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Wisconsin Unions Call For General Strike
I didn't think I'd actually see this happen in the U.S. in my lifetime. And of course it hasn't happened yet, it's simply being threatened, but it is a very potent threat with a storied history.
To explain what that means, let's start with Economics 101 and the idea of the free market. Specifically, the free labor market. The first principle of someone with a trade skill who wants to earn what she's worth is, don't work for less than you're worth. This principle crashes against reality in two ways. Problem one: there's probably only one employer in your town. But even where that isn't true you run into problem two: there's usually someone else with your same skills who has a child to feed and who will take the salary you rejected as too little. So, chances are, if you try to hold out for what you're worth, your child will be the one that starves.
So, there isn't really a free labor market -- unless everyone in your town who has the same skill gets together and all refuse to work for less than you're all worth. This requires open collaboration and is known as "collective bargaining."
Collective bargaining has a storied history because once upon a time it was illegal. And actually in many places in the U.S. it's still illegal. This is interestingly dissonant with the idea that in the U.S. we have the freedom to speak our ideas and to peaceably assemble. When it comes to peaceably assembling with your trade peers and freely sharing ideas (such as everyone there making what they're worth), many Americans do not actually have that right.
Why should it be illegal? Because of the cynic's version of the golden rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules." If you're a capitalist, whatever difference there is between the wage you pay a worker and the marginal revenue product of their labor is money in your pocket. (Economic theory tells us that paying a worker less than the MRP of their labor is not efficient, but you don't need a theory to tell you this is wrong, just look at the ever-growing income disparity in the U.S.) Any law that makes collective bargaining illegal benefits the rich at the direct expense of everyone else.
During the Great Depression, the economic downturn was used as an excuse to cut wages and demand concessions. According to the laws in force at the time, the workers didn't really have any recourse. When they got together to discuss what was happening to them, their meetings or strikes were busted by the police, or private goons known as "Pinkertons," or sometimes the National Guard. What happened then was sometimes a massacre, sometimes a bona-fide battle.
In 1935 President Franklin Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act. It wasn't perfect, but it did end the bloodshed.
A lot of the violence occurred in the 'rust belt': Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York. People there literally died for the right of collective bargaining. Some of the protesters in Wisconsin today may even be descendants of people roughed up or killed in attacks on picket lines. And Governor Walker -- who, after less than two months in office may soon be facing a general strike, could easily earn the title for most divisive politician in America today -- is the spiritual descendant of the strikebusters.
I didn't think I'd actually see this happen in the U.S. in my lifetime. And of course it hasn't happened yet, it's simply being threatened, but it is a very potent threat with a storied history.
To explain what that means, let's start with Economics 101 and the idea of the free market. Specifically, the free labor market. The first principle of someone with a trade skill who wants to earn what she's worth is, don't work for less than you're worth. This principle crashes against reality in two ways. Problem one: there's probably only one employer in your town. But even where that isn't true you run into problem two: there's usually someone else with your same skills who has a child to feed and who will take the salary you rejected as too little. So, chances are, if you try to hold out for what you're worth, your child will be the one that starves.
So, there isn't really a free labor market -- unless everyone in your town who has the same skill gets together and all refuse to work for less than you're all worth. This requires open collaboration and is known as "collective bargaining."
Collective bargaining has a storied history because once upon a time it was illegal. And actually in many places in the U.S. it's still illegal. This is interestingly dissonant with the idea that in the U.S. we have the freedom to speak our ideas and to peaceably assemble. When it comes to peaceably assembling with your trade peers and freely sharing ideas (such as everyone there making what they're worth), many Americans do not actually have that right.
Why should it be illegal? Because of the cynic's version of the golden rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules." If you're a capitalist, whatever difference there is between the wage you pay a worker and the marginal revenue product of their labor is money in your pocket. (Economic theory tells us that paying a worker less than the MRP of their labor is not efficient, but you don't need a theory to tell you this is wrong, just look at the ever-growing income disparity in the U.S.) Any law that makes collective bargaining illegal benefits the rich at the direct expense of everyone else.
During the Great Depression, the economic downturn was used as an excuse to cut wages and demand concessions. According to the laws in force at the time, the workers didn't really have any recourse. When they got together to discuss what was happening to them, their meetings or strikes were busted by the police, or private goons known as "Pinkertons," or sometimes the National Guard. What happened then was sometimes a massacre, sometimes a bona-fide battle.
In 1935 President Franklin Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act. It wasn't perfect, but it did end the bloodshed.
A lot of the violence occurred in the 'rust belt': Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York. People there literally died for the right of collective bargaining. Some of the protesters in Wisconsin today may even be descendants of people roughed up or killed in attacks on picket lines. And Governor Walker -- who, after less than two months in office may soon be facing a general strike, could easily earn the title for most divisive politician in America today -- is the spiritual descendant of the strikebusters.
