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NEWS & LETTERS, November 2002
Workshop TalksYouth to pay price
by Htun Lin We live in a world that robs from its own future
generations. Fanatical mullahs and presidents tell the young to strap bombs on
their own bodies or carry an M-16 rifle to go off to kill the young of the
"enemy.” When schools or nurseries are destroyed by bombs intended
for Saddam or bin Laden, we call it "collateral damage.” So what if such
collateral damage outnumbers the intended target by 100,000 to one? We fret and
wring our hands over the drive-by shootings committed by our young, but what
about mass atrocities committed by our leaders? We rob from the young in other ways. In 1986, we hospital
workers fought management's introduction of a two-tier wage by striking for
eight weeks. The union officials settled behind our backs. We were stuck with a
15%, two-tier wage structure but a bonus for existing employees. That's how
bosses get us to rob from future generations of workers. They bribe us. When they're successful, it begins the slow but certain
process of robbing from the future ranks of our union membership. Not only
enthusiasm but also the raw numbers of union membership begin to decline.
Workers begin to ask, especially young ones, "Why do I have to pay union
dues?" Why should the youth be excited about joining a union which
has robbed from their future? The AFL-CIO national organization likes to brag
about the way of life of the American family, "brought to you by
unions." While that is certainly true, what the AFL-CIO has done in the
last few decades supports that "lifestyle" by directly helping the
bosses rob from the health and welfare of the young and future workers. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the majority of the 40
million uninsured workers in America are either female or Black, or both, but
most definitely young. This is our nation’s collateral damage. After a two-tier system was established in my shop in 1986,
more and more new recruits were added to the lower tier of the company's
payroll--many of them hired from subcontracting agencies. The employer also
gradually let go us older workers on the higher tier by re-engineering the
workplace. You can't even call us a union shop, because of all the
animosity and alienation from young workers. Our company and union bosses tell
us daily to smile and provide "excellent service," because we're in a
partnership. They're in partnership with each other, not us. Our world is not just two-tier, but worse--a permanent
three--tier society. The first tier consists of vested workers with full
benefits and higher wages. The second tier consists of lower-paid workers
without benefits that management likes to call casuals. The third tier exists
outside the shop, within the ranks of the chronically unemployed, who may have
given up looking for a job and are dropped from unemployment statistics. Marx
called this capital's "reserve army." Permanently left out, they will
also be capital's future gravediggers. Marx wrote in CAPITAL that, after the employer has paid for
his machines, supplies, and living labor, so that the worker can come back to
work another day, everything else is surplus value that the employer keeps as
profit. Marx said the boss keeps more of that surplus value by keeping the cost
of living labor low. This he can do either by stretching the length of the
workday or by trimming the existing workforce while keeping production high at
the pace set by the machines. In other words, we (living labor) must be
constantly dominated by "dead labor" (machines). Workers call this speed-up. It's deadly because we workers
pay for it with our lives. Hundreds of healthcare workers die each year from
AIDS, hepatitis, and other diseases contracted on the job. Thousands more are
disabled by back injuries, needle-sticks, patient assaults, or mental and
physical breakdown from constant overwork and speed-up. Some union officials cheapen our lives when they use this
issue only as a "corporate campaign" slogan, as a ploy during contract
bargaining. But this life and death issue is real for us, not just political. We can no longer tolerate our union leaders claiming
success when they trade away the future of our union just to get us a little
more money. All value in the world is created by us workers. No one should take
credit for giving some of it back to us. Especially not by robbing from the next
generation of workers. Most important, we can no longer allow them to give away our job security for more loot. We ultimately pay with our lives and limbs when the bosses speed us up to recover that loot. It is high time we workers reminded our officials that without us, the workers, there is no union. And, without the youth, there is no future. |
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