Wage Frustration

Title of the diary is not about me. Although I would guess that pretty much anyone that reads a blog probably wishes their wages were higher, and is thus frustrated.

A few bits of the ridiculous from this week's latest thrashing over our fundamentally mis-structured economy, relating to wages...

We have corporate executives who make literally thousands, tens of thousands of dollars per hour who run massive companies into the ground because of supremely short-sighted vision, lack of business sense, and the strategic direction of lemmings. They get mildly berated because they didn't fly commercial. And they'll still retire rich after being part of the class and type of thinking that messed up this country's economy and destroyed our productive capacities. But no one is considering the utter absurdity of the existence of this type of 'work' and set of wages.

On the other hand, there are union workers that have been faithfully executing the demands of the corporations who employ them for decades. Along the way, they bargained collectively for what used to be the uniquely American private social safety net and set wage levels for many industries. They gave up concessions left and right as the corporations for which they work sputtered along because of poor management (it has not been labor costs that sunk the auto industry, it's been strategic blindness). Yet we have people lambasting those "greedy" union workers for aspiring to turn work into real gains in the pocketbook.

Does something seem totally off to you about this?

It does to me.

For decades, the American public has been fed a steady diet of anti-union propaganda through the filer of an overarching philosophy of neoliberalism and conservatism. So people are primed to think unions and union workers are part of the problem. Actually, they're part of the solution. Unions capture gains in national wealth for those who create it. And if more people supported labor and labor struggles, all workers would benefit. So instead of blaming unions for the mess autos and other industries are in, we should place blame where it lays, and we should look to what can be done to build a stronger and more robust economy from the ground up. This includes a re-structuring of relationships between markets, government, and people and it includes fostering greater numbers of unionized workers and higher union density rates within industries as well as the workforce at large.

There is a great labor economics argument for how this will help the economy as a whole, but I have neither the time nor capacity to run through it all right now. Perhaps in the future. Suffice it to say for now that we should be outraged nationally on how blame and aspersions are being placed on unions and union workers - while we essentially let off the hook the economic model and real perpetrators of the economic crimes being committed. As a logical corollary, we should not be trying to put together "solutions" to the crisis in the auto industry (and it is industry-wide, not just about Detroit) that place the burdens on the backs of workers. It's foolish and it's wrong.