When I first joined the workforce, at the ripe old age of 15, I seem to
remember that when one group of workers made gains in the workplace everybody
was happy for that group. We were happy
because normally, that meant all other groups were going to see some
improvement in their place of employment.
Not necessarily the same, but better.
After all, this was the United States of America and we were all in a
race to the top, as a nation. Another
reason was that employers respected their employees to a degree, and employee
retention was considered a plus. It was considered
much more cost effective to keep an employee for twenty years than to retrain
someone to take his or her place. Working
for the same company for twenty, thirty, sometimes up to forty years was
something to be proud of then. Employees
have become like much of what we use now, disposable, at least in the eyes of management.
As time went on, that feeling of "we're all in this together"
dissipated then disappeared. The
prevailing sentiment went through a fundamental shift. From a "we're a team" type of
attitude the shift turned workers more towards, "Why do they get more? I'm not getting more so...the other guy
should get less!"
Not a logical thought process nor the best strategy when negotiating
better conditions and wages for those who were receiving less. If logic had prevailed the sentiment might
have leaned more towards, "Look, those guys were able to negotiate X, Y
and/or Z. That opens up an avenue for us
to try for Q, R and perhaps S."
How did this fundamental shift happen?
How did the American psyche go from the war years, in which the nation
not only came out of the worst depression to date (knock on wood, Wall St. can
always surprise us), we also created the largest middle class ever known.
This did not happen overnight, the breakdown of unity among American
workers is the result of a targeted, purposeful campaign by big business aided
by their biggest allies, Conservatives.
The first shot over the bow was when then President Reagan stepped into
the Air Traffic Controllers strike. Rather
than allowing the process to play out, he acted as one very powerful strikebreaker. By telling them that they had to get back to
work or lose their jobs, he essentially broke down an intrinsic part of what
labor law was. If a strike could be
called off before, any conditions had been met or discussed for that matter,
with the added threat of losing ones job, then what protection could a Union
actually provide?
This tactic worked so well that Conservatives started to cast their gaze
about the labor landscape for their next victims.
The next order of business for the Right Wing/Conservative/GOP
was to blame teachers and teachers' Unions, then government workers,
and their Unions for the nation's
ills. By this time, many Unions had been
weakened, either through the courts or through legislation. Is this what was meant by “activist judges”? (Funny, we haven’t heard that phrase of late,
I wonder why?.)
Everybody knows that the exorbitant salaries and pensions teachers
receive (AND they get the summer off?) is what ran up the deficit, right? This particular blame shift started prior to
Bush II's presidency. However, this was
but the opening salvo.
Starting with the teachers and their nine months per year jobs, (of course, we won't mention the
hours per day used to grade homework, create lesson plans, counsel students,
and all of the other services teachers have long provided without pay) for
which they were getting paid far too much.
One thing I always found interesting during this time frame was the
number of school districts that were bankrupted
by Superintendents who were either naive or corrupt, who then went on
to run a school district in another state.
This was happening so often (without prosecution in most cases) that I
was starting to look at running a school district as a career choice. Get the job (while lying on my resume),
bankrupt the school district, and then pocket my ill-gotten gains and move on
to the next, flush, school district. Fortunately,
or Un, Catholic guilt took over. However,
there was never any real culpability as to how bad our schools are, how
strapped for cash they were and remain, laid at the feet of these bad players.
These attacks were somewhat sporadic, or at least public awareness was low. Then Bush II came into office with "No
child left behind" and a real desire to attack Iraq. Once the "war on terror" got under
way, the usual smoke and mirrors needed to go into hyper-drive.
How else to take the blame for the deficit from the two wars financed on
credit and borrowed cash from China? Moreover,
if other workers start to notice that some people were still receiving (gasp)
pensions! then they might want them
back, too. Rather than that executive
tax break posing as a retirement plan, the 401(k) where banks can make
"bank" on the fees charged to administer it, and a 401(k)'s
vulnerability to the fluctuations of the market, people may go back to
negotiating for pensions along with those benefits they received. No, better to demonize those who still were
receiving these forms of compensation with their salaries through their Union
negotiations.
Oh, and Unions!, which are positively Communist according to the
architects of this whole fiasco. To hear
them tell it, workers should not have bargaining rights that might carry on or
worse, create more benefits.
Once that happened there was a very real possibility that those at
the top would not be able to get those extravagant, compensation
packages (complete with golden parachutes) and the stockholders may not get the
dividends promised. No, if benefits and
those pesky pensions were put into workers' contracts employers would have to adhere
(this was prior to the courts decision to allow Auto Manufacturers to cut the
UAW's pensions) to them.
It is as if the Conservatives and Big Business got together while
thinking, “Who do these workers think they are...people, with families to
raise, clothe, feed, and educate or something?”
Best-case scenario for Big Biz is to take the right to negotiate with
their employers over wages and conditions, away from workers. By publicly demonizing these people, turning
then into pariahs and blaming them for ALL of our Nations’ ills (when not
blaming whichever random Democratic politician in sight) then perhaps, nobody
would want to be part of a Union. Shaming
teachers and public employees, all of whom make much less than they would have
in the private sector, for their benefits (must be said with a sneer in one's voice
and face) should stop people from seeking those very things. Better yet, blame teachers and public
employees for the poor state of most local governments.
Shifting blame to these people, rather than acknowledging that tax cuts
for the wealthy along with corporate welfare, a tax code which rewards capital
over a paycheck, and allowing corporations to pick and choose which profits
were made in the U.S., may be a winning strategy for the Conservative,
"trickle down economics" fans.
There is also the side benefit of ensuring the populous is not well
educated. What a perfect plan; saving
money on schools, teachers are paid less so the best ones may just move on to
the private sector. Without experienced
teachers, without many of the classes that baby-boomers such as me were
fortunate to have available, then blatant lies and nonsensical data are much easier to put over on the
American people. Why that is a “win-win”
for those intent on dismantling our country.
As if shifting blame for these things were not enough though, those in
the shadows decided that people just HAD to blame these workers for the fact
that their pay was stagnant; their benefits were being whittled away. So, rather than look at what was working for
teachers and public employees and thinking, "We should be doing that, again",
the American worker now looked at their fellow and thought, "Why the Hell
do they have those benefits or salaries?
Well, since I don't, ergo...we should take what they have away from
them!"
If the goal of this Union-busting, minimum wage destroying (if they
can), anti-health care group now known as the GOP/TP is to: create a nation of
worker bees, without rights, subsisting on minimal amounts of food, with little
heat in the winter, no cooling in the increasingly hot summers with water being
sold to the highest bidder(IF the GOPTP’s latest idea to privatize water comes
to fruition); to allow our Nation to become the dumping ground for hazardous
waste and a veritable wasteland due to the production of the commodities which create
that waste, then they are frighteningly close to achieving that goal.
All of this has been happening while Big Business, along with their
buddies the GOPTP laughed (and continue to laugh) all the way to their friends'
banks. Am I the only person who feels
she has been duped by the 1% and their minions...again?
P.S. Once again, I must put a good portion of the blame for this fraud
being successful on; you guessed it, the Mainstream Media. If those newscasters at ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN
were on their J's, perhaps we could have seen this swindle
looming in the distance much sooner and sidestepped some of the lies. Instead, newscasters are more intent on
either kowtowing to the perpetrators or becoming the news, themselves. They have abdicated their role as the Fourth
Estate in most cases. Redemption can
only be had if they were to start doing their jobs now. The other fix to this particular mess would
be, since the Supreme Court ruled that Fox News is not really news but for
entertainment, I do not believe they should be allowed to call themselves Fox News but
rather Fox-For-Entertainment-News may suffice.
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