Portland Press Herald
Editorial Page
July 7, 2003
LABOR
WORKS TO CONTROL CORPORATE EXCESSES
President,
Maine AFL-CIO
On June 26 Ernie Lebel, apparently speaking as a director of the Alliance
for Maine’s Future, wrote a column that is highly critical of unions in
general, various laws and programs that help workers and, in particular, of the
recent Maine AFL-CIO 10-point action plan to help laid off Maine workers in
crisis.
The material is remarkable largely because it represents a viewpoint of
business, jobs, labor, unions and workers that was common 100 years ago and, for
some people, hasn’t changed since.
The Lebel mantra is that Maine needs more jobs and the way to get them is
to “create an environment that allows Maine employers to prosper.”
The labor movement is definitely not opposed to either jobs or employers.
However, well over a 100 years of history in Maine and the nation clearly
indicates that employers don’t go in business to improve society, create jobs
or benefit workers. They go in business to make the maximum amount of profit in
the shortest time possible. This is simply the way the system works.
On the other hand, workers as a group and society as a whole have an
inherent interest in creating a better society and better working conditions.
Since it is not reasonable, practical, fair or even legal to regulate just one
business at a time, we pass general laws to prevent air and water pollution,
prevent child labor, provide work leave for family and medical reasons, impose
workplace health and safety conditions, allow workers to bargain collectively
for their pay and benefits (ruled illegal for most of the 1800s), set minimum
standards of pay, determine maximum working hours, collect taxes for workers’
compensation for injury, for social security, for unemployment benefits and
other purposes our democratic society considers to be necessary to provide an
acceptable quality of life for workers and for the nation as a whole.
Naturally, this promotes disagreement between society and employers.
Some 50 years ago Maine corporations fought for their “right” to keep
polluting Maine rivers – the so called “payrolls or pickerel” battle. But
(to a large extent the corporations lost) today we have relatively clean rivers
in Maine instead of open sewers with a rotten egg smell. More recently business
has fought against OSHA regulations despite the fact that 25 to 30 Maine workers
and thousands nationally die on the job every year. Nationally business
continues to fight against family leave despite the fact that the measure has
helped thousands of families with virtually no impact on business or profits.
Business also wants to continue to allow outmoded Midwest power plants to belch
smoke and pollute the New England air. And we hardly need to comment on what
Enron and other similar cases reveal about the need for corporate regulation by
society to protect both workers and investors. Nor do we need to comment about
the many massive corporate violations of worker/public interest in such areas as
civil rights, sexual harassment and pension protection.
Without social, work, safety, economic and other social controls,
corporations quickly engage in a “race to the bottom” always justified by
the statement “we must do this in order to compete.”
For decades in the United States we have witnessed this “race to the
bottom” in areas covered by state laws and regulations. Business has always
threatened to move and has moved to some other state to escape environmental
regulation, pay the lowest possible wages and benefits, pay the lowest amount of
taxes, violate safety laws, operate sweatshops and refuse to accept the legal
right of workers to join together and negotiate a contract for their labor.
Today, we are still witnessing this “race to the bottom.” However,
today the race is moving businesses not from state to state but from nation to
nation. It is worldwide. The threat to Americans, to the nation’s economy and
to the entire world is immense.
Over and over Lebel talks about jobs. What he doesn’t mention is the
job loss in Maine that has nothing to do with Maine laws or policies or with
unions but rather with national policies such as NAFTA and Fast Track that have
cost thousands of Maine workers their jobs.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BOLS) from 1994 to 2000
Maine lost a net of 22,357 trade-related jobs. This is a loss of 3.6 percent of
our total state labor force and is the third highest percentage loss in the
nation – exceeded only by losses in Rhode Island and North Carolina. More than
18,000 of these lost Maine jobs were in manufacturing. Nationally the BOLS pegs
the net trade-related American job loss at 3,044,241 jobs.
Space here doesn’t permit a full discussion of the real job problem;
however, the Wall Street Journal on June 2 noted the massive and continuing
national job loss. We now have (including those who have given up looking for
work) more than 9 million unemployed and nearly 5 million more forced to work
only part time. The Journal calls this “the most protracted job-market
downturn since the Great Depression” of the 1930s.
It is a “structural” (never-to-come-back) job loss that is “vast”
and impacts more than 75 percent of American jobs.
First the corporate flight was to Mexico and its impact was largely on
manufacturing blue collar jobs. Now the corporate job flight (restructuring) is
to China (Hathaway shirt for instance) and India and it impacts blue collar and
professional white collar jobs such as architects, engineers and computer
programmers.
We desperately need a much higher level of public understanding and
awareness of the real nature of the problem and we need national officials who
understand the problem and will strive to deal with it instead of supporting
measures that make it worse.
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