Many factors have contributed to the increase of the supply of labor in America since the 70’s to such an extent that employers no longer compete for workers. It’s a take it or leave it environment for most workers seeking work. If you are lucky enough to be in a field that has some union presence your position is somewhat better but even that is now under severe attack.
While us working folk don’t have a lot of clout in the market place on the supply side of employment we still have an advantage in that we are the majority of voters and we can, given the right form of organization, enact laws that can change the balance of power. But that would take those organizations that we do have, that have common cause on many fronts, to unite not with outstretched palms but with raised clenched fists.
And we are now seeing such conditions unfold across this country and internationally. The burning uprisings in the Middle East are not about civil freedom detached of economic justice.
We need living wages not minimum wages. Don’t get me wrong I strongly support increasing minimum wages; keep up the good fight on that front. But what are the components of such a living wage? What is it that most workers want? We need affordable food, housing, transportation, healthcare, education, and more.
“Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made,” Franklin Roosevelt on the Economic Bill of Rights, 1944 State of the Union address.
While we lack power in the workplace we have the power to elect representatives that will propose fully funded budgets that fulfill our social needs. And then tax those that are profiting from our collective efforts. It is the workers and not the corporate officials and financiers that create wealth. As a share holder of a S-Corporation construction collective I created absolutely no wealth. Yet as a carpenter for that collective I created lots. The same is true for service sector work. As a collective member of a food co-op no wealth was created. But when I purchased food from local farmers and sold them at affordable prices to my neighbors I created great wealth.
In a like manner it is the workers that create the economy of California and we have the right to demand that those who come to profit from our efforts and investment pay for that privilege. Our current “budget crisis” could be completely solved with a 1.5% tax on all business income. Californians have created a $1.9 trillion economy and 1.5% of that is roughly $28 billion dollars. No teachers cops and or firefighters laid off. No social services cut for disabled and elderly.
Jerry Brown insisted on a ballot measure that gave the legislator the power to pass a budget with a simple majority. He argued against the same for raising taxes. Pass the budget we want let the Governor and the recalcitrant Republicans veto the ability to pay for it.
