Are you working class? Certainly not, if you are a member of the aristocracy, or its equivalent in America… one of the great merchant families such as  the Rockefellers, Fords, Vanderbilts and so forth.

Are you a landlord, living off of land rents and real estate? Happy you, if you are, and you’re not over-leveraged. But if this is not the case are you the owner of a major industrial enterprise or a financial mega-corporation? No?  Oh, sorry about that.

I guess that leaves  a small manufacturing operation with a handful of employees, or a small business, which is great so long as a Walmart or a giant manufacturing operation doesn’t force you out of business, and then you know what, boyo?..

…you’re a member of the working class. If you’re a wage earner with no control of your working conditions or wages, if you can be fired at will with no recourse and deprived of the right to collective bargaining then you are for sure a member of the working class, working for wages, even if you’re a highly paid middle manager for a corporation you don’t own.

Labor Unions are as American as apple pie but over the past thirty years their power has been clawed back by business interests and their political allies. The argument has been, “Well we needed unions once, in the bad old days, but we don’t need them any more.”

In good times, with a little home of their own and a bass boat parked in the driveway even many union members suckered for this argument  figuring they didn’t need union protection or union dues anymore. Sweatshops, eleven-hour days, inadequate wages and wretched or dangerous working conditions are largely a thing of the past. The result is we tend not to notice or care about Capitalism’s continuous attack on the power and even the existence of the union movement. This is not a good thing.

A union is the average hourly worker’s only defense against the economic power of a system that always tries to buy raw materials at the lowest possible price. It’s not dumb, if you’re an hourly wage person, to remember you’re just so much raw material to that system.

The union maid and her guy aren’t opposed to Capitalism. If you stop and think about it, the fact is that just the opposite is true. These folks simply want to behave exactly like all the other links in the capitalist chain of supply and demand. All they ask for is the right to bargain for the price they get for their labor and the conditions under which it is supplied.

Why should they be the only players in the game denied that right?

Most of us are working class and we need the union movement more than ever.

Happy Labor Day!

There is more to May Day than a trip around the maypole. Today is International Worker’s Day, when we remember, and celebrate, battles fought and won by the American labor movement.

On the 2nd of November in 1909, during what became known as the “Uprising of the 20,000,” female garment workers went on strike in New York. Many were arrested and a judge told those arrested: “You are on strike against God.”

Wow…who’d have guessed?

There’s nothing unpatriotic about the union movement; it’s as American as apple pie.  Boston carpenters walked off the job in April of 1825 in the interest of a 10-hour workday. Ten years later, children working in the silk mills in Patterson, New Jersey went on strike. Of course they had an outrageous demand: A six-day workweek of eleven hour days.

Sweatshops, eleven-hour days, inadequate wages and wretched or dangerous working conditions are largely a thing of the past. The result is we tend not to notice or care about Capitalism’s continuous attack on the power and even the existence of the union movement. This may not be a good thing.

A union is the average hourly worker’s only defense against the economic power of a system that always tries to buy raw materials (that’s you, oh my brothers and sisters) at the lowest possible price. It’s not dumb, if you’re an hourly wage person, to remember you’re just so much raw material to that system.

May Day Events Today:

9:00 Annual Tucson May 1st Coalition March for Immigrant and Workers Rights, from Greyhound Park Parking lot to Armory Park for a Noon rally with speakers, entertainment and info booths.

Afterwards, join Occupy Tucson at Armory Park for extended fun, entertainment, potluck, and other activities, well into the evening.

Michael Moore, in his recent post about the Republican attack on the air traffic controllers union thirty years ago, finishes with the  suggestion that internet petitions and tweets are not going to fight the continuing attacks on the poor by an increasingly corporatist state.

Have we all just given up? What are we waiting for? Forget about the 20% who support the Tea Party — we are the other 80%! This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they’ve done in Wisconsin). Some of you need to run for local office next year. We need to demand that the Democrats either get a spine and stop taking corporate money — or step aside.

Italics mine. Get out in the streets. Are we finally angry enough for massed civil disobedience, general strikes, and non-violent occupation of corporations that either don’t pay their taxes, or are significantly under-taxed?

I don’t really know, but the impulse to such actions seems to be growing. If you’re interested in taking direct action Moore suggests you look at two groups.

The first of these is the October 2011 organization, which is calling for a mass gathering October 6th in Washington DC’s Freedom Plaza.

A Call to Action – Oct. 6, 2011 and onward

October 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the 2012 federal austerity budget. It is time to light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions.

We call on people of conscience and courage—all who seek peace, economic justice, human rights and a healthy environment—to join together in Washington, D.C., beginning on Oct. 6, 2011, in nonviolent resistance similar to the Arab Spring and the Midwest awakening.

The details are available on the website October2011.org.

Another of Moore’s suggestions is that you might want to look in on a move to occupy Wall Street. This strikes me as a rather more quixotic undertaking,  more like conceptual art, than realizable street protest. Nevertheless the idea of trying to get 20,000 people to set up a mass camp with tents and kitchens in Wall Street tickles me.

Even if this is no more than a satyrical send-up the very threat would shiver the conservative peace of mind. (Their capacity for believing in spooks  and goblins is almost unlimited.)

You may visit www.occupywallst or get the picture at the Ad Busters web site.

Related Post: Tucson Progressive, “Poverty, unemployment, unions, the ‘beast’ … and you.”