Wells Fargo to hold off liquidation, pointing out that “we have the most productive workforce in the world, but we don’t make things anymore. There has to be room in America for people who work with their hands for a living.”

We need to focus our energy and resources on putting people back to work with more stimulus and more job creation, to revitalize technical and career education and drop the delusion that everyone should go to college. According to Harry Holzer, a former Department of Labor economist now at Georgetown University, our work force consists of four roughly equal segments: one fourth drop out of high school, another fourth get high school diplomas, another fourth get some further education, but not a college degree and the final fourth have bachelor’s degrees or higher. He says “We have really let go of career and technical education in the United States. There are millions of kids on their way to prison who could have been electricians and plumbers. We all wrapped our heads around this idea that only if you go to college and get a BA are you a success. As a society we have demeaned people who worked with their hands.” We need to train people with skills for economic areas that are expected to grow and we need to respect work that is productive and the people who do it.

August Sandburg, Carl’s father, worked for the railroad 10 hours a day, six days a week with two holidays a year — Christmas and the Fourth of July. Organized labor got us most of the benefits we have today. The eight-hour day, the 40-hour week, vacation days, sick days, safe work environments, retirement pensions, these are all the result of unions gaining the right to bargain collectively, a right which was won by the unions standing up to employers and the government, which was often (then as now) in cahoots with the corporations. The erosion of these benefits for many workers and the weakening of unions results partly from irresponsible deregulation of corporations and financial institutions.

When Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981, he broke more than that one union. Since that time there has been a continuing decline in respect for unions. Corruption and malfeasance by some union officials was used to malign all unions, and lobbying by corporate interests led to loosened trade rules sending millions of jobs abroad. The result has been increased profits at the top and a decrease in wages and benefits for everyone else. Union workers and small, local business built America’s middle class and made possible the expansion of the American dream.

According to a Parade magazine survey 92 percent of us believe that America still needs labor unions. We all need to support the Employee Free Choice Act and insist that our representatives pass it. When organized laborers can bargain together they will earn more, spend more and pay more in taxes, stabilizing and growing our economy.

Laurie Muelder of Galesburg taught English and social studies for 20 years at Churchill Junior High and now substitute teaches for the Galesburg School District.