Worker Rights: No Balls, No Gains (Joe Bageant)

It will be up us, just like it always has been… the writer, the Nicuaraguan janitor, the forty-year-old family man forced to bag groceries at Walmart, the pizza delivery guy, the welder and the certified nurse… the long haul trucker and the short order cook. And they will snicker at us from their gilded roosts on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Joe Bageant -- World News Trust

June 18, 2009 -- In looking back on growing up, I always remember 1957 and 1958 at "the two good years." They were the only years my working class redneck family ever caught a real break in their working lives, and that break came because of organized labor. After working as a farm hand, driving a hicktown taxi part time, and a dozen catch-as-catch-can jobs, my father found himself owning a used semi-truck and hauling produce for a Teamster unionized trucking company called Blue Goose.

Daddy was making more money than he'd ever made in his life, about $4,000 a year. The median national household income at the time was $5,000, mostly thanks to America’s unions. After years of moving from one rented dump to another, we bought a modest home, ($8,000) and felt like we might at last be getting some traction in achieving the so-called “American Dream.”

Yup, Daddy was doing pretty good for a backwoods boy who'd quit school in the sixth or seventh grade -- he was never sure, which gives some idea how seriously the farmboy took his attendance at the one-room school we both attended in our lifetimes.

This was the golden age of both trucking and of unions. Thirty-five percent of American labor, 17 million working folks, were union members, and it was during this period the American middle class was created. The American middle class has never been as big as advertised, but if it means the middle third income-wise, then we actually had one at the time. But whatever it means, one-third of working folks, the people who busted their asses day-in and day-out making the nation function, were living better than they ever had. Or at least had the opportunity to do so.

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http://www.worldnewstrust.com/wnt-reports/commentary/worker-rights-no-balls-no-gains-joe-bageant.html

K&R

* - Carlinian term for weak willed, weak minded Americans

In a placeless world, they do not.

We all love the instant global communication. The price we pay for it though, is the increased ability to outsource. We don't get the upside without the downside.

things could change in America.
Unfortunately, LABOR and Working Americans have not had Political Representation since Ronald Reagan and the birth of the DLC.

There are still a handful of "Democrats" who haven't sold out, but they are few, and have been marginalized by the Big Business "Democrats". I'm starting to doubt that it is possible for reform inside the Democratic Party that would give voice to Working Americans.

Two BIG things that would immediately help Working Americans:

1)Employee Free Choice Act (Card Check)

2)Single Payer Health Care

BOTH have been kicked to the side by a "Democratic" Administration.
They have been deemed as not worth the effort.

In the 60s and 70s, it was possible for a non-college educated Blue Collar parent* (*white male) to:

*Raise a family in security and relative comfort

*Provide excellent Health Care for his family

*Buy and pay off a comfortable home in the suburbs

*Buy a NEW car every few years

*Send his children to a State University where they could graduate debt free.

*Take a real vacation every year

*Retire in dignity and comfort

The above was the NORM.
The same would be possible today if Working Americans were represented by a Political Party.
Sad really.
I used to ridicule Middle Class Republicans who voted against their own Economic Interests.


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone