Eulogy for Labor Day

Harold Meyerson has a must-read op-ed piece today:

Corporate profits, by contrast, have risen to their highest share of the GDP since the mid-'60s -- a gain that has come chiefly at the expense of American workers.

Don't take my word for it. According to a report by Goldman Sachs economists, "the most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor's share of national income."

Again, I've got to ask, are we supposed to keep buying Stern's line that unions need to be concerned about the corporate bottom line? They're doing pretty fucking well without us!

For those who profit from this redistribution, there's something comforting in being able to attribute this shift to the vast, impersonal forces of globalization. The stagnant incomes of most Americans can be depicted as the inevitable outcome of events over which we have no control, like the shifting of tectonic plates.

Problem is, the declining power of the American workforce antedates the integration of China and India into the global labor pool by several decades. Since 1973 productivity gains have outpaced median family income by 3 to 1. Clearly, the war of American employers on unions, which began around that time, is also substantially responsible for the decoupling of increased corporate revenue from employees' paychecks.

But finger a corporation for exploiting its workers and you're trafficking in class warfare. Of late a number of my fellow pundits have charged that Democratic politicians concerned about the further expansion of Wal-Mart are simply pandering to unions.

Let's fucking traffic in class warfare. Let's start harrassing the corporate bigwigs who illegally deny their employees their basic human right to organize. Let's hold accountable the government enablers who allow such violations to occur with nary a slap on the wrist. Let's start talking to our friends, our families, and our co-workers, saying "These are the greedy pigs who are screwing you over!" Let's fucking organize and take our shit back!

Devaluing labor is the very essence of our economy. I know that airlines are a particularly embattled industry, but my eye was recently caught by a story on Mesaba Airlines, an affiliate of Northwest, where the starting annual salary for pilots is $21,000 a year, and where the company is seeking a pay cut of 19 percent. Maybe Mesaba's plan is to have its pilots hit up passengers for tips.

Stunning.

Labor Day is the traditional start of the campaign season. We need to be working our asses off on that day and the days after to elect labor friendly candidates to public office. And once they're elected, we need to work our asses off holding them accountable to us. And we need to bust our humps organizing the unorganized. We need to continue the massive organizing efforts that have begun in the service sector, but we need to also organize the professions - a demographic group which is now starting to see the effects of proletarianization as the same logic which stripped the craftworkers of their autonomy and livelihoods begins its insidious assault upon the white-collar worker.

Stir shit up. And yeah, I'm pissed.