SEARCH
Why Labor Day Matters |
|
Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, says this Labor Day provides an opportunity for progressives to join together to rebuild the economy and reinvigorate the fight for social and economic justice.
Labor Day is a time to celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of working people throughout the generations. American workers are among the most productive in the world. Labor unions have been a positive social force that helped to build the American middle class, to improve wages and working conditions, to provide for health care and retirement benefits, and to ensure that the wealth generated by working people is fairly distributed.
But Labor Day 2009 finds the U.S. economy in the worst recession in decades. Bank failures, corporate downsizing, the mortgage crisis and tremendous economic insecurity are signs of the times. The United States has lost more than 6 million jobs, and more than 45 million Americans are without health care.
The economic policies of the Bush administration brought us to where we are today. I would summarize the policies of the Bush administration as the “three D’s”—deregulation, deindustrialization and deunionization.
Conservatives love to attack government regulation, and the Bush administration led the charge. Regulations were slashed and burned; the free market went wild; corporate executives lined their pockets with billions; and the banks, financial institutions, stock market and housing sector crashed. The policies of deregulation led to the economic crisis we are facing today.
Conservatives also love free trade at any expense. Corporations have been given free reign to transcend national boundaries, and to maximize profits at all costs. Plant shutdowns, capital flight and deindustrialization have been the consequence. Large-scale manufacturing in this country, which helped to build our middle class, has virtually disappeared.
Finally, conservatives have attacked unions. High-wage, unionized manufacturing jobs have been replaced by low-wage, nonunion service jobs. Wal-Mart, the largest corporation in the country, is aggressively anti-union. Union density is low, and corporations abuse worker rights with virtual impunity. Our bankrupt labor laws prohibit workers from exercising their most basic and fundamental right to form and join unions.
But in the midst of this crisis, there is opportunity. With the help of labor unions, Barack Obama was elected president as a leader representing hope and change. He is advocating an agenda that supports working people. But he can’t do it alone. Unions are a critical partner to ensure that these dreams of hope and change become a reality.
The battle for the hearts and minds of the people of this country is unfolding. Conservatives are attacking health care reform, corporations are spending millions to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act and nativists are blaming the economic crisis on immigrants. But now is the time for the American labor movement to stand together, to fight for social and economic justice, and to rebuild our economy to lift up all working people.
On this Labor Day, let us work together for health care reform, for the Employee Free Choice Act and for immigration reform. Let us turn the corner, revive our economy and honor and cherish the working men and women who are instrumental in building America’s future.
2 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
For my Labor Day weekend report I can only report more future jobs destroying policies, in this case future American science jobs.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) money to going to the universities and the NIH is just 10 billion dollars of future science jobs destroying waste for Americans.
There is not a single H1B restriction on this ARRA money and most of it will go to employing foreign H1bs, not taxpaying Americans. This will destroy jobs and export technology on the taxpayer dime as some workers return to foreign countries, including communist China, and become key builders of competitive companies to small US biotechnology companies.
Not one single mainstream article has discussed how the NIH ARRA stimulus money has discussed how this taxpayer derived money is going to create jobs for US citizens, even as the unemployment crosses over 10 %. … absolutely shameful behavior.
Consider this, there are a minimum of 20,000 H1Bs at just the top 100 H1B using universities. At 50,000 dollars a year this means 1 billion dollars is absorbed immediately into the foreign H1B workers, the real figure closer to 3-4 billion in salaries.
There is no cap on the numbers of H1Bs (and others) that the NIH-universities can import. Why? Because in 2000, econ 101 guru Phil Gramm co-sponsored a bill, S 2045, with Arlene Specter that successfully inserted a no cap exemption from for the universities and the out of control US government to “ensure that the U.S. economic expansion will not be impeded by a lack of skilled [ foreign] workers.”
Therefore the H1B cap does not include universities or the out of control US government and the NIH. These H1b numbers do not count in the cap, so there is no control on the H1B numbers in these cases.
The inclusion of the science money in this manner will go directly to the H1Bs and will further destroy US jobs by exporting technology as some workers return to foreign countries, including communist China, and become key builders of competitive companies to small US biotechnology companies.
This is a horrible waste of money and reveals the disconnection between government/science leadership and the taxpayers/workers.
People often don’t realize that it’s not a choice between bringing H-1Bs here and offshoring our business processes and research over there. They are actually step 1 and 2 of the same process. The drain on our economy by reserving thousands of jobs for H-1Bs is incalculable. How many of our American STEM grads are struggling now, living with parents, crushed under student loans, and having trouble finding work because so many of the jobs went to foreigners? Nobody is saying “no foreigners” but the current caps for guestworker visas in the current economy add up to disaster for us. The visa caps need to be reduced and oversight needs to be attentive and enforced.