Forty-two years ago, August 5, 1981, Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 air traffic controllers who were striking for a pay increase, a reduced work week, and improved retirement benefits. They had endorsed Reagan’s 1980 election campaign because he promised to support them, but instead he fired them all. The entire union membership lost their jobs; EVERYONE was replaced. Firing strikers instead of negotiating with them encouraged large private employers to do the same: at Phelps Dodge in 1983, at Hormel in 1985, at International Paper in 1987.
Twenty percent of salary and wage workers were represented by unions in 1983; today that proportion is ten percent. Forty years of attacks on workers haven’t been confined to union members. Real wages are down. Benefits have vanished. Even social security is under attack. This represents forty years of ONE-SIDED CLASS WARFARE… attacks by the capitalist class on all of us.
Now, when people speak up about the massive robbery that “tax reform” has accomplished by freeing the wealthiest of paying any taxes at all, the rich cry, “Class warfare!”
When people ask that the federal government enforce existing safety regulations that would reduce the number of train derailments, chemical spills, and fatalities to rail workers and civilians, the freight companies cry, “Class warfare!”
When workers vote to bargain collectively, employers cut their wages and cry, “Class warfare!”
The next time you hear some politician complaining that a call for justice is “class warfare,” remember that they always endorse class warfare when it is waged by the wealthy against everyone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment