In the wake of the great recession, the US Chamber of Commerce did a little social research. This organization, which represents the gang that caused the crisis that has wreaked such havoc throughout the world, felt the need to rescue the somewhat tarnished image of capitalism. In order to wage a successful media blitz these bourgeois needed to get a fairly accurate view of the public mood. What they discovered was that the term capitalism was so despised that they could not use it. Instead they launched last October a campaign to promote free enterprise. Capitalism, they found in their focus groups, was associated with greed and the strong devouring the weak, so it was out.
Along with the public relations campaign there is the direct and vicious attack on all aspects of our lives. The few thousand unelected people that run society and whose representatives meet occasionally in Camp David, the Bohemian Grove and Jackson Hole Wyoming are driven by the system they govern to make workers and the middle class pay for their crisis; they have to eliminate the gains made in the great struggles of the 1930’s and the civil rights movement that followed.
Fresh on the heels of their victories in auto, they are intent on crushing the public sector Unions that stand in the way of their efforts to privatize education and public services. The rise of the student movement in California that began in response to the 32% fee hikes at the state’s universities has inspired millions of people throughout the US and world and the bankers and their friends are watching it closely.
In the aftermath of the March 4th strikes and day of action the capitalist class increased their propaganda war. The Wall Street Journal editorial of March 10th took the lead and had some advice for the students as to why the fee hikes were necessary: “With just a little research, the students could have discovered that compensation packages won from the state by unions were a big reason for the hike.” , the editorial explained.
There you have it, the old divide and rule strategy at work; public sector workers are to blame. They have used many variants of this tactic; immigrants, blacks, people on welfare, women struggling to gain wage parity, these have all been used as a justification for the assault on workers by the capitalist class and the general failure of their system to provide a decent life for all while a few reap billions in profits.
The Wall Street Journal's editorial on March 26th continues the assault on public sector workers, blaming us for the crisis. Public sector workers are highly unionized when compared to our private sector brothers and sisters. Workers in the public sector have better pay and benefits than the private sector and job security provisions are stronger. It is this that the Wall Street Journal and its supporters want to destroy as it stands as a pole attraction for all workers, or at least it should if the Union leaders defended public sector pay and conditions rather than making the employers arguments for them that we are in an economic crisis. Warren Buffet lost $25 billion in 2008 and he doesn’t seem to be in any crisis.
The billionaires are enraged that public sector workers earn about a third on average more than the private sector. They are even more enraged given that government workers benefits are some 70% higher according to the Journal. It is important to note that that according to the Journal, this “benefit gap” is accounted for due to the presence of unionized public employees. Non-Union public workers are paid “roughly what private workers receive” the editorial points out. In general, Union wages and benefits are around 35% higher than non-Union. This in itself is an argument for Unions despite them being burdened at present with a leadership that cowers to the employers and refuses to fight.
The somewhat better pay and conditions of Union workers and in particularly public sector workers are a great selling point. They need to be improved though. Labor productivity is such that we could easily reduce the workweek to 25 hours immediately; between 1972 and 2007 labor productivity in the United States rose by more than 90%. In other words, US workers’ total production pie of goods and services has 90% more in it than it did 34 years ago. And what did we get for this remarkable achievement? An 11% pay cut. This immense amount of wealth created by working people has been used to line the pockets of bankers and speculators and is wasted on predatory wars to defend their, not our, interests. That which has been pumped back in to the public sector due to the pressure and potential power of the public sector Unions is what the capitalist class wants to get a hold of next. Education, transportation, and as we know, social security are all lucrative ventures that the private sector wants to get a hold of for the immense profits that can be made; the health insurance industry has just been handed a huge windfall by the Obama administration and we can be certain that they will try to move on social security again in the future. They salivate just at the prospect of the fees that are charged for managing these programs..
The official policy of the strategists at the head of organized Labor is concessions. They support the Team Concept, the view that employers and workers have the same interests and their catastrophic policies flow from this. They refuse to mobilize the power of their members or use the somewhat better conditions that public sector workers have to improve living standards over all because they see no alternative to the market; they accept the world view of the employers------profits must be made, the market is sacrosanct, and capitalism is the only economic system; it is the end of civilization for them, so what gains can be made challenging it? Mobilizing their members, fighting for better conditions for all at the expense of the bankers and speculators can only lead to chaos.
The Wall Street Journal’s campaign vilifying public sector workers is heating up and is a direct tactical response to the crisis that so many workers are facing and the rising anger that exists beneath the surface of US society in response to this crisis. The March 4th movement represents a real threat to the capitalist class if it is not derailed and one way to derail a movement from below is to divide it. It is important to recognize this is a serious enemy we are dealing with that will resort to the most extreme measures to defend their right to plunder.
The Journal editorial goes on to explain how much money will be saved if public sector workers pay and benefits were cut, were brought down to the lowest common denominator. But for us, public sector pay and benefits should not only be expanded for those receiving them, but expanded to include the millions who do not receive them. The bosses want to throw us in to competition with each other so that we all go down together. They want to hold up the workers of China and Mexico as our competitors and that if we don’t want them to “steal” our jobs we must give up what took decades to win. We must reject this nonsense. The boss will always seek the lowest wages and the highest profits. Workers and youth throughout the world have one thing in common and one enemy, we produce the wealth and the capitalists steal it. They know this, which is why they introduce division in to our ranks, and they are doing so now between students, the public, and public sector workers.
We can only rely on ourselves to win what is necessary for a decent life; we cannot rely on the Democrats any more than Republicans. A united movement of workers and youth will have the power to win through its sheer economic strength and part of this process has to be an independent working class political alternative to the two parties of capitalism.
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