Today is the day we’re supposed to be celebrating Labor. Yet for most workers in the US today, those working part time, working without benefits, without job security, the working poor, there is really not much to celebrate.
I remember in my high school, there were other options for those who did not wish to continue their academic careers and go onto college. As described in this Forbes article, many of those choices have been removed from our high schools. http://www.forbes.com/...
There used to be a time when a family could be supported by one adult working full time. Benefits were supplied by the company, health insurance kicked in after 30-90 days of work. Pensions were guaranteed. A regular 40 hour work week meant time for families to be together. It meant you could buy a home, take a vacation, put money away for your kids to go to college. None of these benefits came easily. Before unions, laborers suffered terrible working conditions Young children were sent to work to help support poor families. People worked long hours without breaks, in dangerous conditions. Does anyone remember the recent Bangladesh factory collapse? http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/... Just a hundred years ago, American workers suffered the same working conditions. http://www.history.com/... For a look at the suffering of the American worker and the control that corporate owners had over their lives, look up the Ludlow Massacre. The murder of innocent people, including women and children by state authorities at the request of a Rockefeller is a permanent part of our history that has been hidden from us. These are the people who fought and died for worker’s rights.
Workers in this country always suffered terrible working conditions, until they finally got together and formed unions. With the unity and strength in numbers, they were able to form a united voice to challenge the large corporate masters to force the issue of human dignity, demanding livable working conditions and a decent wage. These victories were not won easily, for many put their bodies and their lives on the line to earn these rights. No victory for the poor is ever won by gentle persuasion. Most times, blood was shed. Many times, entire families were slaughtered.
Today’s workers are suffering terrible conditions, and corporate profits and CEO wages are at an all time high. We are increasing the number of working poor in this country, those who work full time yet still have the need to go on public assistance for food to feed their families. Corporations have found ways to avoid certain responsibilities to American workers. They now force workers onto part time shifts, just beneath the required hours to offer health care. Corporations have figured out how to cut down their labor and require workers to do the work of what used to take many workers. Our good paying factory jobs have been shipped overseas to countries that still allow their populations to be exploited the way our workers were exploited 100 years ago.
When the large factories leave their communities to exploit workers in other countries, the communities are left devastated. With no reliable jobs, there’s no money to be spent, so small businesses close down. Towns are literally left to die.
In many communities, Wal-Marts set up shop, the large superstore with the bottom of the barrel prices. Wal-Marts force any competition out of business, regularly shutting down local small business owners who cannot keep up with the low pricing. Many times, good union jobs are lost as industry jobs such as the grocery store worker, once earning a decent wage and good benefits, is cut down to a part time, minimum wage job that offers no benefits. Families have to rely on more than one part time job to keep up with basic needs. Many have to rely on food stamps to feed their families.
It should be no surprise that many workers are living below poverty levels. Where does all this corporate profit come from? Where are these CEOs earning record profits from? Of course, we already know where the money comes from- directly from the pockets of the American worker. Cuts in wages and benefits are all cuts to bottom line expenses, all going back to profits for the corporate masters. Add in our corporate friendly government who offer endless benefits to Corporations, the worker is left to fend for themselves. Few workers have the protections that unions once offered.
We have the talking heads on television who blame the poor for their current conditions. Get a better job, they claim, as if such a thing were so easy. Hey, I could live on $130 a month on food stamps, claimed one ignorant news caster. Just think what it will do to your waistline! The suffering is blamed on poor choices instead of poor conditions trickled down from corporate board rooms.
This is devastating our American families. Single parents suffer much more than families who have two working adults bringing in paychecks, but either way, kids are left at home alone because working parents are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Staying home to raise a family seems like a distant memory to many couples as both are required to be in the workplace. Stable, reliable childcare is difficult to find, and usually is an extremely high cost to the working family. The stress endured by the working family adds to the family dynamic, adding to the struggles for families to maintain loving homes as worries about meeting the needs of basic living expenses are difficult to achieve. Parents have to work through illnesses because they don’t have paid sick days. Workers have to work while injured because they can’t afford to take time off. Forget about vacation time, those luxuries are a thing of the past.
The decimation of the middle class has been a terrible reality of our current corporate and governmental policies. Our workers are being reduced to terrible working conditions and poverty wages, and few are speaking up for them. At the anniversary for Dr. Martin Luther King’s March On Washington, not much was said about the working poor. We have millions in need of food stamps, and yet our government allows these food stamps to be cut for the benefit of corporations who are allowed endless tax loopholes, taking their profits and storing them down in the Caymans. Trillions of dollars that belong back in this country, that should be paid to American workers to earn a decent wage, should be used to rebuild our infrastructure, should be invested in our schools, should be used to pay for universal healthcare in this country. Instead, trillions are making interest for corporate entities and billionaires who seek to take whatever is left of the wealth in this country.
The trillions taken from the American people in cuts to wages, cuts to benefits, cuts to improving our infrastructure, cuts to our schools, cuts to our government services, cuts to the needy in food stamps and school lunches, cuts to meals on wheels that feed our homebound elderly, cuts to social programs, theft through predatory banksters, theft from a manipulated mortgage crisis, this all represents the Great Theft of America. The American Dream is not dead so much as it’s been stolen in the middle of the night by the great corporate thieves who would leave the American citizen to die from hunger, from thirst, from choking on poisonous air and left to rot in the desert created from the climate change that will eventually doom the human species.
Time to wake up, America. Time to take our dreams back from those greedy thieves.