And They Get Neither from an Economy that Exploits Labor and Rewards the Already Wealthy
“Dignity”
and “Respect” have been mouthed so many times they’ve become bedrock
principles. They are akin to Inalienable Rights in the minds of many
working-class people desperately trying to find a toehold inside a careening
economic system that continues to impoverish most while it steadfastly enriches the very few at the top.
West
Virginia coal miners supporting their striking brethren at Warrior Met Coal in
Alabama will tell you that money is rolling in hand over fist for the elite.
They say, “My god, all we’re asking for is our fair share.”
Hard-pressed
nursing-home workers in New York City who suffered through the worst of the Covid pandemic will
look you in the eye and say all they really want from the bosses is the ability
to make ends meet. And, please, at long last, add some
friggin’ respect for the monumental job that they do.
The #TakeItBack campaign is a coalition of
some seven different unionized building trades also in New York City that
regularly rallies outside the tony doorsteps of mega-developers and their
international financiers — most recently, Allianz
Partners of America.
The
#TakeItBack coalition’s purpose is fighting against the rampant worker
exploitation, wage theft and safety violations found in the nonunion sector —
and “raising the bar to ensure safety, respect, and dignity for all
construction workers.”
Without
that fundamental respect and dignity, nonunion construction workers, in particular, die. It makes
any kind of job in the construction industry a very deadly way to try and earn a living.
On Black Friday, first-term Congress member Cori Bush (D-Mo.) joined the chorus of worker-friendly activists and progressives urging passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.
The
PRO Act contains some real teeth. It is considered to be the most substantive
change to American labor law in more than 70 years, levying fines as hefty as
$100,000 on any employer who repeatedly tries to squash the right of employees
to unionize.
According
to the Economic Policy Institute, employers violate workers’ right to a union and collective
bargaining in more than 40% of union election campaigns. Amazon
was recently caught red-handed violating worker rights in Bessemer, Ala., with
help from the U.S. Postal Service, no less.
Labor
Board Budget Frozen
The
National Labor Relations Board is the agency tasked with safeguarding the
rights of American working men and women. But unlike the Pentagon budget
which magically rises up to 10s of billions of dollars the brass never even sought,
the NLRB budget hasn’t been increased in nearly a decade. The PRO Act would
increase the NLRB’s current $275 million annual budget to a still modest $350
million. The PRO Act is lodged within the Build Back Better Act,
President Joe Biden’s human infrastructure legislation.
It
managed to make it out of the House on Nov. 19, along a strict 220-213
party-line vote. But the Senate — the august body that long ago fell under corporate control — is a different
matter. With the 50-50 split between the parties. nominal Democrats Kyrsten
Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia aren’t on board, so the bill
may die. Indeed, it would be something of a Christmas miracle if the PRO Act
ever get out of the upper chamber in anything like the version the House
passed.
Still,
Representative Bush—a registered nurse, pastor and Black Lives Matter
activist—rolled her demonstrated militancy into a plea for senators to pass the
PRO Act as a matter of fairness to those who work holidays for little pay.
“The
Senate should celebrate Black Friday by passing the PRO Act to protect the
hardworking folks who are being underpaid and overworked this holiday season.
Every worker deserves a union,” the first-term representative tweeted.
Government
for Workers, Not Corporations
A
more influential Democratic lawmaker, Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania
similarly sent out a Black Friday tweet. He said American workers, “deserve a
government that works for them and not corporations.” Casey, chair of the
subcommittee on Children and Families finished his Black Friday tweet
saying, “We need to pass the PRO Act to restore fairness to an economy
that’s been rigged against workers for too long.”
The
concepts of fairness, dignity and respect make sense. They are fundamental.
They are intrinsic — but they are not universal. There is a massive hole that
lives at the center of the American economy where the normal rules of humanity
just don’t apply. So, why waste vital energy insisting that they do?
Profit
for the very few at the top is the only thing that matters in the game that we
have going on here. If it’s more profitable to ship jobs overseas, suppress
wages and lay off workers, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. If it’s more
profitable to raise prices, reduce services and build on the cheap. That’s
exactly what’s going to happen.
Livable
wages, decent housing and a dignified retirement are simply not components of
the present economic system. The most profitable thing — history shows — is not
to uplift workers but to enslave them. Enslave them with chains, enslave them with mass incarceration, enslave them with debt, enslave them with poor health.
Don’t
think so?
Just
last year, AFGE Local 3669 President Barbara Galle likened working conditions
at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center under the heel of then VA Secretary Robert
Wilkie to a slave plantation.
“It’s
just like the Confederacy and going back to slavery,” Galle said. “Staff are
looking at it as, ‘No wonder we’re not getting proper PPE [Personal Protection
Equipment]; no wonder we’re not all getting hazard pay’.”
During
the worst of the pandemic hospital administrators kept PPE under lock and key,
while some home health aides were forced to fashion their own masks out of
paper towels. They were the lucky ones. Other workers were simply sacked when they asked for fundamental —
but costly — measures to keep them safe from Covid.
Shawn
McArthur is a certified nursing assistant at Cloves Lakes Health Care and
Rehabilitation in New York City, where he and his colleagues have been fighting
for both back wages and a decent contract.
“Unfortunately,
we have to be here and fight for something that we deserve, not just a raise
and a contract, but our retro[pay],” he recently told me at a healthcare
workers rally held in Times Square. “They haven’t paid us for the year that
they owe us — and all that we have to show for it is their asses for us to
kiss.”
It’s
silly and self-destructive to think that bosses like that will be moved by a
sense of fair play or calls for “dignity” and “respect.”
The
only time the working class in this country has ever achieved any gains is when
we’ve challenged the status quo, shut things down and demanded what we need.
And that isn’t going to change now.
Joe
Maniscalco is a journalist and freelance writer based in New York
City. His work has appeared in a variety of news outlets ranging from the
NewYorkPost.com to Alternet.org. He's spent the last decade covering workplace
justice issues, the American Labor Movement and steadfastly avoiding well-paid
corporate media gigs.