A good article
by Ralph Nader today describing what has happened to
working people in recent years. He writes: “Labor Day is the ideal
time to highlight the hard-fought, historic victories already
enjoyed by American workers, and push for long-overdue health and
safety measures and increased economic benefits for those left
behind by casino capitalism. After all, it was the labor movement
in the early 20th century that brought us such advances as the
minimum wage, overtime pay, the five-day work week, the banning of
child labor and more. “The reality is that big corporations have
abandoned American workers by taking jobs and industries to
communist and fascist regimes abroad — regimes that oppress their
workers and enforce serf-level salaries and hideous working
conditions. America’s working men and women have also largely been
abandoned by the corporate dominated Republican and Democrat
two-party duopoly, whatever their rhetorical differences may be.
The federal minimum wage has been allowed to languish far behind
inflation as corporate bosses’ pay skyrockets. The gap between
worker salaries and CEO pay widens, even as worker productivity
rises. Corporate CEO’s in America make approximately 340 times more
than that of the average worker. In 1980, by comparison, CEO pay
was 42 times greater.” Meanwhile, in education, unions are being
crushed, and there is no one to advocate for them when the Governor
and Legislature cut the budget for education. Teachers get pink
slips, kids get larger classes and lose the arts, library, and much
else that used to be taken for granted as basic in American
schools.
A site to discuss education and democracy
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All good points, of course, about the value of our labor force and what has gained and lost in recent decades.
As for Mr. Nader’s comment about “the corporate dominated Republican and Democrat two-party duopoly, whatever their rhetorical differences may be…”
1.both parties evoke educational rhetoric that is problematic and education should not be about profit and politics
2. flash back to the THIRD party influence on history and it takes you right back to #1.
Too many take for granted the gains fought for by those who forged the way for all workers. This is where “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it” really comes into play.
Unionism is about all of us, together. When we lose that.. we lose everything.
Because my father, a lineman at the local electric company, was able to collectively bargain a contract, my sister, brother & I were able to live a middle class existence. My dad was able to send three kids to public universities in Indiana without acquiring debt. Did we all work to make it happen? Absolutely! The State of Indiana also helped by supporting its public universities which made college affordable for middle class & poor families.
If he were alive today, he’d be heartsick by the way Democrats have turned their backs on working people.
I would like to hear Ralph Nader’s thoughts on what public teachers can do in this most dreadful time period where the very foundations of democracy are in jeopardy!
The five day work week is gone. Even teachers are being pressured into working Saturdays either to baby sit for students who have discipline problems or have fallen behind in credits or need special tutoring or re-teaching during what Administrators happily call Saturday School. The schools get hundreds of dollars per student and pay the teacher a small fraction of that, maybe $18 per hour per class which may be 35 or more if the Administration can get enough students to attend. School Administrations make a nice profit, but who are they spending this surplus on during these times of cutting teacher pay? This must have been something created by one of those Capitalists like Bill Gates. I think Micro-soft might use something like this to rate their workers. Lets see, cut teachers pay, then force them to have to work Saturdays to pay for their home mortgage if they have a home or to pay their ever increasing electric or gas bills which seem to increase without any public input. Is this a tax increase? Oh No, it is Capitalism and a group of wealthy people are getting their well deserved profit from their investment. No one gets a profit from any Educational System, unless you live in a foreign country like Germany. So we should not invest in them? Next idea will be Sunday School and We are not talking about Church related Sunday School even though someone may figure out a way to pay the Churches to do it for less and of course it will be more successful if the state pays them enough money and we can do this with vouchers and give the money directly to the family to use at the Church or school of their choice. I wonder why Arne Duncan hasn’t imposed this idea on schools, yet? Oh, he is currently telling the President to fire missiles at Syria and reward with RTTT grands to the different ships depending on how well they perform and close or mothball the worst performing ships and fire all the crew or replace 25% of the crew with SFA (Solders For America) who could be recruited from the unemployed. He told the President to give Waivers to the ships willing to go ahead without Congressional Approval. No problem, HE is either The Dictator or some GOD, who knows all the correct answers and HE said let the Capitalist System work as it should.
In 1995 when I worked for one of the major telecom companies, I was in a building with 150 people. At that time the CEO made as much money as the entire building (and he was a fool to boot). No matter CEOs can screw up bigtime.
Ralph Nader has done some good things in the past. However, it is because of him we got Bush II. Just before the Florida he got an infusion of money from the right. He knew he could not win. He stayed in for foolish unproductive destructive in the long run reasons. He had no chance of gaining anything except name recognition. Nader got about 5,000 votes as I remember in that race. The chads were 130. Now if Nader had dropped out of the race his votes mostly would have gone to Gore. If that had happened Gore would have been president not Bush II. What would the would be like now Ralph?
Because of this what I call the “Nader Effect” I convinced Jeneen Robinson to give her 8,000 votes to Steve Zimmer in the last LAUSD board race between Steve Zimmer and Kate Anderson, super charter schools and backed by the billionaires. Jeneen knew she could not win and that her people would vote write in if she asked them to. She did the right thing for the students and citizens of LAUSD by making sure that the corporate privatizers did not maintain control of the board of education. If Nader had done the same what would the world look like now?
So, Ralph, too late, you did the deed, it is too late to change it. Are you going to be like Al Sharpton and never admit you blew it big time for the whole planet and help to stop that from ever happening again like Daniel Ellsburg?
When people hear this logic for the first time their eyes get real big thinking about it for the first time.
Maybe people voted for Nader in 2000 because they thought he was the best candidate. I lived in MA and I voted for Nader and don’t feel any guilt at all about voting my conscience. I refuse to vote defensively.
Part of the problem I see is our country to just a two-party system with basically the same values. The Democrats aren’t much better or different than the Republicans. (if Dems were really looking for change, Dennis Kucinich would have been the candidate in 2004)
How about just going with a popular vote?
True, many unions in education are being crushed, but not all.
I just went back a year, to that wonderful late night on September 9, 2012, when Karen Lewis and the CTU “Big bargaining team” marched out of the Merchandise Mart at ten p.m. to announce that the negotiations hadn’t solved the problems (at that point, CPS was still demanding merit pay, major cuts in our medical benefits, and all that other stuff) and so at midnight the Chicago Teachers Union would begin the first strike in a quarter century. It was fun being there for that press conference, and then going over to the Board’s headquarters a mile away to photograph the first picket line at 12:01 a.m.
One of the amazing things about those 24 hours — midnight September 9, 2012 to midnight September 10, 2012, is this bit of history. Over the summer of 2012, some of us veterans of the Chicago strikes of the 20th Century had made a video about how we struck. We thought it might be helpful for the first strike of the 21st Century here, should that prove necessary.
As the day unfolded on September 10, it became more and more clear that whatever we had learned and shared from the 20th Century was going to be surpassed by what was happening on the first days of the first strike of the 21st Century. By the time that “sea of CTU red” filled downtown following those successful picket lines across the city and began marching from the Daley Plaza to 125 S. Clark St., it was clear to all of us, in a very intense and moving way, that something new was being created.
I’m glad that many of us got the stories up as we could, and that people can still go back to “back issues” to read those first rough draft reports from the front (and other) lines. They are all at http://www.substancenews.net in Back Issues, September 2012. In addition to all those labor songs people are singing today, one new one is the Rap Video “Chief Teacher” by Rebel Diaz, showing how new media brings our messages along.
That, plus Pete Seeger’s Solidarity Forever are making this a nice day for our family here. And my young sons, now in third and seventh grade, can proudly say they picketed with their teachers (and their mother) every day of the seven days of the Chicago Teachers Strike of 2012.
If you have an extra minute, go to Rebel Diaz, “Chicago Teacher” to relive that bit of history.
i’d like to see a shift in language . . . from “minimum” wage to living wage . . . no human contribution is “minimum” . . . just sayin’
Aren’t some human contributions actually negative?