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The Past Decade the Worst for America’s Workers |
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Whoa. This from the Washington Post:
The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times…
WaPo is the kind of newspaper that leans heavily toward emphasizing happy economic news, even in the face of 10 percent unemployment. So its coverage of the decade of disaster means the stuation must really be bad. How bad?
There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.
How bad?
Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999–and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.
How bad?
It was, according to a wide range of data, a lost decade for American workers.
But not for the CEOs of the corporations who fueled the nation’s growing economic inequality. Take AIG, which taxpayers bailed out at a cost of $182.3 billion. When one of its execs balked at a salary cut required by the Obama administration because AIG was surviving on taxpayer funds, the corporation paid her $3.8 million in severance.
The cataclysmic widening of the income gap between the obscenely rich and the rest of us is the very definition of the decade of disaster.
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“The Past Decade the Worst for America’s Workers”
This is not news to “America’s Workers”. Does it take a story from the Washington Post to inform the AFL-CIO bureaucrats about the dire conditions of working people?
In fact, for the past 30 years real wages for American Workers have not kept up with inflation and haven even declined. Productivity has dramatically increased over this same time, meaning corporate profits have been maximized by exploiting those who do work. (See DVD video with economist Richard Wolff “Capitalism hits the fan” web-site. http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/)
What economic and organizational lessons has organized labor learned in the last 30 years decline and now collapse of U.S. capitalism? Absolutely Nothing.
Both Decmocratic and Republican Parties are funded by corporate interests
and thus neither are “pro-labor”. The Democrats are considered about 10-percent “pro-labor”. The Republicans are so bad and so anti-labor that they are used as a “scape-goat” to make the Democrats look good.
Obama and the Democratic Party have pursued the same corporate foreign and domestic policies and agendas started by the Bush/Cheney gang. The AFL-CIO leadership has subserviently supported Obama and most tragically supported the corrupt “Health Care Reform” legislation,
The capitalist economy has so profoundly changed in the last 30 years that the organized labor movement must develop new organizational and political strategies if the destruction of American Workers, organized and unorganized, is have any value or reason for existence.
What must be done today?
1. Dump the Democratic Party. Organized labor must unite to issue a call for the formation of a new political party for American Workers that will struggle at every level to further the economic interests of all working people, organized
and unorganized.
2. The AFL-CIO should announce it’s support of “single-payer” Medicare-for All health system to eliminate corporte profiteering from any health care system.
3. Organized labor must demand equal access to mass media, especially PBS and NPR, with programs designed to inform and educate America’s working people what and why the vast majority of people are being impoverished. Why is it that the funds needed for public schools, public health care are being wasted on wars, corporate enriching health care plans, etc ending up in the pockets of the top 5% of the population?
The corporate controlled mass-media, the Rush Limbaughs etc., will forever scream “socialism” or “class war” or “Big Government”, is able today to most effectively indoctrinating America’s working people into a false understanding of reality. America’s workers, leaderless and atomized, will come to believe that “Resistance is Futile”.
Jerry: As a regular here, you know we regularly point out the dire situaiton for workers, including your point about productivity going up while wages go down:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/12/21/working-more-getting-paid-less/
http://www.aflcio.org/issues/jobseconomy/bigbusiness.cfm
the need to extend unemployment insurance for millions of unemployed workers:http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/12/22/unemployment-insurance-extended-but-states-face-ui-disaster/
why the manufacturing industry needs revitalizing for job creation:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/12/17/shuler-to-white-house-lets-revive-manufacturing/
and actions on many issues related to job creation:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/12/17/house-passes-jobs-billtell-senate-to-act-now/
Unfortunately, a third party in the nation’s current non-parliamentary system is a no-go. Third parties throughout U.S. history have never won and survived. If third parties didn’t make it in the more propitious decades of the late 1800s/early 1900s, they certainly can’t now.
Hi Tula!
Since both Republican and Democratic Parties are owned and controlled by corporate money and agendas, with more corporate funding going to the Democrats and Obama in this last election, it must be realized that we have today a CORPORATIST GOVERNMENT with the two parties.
Nader, running in third parties, called the current bi-partisan political system a “duopoly”. Mussolini called it “corporatism” a form of fascism. That is, to paraphrase, “Perhaps fascism should be called corporatism when state power is merged with corporate power.”
No matter the name of the political reality/ Corporate capitalism, with infinite financial resources, has literally bought off the politicians of both parties, they have installed Obama to carry on ALL the foreign and domestic policies of Bush/Cheney.
The current role of the Republican Party is to be the insane threat that forever makes the Democratic Party corporatist agenda look good.
What is needed today is NOT another symbolic “third” party, but a SECOND PARTY that rejects corporate money and corporate agendas. A SECOND PARTY that promotes the economic needs of the vast majority of humanity, the working people of this country, both organized and unorganized.
“If third parties didn’t make it in the more propitious decades of the late 1800s/early 1900s, they certainly can’t now.”
Forget the ancient history of a century ago, that has ZERO RELEVANCE in 2010. WE ARE LIVING TODAY in the most “propitious” decade for change because of the ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES that are generated and exacerbated because of the decline and collapse of U.S. capitalism.
Global Warming (climate change) will never be seriously addressed with “cap and trade” schemes that allows profitable polluters to continue by simply buying pollution credits.
Environment Devastation will never end as, for example, oil companies worldwide find it more profitable to pollute rather than clean up.
Capitalist globalization has permanently destroyed millions of “living wage” jobs in the U.S. as capital is able to exploit millions of workers in China.
Taxes essential to support public education, public health, public utilities, have been slashed for years. Capitalists don’t want to pay any taxes, and they have successfully bribed politicians of both parties to minimize and eliminate takes.
Wars for profit will continue inevitably with a capitalist economy. All the wars in the Middle East, now being expanded by Obama, are all rooted in war for oil, war for hegemonic power, wars for resources.
Corporate control of mass media has forever indoctrinated with “spin” millions of reasons to wage war, to “bale out” corrupt Wall Street bankers, that there is “no money left” for public schools or public health. THERE IS NOT A SINGLE NATIONAL RADIO, TELEVISION PROGRAM THAT ALLOWS A VOICE FOR THE ECONOMIC NEEDS OF WORKING PEOPLE.
I agree with Jerry that unions in the US haven’t done enough to help workers but I disagree with his suggestion that a new labor party will help.
Caught up in the anti-red hysteria that’s dominated American politics since even before the 1917 Russian Revolution, AFL union leaders joined ranks with the bosses and helped crush the anti-capitalist IWW and purged the most militant and active members from their own unions. Then, by investing pension funds in Wall Street stocks unions essentially became bosses themselves. Because union pension funds are major Wall Street investors, union members actually benefit from corporate anti-labor policies.
Most unions in this country are not just useless, they’re counterproductive. A political party run by unions would be just as bad.
“A political party run by unions would be just as bad.”
I agree totally. Organized labor has declined over the years to be a small and politically powerless minority of the working class. Any new political party, to attract tens of millions of working people, must from the founding convention, explicitly represent the economic needs of all working people “organized and unorganized”.
No new political party, limited by the narrow vision of the AFL-CIO to represent only the organized “middle class” dues-paying workers, can possibly succeed.
Simple trade unionism has been effectively killed by changes in U.S. and global capitalism. Simple trade unionism, even with EFCA, can never by itself be suffciently powerful to reverse the long-term decline of the labor movement.
Organized labor views itself as a “business partner” to corporate capitalism and has become the “labor manager” to enforce contracts that match the needs of employers.
The fact is that employers don’t want to pay “living wage” salaries, provide health care benefits, retirement benefits, etc. because all these things detract from and minimize profit.
If organized labor, even with EFCA, demands more than corporations are willing to pay, they simply close and move to China. Globalization has meant the loss of millions of jobs. These jobs will not “come back” until the wages and benefits are so reduced in the U.S. as to be more profitable than the “slave-wage” labor in China and other third world countries. The U.S. is inexorably becoming a “third world” country as far as the living conditions of U.S. working people are concerned.
The high wages and benefits, the minimal standards of living needed by all working people, are no longer secured from trade union demands against employers. The economic needs of working people are increasingly secured through law and regulation from federal, state, and local governments.
Minimium wage laws, Social Security retirement, Medicare, Section 8 housing support, food stamps, unemployment benefits, etc. must now be secured through political struggle.
Thus it is imperative for the organized labor movement to engage in the political struggle for economic needs of working people. This political struggle, in the form a new and socialist political party, must break with and be independent of both the Democratic and Republican parties, which are totally controlled by corporate money and agendas.
Voting republican will break you every time.keep it up and you will be endentured labor.
Thus it is imperative for the organized labor movement to engage in the political struggle for economic needs of working people. This political struggle, in the form a new and socialist political party, must break with and be independent of both the Democratic and Republican parties, which are totally controlled by corporate money and agendas.
I disagree with this assesment. what we need to do is seperate the Democrat- republicans and launch campaigns against them.They run as democrats because they can not get elected as republicans . So lets let their constituants know that they are turn coats and get them beat out.Also do not sign their petitions, so they can not get on the ballot.Also encourage people to run against them,not signing there potetions will encourage others to seek election.
We also need to reform the number of signatures that are required to get on the ballot.