The War on Working Americans --- Part II

The War on Working Americans - Part II

By Stephen Lendman

Created Aug 29 2007 - 12:01pm

This article was written to assess the state of working America in the

run-up to Labor Day, 2007. Organized labor today is severely weakened

following decades of government and business duplicity to crush it. Part I

reviewed the labor movement's rise in the 19th century and subsequent

decline post-WW II and especially in the last three decades. Hope arose for

some change in the Democrat-led 100th Congress. A weak effort emerged, but

Senate Republicans killed it.

Organized labor is struggling to remain relevant and claw its way back. The

enormous obstacles it faces are reviewed below as well as the condition of

working Americans today in a globalized world affecting their lives and

welfare heading "south" in the "land of opportunity" offering pathetically

little.

The Loss of High-Paying Jobs from Outsourcing Under Globalized Market-Based

Rules

World trade isn't new, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)

was its mid-20th century version after 23 founding nations signed it on

October 30, 1947 in Geneva. Earlier in 1946, they drafted the International

Trade Organization (ILO) that followed the creation of the IMF and

International Bank for Reconstruction (now the World Bank) at Bretton Woods

in 1944. Fifty-three nations then signed the GATT in Havana in March, 1948

as the founding international instrument governing world trade.

Subsequent rounds of negotiations followed through number eight launched in

Punta del Este, Uruguay (the Uruguay Round) in 1986. It was signed in

Marrakesh, Morocco in April, 1994 by most of the 123 participating countries

as the updated version of the original 1947 GATT. It was then succeeded by

the WTO January 1, 1995, one year to the day after NAFTA took effect as

another worker rights legislative weapon of mass job destruction. DR-CAFTA

followed next for the Central American countries signing on to it after El

Salvador did first in March, 2006.

The WTO is well-seasoned with a corporate-friendly alphabet soup of

Uruguay-negotiated agreements like the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of

Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), General Agreement on Trade in Services

(GATS), Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), Agreement on Technical Barriers to

Trade (TBT), and others all designed for one purpose. It's to override

member states' national sovereignty so they're now governed under a uniform

set of global market trading rules favoring capital.

They're designed for the Global North, giant corporations and the rich at

the expense of Global South developing nations, ordinary people everywhere,

concern for environmental standards as well as sanity and public safety.

Along with the IMF, World Bank, and other international lending agencies,

this entire structure is big capital's neoliberal scheme to commoditize

everything, including people and life itself in the human genome, to

strip-mine the planet for profit.

Globalized trade has a long history, but the notion of a globalized

marketplace came into its own in the 1980s. It was hailed as a western,

mainly US, prescription for economic growth and prosperity lifting all

boats. In fact, only yachts benefitted by design so the privileged could

gain at the expense of all others preyed on.

The UN's International Labour Organization's (ILO) commission on the social

dimensions of globalization is comprised of representatives from labor,

government and business. In 2004, it issued a damning appraisal of world

trade rules harm and the subsequent distress caused by unfair practices. It

ranges from how TRIPS prevents affordable generic life-saving drugs being

sold in developing countries to the shifting tax burden from business and

the rich to workers, and much more.

In the US and West, the damage comes from exporting jobs and offshoring

manufacturing and service operations to low-wage countries. It began in the

late 1950s when modest numbers of them went to Canada to take advantage of

the cost savings there. The pace then quickened in the 1960s and 1970s with

the exodus of production jobs in autos, shoes, clothing, cheap electronics,

and toys as well as routine service work like credit card receipt

processing, airline reservations and basic software code writing.

What started as simple assembly and service work early on, then took off in

the 1980s. It spread up and down the value chain and now embraces almost any

type good or service not needing a home-based location such as retail

clerks, plumbers, and carpenters; top-secret defense research, design and

selected types of manufacturing; and certain types of specialized activities

companies so far have kept at home. What's moving abroad, however, is big

business getting bigger with Gartner Research estimating outsourcing

generated $298.5 billion in 2003 global revenues.

The toll adds up to a global race to the bottom in a country where services

now account for 84% of the economy. The once bedrock manufacturing portion

is just 10% and falling as more good jobs in it are lost in an unending

drain. Since the start of 2000 alone, about one in six factory jobs, over

three million in total, have been affected. The sector is less than a third

of its size 40 years ago and one-fourth the peak it hit during WW II.

It's been devastating for the nation's 130 million working people. No longer

are unions strong and workers well-paid with assured good benefits like full

health insurance coverage and pensions. Today, all types of financial

services comprise the largest economic sector. Much of it is in trillions of

dollars of high stakes speculation annually producing wads of cash for elite

insiders (when things go as planned) and nothing for the welfare of most

others and the good of the country.

Worst of all is the poor and declining quality of most service sector jobs

measured by wages, benefits, job security and overall working conditions.

It's because fewer good ones exist, unions are weak, and workers are at the

mercy of employers indifferent to their plight. People are forced to work

longer and harder for less just to stay even. Jobs in this sector are mostly

concentrated in unskilled or low-skill areas of retail, health care and

temporary services of all kinds. They pay lots less than full-time jobs, and

have few or no benefits and little prospect for future improvement. This all

happened by design to crush worker rights and commoditize them like all

other production inputs.

The Department of Labor now projects job categories with the greatest future

expected growth are cashiers; waiters and waitresses; other

restaurant-related workers; janitors and cleaning personnel; retail clerks;

and child care workers - all low-skill areas. Harvard degrees aren't

required. Neither are high school ones.

Most in-demand higher-skilled jobs are projected to be for nurses,

post-secondary teachers and sales representatives. There are still plenty of

high-tech jobs in areas like network systems and data analysis and software

engineering applications and systems. But watch out. They're being lost as

well to low-wage countries in an unending domestic job drain affecting all

types of work able to be done anywhere. It shows why domestic job growth is

stagnant (despite the hype it isn't), eligible workers are dropping out of

the work force, and the decline is sure to continue unless legislation stops

it. None is in sight or imagined.

The loss of good well-paying jobs means fewer high-end and a range of

low-skilled ones are all that remain for vast numbers of young people whose

future looks bleak. Two research studies among others highlight the problem.

One by University of California staffers in 2004 estimated up to 14 million

American jobs are at risk to outsourcing, and another by Gartner Research

predicts as many as 30% of high-tech jobs may be lost to low-wage countries

by 2015. In addition, writing in the March/April, 2006 issue of Foreign

Affairs on what he calls a "third Industrial Revolution," former Federal

Reserve vice-chairman Alan Blinder estimated 28 - 42 million American

service sector jobs are vulnerable and could be lost to foreign labor.

In low-wage countries, they're done at far less cost to US employers in

their company-owned or subcontracted out operations. Blinder added starkly

"We have so far barely seen the tip of the offshoring iceberg, the eventual

dimensions of which may be staggering." Veteran financial analyst and writer

Bob Chapman calls this the "rape of our economy" with enormous, wrenching

and destructive consequences to the lives of millions of working people

pursuing an illusory American dream.

It affects the skilled and unskilled alike for all types of jobs at risk.

Chapman cites India as an example noting once only low-skill and routine

programming jobs went there. Now, he says, it's "software aeronautical

engineers, banking, insurance, investment banking and drug research" along

with many other high-end jobs where companies can hire skilled professionals

at a fifth the cost of US and European ones. So why wouldn't they, and more

are in a growing trend.

All types of financial jobs at all levels are also being eliminated with

financial institutions moving sizeable chunks of investment banking,

research, trading operations, and other professional jobs abroad for big

cost savings. Deloitte Touche estimates the industry will outsource 20% of

its cost base by 2010 with more to come in a continuing job drain for big

cost savings abroad. The ones lost will be in financial services and most

other sectors in a trend looking like it won't end until the US is as low a

wage nation as those now taking our jobs.

An Unprecedented Fall in Workers' Standard of Living

Over the past 30 years, most people have seen an unprecedented fall in their

standard of living. Adjusted for inflation, the average American worker now

earns less than in the mid-1970s with the minimum wage unchanged at $5.15 an

hour since 1997 until the 110th Congress raised it in pathetically small

steps to a wholly inadequate top level. Beginning July 24, it rose to $5.85,

will go to $6.55 July 24, 2008 and to $7.25 July 24, 2009. Until the

increase, minimum worker pay was at the lowest point relative to average

wages since 1949. It got many states, comprising over half the population,

to raise their own, but it's not enough.

A recent study released by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

shows the dire state of things. It reported about one in three jobs in the

country, about 47 million of them, pay low wages (defined as two-thirds the

median wage or $11.11 per hour or less) with few or no benefits like health

insurance, pensions or retirement accounts. It's barely enough for a family

of two adults and two children to exceed the official understated poverty

level of $20,444 in 2006 (or $9.83 an hour), and by this definition one in

four workers (35 million) only earned poverty-level wages. But millions of

others fall below it because official statistics way understate the problem,

and workers earning around $11.11 an hour in cities like New York, Chicago,

Los Angeles and other large ones can't get by if they have to support a

family on it.

These growing millions now comprise a permanent underclass in a nation

unwilling to admit what census data and private research now show. America

is a rigid class society by design with extreme wealth at the top, a

declining (maybe dying) middle class, and a growing underclass of low-paid

workers and poor, many desperately so.

Following the inequalities of the 1920s, the nation experienced what

economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo called "the Great

Compression." Income gaps narrowed from the positive effects of New Deal and

Great Society programs, strong unions, and an equitable tax system for

individuals and corporations. From then to now, call it "the Great

Expansion" of inequality with the gap between rich and most others the

greatest it's been since the Gilded Age of the "robber barons" and getting

worse.

Business Week magazine highlighted the trend in December, 2003 and

accompanying research. It showed a decline in social mobility over the past

few decades. The article was called "Waking Up from the American Dream -

Meritocracy and Equal Opportunity Are Fading Fast." It noted the

"Wal-Martization" of the country corporate America embraces to control labor

costs by outsourcing jobs, de-unionizing, hiring temps and part-timers, and

dismantling internal career ladders to boost profits at the expense of

people. What's left is a proliferation of dead-end, low-wage jobs with

public policy skewed to keep it that way. It needs stressing again. This

didn't happen by chance. It was by design to destroy organized labor, and so

far it's working.

In its most recent State of Working America - 2006/2007, the Economic Policy

Institute (EPI) reports the official poverty level in 2004 stood at 12.7% or

37 million people, including 13 million children. It also showed for the

first time ever, poverty in the country grew in the first three years of an

economic recovery. In its study, EPI cited factors today they call

"historically unique:"

-- increased globalized trade;

-- low union membership;

-- more low-skilled and high-skilled immigration; and

-- fewer favorable social norms guiding employer behavior to provide

"adequate safety nets, pensions, and health care arrangements."

EPI noted the biggest challenge in today's "new economy" isn't (macro)

growth but how benefits get distributed with such a high proportion skewed

upward.

Left out entirely are the 16 million 2005 census figures show are on the

very bottom living in "extreme" poverty that's defined as a family of four

with an annual income of $9903 or less. Even more disturbing is how fast the

poverty rate is increasing. The numbers of those worst off grew by 26% from

2000 - 2005 or 56% faster than for the total poverty population. Further, it

happened mostly in years of economic expansion after the 2001 recession

ended late that year. Notable also is the disturbing decline in

higher-paying jobs leaving what's left for unskilled or low-skill workers.

They pay pitiful wages and few, if any, benefits with crumbling social

safety net protection left to pick up the slack.

The Oakland Institute policy think tank promotes social and economic

justice. It recently reported its disturbing assessment of things saying 10%

of the US population (around 30 million) "experiences hunger or is at risk

of going hungry." A December, 2006 Helsinki-based World Institute for

Development Economics Research of the UN University study also reported

disturbing findings. They showed the richest 1% of adults owned 40% of

global assets in 2000, and the richest 10% held 85% of them.

EPI reported the top 1% controls more than one-third of America's wealth,

the bottom 80% has 15.3%, and the top 20% holds 84.7% of it. In contrast,

the poorest 20% are in debt and owe more than they own. Globalization,

automation, outsourcing, the shift from manufacturing to services, weak

unions, deregulation, and other harmful economic factors all add to the

problem.

Other data show an astonishing generational shift of well over $1 trillion

of national wealth annually from 90 million US working class households to

for-profit corporations and the richest 1% of the population. It created

what economist Paul Krugman calls an unprecedented wealth disparity getting

worse that shames the nation and is destroying the bedrock middle class

without which democracy can't survive.

A similar conclusion also came from an analysis of income tax data by

Professor Emmanuel Saez of the University of California-Berkeley and

Professor Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics. Both men are

noted for their work on income inequality. Their research found the top 1%

of Americans in 2005 (about 3 million people) got their largest share of

national income since 1928 - 21.8%, up from 19.8% a year ago or a 10% gain.

Further, the top 10% received 48.5% of all reported income in 2005, also the

highest level since 1928, up 2% from 2004, and one-third since the late

1970s.

The top one-tenth of 1% (about 300,000 people) did best of all, to no

surprise. It got as much income in total as the bottom 150 million Americans

combined. In addition, while total reported income rose almost 9% in 2005,

average incomes for the bottom 90% of the population dropped .6% from the

previous year.

Further, the Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy greatly widened

the income gap between rich and poor that was the whole idea behind them

with a healthy piece of the benefits going to big corporations. In the

1950s, they contributed an average of 28% to federal revenues. That dropped

to 21% in the 1960s and about 10% and falling since the 1980s. It's

happening with the corporate tax rate at 35%, but few of the giants pay it.

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 94% of major

corporations now pay less than 5% of their income in taxes, and corporate

tax payments overall are at their lowest level in 60 years. In addition,

many large companies pay no tax, and some end up with sizable rebates on top

of huge corporate welfare subsidies under a system of socialism for big

corporations and the rich and "free market" capitalism for the rest of us.

Saez and Piketty also reported their findings may be understated because the

wealthy are more likely to file late tax returns so those who did weren't

included in the study. Also, the IRS acknowledges it can account for only

about 70% of business and investment income, most, of course, going to

high-income earners. What's missing is $300 - $400 billion a year that adds

up to trillions of untaxed dollars for the rich with the rest of us having

to make up for it.

Recent US Commerce Department data is also disturbing. It shows the share of

national income going to wages and salaries the lowest on record with their

data going back to 1929. And the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

(CBPP) finds wage and salary growth in the current recovery growing at half

the average rate for post-recessionary periods since the end of WW II while

corporate profits in the current period grew over 50% more than the post-WW

II average. It's the first time on record, corporate profits got a larger

share of income growth in a recovery than wages and salaries - 46% to 34%.

The Growth and Shredding of Social Services in America

The golden age of social service benefits and worker protections emerged

during The Great Depression, but they didn't begin then. An obligation was

felt to help the needy as early as colonial times but without an organized

effort to do it. Back then, local towns and villages did it through the poor

relief system and almshouses. That began changing as the nation became less

agrarian and more industrial when a number of states added services like

cash allowances, mothers' pensions and by the mid-1920s old age assistance

for the blind. Also, then and earlier, the Federal government and States

began recognizing the need for public welfare social insurance financed

through contributions guaranteeing protection for all rather than public

assistance for the needy alone.

The first instance of it began in 1908 with a Federal workers' compensation

law covering some government workers. States then added their own, and by

1929 all of them had it except four holdouts. Other efforts followed

including State and local retirement plans and Federal benefits and services

for veterans. Even the private sector added their own with token amounts of

health care, pensions, life insurance and sick pay.

The Great Depression hard times of the 1930s changed everything creating a

golden age for worker rights and benefits mentioned above. It followed the

roaring 1920s era of anything goes corporate greed and loose regulation. It

ushered in the Roosevelt administration's New Deal to aid the needy and

reform the economy when 25% of the working public had no job in 1933. Those

in power feared the worst knowing they had to act to save capitalism at a

time of mass hostility to it they feared might erupt in a Russian-style 1917

revolution.

They did it then like never before or since starting by passing the National

Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. It was based on a "bubble up" theory of

recovery to raise wages and thereby stimulate consumer purchasing power

hoping it would lead to increased production and new investment. Despite

good intentions, things go as planned. The Depression dragged on until the

1939 early WW II build-up began ending it. It packed greater economic punch

than in earlier public sector spending. Those efforts were less for reform

and more for what John Maynard Keynes recommended - upgrading infrastructure

to revive durable goods production that, in turn, would revive the economy.

Still New Deal policies were remarkable in how mirror opposite they were to

what's been enacted since 1980 and especially in the gilded age of George

Bush. There were stimulative loans and grants to the States and landmark

measures like the FDIC insuring bank deposits, the SEC regulating financial

markets, and the NLRB through the Wagner Act explained above. Most important

was a broad array of social programs. They included Federal emergency

relief, public works and others under an alphabet soup of initiatives. They

were way inadequate, but, nonetheless, tried to jump-start a moribund

economy by providing substantial work and relief for the unemployed and

needy.

The high water mark came in 1935 with the passage of the landmark Social

Security Act. To this day, it's still the single most important piece of

social legislation in our history. More than any other government program,

it's the one most responsible for keeping vast numbers of elderly people out

of poverty as well as providing other essential services and benefits for

the needy and disabled. Other important social legislation came out as well

including Unemployment Insurance with the Federal government partnered with

States; the Railroad Retirement System; Public Housing; and Social Security

Old-Age and Survivors Insurance.

Post-WW II there was lots more:

-- the National School Lunch Program (established in 1946);

-- Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled (APTD - in 1950) that later

became Supplemental Security Income (SSI) in 1972;

-- Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI);

-- Medical Assistance for the Aged (preceding Medicare);

-- Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC - 1960);

--the Food Stamp Program (1964);

-- the School Breakfast Program (1966);

-- the WIC food assistance program (1972);

-- Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC - 1975);

-- Low Income Home Energy Assistance; and

-- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF - 1997 successor to AFDC

that was a huge step backwards explained below), among others.

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society earlier saw other landmark social legislation

with the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. It guaranteed the

elderly and indigent health care coverage at affordable, minimal or no cost

when they needed it most.

That was the good news, but it changed with the election of Ronald Reagan in

1980. Mark Weisbrot from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

called his administration's rollback of social services his "project of

building a bridge to the 19th century in areas of social policy." It was

that and more, but despite it, the dominant media shamelessly exalted him in

life (see Mark Hertsgaard 1989 book "On Bended Knee: The Press and the

Reagan Presidency") and practically deified him following his death on June

4, 2004. Left out of the eulogies was the true scorched earth legacy he left

behind. His "war on international terrorism" was a devastating precursor to

its updated version under the current administration. This article, however,

only addresses his domestic damage on people least able to handle it.

The Reagan administration instituted a generational decline of worker rights

and vital social programs. It allowed them to erode through higher payroll

taxes, raising the retirement age, increasing Medicare premiums, and cutting

Medicaid benefits for the poor. His years were characterized by large

increases in military spending, big tax cuts for the rich and big business

while slashing social benefits, union worker rights and running up huge

deficits.

Discretionary domestic spending for most social programs, other than Social

Security, Medicare and Medicaid, was cut by one-third from 1981 - 1988.

Programs for low income earners were hard hit with a 54% cut. Subsidized

housing lost over 80%, housing assistance for the elderly 47%, and training

and employment services over 68%. Reagan also reduced health and safety

protections and weakened federal statutes guaranteeing workers the right to

organize and bargain collectively.

Beneath his avuncular persona, Reagan was callous and indifferent to notions

of equal justice, civil liberties and human need. He showed it in his

support for the Christian Right's hate campaign against gays and lesbians in

its early days of ascendency by refusing to address the AIDS problem he

allowed to become a global epidemic.

HIV/AIDS first surfaced in the US among gay men in New York and California

in 1981, Reagan's first year in office. It was called a "gay disease", and

still is largely today by those who demean it. Most notably, extremist

Christian Right leaders call it God's revenge against gay people they say

are diseased sinners. When the Centers for Disease Control first reported

the outbreak they, too, stigmatized the gay community as disease-carriers

calling it GRID - gay-related immune deficiency.

Ronald Reagan went along with this notion refusing even to mention AIDS or

do anything to address the problem in the first seven years in office. It

caused enormous setbacks for HIV/AIDS research and appalling discrimination

against the infected and gay community overall. In addition, there were no

government-directed efforts at prevention or education. It thereby allowed a

health problem that might have been contained to become an epidemic killing

a half million people in the US alone and infecting an estimated one million

others now living with the disease.

Worldwide the numbers are catastrophic with an estimated 25 million deaths

and another 34 - 47 million people currently infected. In addition, millions

more are added to the numbers each year who might have been helped if the

Reagan administration had led a worldwide effort to contain what's now an

out-of-control plague in parts of the world like sub-Saharan Africa. None of

this was mentioned in Reagan's eulogy that should have been a denunciation

for this and his other crimes against humanity George Bush is now doing his

best to match or exceed.

The GHW Bush years followed the "Reagan Revolution." They were pathetically

"kinder and gentler" domestically and made worse by a "new world order"

imperial agenda harming working people everywhere that's standard practice

now under all Presidents. It was the same under Bill Clinton who called

himself a Democrat but never governed like one. His tenure included NAFTA

and WTO responsible for mass and growing poverty, human misery and

ecological destruction under one-way globalized trade rules providing cover

for predatory capitalism.

So-called "welfare reform" in the Personal Responsibility and Work

Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) also was passed. Before it

did, the needy got welfare payments through Aid to Families with Dependent

Children or AFDC help. That changed in 1996 with time limits set so no one

would be helped for more than five years under the new program called

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF. Under it, the Federal

government allots fixed block grants to the States they then administer at

their discretion meaning the needy now get cheated by an uncaring state.

TANF also requires most recipients to participate in some kind of work or

training to qualify for help. It doesn't matter that much of it goes to

single mothers with young children needing them at home to provide care

unavailable if the law prevents it. There's also no relief during recessions

when jobs are lost and unskilled workers are least able to find one.

Clinton's main social initiative was his ill-conceived health care "reform."

It was a complex mess based on the notion of "managed competition" and

marketplace medicine instead of what's really needed in the form of a

"single-payer" national health insurance program modeled on the kind in

Western Europe, Canada or that all members of Congress and the

administration get. They cover everyone, irrespective of ability to pay, and

for US legislators and the executive it's gold-plated for life.

The Clinton plan (dubbed "Hillarycare") offered the public less choice for

more affordability but wanted big insurers and HMOs to run it guaranteeing

an illusion of full coverage the way it is now. Profits always trump need

with insurers targeting young and healthy prospects while avoiding those

posing the greatest risks.

The pace of social spending cuts accelerated dramatically under George Bush

who'd eliminate them all given the choice, and he's working on it. He's

against all of them to fund more tax cuts for the rich and provide

multi-billions for his permanent state of war plus every imaginable weapon

system the Pentagon and defense contractors want to wage them.

Bush's assault on organized labor was covered above, but he has lots more

targets as well. Education is one of them in his appalling No Child Left

Behind Act. It focuses on testing, not children. It's a boon to corporations

supplying the materials but not to teachers who hate them. It forces them to

teach "to the test" instead of educating students in course material that's

the only way to run a classroom. Otherwise, kids don't learn, but that's

part of the scheme as what kind of future do all but the well-off have to

look forward to.

The Bush education agenda also promotes school vouchers disguising a broader

goal to privatize public education and aid the white supremacist parochial

part of it. Christian Right zealots support these schools because of their

brand of hard right extremism dangerous to everyone outside the faithful. In

most areas where vouchers are used, 80% of them are for these type schools.

They renounce proved science like evolution and teach creationism instead,

repackaged as "intelligent design."

They also preach an extremist Christian doctrine waging war on truth and

democratic principles of a free and open society. They replace it with

faith-based pseudoscience on everything from creation to HIV/AIDS to

pregnancy prevention to global warming to militarism, and all the while

denounce non-believers as heretics. These schools also threaten the survival

of public education. They divert funding from them and violate the

constitutional separation of church and state which is why the Bush

administration supports them.

His administration also opposes college aid at a time tuitions and fees are

more unaffordable than ever and rising much faster than inflation. An

undergraduate year at Harvard now costs over $50,000 with all expenses

included, but even lower-tuition state schools aren't affordable for many

with the University of Illinois typical of most others. It's much cheaper

than Harvard but still costs about $26,000 a year "base rate" that's

unaffordable for low-income families without considerable financial aid.

George Bush's solution - cut or freeze maximum allowable Pell Grants so even

holding them steady means amounts offered don't keep up with rising costs

and needy students lose out.

Bush's prescription for health care is no better at a time 47 million have

no coverage, millions more are underinsured, and 80 million in the country

have no coverage at some time during the year meaning they need to be

judicious about when they're sick. Administration solutions are pathetic at

best showing no intent to tackle a problem this huge. Suggested tax breaks

are so inadequate, families with annual incomes under $10,000 would only

save $23 in 2007. Those with higher incomes fare little better with the Bush

plan only covering 9 million uninsured leaving 38 million others (and

rising) with no help.

Then there's Bush's 2003 Kafkaesque Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement,

and Modernization Act (MMA) scamming seniors. It took strong-arming threats

and bribes in an all-night congressional session to get it passed. Its

controversial Part D costs tens of billions annually, does little for most

Medicare recipients, but provides huge benefits for "Big Pharma." It's able

to charge top dollar because the administration won't negotiate lower prices

the way the Veteran's Administration (VA) does getting big savings on all

drugs it buys so veterans today only pay $8 a prescription. Two decades ago,

they paid nothing.

More social wreckage gets into each new FY budget with billions of new cuts

heaped on past ones. It's to free up more funds for the military, the rich,

and corporate allies with the White House now audaciously proposing a

further cut in corporate tax rates. It's part of a near-three decade agenda

furthering the interests of the privileged at the expense of all others. In

America today, social welfare and the greater good are nonstarters.

Earlier damage included -

-- killing OSHA workplace ergonomic rules more than 10 years in the making;

-- revoking grants to study workplace safety and health;

-- cutting funding for job training; and

-- more cuts for enforcement positions at OSHA and the Mine Safety and

Health Administration that was a key reason for the early 2006 Sago and Alma

mine deaths in West Virginia, the latest tragedy in Utah (not earthquake

caused), and the death of 60 miners and counting since January, 2006.

-- Bush also proposed paying welfare recipients below-minimum wages;

-- denying Homeland Security employees protection for being a whisleblower;

-- blocking release of funds to monitor Ground Zero;

-- ignoring New York rescue workers' health;

-- cutting health care benefits for veterans and billions more cuts for

Medicare and Medicaid;

-- raising interest rates on student college loans;

-- cutting the number of WIC-eligible participants;

-- reducing the number of adults eligible for food stamps and children

qualifying for school meals;

-- cutting the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, child care, Head Start,

affordable housing units for the elderly, home energy assistance (LIHEAP),

Employment/Training Services, and education for the disadvantaged; and

-- stiffening work requirements for two million adults (mostly single

mothers) on welfare.

His administration is also at fault for the Walter Reed Hospital scandal

because medical facilities for military personnel and veterans across the

country are understaffed, underfunded and allowed to deteriorate under

federal or private contractor management. The result is inadequate or

sub-standard care for the severest of problems, and the worst is yet to come

with tens of billions of new planned cuts through FY 2011. Only Bush's

plummeting approval rating may slow him down. But it doesn't stop his war

machine from getting all the funds it wants and lots more for the asking in

supplemental add-ons.

Looking Ahead - Tough Choices with No Easy Answers

The state of working America today is bleak with few signs of improving in a

globalized world of corporate omnipotence and an indifferent to hostile

government. It backs the rights of the privileged while scorning the social

welfare needs of all others. Somehow, some way this must change, but wishing

only works if backed by effective action. A look back suggests how.

Past labor successes were noted above. What worked before can again, and

there's nothing complicated about it. Above all, new leaders are needed

because too many today are uninspiring at best. They must be committed and

dedicated to the rights and needs of ordinary working people and be willing

to go to the wall for them. Effective mass organizing is needed to build

unity and strength of numbers, educate workers on what they lost, and lead

the fight to win them back. It means taking to the streets, storming the

halls of Congress, going on strikes, holding boycotts, doing battle when

necessary that in the past meant paying for it in blood and lives.

It worked when it won an eight hour day, a living wage keeping pace with

inflation, essential benefits like health care coverage and pensions, and a

more level playing field guaranteeing labor the right to bargain

collectively on equal terms with management. Those gains weren't handed over

because change never comes from the top down. They were fought for and won

with lots of blood and sweat expended to get them. Why not again?

It's called democracy, equity and justice and one thing about them is clear.

Achieving and keeping them requires a strong middle class of ordinary

working people that, in turn, needs a vibrant labor movement as a foundation

and springboard for progressive grassroots social change. Organized labor is

in tatters today at barely over 7% of private sector workers (a 100 year

low). It's on life support, needs a survival strategy, and is heading for

the dustbin of history only major change can avoid. The way is through

organized people out-muscling organized money. It happened before and can

again.

This is the great class struggle of our time against long odds for success.

The stakes though are huge, and our future as a democratic society depends

on the outcome as former US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis explained

in 1941 when he said "We can (either) have a democratic society or we can

have great concentrated wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have

both." The concentration is greater than ever at a time American workers are

in their weakest position in decades.

Bowed but not broken, they're in a war for survival with the rest of us, and

their sovereign worker rights and ours in a free society are at stake. It's

no time for timidity. It's a time for unity and pressing ahead. It happened

once. Why not again, and the time to go for it is now with the rest of us

pitching in to help for our own preservation and survival.

_______

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson