American Workers Are Taking a Beating,
So Why Don’t They Start Fighting Back?

In a country where 24 million people can’t find a decent, full-time job, Americans are a remarkably disciplined people. They don’t riot in the streets. They don’t hold their bosses as hostages. They rarely indulge in sit-ins.

When they are laid off, they leave quietly, not wanting to create a scene that would embarrass themselves and the employer. Being on good terms with the boss may pay off later when he decides when he’s ready to call them back to work. American workers understand how the economy works, so what’s the point of complaining?

Very few Americans get really disturbed when the economic news is bad, even really bad. When they learn that 6.1 million people have been out of work for 27 weeks or more, they take the news calmly, without angry calls for government action. Nor do they spend much time worrying about how unemployed workers with a spouse and two kids manage to survive, even for a week. Each of us has our own troubles to attend to. And life must go on.

We’re told that the big banks are back in business, doing what they do best—making money, at our expense. Despite President Obama’s pleading for them to make more loans to small businesses, they are doing so, only when the risks are small and the profits are substantial. You can’t fault them. That’s good business..

Obama’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, keeps repeating: ”Everybody agrees that the recession is over.” If what the learned professor says is true, we should be celebrating the fact that “hard times” are over, and we’ll soon expect our old jobs back.—even, if at first, it’s only a temporary one.

Meanwhile, there’s still lots of talk about saving and creating millions of new jobs, while, at the same time, tens of thousands of workers are laid off each month. Conservative econonists tell us that even during economic recovery, we can expect layoffs to continue—and we rarely ask why.

Where Is Our Rage against Economic and Social Injustice?

Let’s face it: American labor will continue to go downhill unless it regains the fighting spirit that enabled it to win major economic and political benefits for the nation’s working families. We must find ways to halt the drain of hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs to foreign countries each year by challenging those companies that are seeking cheap labor markets.

We can insist on a moratorium on layoffs and apply economic pressure on those corporations that violate our mandate. When companies announce layoffs, we should demand that they open up their books to their employees to justify the layoffs We could require profitable companies to set up a special fund for their laid-off employees. If we involve a sizeable fraction of the AFL-CIO's 11.5 million members, we can win many concessions that we feel we deserve, Let’s show some rage and less compliance with the abusive treatment that workers often receive in the workplace

With some 30 million people needing a job (we’re including the 6.6 million people who finally gave up looking for one), how is the United States ever to reach the state of “full employment,” that once was the dream of the labor movement? How many millions of workers (our children and grandchildren) may never have a regular job during their lifetimes?

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka made a perceptive comment about America’s long-term dilemma, when he said: “To solve the job crisis, we must create a different kind of economy,”

Unfortunately, neither Trumka, Obama or any member of Congress has tried to come up with an answer.—Harry Kelber

LaborTalk (31) will be posted here on Tuesday, January 14, 2010 and on our two web sites: www.laboreducator.org and www.laborsvoiceforchange.org