Voices from the Inside Out

Women workers in Bush's U.S.

by Robert Taliaferro

The following  is a synopsis of a small, unscientific survey that was conducted by the writer. The references below are an encapsulated result of that informal survey and are in no way intended to represent the conditions of one specific individual.

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To look at her, you'd see a proud middle-aged woman with dyed red hair to cover the gray. At 49 she could almost pass for a model. She likes to dress well, though can only afford to buy clothes at thrift shops.

When she stands close you can see a tiredness in her eyes that saddens you, but it's her hands that tell the true story of her life. She wears fake nails to hide the chipped and cracked remnants of her own fingernails. Her fingers are covered with cuts and bruises that seem never to heal; they are blotted with super glue to ease the pain and provide a covering for those cuts, allowing her to keep working despite the pain.

This woman is one of millions of working poor in this country, people whom the government uses to pad its statistics of how well America works. This representative of her class works in manufacturing, the only job that she can hold with a limited education and job skills. She's also a second-generation parent to her grandson, raising him after she raised her own two children as a single parent. She's only been on welfare for six months of the 33 years that she has worked, and is proud of that fact, and she spends her leisure time wondering if she will have a job the next day.

To exacerbate the lack of funds, she--like many women in low-paying manufacturing jobs--must suffer gender abuse at the workplace, some subtle, some not so subtle. There seems to be an unspoken rule that silence maintains employment, and she cannot afford to lose her job for any reason.

The survey found that small manufacturing companies are particularly notorious in how they treat their female employees. We often are abhorred at sweatshop conditions overseas and yet small companies--in order to make ends meet--often employ the same sweatshop mentality with American workers, especially those who are poor and particularly those who are female.

Union is a five-letter word that can result in immediate termination. As one respondent noted, "I did not know that I was such a poor employee until I mentioned the word 'union' at work."  The result was a termination for cause based on negative performance.

In non-union small manufacturing companies, workers are subject to near-dictatorial conditions, often required to work ten-hour days on a moment's notice; have improper (if any) safety equipment. They are often replaced when they challenge the conditions, often for real or imagined infractions that are only referenced if there is a complaint lodged, and retirement is out of the question.

POVERTY RATES FOR WOMEN DOUBLE

Currently 3.6 million people over the age of 65 live below the federal poverty line, and the poverty rates for working poor women and minorities is double that rate or worse.

Women referenced in this article earn much less than their male counter-parts at the same low-paying jobs. Only a few have ever participated in a pension plan, and only one out of 50 has a viable health care plan that costs her nearly one-third of her salary. As she noted, she can't afford NOT to have the plan. A retirement plan is out of the question because it would require taking money from her check that she can ill afford to lose.

Today, only one in five workers in the category of "working poor" is covered by any defined pension or benefit plan. Even in the middle class, only 39% of families with incomes between $25,000 and $49,000 a year participate in a defined retirement plan.

Of the individuals referenced in this piece, not one has given a thought to retirement, and as one 65-year-old Wal-Mart employee noted, "I'll be working till I'm 100 or till I can't walk no more...I can't afford not to...and I don't even think about getting sick."

In MARXISM AND FREEDOM, Raya Dunayevskaya stated, "Labor is first of all the function of man. But labor UNDER CAPITALISM is the very specific function of man working at machines to which he becomes a mere appendage. His labor, therefore, is not the SELF-activity, the creative function it was under primitive communism where, in mastering nature, man had also developed his own natural capacities and talents. Labor in the factory is ALIENATED LABOR." (56)

Alienated labor abounds in Bush's America. It's an irony that the lower the unemployment rate goes, the more sweatshop conditions abound for the working poor, who must ignore these conditions if they wish to maintain what little fiscal security they have.

Yet there is hope in many that their lives will change--one day--for the better, a hope that we find in the archives of News and Letters Committees, in the words of Felix Martin. "I...see the unity of working people" he said, "...being the type of force which can change what is going on; which can provide ideas coming from the rank and file for taking control of their life and labor." (THE REVOLUTIONARY JOURNALISM OF FELIX MARTIN, p. 28)

WORKING POOR NEED BETTER LIFE

Today, tomorrow, next year, it is an imperative that the working poor be given a better way to live, so that super glue does not become a common replacement for good working conditions, and so that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not attributes that are defined by a person's wealth in any given society.

Workers should dictate the conditions in which they work, for without them there is no commerce; there is no economy. As Felix noted in 1994, "Workers are thinkers; they don't need to be led. Every worker is an organizer." (TRJFM, p.94)