ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” story. It is an editorial by the editor.
“The Howl of the Wolf movie… presenting honest stories of working people, as told by rich Hollywood stars.” — The Firesign Theatre, 1970 in “Don’t Crush that Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.”
The actress Sally Field was able to shed her silly Flying Nun fame in 1978 by winning the best actress Oscar for “Norma Rae,” supposedly based on a true story about a union organizer in the South. Almost 40 years later, the tale now seems like just a snapshot in time rather than the origins of a movement to benefit the working poor.
Indeed, I submit Labor Day has become America’s most awkward holiday. Though many decry the picnics, barbecues and trips to the beach over Memorial Day weekend, the process is even more striking for Labor Day. Veterans suggest we’ve lost the true meaning of Memorial Day, but labor advocates can very easily say the meaning of Labor Day is so lost that its name might as well be changed.
Labor Day was created in 1894 during the administration of Grover Cleveland to honor the many sacrifices men and women made during the Industrial Age to win such amenities as child labor laws, overtime pay, the eight-hour day and the 40-hour work week.
Labor leaders rightly can say that government and business leaders would not have agreed to such developments without grass-roots pressure from organized unions. Yet the numbers of union members over the last 35 years in the United States have dwindled to less than 12 percent of the work force. With these dwindling numbers comes decrease in power.
Some trace the decline of union membership and influence back to the late 1970s, when workers’ groups got greedy and demanded too much of a slice of the profits, thereby forcing manufacturers and businesses to seek cheaper labor overseas.
Some trace it to the air traffic controllers (PATCO) strike on 1981, when President Ronald Reagan ordered them to return to work or he’d fire them — and he did. Film maker Michael Moore called it, “The day the middle class died.”
Some trace the trend to th
e changing times in America, moving from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. I saw the beginning of that process in Albion, a once-proud foundry city that lured massive numbers of blacks north for good jobs after World War I. Service sector jobs have not offered wages as high as what manufacturing did, and the result was places like Detroit, Flint and Albion suffered miserably, becoming virtual industrial waste zones.
Labor leaders rightly point out that when union membership was highest, the standard of living in the United States was the greatest ever known on this planet. The middle class was thriving. Families could get along even if it was only the father who had a job.
Today, women have had to enter the work force, creating a lot of latch-key kids and helping the “Bowling Alone” lives we now lead, including the breakdown of families, public lives and communities.
Some say there isn’t a lot we can do about it. It’s just a sort of Social Darwinism in which the strongest are able to adapt to changing conditions while the weaker ones are left behind.
And now America is saddled with the biggest disparity in incomes, between rich and poor, a fact that has to fuel rising crime and discontent.
I submit one way out of this abyss is to begin a massive rebuild of our infrastructure and a complete changeover in energy policy to create jobs in the clean energy sector, which includes solar, water and wind as generators. Not only would it create jobs, it would perhaps save the human race from its destructive path fueled by the fossil fuel industry.
Happy Labor Day.
PHOTO: Union leaders to this day are proud of spearheading the effort to prohibit child labor and suggest business and government would not have done so. (Photo courtesy of Mother Jones)
Excellent, insightful and very well written, Dave. I feel edified.
And lest we forget, let’s not leave out the impact of the signing of NAFTA by President Clinton and other ensuing trade agreements. Our steel and automotive industries have suffered greatly from dumping of product into America, during ongoing trade agreements. There was some remedy to the auto trade, when demands were made that ac certain # had to be produced here. But our steel MFG. is decimated. And that is a definite national defense concern as well of a loss of jobs to many “unskilled” workers in America.
Let’s be honest here. There are jobs for the educated and trainable people in our country. Where the problem lies is with those that do not have the aptitude for schooling and/or training of any kind. After working in a steel mill for 10 years, I can assure you there are many such people. And the problem with that is, those are the same people that turn to crime and violence when there is no work for them. Without good paying jobs for them, they can not only not afford to live a decent life, they can not afford to join others in having and creating & supporting a family of their own. Does not mean they don’t have children, it just means they do so without the responsibility of supporting them. Another blight on our social fabric.
And the voice of such people. Well, turn on the news. They end up frustrated to the point of killing their own mates and children or by committing some other heinous crime. That is when we recognize them or pay attention to them. But we rarely associate those crimes to the lack of a good paying job. We need labor intensive manufacturing jobs, not just as a source of income and to boost the economy. We need those jobs to lower crime rates and repair the social fabric of our society. “Idle Hands Are For The Devil’s Play”. We see, read and hear about the effect of a lack of jobs for the unskilled every day. Not everyone can turn out to be a Forrest Gump, In real life, it just doesn’t happen that way.