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I’ve mentioned here before that I spent most of my childhood in LaGrange, Georgia, a town that was dominated in a profoundly feudal sense by Callaway Mills, one of the stalwarts in the fight against unionization of the southern textile industry. In the public schools there, we began classes each year on Labor Day, an impressive gesture of contempt for the American labor tradition.
We are not that far from a major lurch in that direction on a national level. It received little national attention during the Republican National Convention, but South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s speech presenting her backward, poverty-stricken state as a union-free paradise of happy workers seemed very much the wave of the GOP future. With the exception of a handful of self-styled “progressives” or “liberals”—or such savvy pols as Richard Nixon who cut deals for political support with particular unions—Republicans have always been considered the “anti-labor” party. But they used to pay automatic respect to the basic legitimacy of unions and collective bargaining, certainly in the private sector. Not any more. Republicans used to hide their anti-union bias and when in power sought to roll back labor rights quietly through control of regulatory bodies like the National Labor Relations Board. There is every indication that if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan win on November 6, the kind of loud-and-proud in-your-face hostility to unions that I grew up with will become national policy instantly.
Does that matter to Americans who aren’t union members, or are working in industries with little or not union presence to begin with? Of course it does. Unions greatly affect labor markets, and act to create upward pressure on wages and benefits—not to mention public safety net programs—affecting conditions of employment far from their specific bargaining units. And as Harold Meyerson points out in his Labor Day column today, the weakening of union power has played a big role in steadily eroding ability of wage earners to secure improvement in living standards despite rising skill levels and productivity:
Are American workers becoming less productive? On the contrary, a Wall Street Journal survey of the Standard & Poor’s 500, the nation’s largest publicly traded companies, found that their revenue per worker increased from $378,000 in 2007 to $420,000 in 2010. The problem is that workers get none of that increase. As economists Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon have shown, all productivity gains in recent decades have gone to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, in sharp contrast to the three decades following World War II, when Americans at all income levels shared in the productivity increases.
The primary plight of U.S. workers isn’t their lack of skills. It’s their lack of power. With the collapse of unions, which represented a third of the private-sector workforce in the mid-20th century but just 7 percent today, workers simply have no capacity to bargain for their share of the revenue they produce.
The implicit message of some business leaders and their political allies these days seems to be: you should count yourselves lucky for having any jobs at all, so shut up about your eroding wages and disappearing benefits and non-existent job security and under-seige public safety net!
And an even more offensive implicit message is coming from the “we built that” rhetoric of the GOP, which doesn’t just deny government’s role in making individual business success possible, but that of workers as well, who are viewed as interchangeable, expendable material shaped and deployed by heroic “job creator” capitalists, to whom all glory, laud, honor and profits must accrue to keep the American economy moving.
It’s a way of thinking and living that takes me back to the LaGrange, Georgia of the early 1960s. Better take advantage of this and every ensuing Labor Day. There’s no guarantee it won’t be, in some respect or another, the last.
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martin on September 03, 2012 10:11 AM:
I drive by LaGrange a couple times a year on my way back and forth from Atlanta. I'll be sure to raise a finger to them next time.
Not that Alabama is any better.
Anonymous on September 03, 2012 10:16 AM:
Labor Day?
Work?
I don't remember anymore - what, exactly, is "a job?"
At this point, whatever it is they're doing, is working on me.
Right now, I'd gladly be one of their lowly serf's, rather than sit at home reading blogs, and applying for jobs on-line all day (that no one even calls me back for an interview – since no one wants to hire us 50+ year-olds anyway, no matter now much business or management experience we have), and reading books in the evening – watching every single fuckin' penny my mother and I spend, trying to keep costs down, since I no longer collect unemployment, and we can't afford to exceed her monthly SS payment now that my father has passed away. and she lost her SS payment in lieu of his.
I don't "live" anymore.
I just fecking exist.
And it sucks.
Today, on Labor Day, serfdom sounds like a pretty good fucking deal to me.
But the motherfuckers haven't won yet!
I have plenty of time to sharpen a guillotine – if only I could afford to buy one of the fecking things…
If they don't watch their asses, maybe sometime soon, we'll all be celebrating May Day, too! - aka: International Worker's Day.
Too bad they won't be around to join in on the festivities...
c u n d gulag on September 03, 2012 10:18 AM:
OY!
"Anonymous," was me - gulag.
OT - When do we finally get to guillotine CRAPTCHA?
sjw on September 03, 2012 10:43 AM:
In the new Conservative World Order, the Republi-fascists will keep the Labor Day holiday for decorative purposes. We'll "celebrate" the men, women, and children who work the 6-day week 7-7 day. We'll be told that these are the people who make America strong. And on Sundays the preacher-man will tell them that God is with them.
Celui on September 03, 2012 10:44 AM:
Labor Day certainly commemorates the struggles for the economic rights of workers in the workplace, and yet--just as important and valid--has been the struggle for worker's workplace rights. A defined workday and workweek with time off for necessary visits to the restroom & breaks. A valid and respected grievance process for resolution of workplace issues that can and do affect productivity. Economic gains are important, yes, but so are the agreed-upon rules that affect the interactions among employees and employees, employees and management, employees and owners. Safety rules are there for a reason, and cannot be neglected (get that, mining industry???). The workers' roles in the production of goods and services reflect a value just as important and contributory as those of the 'job creators' (who often do so with the assistance of government loans, TIF 'gifts', and infrastructure improvements). So--
Who Built That?? The answer's clear: we ALL did/do. There's no I in ALL, Mr, 'Job Creator.' Thank the unions for the demise of the labor paternalism of the non-union employers, and screw the Right to Work movement, which is, of course the right to work long hours at poor pay, absent safeguards, no say in working conditions and economic benefits, and life back in the 'company town.' Tennessee Ernie sang it right: "I owe my soul to the company store." Would that this never becomes true again.
RepublicanPointOfView on September 03, 2012 11:02 AM:
F*ck labor. Everyone knows that the only thing of value in OUR country is capital.
zandru on September 03, 2012 11:03 AM:
Frankly, I'm glad that Mr Kilgore is a Southerner. One, he provides a broader social and political perspective than my standard librul reads. Two, he "gets" the Dixiecrat mentality which has taken over the formerly-G OP. Three, he's a helpful antidote to the usual librul demonization of all Southerners. We - and I assume I'm speaking to the choir here - will never overcome the crazy wingnutter ideologies that have swept the Republican party without actually understanding the people who make up their base. This reminiscence about the near-feudal factory towns of Georgia should be a reminder that not all Americans are overpaid urban professionals with limitless options.
Unlike Clint Eastwood, we need to actually sit down in that empty chair and become "the enemy".
RepublicanPointOfView on September 03, 2012 11:16 AM:
We look forward to January of 2020!
In that month, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of Citizens United Not Timid v FEC by formally reuniting OUR country as The United Corporations of America. With our newly incorporated country, we shall have our first CEO declare the following:
January 10th shall be declared a holiday forevermore to be known as 'Corporate Freedom Day'. It shall be celebrated by having all workers putting in an extra 4 hours of work for their 'job creators'.
The following holidays shall be declared superfilicious and unnecessary and therefore banned from being celebrated as federal holidays from work:
- Independence Day
- Labor Day
- Thanksgiving
- New Years Day (with the proximity to Christmas, just too disruptive to corporate profitability)
Patrick Star on September 03, 2012 11:16 AM:
As I've commented before, one of the very few smart things I ever did in my 20's was get a job in a union workplace, with union wages, benefits and a pension. The choice for working America, and the middle class, has never been clearer in regards to this election. Everybody knows in their gut that income inequality is a problem, and getting worse. And everyone knows that a vote for Romney is a vote for the 1%. If Romney wins, America has no one to blame but itself.
MuddyLee on September 03, 2012 11:17 AM:
Many people in South Carolina despise Nikki Haley and her policies - anti-labor, anti-public schools, anti-stimulus, anti-Medicaid expansion, anti-ethics, all sort of ante-bellum you might say. It's funny how she's considered a "minority" outside of SC, but she never talks about that when she's at home. My dad was a union member, a pipe fitter, unusual for South Carolina. We also had some cows. He taught me that if you hire somebody to do some work for you, you need to pay them fairly. That's what I will remember about him today. My mom was a nurse. They voted for the Democrats. I think I was about ten years old before I realized that "damn" and "republican" were two separate words.
jpeckjr on September 03, 2012 11:24 AM:
How many of those non-union textile jobs are left in LaGrange? Very few, if any. That is the story across much of the country, not just the South. Both union and non-union manufacturing jobs have disappeared in massive numbers.
It is not that we have no manufacturing sector -- we do. Rather, manufacturing in the US is no longer about large factories employing large numbers. Manufacturing is characterized by smaller factories relying more on technology than human labor to make things. Both union and non-union jobs have changed in this way. Those smaller factories are more difficult to organize.
Additionally, because I'm familiar with the paternalism of the Southern factory town, the feudalism included some sense of community responsibility, that the owners were part of the town, too. The globalization of ownership diminishes this aspect. Owners have no ties to any of the communities where they have factories or stores or offices, so the jobs are commodities that can be moved anywhere at any time.
I lived (unhappily) for nearly a decade in a midwest meatpacking town where the union had been busted by the company. Although the company still made generous financial contributions to various community endeavors, the overall quality of life and economic vitality had declined noticeably since the days when the union was strong.
james on September 03, 2012 11:39 AM:
@RPOV 11:16. Well, I just disagree with you about the holidays. Of course we'll get rid of Labor Day.
But New Year's -- lots of money gets made off those football games and parties.
Thanksgiving has to be kept both because it has religious -- well, white Christian -- origins AND because lots of money gets made off those Thanksgiving weekend shopping trips.
Independence Day was created by the Holy and Wise Founders. It is clearly their intent it be observed in perpetuity.
Davis X. Machina on September 03, 2012 11:45 AM:
You can still go over to DemocraticUnderground.com, and other more-progressive-than-thou sites, and without much effort find people who will tell you that unions are dinosaurs, that they backed the wrong horse a generation ago on Vietnam, and civil rights, and gender equity, that they're corrupt and nepotistic and protect the inept and lazy. Or that the poster has no need for them, due to their own talent prowess and bargaining skills and power.
Making the other side's job easier for them is an ancient tradition for the left.
exlibra on September 03, 2012 1:57 PM:
Labor Day is the official opening of the political season around here (south-western Virginia), with a parade, and with politicians -- incumbents as well as wannabes -- showing up as likely as not, to run alongside shaking hands and having a chance to speak afterwards.
The speeches part starts with an introduction (by the mayor of the town, I think. It's not my town, but the neighbouring one) of the pols, followed by a prayer. So, the preacher opened today's blessing with "For the Labor Day, we thank God". Not quite under my breath, I added "and the labor unions". Got me a couple of giggles from the left and a lot of glares from the right and the front (Repubs invaded our side of the hall); how dare I forget that Virginia is a "right to work" state? And, as soon as the preacher finished, the right burst out with the chant: "You *did* build that! You *did* build that!". Yeah, because we're all so bloody individualistic, living on our Social Security benefits, and riding around in the Medicare-provided wheelchairs...
"iognei sometimes". Most of the time, actually, dear Craptcha.
nerd on September 03, 2012 2:07 PM:
On the subject of 'worker productivity' I can only say that it has to peak soon.
Workers are now doing so many more jobs than in the past. For example, it used to be that you had admin assistants to do things like set up travel, handle paperwork, etc., but now those tasks are handled by everyone. While this has led to fewer assistants this has also led to greater overhead for each worker. The same can be said of IT tasks. The 'gain' of having fewer employees for such 'overhead' operations cannot be sustained forever.
Gingerpye on September 03, 2012 2:35 PM:
I have relatives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and the county schools were open today.
c00p on September 03, 2012 9:23 PM:
I wish I had several copies of that old bumper sticker: "Eat the Rich."