Tapsearch Com EditorU.S. Labor standards degraded (LINK)
May 24th 2008 01:07
Workers Locked out of their jobs- Bearing their Cross - by Ray Tapajna
This Art-that-Talks artwork by Ray Tapajna tells the story of our times. It is symbolic of all the millions who have lost their jobs due to so called Free Trade. Free Trade is not really trade. It is about moving production from place to place for the sake of cheaper labor. The main variable in this economic arena is the cost of labor. Workers are the main commoditiies being traded. They are put on a world trading block to compete with one another for the same jobs in a new kind of wage slave competition. A Congressman in Ohio, made a deal this way and this points to the core of the problem. We are being used in our quest for economic survival in more ways than one. The Congressman consented to voting for the CAFTA Free Trade agreement providing Cleveland would maintain their largest Federal Government agency in the city. ( The Federal Government is now the largest employer in Cleveland and 46 percent of union workers in the AFL-CIO are government workers which makes a farce out of unionism in general. It is also nonsensical when you consider private sector production workers pay the taxes to support the government workers. ) This made news. It showed the Congressman saving jobs for government workers while opening the way for more private sector production jobs being lost. Human Dignity in the work day is the victim with workers being used against one another without any voice in the process.
The artwork shows the steel workers who were locked out of their jobs for more than three years in Mansfield Ohio. Cheaper replacement workers were hired while company police enforced the lock out. Imagine the turmoil this caused in many families. This is only one example with it being repeated across the U.S. in similar situations. The above started during the Clinton years and the same company locked out workers again in the Bush years. This all comes after more than 700,000 workers lost their jobs related to the steel industry with the same happening in other industries too. More than 400,000 workers related to the auto industry lost their jobs too. Now states like Indiana pay Honda millions of dollars to build an assembly plant in their state - to create 5000 jobs while about 20,000 auto parts workers lost their jobs in the state during the same time. Other states have paid or are paying millions to foreign auto makers to build their assembly plants in the USA. About 300 million in support has been given to Toyota in Kentucky in recent years.
Today, the firing of higher paid workers and the hiring of replacement workers is out in the open. Circuit City did it publicly announcing they were firing about 8 percent of their work force to hire cheaper labor right here in the USA. Their stock value increased immediately. IBM announced it will cut up to 150,000 American workers and outsourced their jobs to cheaper labor markets like India. The stock market responded and IBM stock rose in value with the announcement. In the beginning of the computer era, IBM quietly layed off 10,000 highly trained workers to stock the need for computer expertise in corporations and this open the door for doing it the IBM way for many years. Then In the Clinton years, IBM layed off their first 150,000 employees.
This is the state of human dignity in the workday and no one seems to care !
Workers Dignity attacked by U.S. elite
This Art-that-Talks artwork by Ray Tapajna tells the story of our times. It is symbolic of all the millions who have lost their jobs due to so called Free Trade. Free Trade is not really trade. It is about moving production from place to place for the sake of cheaper labor. The main variable in this economic arena is the cost of labor. Workers are the main commoditiies being traded. They are put on a world trading block to compete with one another for the same jobs in a new kind of wage slave competition. A Congressman in Ohio, made a deal this way and this points to the core of the problem. We are being used in our quest for economic survival in more ways than one. The Congressman consented to voting for the CAFTA Free Trade agreement providing Cleveland would maintain their largest Federal Government agency in the city. ( The Federal Government is now the largest employer in Cleveland and 46 percent of union workers in the AFL-CIO are government workers which makes a farce out of unionism in general. It is also nonsensical when you consider private sector production workers pay the taxes to support the government workers. ) This made news. It showed the Congressman saving jobs for government workers while opening the way for more private sector production jobs being lost. Human Dignity in the work day is the victim with workers being used against one another without any voice in the process.
The artwork shows the steel workers who were locked out of their jobs for more than three years in Mansfield Ohio. Cheaper replacement workers were hired while company police enforced the lock out. Imagine the turmoil this caused in many families. This is only one example with it being repeated across the U.S. in similar situations. The above started during the Clinton years and the same company locked out workers again in the Bush years. This all comes after more than 700,000 workers lost their jobs related to the steel industry with the same happening in other industries too. More than 400,000 workers related to the auto industry lost their jobs too. Now states like Indiana pay Honda millions of dollars to build an assembly plant in their state - to create 5000 jobs while about 20,000 auto parts workers lost their jobs in the state during the same time. Other states have paid or are paying millions to foreign auto makers to build their assembly plants in the USA. About 300 million in support has been given to Toyota in Kentucky in recent years.
Today, the firing of higher paid workers and the hiring of replacement workers is out in the open. Circuit City did it publicly announcing they were firing about 8 percent of their work force to hire cheaper labor right here in the USA. Their stock value increased immediately. IBM announced it will cut up to 150,000 American workers and outsourced their jobs to cheaper labor markets like India. The stock market responded and IBM stock rose in value with the announcement. In the beginning of the computer era, IBM quietly layed off 10,000 highly trained workers to stock the need for computer expertise in corporations and this open the door for doing it the IBM way for many years. Then In the Clinton years, IBM layed off their first 150,000 employees.
This is the state of human dignity in the workday and no one seems to care !
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I was on both sides of the union line and as part of management, had a burning 2x4 waved at my head during a strike where the workers were trying to form a union. I drove through strike lines supplying the phone company to keep the phones lines live. I lived during a time when unions were arrogant and did not care about the survival of small businesses. However I also know things were much better for both union workers and non-union workers when unions were strong. Many shed their blood during the formation of unions and it now seems like they wasted their blood as the human dignity in the workday has declined.
Too many in the upper classes have isolated themselves from the working poor of our times and look the other way as if a new wage slave class is evolving in a natural global economic way.
Pope John Paul called for a new economy with both Communism and Raw Capitalism failing mankind. However, it seems these two systems seemed to have merged to make money off the under class together in the new global economic arena of Globalism - the new ism of our times.
Pope John Paul defined solidarity as a moral virtue expressed in "a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good". The U.S. Catholic bishops put it this context in 1986, solidarity requires working for "the establishment of minimum levels of participation in the life of the human community for all persons."
Today, the financial community rules the workday and human dignity in the workday is ignored even though as Adam Smith said, labor and work is the core of all society. Today, the human community is being divided more and more between the haves and the have nots.
The working poor and the underclass in the U.S. and the rest of the world wonder who can renew the American Dream for all in the world. Where does this renewal start - at the top or at the bottom. We do know at the top , greedy tendencies rule outside the will of the people.