Oh I’ve been looking at my last few entry’s and I have to admit I appear a little angry. I hope the word curmudgeon isn’t on the tip of your tongue. Don’t paint me with that brush; I’m too young and too pretty to be an angry old man. Am I in denial?

The Simple Green for our times, denial, the all purpose cleaner; The economy isn’t so bad; look at Wall Street. Things will get better in the new year. We’re all in this together. Compromise is the ticket. I won’t rock the boat; I shall become the next millionaire. And last but not least, I’m just going through a ‘dry spell.’

So I’m not a curmudgeon, I’m a hopeful young man just going through a bit of a social/economic dip. And in this minor swale I’m learning. I’m a product of excess and by falling behind in consumerism I’ve angered god. I now as penance for my dwindling income I’ve proved that I don’t deserve health care and unemployment and a steady income or new socks. Hell if you were on the right side of god you’d be healthy and if you’re not, eschew muni and walk up them hills. About work and money; my ex-fatherinlaw used to advise, “Get a job ya bum ya.” And in getting back to basics, I’m learning to damn/darn my most holy socks.

Joyfully, I’m getting into our twenty-first century zeitgeist. I’m enjoying my apartment watching DVD’s and eating popcorn five nights a week. Who needs to look for work when there is Facething waiting to ambush and smother the productive impulse in it’s fuzzy, warm embrace. “Oh look at all the fun my countless friends have had over the holiday….” As product of the twentieth century I can’t in good conscience do Netflix when the Film Yard is six blocks away. Crazy as this sounds, I buy local and walk to the shop. I may never finish my ablutions if I keep on like this but I’m skeptical about a two ton SUV for twenty pounds of groceries; I ride my bike and carry the produce in the basket. I buy books from Green Apple (I’ll give up restaurants rather than books). Local eliminates stores based either in ether or in hell. If I don’t buy from stores connected to a satellite the less I have to buy. Sort of a win/win thing for a grumpy guy. If I were grumpy. I’m not grumpy. My frown is upside down. Oh my goodness, my giggle pin has worked loose at the prospect of a Happy New Year. Curmudgeon my ass.

How's that working for ya?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/business/23prichard.html

Prichard, Alabama. Failed town, gutted pensions.

Here is the deal. The bosses, those who hire and fire and make the big money, are more familiar with contracts than workers. The bosses agree to and sign work and pension agreements. They know full well what they are signing, even if they don’t intend to fulfill their end of the contract. The bosses want your labor.

Another part of the deal is this; the bosses get your labor first. Afterward the worker is paid. Benefits are paid months later. Now, who is taking the risk? But labor is always portrayed as the bully, the thugs, the union bosses. When businesses fail because of mismanagement, or municipalities renege for the same reason, you can't take back your labor. Under the guise of suspicion, a worker is seems, needs her good faith enforced under the hammer of dismissal; she can be fired. There is no equal lever to hold the corporate and municipal bosses to their bargain, the workers only recourse is to withhold labor by striking in mass or, not as effective, to quit alone. Sometimes, maybe more than we want to believe, the bosses sign these contracts knowing that they will not honor it. As a union bricklayer I remember many pay and benefit “give backs” starting from Reagan’s era of anti- labor, anti-unionism. The first I recall was the San Francisco Bricklayers returned one dollar an hour that had been signed for less than a year earlier; we gave our wages and benefits to the contractors. The contractors maintained their profit margins. A vindictive labor force could have struck, this was breach of contract. But we were fed the line from our union that helping the contractors was helping ourselves. The mason contractors don’t view things the same way. The refrain from brick contractors is, “Anyone can be a bricklayer…” Though we’ve made some of these men rich, we’re expendable.

2010 would seem the perfect time to organize a disgruntled and demoralized workforce. But a lot of our work has been off shored or automated out of existence. And the Reagan Babies, who have come into the workforce since the eighties, with the non stop drum roll of market economics and anti-laborism, were raised essentially non-union. Reagan/Bush/Chaney era distortions of labor leaders is similar to Nazi era characterizations of Jews. Labor has become the other, and by extension; enemy. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” No matter what color your collar everyone who works for a paycheck is labor; a fact that high tech Americans tend to forget. Yahoo laid off seven thousand individuals last week.

Labor strikes are reckoned by conservatives as treasonable, media doesn’t dispel this. And American workers look on the general strikes in France and Greece with longing and bemused horror. When push comes to shove, we know too well who has the upper hand; we can be disappeared from the workforce as quietly as the stroke of a pen.

The gloves are off, anti-worker sentiment in the form of obfuscation on the health care debate, the continued push to privatize Social Security, the Citizens United gift to corporations, and the unrepentant anti-government, anti-regulation mythology rains down on workers unabated. And the Supreme Court is five-four in the corporate pocket. Meanwhile, workers pension funds which through mutual funds buoyed wall street and the bubble economy, are going broke. Real people, working people who have already given their labor are hurting bad.

Sarah Palin might say in her chirpy nasty voice, "How's that workin for ya?"

We Are All Workers

I have no axe to grind with other working people. Lately I’ve been hearing that we need to pay freeze the workers in the public sector, that they make too much money, that they are protected by unions and their “bosses” and those protections are not fair.

What isn’t fair is that the rhetoric has devolved so that union members; bus drivers, teachers, civil servants of all stripe, what’s left of the auto workers, and anyone fortunate enough to have a collective bargaining agreement with attendant benefits, are the target of animosity by those in the private sector. Those still working in the private sector are getting steamrollered into longer hours, less pay, loss of benefits and the constant fear of lay off’s. Unemployed workers are targeted by those barely hanging on for their ‘free money’ instead of the puppet masters pulling the strings. In doing a google search for union advocacy I found a web page called “Union Facts” whose purpose is to destroy unions. Union Facts talks with authority about how union non secret certification ballots aren’t fair never mentioning that secret ballots have been discounted by the corporations as fraudulent. Unfortunately the unions have found open ballots as the only recourse.

Union Facts is located in suite 800 on 1090 Vermont Ave. in Washington, DC. as is the “Center for Consumer Freedom” which is in the same suite as “Berman and Company.” Berman is fond of discrediting the “liberal agenda.” Of course he fails to say who pays for the very slick web sites and the claimed thirty staff members. His web site touts, “The Power to Change the Debate.” Richard Berman and his ilk have done that. Instead of working people demanding from those who gained the most from our bubble capitalism to release George Bush’s governmental welfare, we hear from conservative Capital Hill that it isn’t fair that one sector (those making more than $200,000) lose their tax refund and while others ( the vast majority of Americans) get a break. We hear that union elections are not fair. When the barista in my local cafe asks, “How are we going to pay the national debt” or “I guess we needed to step away and recalibrate” instead of asking about who screwed us in the first place, something is wrong. That anyone could link the out of work masses to the incompetence of the wealthy seems a contortion of the most nimble yogi.

We now have a vast sea of labor talent to be used by the powers that be to tamp down wages and benefits. And slowly this is beginning to dawn on all whose income is based on income rather than interest. Forget the term, middle class, NPR did a survey asking American if they were and what constitutes middle class, everyone considered themselves middle class; the range fell between $30,000 to $250,000. What does this mean? As Americans we fall prey to the myth of rugged individualism we all yearn for the company of the middle. But there is no safety in the middle. Yahoo just laid off seven thousand employees. Workers of all stripes are look over their shoulders see their out of work brethren, desperate enough to take a job, any job, for less. Worker’s misguided reflective anger stems from exhaustion and the fear that the organized workers may be gaming workers slicked into believing that they are ‘associates’ in a corporation or ‘contractors’ free to do what ever they want. That workers now talk with anguished concern about budget deficits they didn’t create, wars they didn’t start instead of the grand bonus’s and stock options they didn’t and will never receive is a result of spin misters like Berman. The advantaged tout unctuous lobbying assistance and dictate the terms of the ultimatum; no extended unemployment unless the rich continue to gut the government. With their tax rewards the few of great wealth hire the likes of Berman and Company to further “Change the Debate.”