Working For a Living II: Labor's Day

The story's always the same

Seven hundred tons of metal a day

Now sir you tell me the world's changed

Once I made you rich enough

Rich enough to forget my name

From “Youngstown”  Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen.

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
From “Solidarity Forever”  Lyrics by Ralph Chaplin

Maybe this year we should call it Labor's Day; own it.  Maybe those of us who are the worker bees should claim it back.  Look to the roots of what the holiday should be about. At one time it celebrated the worker; the worker who fought hard for fair treatment and a fair wage in exchange for the sweat on his brow.  We’ve regressed.  Now it’s just another day off.  How poetic it would be if only the workers got the day off and the CEOs and their high level brethren had to do, just for one day, what the minions do every day and do it thanklessly.  I dare say the first thing that would happen is that they would fuck it up horribly ( Because, "Without our brain and muscle not a single wheel would turn.").

It’s Labor Day weekend.  Summer is waning, the days are getting noticeably and depressingly shorter, cutting down on evening’s activities.  There’s that nip in the air that wasn’t there a couple short weeks before.  Football is muscling its loutish self onto baseball and Halloween decorations and candy bags have replaced the pool toys and water guns on the store shelves.  Unless you’re in Florida or Cancun you probably couldn’t find a swimsuit on a department store rack to save your life and pretty soon you’ll find, and I shudder at the thought, Christmas decorations.  Orchard Supply has closed out the patio furniture and the fireplace sets have taken their place.  Some kids have been back in school for a couple of weeks now.

When I was a kid Labor Day weekend meant the last few precious days of freedom.  School didn’t start until after the Labor Day holiday.  Families could have a last long hurrah before the school routine began.    Baseball season was winding down and before 1969 when the format changed, the World Series would be over in little more than a month.  There were no playoffs; just an American League Champ and a National League Champ and they met in the first week of October.  By the 10^th a new champion had been crowned.

Labor Day usually came concurrently with the new network TV shows.  There were three networks, ABC, NBC and CBS; no HBO, ESPN, FX, et al.  Summer was the rerun season and September brought in new episodes of surviving shows and brand new shows to replace the ones that had fallen by the wayside.  It was really quite exciting as the networks aired teasing trailers during the last few weeks of summer.  

When I was a kid the American worker was pretty sure of his job.  Many had worked in their jobs all their lives, often recruited by their parents who had been recruited by their parents.  Nobody knew what venture capital was; nobody worried about buyouts by investment firms.  America exported products not jobs.  Unless you were retiring you didn't go through the indignity of training your replacement.  Yeah Labor Day was then, another day off because you just knew that, even though the workplace wasn't perfect, even with the inequities, that on Tuesday the job would still be there.  Your job would still be there.  And you were pretty certain that if you kept your nose clean and did right by your employer your employer would do right by you and give you a raise. 

Labor Day is of course supposed to mean more than the last fling of summer, the final big barbeque and winterizing the pool.  It is supposed to be a day to honor labor and at one time it did just that.  It actually started not as a holiday but as a demonstration.  The first Labor Day Parade, unofficial as it was, took place on September 5^th, 1882, when 10,000 workers took unpaid time and marched from New York’s City Hall to Union Square.  It caught on and cities throughout the country took up the notion of a “workman’s holiday” on the first Monday in September.  States gradually granted recognition to the workingman’s day” and 12 years later Congress established the Labor Day Holiday.  It was a day set aside to honor the trades and labor organizations; a parade followed by festivals and picnics for workers and their families.

One hundred and thirty years later and the notion of honoring labor seems all but forgotten.  The mere mention of the fact that the founder of Labor Day was a union leader (both Peter J. McGuire, cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, and Matthew Maguire, a secretary of the Central Labor Union have been credited as founders) would probably elicit some sort of sneering indignation; “damned unions.”    

I never really gave Labor Day much of a second thought before.  Forty two years or so of being in the workforce (on and off) and I’m finally reflecting on it.  Maybe it’s because of an acrimonious Presidential Election this year (being carried out in a very non-Presidential manner) that’s focused largely on some aspects of labor; a slushy job market, high unemployment, so-called class warfare and an economy that’s chilly at worst and tepid at best.  Maybe it’s because I’ve taken closer note of the atmosphere of America’s workforce; noting my own experience and the experiences of others.  And what I’ve noted is that while we Americans have it better than many, it seems to me that, given the promise of America and what we should be as a nation, it could and should be better.  At times it can be downright depressing.

                Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, the paycheck; it’s why most of us work.  Otherwise it would be a hobby.  Sure the economy isn’t in great shape but it’s definitely better than it was 4 years ago.  Ask a CEO; and he’ll tell you so.  In 2011 the average CEO increase was 2%, not much to brag about but that comes on the heels of an average 27% in 2010 during a time when far too many Americans were struggling to find work. In the meantime the wages of the American worker have stagnated.  Median net worth is back to the levels of 1992; that year my two now grown children, with children of their own were still in elementary school.  And yet just about every CEO or manager is always ready to pull out of his bag of boilerplate bullshit some version of the “Our people are our most valuable asset,” speech.

                And while we’re on the subject of wage gaps, there’s still that pesky gender gap.  According to a recent University of Georgia study the gap, which has closed significantly, is still at six dollars an hour.  The question that remains is; why in 2012 is there a noticeable gap at all?  I have a partial answer and it has nothing to do with statistics but everything to do with attitudes.  I’ve heard the jokes and the opinions and the so called inappropriate remarks that tell me there are still some pretty Neanderthal beliefs out there. 

                And what about the minimum wage?  The federal minimum wage is now at $7.25 an hour.  Who can live off of that?  Oh yeah I’ve heard that argument that raising the minimum wage is just going to enrich teenage workers (Right. I’m sure that at $10.00 an hour the number of teens driving new Shelby Mustangs will go off the charts).  The problem is that more adults, with real adult responsibilities, are having to make do on the minimum wage.  According to a recent piece by Representative Dennis Kucinich, “The purchasing power of a worker earning minimum wage in 1968 is equal to $10-11 today. That means, at $7.25 an hour, workers today have less wage power than workers in 1968.”  To put this into a little perspective, I, a grandfather now, was in high school then. 

                Productivity is in the news a lot lately.  Were “gettin’ ‘er done” and that’s a great commentary on the American worker and it’s a hell of a deal for corporations.  Back in those really dark days of our economy companies found layoffs necessary.  And I get that.  With leaner staffing those workers still left in the ranks had to take on more work with more varied tasks.  Then the economy started to turn around and the logical thing that everyone thought would happen, hiring workers back, never did  Profits went up but now the corporations had learned a new trick.  If you can squeeze more out of your workforce when times are lean why not stay lean when times get flush.  Keep your employees multitasking and hire temporary and part time labor to take up some of the slack.  And if you want to know who is drawing a full house and who is getting the bad hand I refer you back to CEO increases versus worker stagnation.

                If you’re enjoying your ribs and corn on the cob at your Labor’s Day cookout you might want to hoist a glass in honor of your local union worker.  Do you like your weekend?  Your health benefits (such as they might be)?  Family and medical leave?  Overtime pay?  Do you like the fact that unfair, Draconian labor practices are no longer legal?  Do you like your holidays?  Thank the unions.  Do you think you got all of this because management miraculously developed a soft spot in the corporate heart?  I hearken back to Scrooge’s line in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, when Bob Cratchit  asks for Christmas Day off; ``And yet,'' said Scrooge, ``you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work.'' The clerk observed that it was only once a year. ``A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!''

                And yet union membership has declined since that first Labor Day and unions have been demonized as the cause of all of our economic woes.  A war is being waged against unions that threatens not only to undermine them but to eliminate them altogether.  And woe to those of us who are not union workers because just as many of our benefits came on the coattails of the unions our losses may follow those suffered by unions.

But beyond the statistics the workplace is not always a happy place; on the contrary it is sometimes a downright unpleasant place.  And it shouldn’t be.  It is after all where we spend most of our waking hours.  And while we as workers can and should go a long way towards improving the workplace atmosphere, it is management that needs to show the way.  Unfortunately the way is more and more in the direction of intimidation and impersonalization.    

Its most obvious form is the often unveiled specter that if you don’t get the job done, if you don’t like the extra work or the longer hours then there’s always someone on unemployment willing to fill your spot.  You like that laptop the company gave you?  They didn’t give it to you to surf porn and get up to date fantasy football stats.  That’s right – homework.  Turn off the ballgame and get that spreadsheet done. 

You know that boilerplate bullshit that I referred to earlier – “Our people are our assets?”  Well, the real assets are the equipment; that server, the molding machine, all those printers and PCs.  Be careful with those; they cost money.  Just like office equipment or machines workers are simply a means to an end but the difference is employees are replaceable at no extra charge beyond some training. 

And then there is that document that we all revere; The Constitution.   In the workplace it can be so much scratch paper because once you’ve clocked in your rights clock out.  Your employer wants to know just what you’re doing; not only on the clock but off.  They’ve asked for social networking passwords and even without it may be lurking without you knowing it.  They can track your movements with that company cell.  Have a political view?  You best just keep that to yourself.  Isn’t it darkly ironic that at the Jelly Belly Candy Company, corporate can lionize Ronald Reagan but if you have the temerity to sport an Obama bumper sticker you’ll need to park your car outside the lot; please and thank you.  Or you could be coerced by the brass to go to a GOP rally like the miners at the Murray Century coalmine in Ohio.  The company closed the mine, docked the workers a day’s pay and told them that attendance at the rally was mandatory.  Hell that cherished right to take a dump in peace can be shot;  Salon reports that, “employees at lower rungs of the economic ladder can be timed with stopwatches in the bathroom; stonewalled when they ask to go; given disciplinary points for frequent urination; even hunted down by supervisors with walkie-talkies if they tarry in the stalls.”  Makes you wonder if we’re in the good old U.S of A. or in the former East Germany.  I suppose I can be given my walking papers over this blog (And if I am then I suppose that it proves those corporate mucky-mucks have some bad literary taste). 

It’s a numbers game now.  Does it really count anymore that you might have some people skills and that special touch that develops good, lasting relationships with clients or vendors?  I’m starting to doubt it.  The company that I work for is developing a new system that will be tracking turnaround time and success rates for certain tasks and transactions.  And yes the notion is intimidating.  It will also be frustrating for some companies that have to deal with ours.  Are you doing it fast enough?  I recall an episode at my last workplace; an injection molder.  A group of engineers was gathered at one of the machines timing the process and the workers.  One of the engineers was holding a stopwatch; another, a clipboard.  I thought immediately back to a scene in the movie Schindler’s List in which a Nazi officer is timing a one of Schindler’s factory workers nervously making a hinge. 

My employer has been acquired by an investment firm.  If we were pawns before the buyout what are we now?  What are you when you’re less than a pawn?  I recently heard one of those “Our people are our assets,” talks.  It was accompanied by some clumsily veiled threat that if you aren’t on board with the new program then someone can be found who will be.  Of course the changes in the program might not include you.  I’ve been through that before.  At a certain point I got fed up with working scared.  I realized that there were more important things; a roof over my head (bought and paid for thank you), a loving wife two fantastic children and two grandchildren (now I have three).  The epiphany came to me as I was sitting in a park with my daughter in law before sunrise on a chilly morn, saving a spot for her daughter’s birthday party.  She was worried about an uncertain future and when I told her not to worry, that things would work out, that she had a strong safety net in family I realized that I could just as easily have been talking to myself.  So when the layoff came I was happy to be gone.  This time I’m not working scared; fine, fire me and fuck you.  I show up, give them a hard, honest day of work and realize that I’m not an asset and I really am just a means to their corporate end. 

This is a bleak picture for a Labor’s Day.  Workers have been marginalized, intimidated, brow beaten, intruded upon and worked to the bone.  The rewards that they work for are reaped by CEOs and other high level managers who often don’t even leave any scraps.  But what is really frightening is the fact that one of the candidates for the highest office in the land was a partner in one of those private equity, venture capital firms.  He was in the business of buying a firm and probably telling the workers that they were the real assets; right up until cutting them at the knees and shipping their jobs off to some foreign land.  And today he wants you to believe that he’s a friend of the middle class. 

My hope is that beginning this year we come to the realization of just what Labor Day is all about.  Claim it back.  That we start to think of it in terms of LABOR’S Day.  Go back to the notion that labor, the American worker really IS an asset and not a means to the shareholder’s ends.  The first step would be to tell the investment man who wants to be our nation’s CEO to take a hike and take his millions with him.  Where we go from there I don’t know.  But I do know that the economy will be better one day, we will turn the corner.  One day it will again be the employees market.  I may be retired then.  But I hope I see the day when labor gets up off the mat, grabs the CEO by the balls with one hand and that designer tie with the other, gives those marbles a vice grip squeeze and says; “Hey fucker, the worm just turned.”