Dawn Comes Soon Enough for the Working Class

 

"Song for a Deck Hand's Daughter" - James McMurtry

Bad news, bad news, and more bad news for working Americans.

- The classic canard in today's capitalism is that if only workers were skilled and productive enough to make their company's prosper, then they would share in the wealth they help create.  Well tell that to the employees of Caterpillar, who helped their employer make $4.9 billion in profits last year.  Their reward: employees at their Joliet, Illinois plant asked to take a six year wage freeze, a pension freeze, and pay more out of pocket for medical coverage despite the fact that Caterpillar is realising a profit of $39,000 per employee.  One wonders really in what circumstances employees could expect to receive wage increases and otherwise improve their standard of living -- maybe when Caterpillar makes $10 billion in profit. Anyway, the Machinists Union is striking, a rare moment when workers are actually fighting for themselves. I wish them well.

- And then there is the warehouse workers in California's Inland Empire -- east of Los Angeles -- from where many of the products imported on the west coast are stored and shipped.  Here workers are often paid piece rates that fall below minimum wage.  Workers are often shifted from subcontractor to subcontractor without really knowing by whom they are being employed.  In addition to subpar pay, workers complain of dangerous conditions:

“There’s nobody who cares about our health — there’s just pressure to empty cases at a fast pace,” said Mr. Herrera, who is part of a complaint that Warehouse Workers United filed last week with the state. “All the dust we inhale, all the heavy things we have to lift with all our strength and no support, it’s very hard.

I suppose in today's America, Mr. Herrera should be thankful to have his unsafe job.  (Hat tip to bbw.)

- And, of course, the notion that any of these working people should be allowed to retire with an adequate pension, well that's just silly talk.  

How many of these workers will in turn go out and vote for politicians like Mitt Romney, who will pursue policies that will render them ever more economically insecure?  There was a time when leftist crowed that the last capitalist would sell the rope with which they would hang him.  I am pretty sure that today's working class will embrace the politics and policies that will render them ever more vulnerable to capitalist predation without having the first clue as to what they have done.

Your thoughts.

Comments

[joel hanes]

I take what comfort there may be in reflecting that Rupert Murdoch and (the bad) Roger Ailes are old and mortal, as is their audience.

As am I. I'm kinda glad I won't be around to see what 10 billion humans make of the globe. I'm afraid that population peak will be sharp, and the downward slide a bad thing to experience.

[scott]

Regarding the working class voting for Romney, it's easy to poke at them, but in a situation where they're divided, leaderless, and where no one speaks up for them, is it so surprising that they're ripe for deception and self-delusion? To me, the answer is not so much. If neither side offers you very much but one side self-consciously sings your praises culturally as being a salt-of-the-earth-real-American, maybe you wind up feeling partial to the side offering you the kind words, if nothing else.

[oddjob]

Re: Our Ridiculous Approach to Retirement

Thanks for sharing that link, Sir C. Sobering reading.

[Davis X. Machina]

Just this morning, Facebook opens with my brother "Liking" Romney.

He works for a firm that's 70% dependent on the auto industry -- in a factory that's already staffed at less than half its 2005-6 high.

His eldest daughter is graduating from college next year, and is on his health insurance. She is training to be a public school teacher. Two of her three siblings are uninsurable under the status quo -- pre-existing conditions.

His wife's been only sporadically employed since the Crash in '08. She's worked in health care, not directly, but in support of long-term & Medicaid-dependent facilities through rounds of cuts, when she's worked.

Here's a candidate who, if he wins, and his coat-tails flip the Senate, is promising in advance to make my brother's life, and that of his kids, more cramped, less secure, more expensive.

But hey. Go Team Red!

[Paula B]

Two immediate thoughts:
Lenovo's CEO just divided up his bonus among the company's lowest paid workers as thanks for putting the company in the #2 spot. They'll each get the equivalent of an extra month's salary.

You mentioned the deterioration of working conditions, which I've seen occur over the last 20 years, but especially lately, as we have turned, more and more, to a 24/7 world. Speed is all, and workers give up everything they can to get jobs done quickly and efficiently, often at their own peril.

The shooting made me start thinking about how all this online ammunition gets where it has to go. Much of it is shipped by air and truck. Does any of it go through USPS? Do you think UPS truck drivers, pilots, messengers, warehouse workers, shipping clerks, mechanics are alerted to the content of the packages they work with? Does it qualify as negligence on the part of the employer if they are not told of the hazardous the materials they carry?

When I was a kid, a fire started in a garage down the street from our house. Apparently, that garage was filled with ammunition and, once the fire got going, bullets started flying everywhere. The volunteer fire department called us to tell us to stay indoors, away from windows. The firemen couldn't even get near the fire, so they had to let if burn itself out. At least, that's the way I remember it.

What about the safety of neighbors, workers, rubberneckers and other bystanders to accidents involving trucks carrying the tons of ammunition that must be moving around this country, thanks to online sales? If it was sold only at brick and mortar stores or at regulated sites -- like package liquor stores in some states -- at least some of that transport would be eliminated.
Just thinking of this whole issue in terms of the deterioration of worker's rights and safety, let alone all the other awful consequences. Firepower mania invades the safety and quality of life in so many ways. If, as so many gun nuts say, gun ownership and shooting are nothing but elements of a hobby, I wish people would find less destructive ways to express their childish needs.

[Paula B]

Joel--- I didn't know whether to cheer or cry when I heard Rupert was stepping down from the news operation. If any one person deserves blame for the creation of right-wing chaos in this country and others, it's him. As for the audience, turning news into entertainment has helped him reach younger and younger people, so we'll have to wait some time before that happens. Concurrently, we have an entire generation of educated, unemployed, disaffected youth in almost every major economy and many evolving ones. I'd prefer to be a fly on the wall when that dam breaks.

[oddjob]

But hey. Go Team Red!

It is to weep.....

[oddjob]

Do you think UPS truck drivers, pilots, messengers, warehouse workers, shipping clerks, mechanics are alerted to the content of the packages they work with?

The Department of Transportation has a whole bunch of regulations regarding the transport of hazardous materials, and yes, the customer is required to notify the shipper that the materials being shipped are hazardous, as well as to define the hazard. UPS also has its own policies about what it will handle and has training it gives both relevant employees as well as customers regarding handling hazardous materials.

[Paula B]

thanks oj, that's good to know.

[oddjob]

When Romney says Obama's practicing Chicago-style politics Romney's only showing how ignorant he is.

(Hat tip, Sully.)

[Sir Charles]

DXM and oddjob,

At what point do we have to demand at least some modicum of self-awareness from people.

DXM's anecdote reminds me of a friend of mine's brother, who once characterized himself as a "Forbes Republican." The guy has probably never made more than $30,000 in his life and is currently on the brink of bankruptcy and foreclosure. Anyway, he accused his brother one day of being a silver spoon liberal to which my buddy incredulously replied, "we shared a bunk bed!" But see, in conservative world attitude matters more than mere facts.

[Bill H]

I generally have issues with statements in absolute dollars because they lack context. Oil company profits, for instance are presented as being outrageously high in billions of dollars, but they are actually only in the range of 6% to 7% on revenue, which is very reasonable.

So I read "Caterpillar made $4.9 billion in profit last year" and am initially unimpressed, but looking up their 10-Q I find that the number represents something like 9.9% profit on revenue, and that does strike me as high enough to be in agreement with you that their position with their employees is nothing short of outrageous.

[oddjob]

“You Olympians, however, know you didn’t get here solely on your own power,” said Romney, who on Friday will attend the Opening Ceremonies of this year’s Summer Olympics. “For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities. All right! [pumps fist].”
- Mitt Romney

[kathy a.]

the 2002 olympics were majorly supported ($1.3 billion) by the federal government, so it wasn't just the parents and communities of competitors. a bunch of that was apparently an infrastructure windfall to salt lake city.

[oddjob]

Interesting, kathy a!

[nancy]

kathy a, You bet it was an infrastructure windfall. The light rail in SLC is one result, now kickstarted and expanding. U of U inherited newly-built athletes' housing which was handy for an expansion of upper campus dorm life. FAA added airport expansion monies, the timing of which looks to be Olympics connected. Nothing untoward about any of that until the big government squawking begins. Romney is so bizarre. What else has he forgotten?

[Jeff]

SC - I was a little taken aback when I read your comments. I'm used to pro-labor types relentlessly sugar-coating the poor political decisions of the white working class. Does this represent a shift in your thinking, or are you just venting?

I was a union organizer many years ago (SEIU), and I'm still pro-labor, but I'm less and less sure what that means.

Lefties want to have it both ways when it comes to explaining why labor and the left are such weak forces in the U.S. Roosevelt said, “Go out and make me do it,” and it's obvious that power structures need pressure from below if they’re going to bend to the will of their constituencies. Why should that be any different when it comes to the labor movement itself? At a level even as low as a union local, you know how wildly the interests of the leadership and the members can diverge unless there’s some kind of impetus or move for accountability coming from the members. I generally just don’t see that coming from the rank and file these days--marginal movements like TDU notwithstanding.

One can believe that this is the fault of the labor movement and the Dems (which kind of begs the question), but, barring any actual evidence, that's no more valid an explanation than than the hypothesis that we’re a relatively rich, comfortable nation that simply lacks sufficient hardship to impel militancy anymore.

Most workers in America probably think of themselves more as consumers than as laborers in any class-analytical sense, and many, many of them have assimilated the values and mores of the elite masters. To take one example: The fact that 60% of Wisconsin voters seemed to care so much about the relatively minor procedural point that a governor shouldn’t be recalled except for malfeasance is strong evidence for what a thoroughly bourgeois country this has become.

[oddjob]

What else has he forgotten?

Whatever he needs to in order to win the next election in which he's running.

... It was just [Governor elect] Mitt Romney, suddenly comfortable again in his own skin, talking about wanting to “do a better job for people who need government’s help.’’...

When it comes to electioneering the man is 100% integrity-free.

[oddjob]

many, many of them have assimilated the values and mores of the elite masters

Which in 10-25 years is going to come to a screeching collision with this.

[nancy]

Apparently Romney forgot also about his and his numerous progeny's conspicuous absence from military service in his speech before the VFW today. In contrast to all of his worse-than-saber-rattling campaign rhetoric. From P.M. Carpenter -- "Romney's speech an absolute obscenity."

[Sir Charles]

Jeff,

I don't think this represents a shift in my thinking. I think it is just an expression of my exasperation with the largely non-organized white working class and the degree to which it has been stripped of all class consciousness in the classic Marxian sense and instead has wholly inhabited the world of false consciousness embodied in such things as tribalism, racism, and consumerism.

It seems to me that organized labor continues to be able to educate its white working class members and push them in a positive political direction, but that its overall withering has left the overwhelming majority of the white working class with no representation and no political model for how to see the world.

I think that you are correct to a degree that the overall affluence of the society led to the demise of the kind of class consciousness that was once part of the DNA of the country. But it seems to me that conditions have changed radically and that the once comfortable life available to workers is receding before their eyes -- and yet, there is no renewal of militancy.

I am not sure what it will take for it to reemerge or whether it will reemerge.

[oddjob]

“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he [Romney] feels that the special relationship is special. The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have.”
- a Romney advisor, speaking to London's Daily Telegraph (a Tory paper)

I should know better than to assume Romney doesn't have "advisors" willing to play the race card this nakedly, but I just can't believe it......

[Mandos]

Special relationship is special?

[Jeff]

SC -

I am not sure what it will take for it to reemerge or whether it will reemerge.

I'm with you there, though oddjob's reference to the coming cataclysm of underfunded retirements is certainly a good candidate for a catalyzing event. Unions should of course be educating their members and non-members now in order to channel the anger and resentment that's sure to result from it into effective class warfare, but of course they're not. I can just as easily see it being turned into savage inter-generational warfare--and any warfare not directed at capital is a useful distraction for capitalists.

At any rate, I've been meaning to compliment you for a while on this blog. Great stuff--it's a nice reprieve from the liberal blogosphere to read something by someone who knows about labor. Keep at it.

[kathy a.]

so, romney's decided to show his foreign policy chops and leadership by dissing the sitting president, to one of the country's strongest allies?

that's what he thinks shows loyalty to the country? that's what he thinks shows the mature and sound judgment to lead this country?

[oddjob]

Romney's habit of secrecy is much more pervasive than has been generally acknowledged to date.

It's by no means just the tax returns!

[scott]

Regarding the working class, could we remember the elephant in the room? That, beginning with the Powell Chamber of Commerce memo 40 years ago, business has waged an unrelenting and successful war on labor, building an infrastructure that's been pounding home an anti-labor message all that time and weakening the class consciousness that SC talks about? Unions aren't blameless in that by any means, but neither was the increasingly neo-liberal Democratic Party, which did precious little to resist that war and half of which at any one time now seem to believe that unions are just impediments to enlightened rule by our betters. Let's not lay all the blame for this on the working class, which after all is concerned with making a living and getting by, not being as hyper-informed as many of us are on how they're being sold down the river. Movements to do anything need leadership, and the working class admittedly has been badly served by union leaders but also by Democratic leaders and supposedly "progressive" opinion leaders (someone like Yglesias is emblematic) who give at best a very intermittent darn (not damn) about their interests.

[Davis X. Machina]

....beginning with the Powell Chamber of Commerce memo 40 years ago, business has waged an unrelenting and successful war on labor

True, if you replace "...beginning with the Powell Chamber of Commerce memo 40 years ago" with "...beginning with the Knights of Labor 140 years ago."

When wasn't it an uphill battle? When didn't the world default to a small number booted and spurred and ready to ride, and the rest of us saddled and ready to be ridden?

Which is why "In every generation, a person is obligated to regard himself as if he personally left Egypt...." as the Seder says...or as Yogi says, "It's not over till it's over".

[Bill H]

scott makes a good point about leadership, but I'm with Jeff that if unions want to regain their strength they need to take it back rather than sitting around waiting for Congress to give it back. How did they get that strength to begin with? Ever watch the movie Norma Rae? When I was standing in front of the gates of a steel plant with an axe handle in my hand our leaders wore steel toed boots, overalls and a hard hat, and they were in front of those gates with us. I don't really want us to go back to those days, but if that is the price of getting out of these days and the "suits" won't see reason otherwise, then...

Similarly, voters need to take back their government instead of sitting around plaintively begging for the thieves in Washington to give it back. We should not be pitching tents and having a happy campout in New York, we should be in Washington as an angry mob with torches and pitchforks telling them to shape up or we will throw them out.

[scott]

I don't disagree at all with the last two comments - I'm all for pitchforks and sticking it to Pharaoah. I just don't like the tendency I see too often on the left to say it's all the working class's own fault and to denigrate them as some kinda mindless addled lumpenproletraiat that deserves what it gets. Thankfully, I don't think the two are inconsistent; once all of us realize how much our leaders have failed us and how help from them ain't gonna be forthcoming, the quicker we'll realize that agitating for what we want is the only way forward.

[Crissa]

I've heard alot of whining about 'I want to vote for a OWS candidate!' and yet, I know of no primary in which an OWS candidate got significant votes. And I do recall many Democrats and third-party groups courting OWS and getting trashed for it - yet at the same time, I hear the same people whining that there's no OWS candidates whining that no Democrats recognized or supported OWS.

There's just alot of hot air on one side and fire and brimstone and lies on the other. It's about to make one mad, I think.

[Jeff]

OWS was a mess. I think it got as much serious consideration as it did because most people were unfamiliar with the indulgent little subculture that was at the root of it--particularly anarchists and their immature fantasies about temporary autonomous zones and similar nonsense--and because lots of sincere people saw it was the only game in town in terms of an outlet for rage against the banksters.

In all honesty, I think it was ultimately the weirdness factor that drove away those of us within one standard deviation of the mean. And it's a shame that the Dems didn't co-opt it and turn it into a whole-hog populist campaign pitting productive capitalism against financial capitalism. That would have been the Republican Party's worst nightmare. I suppose too many Dems are too in the tank for Wall Street for that to have happened, but at least I can dream...

[Sir Charles]

Jeff,

Thanks for the kind words. I really appreciate it.

Scott,

I think this is an incredibly complex issue -- one that has pretty much preoccupied me in some form or fashion for the last thirty years.

It is something that young union leaders continue to grapple with. Last night I had several beers with one of my favorite clients, a newly elected leader of a local union who has only been out of the field for four years. He is one of the first of my clients who is younger than me -- I am suddenly playing the eminense gris, which is amusing in a sort of disconcerting way -- and he was asking me last night how I thought labor had succeeded in the depths of the Depression with mass organization. I don't know that there is an easy answer to that question. First, labor had nothing to lose at that time -- it had been eviscerated in the 1920s. It had no marble palaces in DC to preserve, no six figure salaries to protect, no large institutional concerns to worry about. It was the classic paradigm of desperate times calling for desperate measures. Second, I think the Depression really radicalized working people in a way that nothing before or since has done. The failures of the capitalist system and the political elites had been laid bare and one could have few illusions regarding either the good will or the competence of business and its allies. Finally, there was the enormous mass in mass industry at the time. Audacious action in relatively confined geographic areas like Detroit and Pittsburgh meant that literally hundreds of thousands of workers could fall into the lap of new organizations like the United Auto Workers and the United Steelworkers of America.

These conditions are unlikely to replicate themselves. We live in far more atomized times and there is nothing like the automotive or steel industries with a massive and militarized work force crying out to be led into battle.

I think we also have to question whether the Marxian model -- which has influenced many non-Marxist social democrats like myself -- which posited the idea of a working class that had the potential to be a self-consciously militant and revolutionary force was simply mistaken. The class consciousness that emerged under the mass industrial model and the conditions of the Depression seems to have been ephemeral -- a temporary response to temporary conditions.

The working class in the United States seems to identify at this point much more forcefully to its self-perceived cultural otherness -- a sense that it is somehow being looked down upon by liberals or coastal elites or Ivy League professors or whoever it is that are perceived to be the enemy. Racial antipathy remains a large part of this identity -- the clinging to whiteness as a last desperate measure of prestige. And a complementary sense of victimization over its whiteness (and maleness in large part). Finally, add in the sense of being victimized by undocumented workers -- a subject about which I have quarreled with Yglesias who persists in viewing this as illusory. I don't blame the undocumented -- I blame the employers -- but the notion that the mass influx of undocumented workers has not undermined the living standards of working class men is nonsense.

Sadly, the one group that doesn't frequently make the enemies list are the financiers and corporate chieftains who are determined to drain every ounce of blood from these people.

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

I'm with Jeff -- OWS did not have the intellectual underpinnings or the discipline to be anything but a flash in the pan. It was I think a nice cathartic moment, but not really a movement with any kind of meaningful cohesive program.

Unfortunately, meaningful economic change is going to require intense slogging through the political process. I actually think some sort of mass movement would be a good thing, but it needs to be harnessed to something far more concrete than OWS managed.

[Bill H]

"campaign pitting productive capitalism against financial capitalism." Oh my goodness, what a lovely concept that is. I doubt that 5% of the OWS crowd knew the difference.

Sir Charles makes some good points about conditions when labor took its gains on the 20's and now, but there is still strength in numbers and in outrage. There were people willing to take the jobs we walked out on too, but they were going to have to get past my axe handle to do so. The law? They stood by but decided not to mess with us. A lot of us were veterans, no few mustered out draftees.

I am not unhappy with what's happening in Anaheim. If police can gun down unarmed citizens with impunity, the will keep right on gunning down unarmed citizens. It's time people display some outrage. Entrenched authority will not change voluntarily.

[Joe S]

Look, I think there's a lot of doom and gloom about White, working class males-- which are a smaller and smaller portion of the electorate.

First, the White Working Class generally vote about 40% Democratic. That's not great, but it's not nothing either. The only place where you see White working class support for the Republicans become monolithic is in the Deep South and among Religious Mormons. There's never been any class consciousness or a powerful labor movement in places like Mississippi or Utah.

Second, the White working class (as opposed to everyone else without college degrees) have not done as badly in the past twenty-thirty years as everyone else. With women entering the workplace and with the connections built up over generations, the White working class has weathered the problems of the globablized economy better than the rest of noncolleged educated American society. It hasn't been until the millenial generation that the White working class started to get pinched hard.

I know lots of White men without college degrees who have done okay to pretty well- especially in smaller markets and especially among Boomers and Generation X. It really is very cheap to live in Decatur Illinois or Cape Girardeau, MO, or Green Bay, Wisconsin. And there are still lots of protected industries around the states where privileged members of the working class can get ahead.

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

My concern in this instance wasn't electoral -- as it so often is -- but a broader concern for the condition in which working people -- not simply members of the white male working class -- are finding themselves. And it is a bleak one indeed.

I have focused here on the white male workers to some degree because they have historically been the backbone or organized labor and of working class consciousness as it existed in the United States from 1930 - 1980 and they have been the group that has deserted liberal left politics in the greatest number and has helped form an important element of political and cultural support for reactionary tendencies within the country.

It is true that this is a shrinking demographic in the country, but they are not without significance by any means. Moreover, as a matter of sentiment, they are people with whom I maintain a bond of solidarity, even if that sentiment is not always returned.

It kills me to see them backing people like Romney and others who would happily consign them to slavery if it would improve some company's bottom line.

[Joe S]

Sir C, with respect, a problem of the Labor Movement has been its concentration on the concerns of White men without college degrees. The strongest unions with the most class consciousness are built from nonwhite, nonmale members. The California Nurses Association, the Teacher's Unions, AFSCME unions associated with nursing home workers, UNITE, the SEIU. These are the unions that have mixed it up with Republicans- because these are the unions whose members have had it hardest in this economy.

Also, unions composed of culturally White, noncollege educated men have never been all that progressive in the grand scheme of things. The (mainly culturally White) AFL was never as radical as the (culturally ethnic) CIO. The Teamsters often supported Republicans back in the day. The bottom line is that this behavior is nothing new, and the labor movement, to the extent it will regain strength, depends on nonwhite, nonmale working class that is having it roughest in the current economy.

[oddjob]

For those who can afford to take advantage of it the home mortgage outlook just improved again:

...the average rate on the 30-year loan dropped to 3.49% from 3.53% last week. The loans are the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s....

[low-tech cyclist]

Lefties want to have it both ways when it comes to explaining why labor and the left are such weak forces in the U.S. Roosevelt said, “Go out and make me do it,” and it's obvious that power structures need pressure from below if they’re going to bend to the will of their constituencies. Why should that be any different when it comes to the labor movement itself?

Jeff - I realize I'm coming in late on this discussion, but I guess the way I usually hear the question phrased is something like, "Why are white working class people voting against their interests by voting Republican?" And from that perspective, the answer is, "Why should the white working class believe that the Dems are fighting for their interests?"

As I'm sure you know, what you have is a GOP that's actively trying to eviscerate the working class (regardless of race, sex, or ethnicity), a Democratic Party that's only mildly supportive of their interests at best, and our national media which does a very good job of glossing over just how bad the GOP agenda is for the working class because it doesn't fit into a both-sides-do-it framework. And once it's not apparent that there's an economic reason to vote Dem, of course they're going to vote on cultural issues, false consciousness or not.

This doesn't absolve any of us on the left for our failure to organize better - and we upper middle class suburbanites are just as bad as the working class, as far as that goes. The wingnuts routinely light up Congressional phone lines anytime something upsets them, while we rarely do so. And we can't expect our elected representatives to do all the pushing back by themselves, when we're not also pushing them from our side.

[low-tech cyclist]

I guess my point is that where responsibility lies depends on who's asking the questions.

If you're NOT of the white working class, and are asking why they're not living up to your expectations, then the answer is, what are YOU doing to give them a reason to do so? Those of us who ain't them can't evade our OWN responsibility by pointing at them.

Whoever and whatever we are, we have to do what we can to get the ball rolling in the right direction, and then we can ask others to join in. But we can't all sit around waiting for someone else to make the first move.

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

Obviously the old line craft unions have historically been more conservative than the CIO unions, but in the period from 1932 - 1964, there members voted reliably Democratic and had a strong sense of their working class status.

But I think you are incorrect to suggest that white male dominated unions were never that progressive. Some of the CIO unions with large white male memberships such as the UAW and the USWA were pretty damn progressive -- indeed the UAW was arguably the most important force for liberal-left politics in the Twentieth Century (even providing the place at which the Port Huron statement was drafted, not to mention basically underwriting the entire March on Washington).

I understand that we have had to put together a new kind of coalition in the wake of what has gone on over the last 30-40 years in American politics and in the economy. But there is a profound loss in lefty politics when the working class has essentially ceased to function as a cohesive entity -- sadly (in my opinion) what you have now is much more driven by racial and cultural identity than any kind of common economic world view and any collective push for social justice.

[Joe S]

Sir C, When the UAW was at its height (roughly from the 1930's to the 1970's)the membership was still becoming "culturally white." Much as Latinos are now not seen as completely "White", the Eastern and Southern European ethnics (as well as Appalachian Whites) were not seen as "White" prior to World War II. From the late 1940's onward, ethnics melded into American cultural "Whiteness" over a period of decades. The bottom line is, at least in the United States, working class has always been tinged with a lack of Whiteness. Cultural Whites in the South (and Mormons) never unionized and never had a true class sensibility. In the West, unionization only really occurred among miners and loggers. Agricultural employees never unionized (by design- to prevent Blacks and Latinos from organizing).

[Sir Charles]

Joe,

One of the things that most bothers me is being from an ethnic group that was the lowest of the low in the eyes of respectable Americans -- really subject to the most dehumanizing stereotyping this side of African Americans -- and the fact that my fellow Mick-Americans have utterly forgotten from whence they came.

[nancy]

Nah, Sir C. Appalachian heritage is the lowest of the low. Hillbilly jokes are still OK to this day.

And guess what. Unions said to all of them -- 'Too bad. You're too dumb to even get it.' Company store for you. Good luck keeping life, limb and family together. Too bad, so sad. (But not really) Sorry about that black-lung thing. Them's the breaks,

[Sir Charles]

nancy,

Except that Appalachia spawned the ultimate in militant American unions -- the United Mine Workers of America. The UMWA was willing to go to war -- literally -- to uphold the rights of its membership. The slogan "God, guts, and guns" on UMWA caps was not an idle choice of words. These guys meant business.

And from UMWA, John L. Lewis moved forward to create the CIO and succeeded with the idea of mass industrial unions like the Steelworkers rather than old style craft unions.

UMWA staged one of the last truly successful strikes in America with the 1988 standoff against Pittston Coal. As one of their lawyers described their strategy, "we created enough legal space for the UMWA to use violence to win the battle."

They used to play for keeps down in West Virginia. And UMWA miners enjoyed excellent wages and benefits and far safer mines. Alas, now technology has pretty much done them in.

[Jeff]

low-tech cyclist -

And we can't expect our elected representatives to do all the pushing back by themselves, when we're not also pushing them from our side.

This was essentially my point too, though I was attempting to be critical of the conceptual approach of the Matthew Rothschild-types who blame a lack of labor militancy on the Democratic Party and on union leadership. To my mind, inasmuch as that's true, it's irrelevant. The reason those bureaucracies are not responsive to "the interests of the working class" is because the working class isn't pushing them to be responsive.

I know this is a vicious circle--if the working class isn't self-conscious it can't get organized, and it can't get self-conscious unless it gets organized--but union militancy was born in this country at a time when the evisceration of the working class was more literal than figurative. As Sir Charles said, it had nothing to lose at that time.

We're no longer in that situation, and this "problem" is largely a result of our past success. That said, I don't see a way out other than a further deterioration of material conditions and an increase in inequality. And even then, capital is a hell of lot more resourceful now than it was in the industrial age. I just don't know.

One other, incidental thing: I get a bit rankled whenever I hear talk about how silly it is for workers to vote against their economic interests. My wife and I definitely vote against our immediate economic interests whenever we vote for Democrats. Progressive values matter more to us than the possibility that we'll have to pay an extra 4.5% in taxes on our income in excess of $250K. I think that a lot of people's values could be modified through proper education, but this is just to say that it's not particularly irrational for people to vote against their pocketbooks.

[Sir Charles]

Jeff,

Good points.

I had a union leader -- from a highly successful craft union -- express how uneasy it made him when he went out to local union meetings to see how many $35-40,000 vehicles he would see in the parking lots. He was happy that his members made the kind of money that allowed them to buy such things, but he was really concerned that their identity as consumers had superseded their identity as union members and that if they ever needed to strike it would be difficult as hell.

You are also correct about our blind spot when it comes to the idea of voting your interests. We speak as materialist when we look at the behavior of workers while also congratulating ourselves on our selfless spirit as liberal higher earners. Some of the push back against "What's the Matter with Kansas" arguments made that point very effectively.

Having said that, though, I am not sure that tribalism or a misplaced sense that there are large numbers of people -- usually minorities in the imagination of these folks -- "getting over" at their expense is really a "value" in any traditional sense.

I saw a guy with a bumper sticker the other day that read "Don't Spread My Wealth, Spread My Work Ethic" and I was filled with an overwhelming urge to drive him off the road. This notion that somehow the poor are strangers to work is infuriating.

[Jeff]

Sir Charles (May I call you Sir?)-

I am not sure that tribalism or a misplaced sense that there are large numbers of people -- usually minorities in the imagination of these folks -- "getting over" at their expense is really a "value" in any traditional sense.

I didn't mean to ascribe a moral quotient to the term "value," so that was sloppy phrasing on my part. I guess I just meant that few of us are the classic Homo Economicus of textbook fame--and thank Jebus for that. In fact, I had in mind a Christian fundamentalist friend who, though he agrees with me completely on economics, will always vote Republican because abortion is his single issue (which is appropriate, as he really believes that legalized abortion is the second holocaust).

"Don't Spread My Wealth, Spread My Work Ethic" is a great slogan (again, not ascribing a moral quotient to it). Driving the bootstrap types off the road is probably the only solution, as it's impossible to argue with them.

[oddjob]

Louisiana's decided its new school voucher system can be used to transfer students, at taxpayer expense, from below average public schools to even worse private schools.

Can you imagine?

[nancy]

Sir C, I was thinking more specifically of eastern Kentucky, where unions, for whatever reason, never managed to take hold. I believe the unionizing strikes in Harlan County in the early 70's went on for a period of time, but the coal mine operators and Duke Energy eventually won out against the contracts. If I'm remembering my oral history correctly, the mines of Kentucky are still non-union, with the younger generation having become more disengaged from believing in the value and power of unionizing. Kentucky seems to have been ceded in any organizing efforts since.

[Sir Charles]

Jeff,

I totally agree with your points.

oddjob,

Yes.

nancy,

The Harlan County mines were unionized at the time of the early 70s strikes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County,_USA

It was a time, though of incredible internecine warfare within the UMWA -- leading to the murder of insurgent union activist Jock Yablonski by people paid by UMWA president Tony Boyle.

I was actually surprised to see that Kentucky is not a right to work state.

[oddjob]

A Pennsylvania inspector of elections refuses to enforce the new voter ID law.

He's a Democrat from a Delaware County suburb immediately abutting Philadelphia. Colwyn is just slightly more than a mile from the Philadelphia Intl. Airport. Delaware County is sometimes a hotly contested set of suburbs. The congressman from the district covering most of Del. Co. is usually a Republican (for those of you who remember the name Curt Weldon was the Republican idiot from there for quite a while), but the Dems. sometimes win the seat, too (Admiral Joe Sestak most recently). The seat's now held by Republican Pat Meehan.

[nancy]

Sir C, you're right of course. Here's what the situation was more recently.

It doesn’t take long to find a member of the United Mine Workers of America in Eastern Kentucky. But in a part of the state where coal has long powered the economy and generations have toiled in the mines, you can’t find a UMWA member mining coal.

Though Appalachia is central to the historical strength of the union, there are no unionized mines in Eastern Kentucky. But with many retired miners, the union culture remains, and there is a new face to the union, in its representation of more than 200 county and nursing-home employees in Pike County.

Documentary looks to be a must-see. I'd forgotten about it.

[oddjob]

Over 100 House Democrats have introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage.