Letter to the Editor

In the early part of the last century, working people noticed that they were being taken advantage of. They realized they were being paid far too little. They were being worked far too hard. They were working far too much. So they came together—on the plant floor—and talked about it, organized a union, and refused to go back to work until the companies that they worked for treated them as valuable.

The Labor Movement changed the environment for American workers. They got paid better. They got treated better. Their work week was reduced from “whatever we tell you to work” to forty hours max. People’s family life improved. Their bank accounts improved. They bought houses, cars, vacuum cleaners, TVs. More importantly, workers’ eyes were opened to their own intrinsic value. Without them, the factory was useless. With them, the company thrived.

Companies learned something too: treat your workers better and you have better workers.

Right now, American workers are paid less than they were in 1950. They are threatened by a complete lack of security, by an influx of part-time workers, service jobs being outsourced to India and the Philippines, and a President that sets a regrettable example by allowing cleanup companies in Louisiana to set a disastrously low cap on workers pay and benefits.

Most of the people in America work for incomes well below the middle class water-mark. They work for hourly wages in several jobs just to make enough money to barely survive. Recently, I was a manager in retail, I hired people who were working their second and third jobs just so they could afford a tiny apartment. I hired parents who were working part time at night just to afford the daycare for their day jobs. Their lives were relentless and utterly without hope.

The philosophy that allowed factories to happily grind their workers through 18 hour days and poor conditions at the beginning of the last century is coming back because workers have stopped valuing themselves. Long hours, little income, no family time—it all adds up to lost hope. When people lose hope, they quit caring about what happens to them and they’ll accept even the most dire conditions as inevitable.

My grandfather was a Union founder. My father was a respected Union foreman and supervisor and my Uncle currently holds office in a powerful union in Florida. My family and thousands of families like them all over the U.S. spent the entire last century busting their ass, getting in fights, scraping by during strikes and even risking their lives, to prove to the average American wage earner one fact: you ARE the company.

I knew this plumber. He was an old lanky New Englander and he had a real matter of fact way of explaining things. I was an idiot summer worker and I thought I’d start an argument at lunch. I said to him, “Look, without the company where would we be?” He was eating a baloney sandwich and he pulled a hanger brace out of a box next to him, threw it on the floor and dramatically asked the company, addressing it by name out into the open air, to please hang that brace. He went back to eating his sandwich. He said: “The company exists to get me work and to pay me for doing it.”

American wage earners need to remember that they are the greatest resource this country has. Their work makes the country go. It has intrinsic value. They make things that last.

Consider how you’ll spend a week researching the best PC, a product which will inevitably break down, lose important files, crash, get infected with viruses, cause undue stress and expenditures, and only last about three years before you buy another one.

Then think about how you will heedlessly walk onto any old elevator without a second thought. It doesn’t miss your floor. It doesn’t crash.

Some hourly worker worked hard to make sure every piece of that machine works perfectly and will keep on working—forever.

That’s value.

Hourly workers, wage slaves, retail middle managers, nurses, office supers—all of you need to remember the mindset of the union plumber I mentioned. The government isn’t going to raise your wages. The government isn’t going to give you health care. The government isn’t going to stop exporting your jobs. The government isn’t going to treat you any better tomorrow than it did yesterday.

The government isn’t the government.

You are.