The War on the Working Class

One of the things that I would find endlessly amusing, if it didn't make me want to kill somebody, is the use by the right wing and their witless allies in the media of the term "class warfare."  It is always invoked when any slightly populist economic notions are floated by Democratic candidates.  Of course, real class warfare has been going on unabated in this country since the start of Reagan's first term and working people have paid a bitter price in terms of the decline of real wages and benefits, the loss of voice that has accompanied deunionization, and the assumption of a huge amount of the economic and physical risk now borne in this society.

I am just getting involved in two cases dealing with egregious exploitation of immigrant labor in the construction industry -- one involves workers who are illegally classified as independent contractors, and receive a substandard wage from which a "labor broker" deducts ten percent of their gross pay, and for which they receive no worker's compensation, unemployment protection, social security coverage, or overtime pay.  Naturally, they do not receive health care coverage.  The second case involves similar types of workers who were transported about 250 miles from their homes by the employer, leaving them in a state of near slavery.  They were forced to work 12-14 hours a day seven days a week, at the command of the employer, again without receiving overtime, worker's compensation or unemployment coverage or social security payments.  Workers who balked at this were told to find their own way home from this relatively rural setting.    

This work, by the way, was in the first case done primarily in high end office buildings in Washington, DC, while the second occurred at a major state university.  In other words, this is exploitation that occurs in plain view, not off in some migrant labor camp associated with the agricultural industry.  It is my fondest hope to severely break it off in the backsides of these employers, but I worry about a legal system that is infested with Federalist Society and "Chicago School" type judges.  All of which put me in a rather bad mood for reading about the following:    

- The Wall Street Journal had a fascinating article the other day about Wal-Mart attempting to intimidate its employees (or "associates" as those assholes call them) about the negative implications of a Democratic victory in the upcoming election -- (yeah they'll lose their chains).  Kathy G. had a good post about this.  What is clear is that Wal-Mart is pissing its pants over the idea that the Employee Free Choice Act may become law under an Obama administration.  I am afraid that I am a terminal pessimist on the prospects for labor law reform, but if this were to happen it would be an enormous victory for working people.  (This should also give you some hint about the credibility of people who claim that unions don't make a difference in the lives of the working class.)  It is outrageous that employers are permitted to hold these types of captive audience meetings regarding either unionization or politics -- it is such an inherently coercive environment that it should also be made illegal as part of any meaningful labor law reform.  (Why would any Democrats would take money from Wal-Mart is the question raised in this post.)

- The Washington Post reported on an attempt by the Bush Administration to rush through an administrative rule making it more difficult to regulate worker's exposure to chemicals and toxins.  This rule, promulgated by the ironically named "Department of Labor," is being rushed through in secrecy in apparent contravention of the Administrative Procedures Act.  It represents yet another in a series of actions that make clear that working people barely rank above beasts of burden in the eyes of Republicans.   (It is a really finely reported article and reminds again why the Post is so important notwithstanding its sometimes repulsive Op-Ed pages.)

- In case you think some of these concerns abstract, check out this story detailing the deaths of eight building tradesmen on a couple of major construction projects in Las Vegas in the last sixteen months.  So much of the general public, including most of us in the blogosphere, are completely removed from the danger and physical difficulty of this kind of work.  That's why you hear people talking about raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 -- they have no idea what it's like to hump it on a construction site for 30 or 40 years, no idea what it is like to pick up and lay down cinder block, one after the other for eight hours a day in 90 degree heat or 30 degree cold, no sense of what it takes to walk the iron or hoist re-bar or climb ladders and scaffolding when you're 58 years old and your back is bad and your knees are screaming and your body is just broken down.  It's easy for some asshole editorial writer or some glibertarian blogger to talk about working until you are 70 -- but my feeling on this is that if the heaviest thing you lift every day is a cup of coffee or a bulky file -- just shut the fuck up on this subject.

It is incredibly shameful that the richest society in the world views its working people as disposable objects to be exploited for maximum economic gain and minimal social expense.  It is even more galling that so many working people take part in their own oppression by voting Republican.  I am hoping that this election may represent at least the beginning of the end of the latter phenomenon.             

Comments

[Joe Klein's conscience]

Sir Charles:
While I hope I am wrong, I think nothing short of mass marches and the like will bring about the desired changes. It disgusts me that people like Charles Schumer and Hillary(she was once on the board of Wal-Mart after all) can talk about caring for the lowly worker when the worker takes it up the ass from corporate America. Will Blue Dogs and the like stick up for the workers or their corporate masters? The problem with Democrats is that we aren't lock-step follow the leader types. The movement isn't as cohesive as it needs to be.

[Lisa Simeone]

"It is even more galling that so many working people take part in their own oppression by voting Republican."

Amen. Except that so many Democrats in Congress have gone along with the Republicans for the past 8 years, and shown no backbone whatsoever, on this or anything else. But yes, I get your drift.

It's sad and pathetic when people who should damn well know better vote against their own best interests. And I don't believe, in this case, it has anything to do with education. I have a whole passel of relatives who are educated enough, and they're foaming-at-the-mouth anti-unionists and libertarians (though some have been beneficiaries of unions themselves!). It's not about educating oneself on the issues; it's about giving a shit. And they just don't give a shit. About anything but their own tiny little insulated worlds.

[Lisa Simeone]

Then again, articles such as this one in today's NYT give one hope that economic conditions will simply force attitudes to change and will strengthen labor's hand:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/business/worldbusiness/03global.html?ei=5070&en=e8c09e5ff80afaf1&ex=1218427200&pagewanted=all

[Toast]

Chuck, it puts a smile on my face to know there are people like you out there fighting this fight. Taking up the cause of labor in our current political environment must require balls the size of cantaloupes. Keep up the good work.

[minstrel hussain boy]

one of my nagging, persistent suspicions, filtered of course from being right down here on the mexico/california border is:

those who are screaming the most about "border security" and hollering the loudest about "illegals" are those very same people who are benefitting mightily from having a readily available, desperate and marginalized underclass handy for whatever vile exploitations they might dream up.

[Sir Charles]

mhb,

What I think you would find shocking is the degree to which this underclass available in huge numbers even this far from the border. I hesitate to weigh in much on the issue of undocumented workers because it so often deterioates into the worst kind of nativism. But it is a huge problem and I find nonsensical the claim that it does not depress wages. I always find myself thinking who am I to believe -- some fucking economics professor's graphs or my own lying eyes?

I think we need to at least legalize those people who are here in order to limit to some degree the exploitation that they are being subjected to by bottom feeding employers, most of whom I suspect are Republicans in good standing.

[Toast]

most of whom I suspect are Republicans in good standing

Gee, ya think?

I read something years ago on the 'tubes that suggested, by way of combating the easy "Tax & Spend Democrats" meme, that we popularize the phrase "Cheap Labor Republicans". More than anything else, that's the force that drives them. Keep workers down. Minimize as much as possible the share they get from their labor. I've always found it quite baffling, really, as it's an attitude that is so blatantly unfair.

[Corvus9]

Toast, I think the reason is the the way the national conversation has been shaped has become so hostile to leftist economics that discussing politics from the perspective of The Worker is immediately seized upon as code for communism. Basically, the cold war has completely eaten away the possibility of economic populist rhetoric in America, and probably not by accident either. So all attempts at reforming wage distribution is phrased as strengthening the middle class (a phrase that originally meant the incredibly wealthy people who didn't have a title of nobility), or something like Christian charity to the poor. And if Democrats tried to inject such rhetoric as "Cheap Labor Republicans," (which I think sounds brilliant, by the way) Republicans would immediately jump on that as inappropriate and sure sign that they are really a house for evil socialist sentiments, and the news media, at the urging of their corporate employers, would force down that narrative to the hilt. Other Democrats (blue dog scum) would attack the people saying it, isolating the people within their own party. The Democrats would lose whatever funding they get from business interests, making it harder to compete electorally. And such voices would disappear from office, because it is a message that no one would end up hearing, and no one except the converted would hear it. And people would continue to not take their economic interests into account while voting. Basically, the imbalance of wealth makes true democratic process impossible.

But I digress. We should start calling them Cheap Labor Republicans though.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

Someone needs to start a band called "blue dog scum."

Toast,

I like "Cheap Labor Republicans" as well.

[Toast]

What troubles me the most... Well, scratch that. Too many candidates to name. But one of the things that pisses me off is the way the discussion is framed in terms of "the market". As in the notion that companies pay workers based on what the market will bear. This completely ignores the power differential between owners/managers and workers. CEO's don't get paid the obscene sums they do because of some Econ 101 formulation; they rewards themselves that way because they can. There is literally no one to stop them.

[low-tech cyclist]

That's exactly what it is, Sir Charles - a war on the working class. Employees as disposable objects - use 'em up, then toss 'em out.

It's easy for some asshole editorial writer or some glibertarian blogger to talk about working until you are 70 -- but my feeling on this is that if the heaviest thing you lift every day is a cup of coffee or a bulky file -- just shut the fuck up on this subject.

Indeed. My father-in-law - who had it easy compared to some of those building-construction guys - barely made it to 62 before his body started falling apart from all that climbing through, over, into, and under assorted food refrigeration machinery under an array of temperature and dampness conditions. He's 66 now, and it's just a question of which thing hurts worst today - knee? shoulder? something else?

Work until he's 70? He can barely do light yard work. Words cannot capture the disgust I have for op-ed writers who think everyone can work until they're 70, just because they can.

And Toast, I'll second (third? fourth?) "Cheap Labor Republicans." Like Bill Clinton said, "people who work hard and play by the rules" should get a decent life out of the bargain. As today's front-page WaPo story demonstrates, it ain't happening for a lot of them. If Dems would offer people in the lower income ranges some specific reforms that they were willing to go to the mats for, they might get somewhere with this group. But if lower middle class workers don't believe the Dems are going to actually do them any good, why vote Dem?

For instance, even if the Blue Dogs aren't willing to fight for universal health care - and shame on them if they aren't - could they perhaps stand up to business and the GOP and require employers to provide five measly paid sick days per year? (I'd ask for two weeks' paid vacation too, but there's a limit to how much you can shame a Blue Dog into.)

With no penalty for actually using those sick days, I might add. My father-in-law had paid sick time at the last place he worked before retiring, but actually using them counted against him and his fellow workers in tangible ways. Shit like that has gotta go.

[low-tech cyclist]

Dunno if anyone's reading my blog, Chas, but I told my probably nonexistent readership to get their butts over here and read this post.

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

I am reading your blog -- I tried to leave a comment the other day, but it got very complicated and I ended up having to abandon it. Great work by the way. I will try again to say hi over there. Everyone likes to know that they are being read by someone.

[nola68]

So true about some people not understanding the toll blue collar work takes on a body.

My husband was in the military as an aircraft mechanic for 22 years before being granted a military disability pension due to severe damage to his knees (all the bending, kneeling, squeezing a 6'2" body upside down into the cockpit, etc.). At the time, my mother said, "I'm just trying to think...you know, it's strange that he's in that much pain because Scott is, you know, Scott is a few years older than he is...."

Then I had to point out that SCOTT, while a few years older, is A LAWYER. Sitting behind a desk hardly compares to being a mechanic when it comes to the aging of the body.

Geez.

[Sir Charles]

The major occupational hazzard for lawyers is the shriveling of their souls.