There is a lot of speculation about what impact the departure
from the AFL-CIO of the Service Employees International Union and
other affiliates will have on American workers. But it’s a measure
of how much the world has changed in my lifetime
– I was born the year before the labor federation was created –
that about as many Americans even felt this labor earthquake as can
tell you what AFL-CIO stands for.
There is a lot of speculation about what impact the departure from the AFL-CIO of the Service Employees International Union and other affiliates will have on American workers. But it’s a measure of how much the world has changed in my lifetime – I was born the year before the labor federation was created – that about as many Americans even felt this labor earthquake as can tell you what AFL-CIO stands for.
Today the very language of unions strikes us as antiquated. Terms like “brotherhood” and “teamsters” no longer resonate in our daily lives, even though today’s economic disparities more resemble the America of 100 years ago than 50 years ago, when the labor federation was created.
Take Scott Lee Jr. You’ve probably never heard his name, which is strange, since he’s the CEO of the largest company in America, Wal-Mart. In the 50s that would have been like a worker not knowing the name Rockefeller or Ford.
With his $17.5 million salary last year, Lee earned more in two weeks than his average employee, who made $17,000, earns in a lifetime.
That’s downright Dickensian. Contrary to what some want you to believe, there’s nothing economically inevitable about that. The disparities in wealth in this country are the result of ideologically-driven policies that favor the rich. It is the triumph of greed, and Americans voters have been the passive enablers of it for two decades.
Since 1980, the income of the top .1 percent has gone up two and a half times. During the same period your income and mine, on average, have increased 22 percent. Our percentage of the nation’s wealth has actually fallen.
The labor movement used to be the counterweight to this assault on the greater good, and the result was the economic stability for which the 50s are famous. Back then, crossing a picket line was considered immoral. When was the last time you even saw a picket line?
Few grasp how the deck became so stacked against labor, but a group of workers in San Benito County may be on the verge of giving us a lesson in why that is so.
A few days ago, the employees of San Benito Foods overwhelmingly rejected a company contract offer that, by all accounts, was terrible – health benefits would have been cut entirely for some workers and the rest were offered measly raises.
The law says that if the two sides cannot come to an agreement, the workers have the legal right to withhold their labor – that’s a strike – until a contract is agreed upon. The company can also choose to withhold work – that’s a lockout.
That seems fair. The workers don’t get their paychecks, the company doesn’t get production, and both sides suffer until a contract is reached. But it’s not that simple – or that fair.
Once workers vote to join a union, a right for which generations fought and died, the employer is legally obliged to bargain in good faith. But all he has to do is make a show of it, because unlike many industrialized countries, it is not against U.S. law for your employer to permanently replace you if you go on strike. He can’t fire you – that’s illegal – but he can give your job to someone else. It’s a grotesque legal contradiction.
Until 1981, when Ronald Reagan did just that with the striking air traffic controllers, it was a weapon employers had long been reluctant to wield. Since then, the assault on unions, and on the standard of living of average Americans, has been relentless. Ironically, American conservatives were cheering for Poland’s Solidarity trade union at the same time they were busting unions at home.
How will county residents react if there were a strike at the cannery? Will they support people trying to stop the erosion of good jobs and good wages that has been underway in this country for a generation? Will they refuse to undermine the strikers by taking away their jobs if the cannery attempts to hire replacements? Will they pressure the company to treat its employees with respect? Or will they be indifferent, even hostile, to the strikers?
In 1955, when Americans understood the role unions played in their prosperity, I know what the answer of most Americans would have been. Today’s answers could go a long way towards explaining why the American dream has been slipping steadily from our grasp.
John Yewell is the city editor for the Hollister Free Lance.
