Should We Have Cancelled Labor Day?

When Academy Award winner Sally Field, playing the title character in the 1979 film Norma Rae, finally becomes totally frustrated at the cowardly response of her coworkers as she and a New York labor organizer attempt to form a union in a small Alabama cotton mill town, she scrawls the word UNION on a piece of cardboard and defiantly climbs on top of a worktable and holds it up over her head for everyone to see.

As her coworkers (previously too intimidated to call for vote on establishing a union — in spite of the fact they were being treated as badly as the descendants of slaves they worked right alongside of) began, one-by-one, to show solidarity with her efforts and shut their equipment down, I got a huge lump in my throat … such was my affinity for the American trade union movement. The union won that day, but seemingly the movement has been losing steam ever since. Membership ranks have been in steady decline for years.

I was not raised in a “union” family; my father was a saloonkeeper, and a Republican to boot. Upon gaining my majority we used to have — what I will euphemistically call — “spirited” debates about the rights of workers and the social order. He strongly believed that workers had but one right: The right to remain silent.

After going to work in the union shop of a large public utility company right out of high school, and by age 23 being elected to become the union representative (in spite of the fact I was one of only three black employees in the 75-man shop) I immersed myself in the history of America’s union movement, and was a stalwart on the picket line during the sometimes tumultuous1967 strike against the company. Going into the strike I could only guess at my courageousness; coming out there was no doubt. My actions during that six-month strike marked my maturation, my coming of age, and won me the admiration — albeit, sometimes grudgingly — of my white coworkers.

During my self-education regarding the union movement I discovered that the first group of whites to embrace my black forbearers and call them “brother” when they began migrating to the North were the Knights of Labor. This marked the first large-scale fair treatment of blacks in America, and upon learning this I became a true believer in the power of trade unionism to transform the workplace — and indeed the world — into a fairer, more egalitarian place. Unfortunately, the cherished beliefs of my youth have diminished over the years, and were finally extinguished once and for all last week right here in Cleveland.

Cuyahoga County, like many other governmental entities, is facing a relatively severe budgetary shortfall next year. To balance the books, county administrators asked the members of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) to vote on a proposal to take six furlough days this year and a total of 10 next year to help forestall layoffs.

The union membership, however, to its everlasting shame, voted the measure down. Yes, rather than lose 16 days of pay (the same number of days the non-union managers will lose, by the way) they threw their fellow union members under the bus: 121 of their coworkers will lose their jobs by the end of the year. Whatever happened to solidarity … to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with your brothers and sisters?

Mind you these were not truck drivers or widget manufacturers who voted against their own brethren, their own fellow members … these were, for the most part, social workers — yes, people who are members of one of the supposedly “caring” professions. This selfishness is indicative of the mindset that the plutocracy has been able to inculcate among the working classes, and is a major reason healthcare reform is having such difficulty gaining traction.

As Americans we’ve seemingly lost our sense of sacrifice, our willingness and ability to care about our fellow citizens, and, as always, when societies move away from the common good and embrace only greedy self-interest … there will be a price to pay.

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier's From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.

(:divend:)