Union of Liars Workers in the United States are getting shafted from every direction. Illegal immigrants trickle up across the Rio Grande to take low skill jobs, armies of machines stand ready to replace human labor, and sniveling obscenely wealthy captains of industry ship jobs overseas. These same courageous captains of quarterly earnings smile through their teeth and call themselves job creators, which they certainly are. These brave souls have created jobs in China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and in sweatshops all over the Southeast Asia. Collectively they seem to have raised the standard of living for every civilization but our own. Because workers in these countries cost a fraction of what paying an honest American wage does, these vampires will continue to do so. Worst of all they have decimated our ability to organize and collectively bargain. There is a direct correlation between high quality, secure jobs with competitive wages and the number of unions operating in the labor market. Unfortunately there is resentment between workers in non-union jobs and the lucky few who still carry a union card; at last count only 7% of American workers paid dues. Workers with no job security, no rights, and are all on their own negotiating salary with the powers that be see unions’ abilities and feel understandably envious. If the American worker is going to reverse the trend of stagnant wages and laughable rights this has to stop. Unions at their peak accounted for 35% of the workforce in 1954. Since then there has been a steady decline as industry leaders actively sought to undermine and dismantle the unions with hostile legislation and a vile campaign of slander. Last year during the Chicago public school teacher’s trike media talking heads all over the country pointed their fingers and said “look at those greedy teachers! Doesn’t it make you angry to see what they’re making! And they get summers off to boot.” When Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin declared war on his state’s public employees ability to bargain collectively these same voices screamed that the protestors were bleeding the public teat dry. “Look at how much they get paid! Isn’t that unfair? Doesn’t it make you angry to see other Americans earn more than you do? And all because they have a union!” They parade out tired clichés of union malfeasance, intoning the name Jimmy Hoffa to mischaracterize every union as corrupt and bad for the economy, all the while swindling the nation into recession after recession in pursuit of short term profits and absurd performance bonuses based on nothing but stock price. Playing one side against the other is a trick as old as Rockefeller money and it’s just as slick and dark and crude. Beneath our rugged veneer of John Wayne individualism, the American worker is enduring terrible suffering. They know this and exploit it at every turn to their own advantage. The forces that seek to suck every penny possible from our hard working hands are organized. The millionaire and billionaire CEOs, their lawyers and their media sycophants represent the most powerful union of all: The Affluent Liars Local 101. They are determined to turn the clock back to the 19 when robber barons ran roughshod over the American countryside, leaving a trail of penniless corpses and shattered working families in their wake. We cannot afford to play the corporate vampires’ game anymore. Rather than resent those who are fortunate enough to still have a union job we should be working to forge our own.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 18:02:11 +0000
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