How the GOP honored Labor Day 60 years ago

Job creators and wealth creators

Maybe we Americans should be less concerned about “job creators” and more concerned about “asset creators”—the workers whose toil and skill creates wealth, rather than owners of that wealth who supposedly enable workers to work (or not).

Why Americans need labor unions

During the past 40 years, the productivity of American workers has continued to increase but their wages (adjusted for inflation) have barely increased at all.

Labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan, in his new book, Only One Thing Can Save Us, says this is because corporate America has decided that it doesn’t want highly-skilled, well-paid workers; it wants low-paid, replaceable workers.

The middle class is the middle 60% of income earners, between the top and bottom 20%

Many evils flow from this.  Working people and the middle class have take on more debt in order to buy homes, pay for higher education or maintain their material standard of living.

Bankers and financiers find it more profitable to invest in debt than in the production of goods and services.

This results in the financialization and hollowing-out of the U.S. economy.

Geoghegan thinks the one thing that can save us is a labor union movement strong enough to win wage increases sufficient to keep up with the increase in the production of wealth.

This will give working people and the middle class enough buying power to generate a real economic recovery.

It will enable them to pay down debt.  Shrinking the debt industry will free up money to be invested in producing real goods and services.

Labor union contracts will make it harder to lay people off at will.  This will give employers an incentive to invest in training to make their workers more productive, which union apprenticeship programs can help with.

With more Americans earning good incomes, tax revenues will increase and governmental budgets will be more in balance.  With fewer jobs being shipped overseas, the U.S. trade deficit may shrink.

A politically powerful union movement will bring American politics into balance.  The USA will have both a left wing and a right wing rather than, as at present, only a right wing.

He advocates reforms to strengthen labor unions, including:
1.  Making union membership a civil right.
2.  Allowing members-only unions without NLRB elections.

Readings for Labor Day weekend 2015

I was a member of Local 17 of the Newspaper Guild in Rochester for 24 years, and I’m still a strong supporter of the labor union movement.

Labor unions have their faults, just as churches, political parties and other institutions do, because they’re merely structures in which people can operate, for good or ill.

But they’re the only structure created for the specific purpose of defending the rights and interests of working people.  Without a strong and independent labor movement, there’s little to stand between individual working people and the structures of corporate and governmental power.

Even a weak labor union, if truly independent, is better than none.  Local 17’s contracts with Gannett Newspapers were highly favorable to the company, but the fact that there was a contract meant that the company could not operate arbitrarily.  Even if the company wrote the rules, it had to follow these rules.

Another thing that helped us was the strength of the International Typographers Unions and other printing trades unions, until they were wiped out by new technologies that didn’t require their skills.  Their high wages and good benefits set a benchmark that benefited all other employees in the building.

A lot of people used to take the gains won by labor unions for granted.  They thought that the eight-hour day, overtime pay, paid vacations, sick pay and medical insurance were something that employers granted out of the goodness of their hearts.  Now that all these things are under attack, I think some of these people are reconsidering.

Most Americans in labor unions are better off than Americans not in labor unions.   I hear non-union workers ask why the union members should have benefits that they lack.  I think they should ask themselves why they themselves shouldn’t have these benefits.

∞∞∞

Here are some articles about American labor and labor unions that I read recently and recommend.   If you have the time and interest, they might make for good reading over our Labor Day weekend.

The history and meaning of Labor Day

Labor Day, like Martin Luther King Day, arose out of a struggle for human rights—the right of workers to bargain collectively for better wages, hours and working conditions.

Thanks to the struggle of labor unions, we Americans (some of us) have an eight-hour day and 40-hour week, weekends off, paid vacations, workers compensation for injury on the job and contracts defining the obligations of employers and employees.   And if fewer and fewer of us enjoy these rights, it is because of the eroding power of organized labor.

Here are links to articles on the history of  Labor Day and North American labor struggles.

Labor Day History: 11 Facts You Need to Know by Nate Hindman and Craig Kanally for Huffington Post.

When Labor Day Meant Something by Chad Broughton for The Atlantic Monthly.

The Forgotten Meaning of Labor Day by Jack Marshall on his Ethics Alarms web log.

The First Labour Day in Canada on the Canada’s History web site.

Debunking the Myth: The True History of Labor Day by Eugene E. Ruyle for Popular Resistance.  Why the U.S. labor holiday is not on May Day.

Organizing “The Organized” Is Now the Key to Union Survival by Steve Early for Counterpunch.  (Hat tip to Bill Harvey)

 

The ironic history of Labor Day

Click on Haymarket Affair, Pullman Strike, Eight-Hour Day, and Labor Day for Wikipedia articles on this labor history.  It’s worth knowing.

Click on oscarinaland for more cartoons.

The Canadian roots of Labor Day

This is from the History Channel.

Robert Reich on Labor Day 2011

Double click to enlarge

Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration and now is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote the following a couple of days ago.

Labor Day is traditionally a time for picnics and parades.  But this year is no picnic for American workers, and a protest march would be more appropriate than a parade.

Robert Reich

Not only are 25 million unemployed or underemployed, but American companies continue to cut wages and benefits.  The median wage is still dropping, adjusted for inflation.  High unemployment has given employers extra bargaining leverage to wring out wage concessions.

All told, it’s been the worst decade for American workers in a century.  According to Commerce Department data, private-sector wage gains over the last decade have even lagged behind wage gains during the decade of the Great Depression (4 percent over the last ten years, adjusted for inflation, versus 5 percent from 1929 to 1939).