How many stockbrokers, lawyers, bankers, accountants, or aluminum siding salesmen would turn down a big, fat pay raise if it came with strings attached? What if accepting that raise was contingent upon future new-hires being denied the opportunity to earn those same wages? Would they make a personal sacrifice for these unsuspecting, future employees -- reject a pay raise as a matter of principle -- or would they take the money and run? My guess is that most would take the money.
And yet we hear the pejorative term "sell-out" applied to union negotiators who agree to two-tier arrangements. Under a two-tier wage/benefit schedule, new-hires can never receive the same compensation as those employees already on the payroll. We hear "sell-out" applied to the UAW (United Auto Workers), and, unfortunately, we hear it applied with little or no understanding of how ferociously the union resisted it, or how forcefully the two-tier configuration was crammed down their throats.
Look at the record. First of all, no one but organized labor categorically opposes the two-tier system. That's because only organized labor has the ideological and institutional solidarity to generate that opposition. Second, unions are known to have risked their own economic well-being by designating the two-tier as a "strike issue." Again, ask yourself how many bankers would willingly put themselves at risk to help future bankers? And third, the history of collective bargaining shows that those unions who accepted the two-tier were dragged to that decision, kicking and screaming.
I've sat at the bargaining table when the two-tier was broached. It's an insidious negotiating device. To begin with, the company comes at you with a steamroller. They paint a dreadful economic picture, one colored with dire scenarios of massive takeaways, lay-offs, even plant closures. In the case of the UAW, the companies' woes were already public knowledge. Everyone knew Detroit was getting creamed by Japan, and that the UAW had lost over a million members, reducing it to a shell of its former self.
Management tells you that they're sinking, that they need help, that they need a lifeline. It's terrible news. The picture is dark; prospects are dark; the meeting room itself seems to palpably darken. Then, suddenly, a ray of light.... when they announce that there's a way out of this mess, a way that won't require pay cuts, or penalties, or furloughs, or layoffs, or increased medical premiums.
If the union will allow the company to low-ball all future employees, the company will promise not to penalize any existing employees. Simple as that. Everyone not only gets to keep all the goodies they currently have, but there might even be a modest pay raise in the piece. All they have to do is allow the company to change the way they compensate new-hires. But the company also somberly warns the union: If they reject this two-tier proposal, those necessary cost savings will have to come out of the membership's own hide.
When the union presents its standard objections -- that these draconian steps aren't necessary, that they're contrived, that they aren't fair, that they're un-American, that they'll be resented, etc. -- the company reminds us that no one presently on the payroll, not one single person, will be affected by this arrangement, that it only applies to hypothetical workers, to "fictitious" workers, to workers who don't technically even "exist."
They make it sound eminently reasonable. They remind the union that if any potential new-hire examines the contract and doesn't like what he sees in the two-tier arrangement, he's free to walk away and find work elsewhere. After all, it's a free country. No one's going to be forced to do anything or sign on to anything that doesn't make absolute sense to them. In other words, it's your classic win-win situation.
But make no mistake. By acknowledging that the beleaguered UAW had its back against the wall, no one is suggesting that the two-tier is defensible, because it's not. Indeed, it's unfair, it's extortionate, it kills morale, it erodes solidarity, and, ultimately, it betrays you, because even after you agree to it (against your better judgment), the company continues to chip away at your wages and benefits -- as if you never agreed to anything.
The two-tier is an abomination. But the problem isn't how to identify it; the problem is how the heck do you stop it from finding its way into a union contract.
The job declension that exists today resembles something like this (listed in declining order):
Full-time, fully paid and fully benefited workers
Two-tier workers (lesser pay, lesser benefits)
Common jobs (mediocre pay, occasional benefits; Walmart)
Perma-temps (sufficient hours, no benefits)
Temps (spotty work, no benefits)
Undocumented workers (less than federal min. wage, no benefits, victimization)
Part-time workers (supplemental income, no bennies)
Day-laborers (low pay, no bennies, no guaranteed work)
Panhandlers
Clearly, those who have it best are the men and women employed in full-time jobs at decent pay with good benefits (e.g., union workers in a big-time manufacturing plant). Correspondingly, those who have it the worst are the guys, usually Spanish-speakers, who hang out at Home Depot looking for pick-up jobs.
That top category, where people make decent wages and enjoy good benefits, used to be considered standard procedure in America. No one really felt it was that big a deal. After all, good jobs were what this country was supposed to be all about. Today those "regular" jobs are considered a luxury. That's how far we've fallen.
David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author ("It's Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor"), was a former labor union rep. He can be reached at Dmacaray@earthlink.net
For those of you who do not know about the adjunct system...they are "part-time" faculty earning $10-12/hr. with no benefits. They in fact make up 2/3 of the nation's faculty. It is a result of higher education adopting the Walmart-model with faculty compensation to save money.
Some teach nine courses across multiple campuses to make ends meet. They have no professional status and are renewed semester to semester.
It is a disgrace and unsustainable.
The administrators at most colleges and universities are apparently pretty well heeled, though.
The problem is that as we look for solutions at this late date we find that there are no solutions. The infrastructure that could have been relied on to pull us out of this morass is no longer there.
Our decline has nothing to do with the free market and everything to do with global plans for a modern free trade zone world. Without thinking about the consequences, our leaders have worked hard to construct the ideal conservative laissez faire interconnect between countries and cultures without understanding the ramifications of leaving behind the protective tariffs that have protected workers and economies for 150 years. But no other country bought the system whole except the US. We alone are undefended as the world has suddenly turned vicious in pursuit of the ultimate soverign good, not profits but domestic manufacturing jobs.
We have been fighting and losing an economic war without even knowing that we were under attack. Like 9/11, the jobs war was somehow unimaginable and caught us unaware. The idea that capitalism could ever be used as a weapon against us is still inconceivable to the ideolog elite who run our country.
I strenuously object, though, to your so-called "job declension." You place "panhandlers" on the lowest rung of a ladder of workers.
Never. Absolutely not. Each level of labor is someone doing his or her best, doing what can be done and what has to be done. The panhandler does not rate that honor, for all work is honorable. The panhandler has given up. .
http://dailycaller.com/2010/04/09/poll-57-think-next-generation-will-be-worse-off/
Union membership is at a 70 year low.......
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/22union.html?_r=1
The rich are getting richer, faster, then ever before in US history..............
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rep/elite-getting-richer.html
I guess that's a problem with this "new digitized computer age".
They did away with children's games..........and books.
Seems only us old timers now have the ability to "connect the dots",