Ira Grupper irag@iglou.com
LABOR PAEANS— June 2011
Ira Grupper
(published by FORsooth, newspaper of Louisville, Kentucky chapter of F.O.R. [Fellowship of Reconciliation] )
Down the stretch they come – May Day on the outside
I need to rectify my ways—focusing this column so often on economic disasters, oppression of the working class, racial and gender disparities, and such. So, let me, in atonement, turn to a happy topic: the Kentucky Derby. More specifically, the Derby Parties. Today, May 7, is the running of our fabled horse race.
The best known soiree, the Barnstable Brown Derby Eve Gala, and the oh so many others, attract movie and sports stars, and the grotesque garish gigolo and gigolette-ish trophies of private accumulation. To be fair, the gobs of dollars raised go to charities, if not also tax breaks.
At the same time as all this happiness, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports: “Free clinic aids workers in need.” And it continues: “…(A)bout 2,500 patients (are) served by the Kentucky Racing Health Services Center. The nonprofit clinic has provided health care to backside workers at Churchill Downs (racetrack) and others working in Kentucky’s horse racing industry for six years.”
Simpleton that I am, I must wonder why the glitterati raise money for the needy with the cameras rolling, on the one hand, and why they don’t include health care for the many people, and their families, who enable them to, in their finery, accept plaudits for winning races that the horses, jockeys, hot walkers and so many others really deserve.
This month also recognizes May Day, a holiday, in its political aspect, begun in 1886 in the United States. A wave of strikes demanded an eight hour workday. At the demonstration in Chicago, at Haymarket Square, it is alleged a bomb thrown by an anarchist led to the deaths of a dozen people (including several police officers) and the injury of over 100 more.
The eight hour day was won, eventually, in the U.S., although bosses in the last fifty years instituted forced overtime, paying for extra hours worked rather than hiring more workers. Nonetheless, May Day, the U.S. holiday, was celebrated around the world, including in all the former socialist countries.
The McCarthy period (the “red scare”) saw Labor Day, a more respectable scenario, replace May Day. Yet, in recent years, May Day has made a big comeback even in the U.S., with protests against globalization, and now also pushing for immigration reform. Internationally, this May Day was celebrated in France, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Germany, Iraq and many other countries. In France, 120,000 people turned out for marches in 200 locations. Twelve thousand workers demonstrated in Athens, Greece.
I have seen two reports on the May Day demonstration in New York City. The first reported the official announcement: that 20,000 people participated. The second: “…I find it very hard to believe that by 3 p.m. there were 20,000 (people) there when at 2:10 pm there were only several hundred. So I doubt the official announcement.” I don’t know who is right. But I do know that we on the Left must be honest and accurate. It is the only way we can maintain credibility.
Demonstrations for justice at the workplace notwithstanding, the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. is widening. In 1980, CEOs made about 42 times the pay of an average worker. In 2010 it was 324 times.
Reports PBS’s Newshour: CEO pay, including salaries, bonuses, and stock options, was up 24 percent last year, to a level higher than 2007, just before the recession hit. The 10 highest-paid executives made a combined $440 million. Six of them came from the world of media and entertainment, including the heads of Viacom and CBS.
There is some good news to report concerning the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB was created during the New Deal of the 1930’s to conduct union elections and to investigate and remedy unfair labor practices.
Over many years it became a roadblock for worker justice and union representation. But there is some good news lately. Reports the N.Y.Times (April 21): “In what may be the strongest signal yet of the new pro-labor orientation of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama, the agency filed a complaint,,,seeking to force Boeing to bring an airplane production line back to its unionized facilities in Washington State instead of moving the work to a nonunion plant in South Carolina.”
There have also been reports the NLRB will make it more difficult for companies to push union decertification elections.
In April I was among 2,500 attendees at the National Conference for Media Reform, held in Boston, Massachusetts. I have attended two previous conferences the group held. The continued monopolization of media, with massive job losses, coupled with automation, changing the nature of reporting, and forcing progressive media out of business, was addressed in many panels, workshops and plenaries.
Whatever “objective” reporting there was in the past seems to be drowning in the quicksand of enhanced capital accumulation. For example, we used to look at CNN as progressive media, and FOX as reactionary.
Well, on May 4. at 6:30 am, I was watching CNN News. Two guests were giving analysis of Afghanistan and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. One was Lisa Curtis, former CIA adviser, now with the Heritage Foundation. The second was David Rittgiss, former Special Forces officer, now with the Cato Institute. Both analyses came from the far right. Flashing on the bottom of the screen was an announcement about Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), and certainly no Leftist, talking about us needing to withdraw from Afghanistan. Yet Curtis and Rittgiss were saying the opposite. So much for CNN objectivity.
We close with an important piece of information. A corporate CEO, a Tea Bagger, and a union member sit down at a plate of a dozen cookies. The CEO takes 11 of them, and then tells the Tea Bagger, "Watch out for that union worker; he wants yours".
Contact Ira Grupper: irag@iglou.com