[Peace-discuss] one Labor Day talk

[Ricky Baldwin]

Editor's Note: The following remarks were delivered by
William Rivers Pitt to the Greater Boston Labor
Council's annual
     breakfast on September 1, 2003. 
 
     Hard Talk On Labor Day 
     By William Rivers Pitt 
     t r u t h o u t | Perspective 
 
     Monday 1 September 2003 
 
     Did everyone have a nice weekend? Good. Thank a
Union. 
 
     I was tempted to come in here today and deliver a
speech about how profoundly important unions have been
to the development of this
nation, and to me personally. After all, I make my
living as a writer. Before that, I made my living as a
teacher. The bedrock abilities I need to
do both those jobs were given to me by union teachers.
A union member taught me to read. A union member
taught me to write. Union
members taught America to respect the rights and
strengths of working people everywhere. I submit that
an America with no union
organization would be an America most citizens could
not be able to recognize, an America most citizens
would want nothing to do with. 
 
     So, yeah, I thought about giving that speech. I
figured it would be a home run ball. But then it
struck me. First of all, you folks don't need to
sit here and listen to someone wax poetic about the
greatness of unions. You already know. Second of all,
giving a speech like that, in this
day and age, would be like sitting in the middle of a
house fire talking about how warm and cozy we are.
This house is on fire, and so today I
want to talk to you about how we are going to stomp
out those flames before they burn out everything that
is important to us as citizens, and
as a nation entire. 
 
     A man said, "On this Labor Day weekend, Americans
pay tribute to the spirit of hard work and enterprise
that has always made this nation
strong. Every day, our workers go to factories and
offices and farms and produce the world's finest goods
and services. Their creativity and
energy are the greatest advantage of the American
economy." 
 
     What man said that? George W. Bush said that, on
Saturday, from his ranch in Crawford Texas. Does
anyone else appreciate the irony?
This house is on fire, and George is sitting in the
front yard with a great big flamethrower and a grin on
his face. The history of unions has
always been a story of the people versus the powerful,
the worker versus the bosses, the folks scratching to
keep the lights on at home
versus the folks taking CEO salaries home that are so
big they need a fleet of Brinks trucks to drive them,
laughing, all the way to the bank. 
 
     Some will argue that George W. Bush is a great
leader. I would argue that he is a symbol, in more
ways than one. As a leader he is
literally symbolic, a figurehead. Symbols are
important. He is a symbol of what happens when workers
stop believing that they have a say in
their rights as workers. When that happens, guys like
this find themselves able to run the show. And let's
face it, ladies and gentlemen: The
incredible mess this Iraq war is, and is turning into,
is nothing more or less than a prime example of what
you get when you put the boss'
son in charge of the production lines. 
 
     It is all well and good for Mr. Bush to praise
the greatness of the American worker. But it behooves
us to look long and hard at how the
American worker has fared under his administration,
and to talk long and hard about what that record means
to us, and to this country. 
 
     So let's talk hard. 
 
     The Bush administration has proposed changes to
the Fair Labor Standards Act that would strip millions
and millions of American
workers of the ability to earn overtime pay for
overtime work. In this ongoing recession - helped in
no small part by a couple of Bush
administration tax cuts that were basically
multi-billion dollar thank-you notes to the
corporations that funded Bush's 2000 campaign - in
this
on going recession, many many many American families
depend on overtime pay to make ends meet. If the White
House gets its way, that
thin safety net will be gone. 
 
     We shouldn't be surprised by this, by the cynical
way Bush pats workers on the back with one hand while
gutting their income with the
other. This administration has made much of the need
to support our troops in Iraq, something I am sure
each and every person in this
room agrees with. How, then, does this administration
think it is supporting the troops by pushing a policy
to cut hazard pay - overtime pay at
the extreme definition - for our soldiers still under
fire in Iraq? 
 
     Such actions demonstrate a callousness of spirit
that is as unpatriotic as anything I have ever heard
of. When American workers and
American soldiers are menaced by the economic policies
of a sitting President, that sitting President should
be made to stand, and walk,
right out the White House door. 
 
     Let's talk hard. 
 
     Let's talk about the 11 million jobs lost in this
country during the tenure of an administration that
some maniacs decided to give
Fast-Track treaty approval to. Jobs in automotive,
aviation, computer, data-processing and
software-programming, for starters, are sprinting
overseas in an stampede of 'outsourcing' that will
only be exacerbated by the Bush administration's love
affair with concepts like the Free
Trade Area of the Americas zone. 
 
     I'm going to put my Wobbly hat on for a moment,
and so I hope you will bear with me, because there are
some old Wobbly ideas that
deserve a second look in this brave new world. Those
millions of outsourced jobs that union workers could
be doing are leaving this country
for one reason: Because the countries they are going
to have no history of, nor protection for, collective
bargaining to protect workers' rights
and workers' wages. The companies that are outsourcing
to China, to India, to Bangladesh, to the Philippines,
are doing an end run around
each and every one of us. 
 
     It can be argued that the process of 'Economic
Globalization' has been going on since the first
Chinese trader met the first Indian
merchant on the Silk Road and said, "Have I got a deal
for you." It can be argued that globalization is
inevitable, especially given the
incredible technological leaps forward we make,
seemingly on an hourly basis. But if that
globalization is allowed to continue without giving
workers around the world the ability to unionize, to
fight for a living wage, to strike for the right to
improve their lot, workers here in America
and around the world will reap the whirlwind, will
find their backs broken at the expense of bosses who
have been historically allergic to
giving their employees the rights they so richly
deserve. 
 
     That, ladies and gentlemen, is what the Bush
administration is symbolic of. They symbolize the
repudiation of that right to collective
bargaining that, simply put, made this country what it
is today. They symbolize the stripping of your
much-deserved power within this
economy, for no other purpose than to empower the few
over the many. 
 
     Talking hard is dangerous, especially these days.
As a nation we have, since September 11, been cautious
and deferential about
criticizing the actions and ideologies of the boys and
girls in Washington. We've had to deal with the idea,
evinced clearly by this
administration, that to criticize is to be
unpatriotic. We've been told, by none other than White
House spokesman Ari Fleischer, to "Watch what
we say." 
 
     I submit that union men and women have earned the
right to speak openly and strongly against the
direction this country is headed. They
earned that right with the blood and lives of the
union men and women who charged headlong into two
burning buildings two years ago.
Union men and union women do their jobs. On that dark
day, union men and union women spent their lives on
the job, and they did it
without a second thought or a hesitating step. Union
men and women earned the right to speak their minds
after their fallen brothers and
sisters were used by the Bush administration as props
in a photo-op, and then were shamefully slapped across
the face by that same
administration. 
 
     Here's the news, America. 'Homeland Security' is
not a bunch of guys in black suits and sunglasses.
Homeland Security is cops, and fire
fighters, and emergency medical teams, all the people
who work every day to save lives. Homeland Security on
September 11 was union
workers all, and those cops and fire fighters and EMTs
have since had their funding eviscerated by an
administration that took their pictures
and then gave them the back of its hand. 
 
     Oh, yes, ladies and gentlemen, the right to speak
out has been earned here. 
 
     Caution and deference have no place in this
conversation anymore. We gave those people our caution
and deference, and they have paid
us back by steamrolling us. So enough of caution.
Enough of deference. It is time to talk hard. If we
can't speak the truth in the daylight, we
will never be able to begin the process of changing
that which desperately needs to be changed. Every
great movement in history has begun
with one thing: Words exchanged in truth between
people of good conscience. So let us, as people of
good conscience, exchange a few
hard words in the hopes of beginning something whose
time has come. 
 
     A long time ago, a man named Benito Mussolini
invented something called Fascism. In the time since,
fascism has come to be defined
by Nazis, by war, and by crimes against humanity that
defy description. But when Mussolini invented fascism,
those definitions had not yet
established themselves. Mussolini, the inventor of
fascism, defined it differently. "The first stage of
fascism," said Mussolini, "should more
appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a
merger of state and Corporate power." 
 
     Now, even with all my tough talk about hard words
and doing away with caution, I am appropriately
cautious about using so bloody a word
in this setting. Well I should be. But I ask you: What
do we have today if not the beginnings of the merging
of state and corporate power?
Even if you refuse to see our current situation
through Mussolini's eyes, even if you refuse to use
that hardest of words, the simple fact that
the corporate world and the federal government are
becoming one and the same is clear, and unavoidable.
Is that merger complete in
America? Certainly not. Are we headed in that
direction? Lawyers use a Latin phrase: "Res ipsa
loquitor." The thing speaks for itself. 
 
     What will the place of unions be in such a world?
Where are the rights of workers? 
 
     I say unions and the rights of workers are and
must continue to be at the forefront of a fight that
is not new, but is now as desperate as it
ever has been. There are millions and millions and
millions of Americans who would join a union tomorrow
if given the chance. We must
fight to see that they are given that chance. A man
staring down the barrel of a gun once said, "Don't
mourn. Organize." We are staring down
the barrel of a gun today, and if we don't organize,
we're finished. 
 
     I believe, at the end of the day, that America is
an idea, a dream. You can take away our cities, our
roads, our crops, our armies, you can
take all of that away, and the idea that is America
will still be there, as pure and great as anything
conceived by the human mind. I believe the
idea that is America stands as the last, best hope for
this world. When used properly, it can work wonders. 
 
     I believe that the idea, the dream, that is
America was made possible by the men and women who
lived and worked and died for the right
of workers to stand collectively for themselves. The
idea that is America would not exist without unions,
period. We must make people
understand that. A great, great many Americans are
well aware that the folks running things today do not
have their interests in mind, but
instead serve the interests of entities that would see
workers' rights ground to powder. 
 
     That awareness is out there. We must make them
aware that unions offer them the best possible chance
to bring change, to turn back
this tide, to bring us more fully towards the
realization of that idea that is America. In your
hands is the power to do these things. In your
hands is the future of this great nation. 
 
     The word 'Union' is synonymous with the word
'Work.' I say let us begin this work, let us begin it
today, let us not stop, let us not tire. I say
let us begin. 
 

     William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of
truthout.org. He is a New York Times and international
best-selling author of three books -
"War On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The
Greatest Sedition is Silence," available from Pluto
Press, and "Our Flag, Too: The
Paradox of Patriotism," available in August from
Context Books. 
 
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© Copyright 2003 by TruthOut.org


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