Defend Jet Blue Flight Attendant, Steven Slater. Millions Should Do what Slater Did---Walk Off the Job

Steven Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant in the news for walking off the job stood up to the boss and the pressures of an increasingly hostile workplace and protested in the best way he could think of at the moment; like many workers, he’d had enough.

As a previous blog pointed out, Flight Attendants have suffered major attacks on their living standards and quality of work life.  Like any job that deals with the public at large, like teaching or transit, or workers at the DMV for instance, Flight Attendants are often the recipients of anger that the general public feels in response to the attacks on all of us; the foreclosures, job losses, cuts in public services etc.  Then there’s racism, sexism, the lack of health care and other burdens people have to deal with.

From what I can gather in the press today Steven Slater is faced with felony charges.  The bankers, speculators and wasters who are the cause of the crisis we are facing in our lives are not facing felony charges.  I understand also that Slater took time caring for his mother who was also a Flight Attendant and did the same for his father who was a pilot.
The workers in the airline industry including pilots have faced years of cuts like so many of us.  Those of us over 20 will remember the Eastern Airlines and TWA strikes.

There is another related story in the news today that we should think about; productivity declined at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the April-to-June quarter. Some economists see this as a positive sign because it means that employers can no longer “squeeze extra output out of leaner staffs.” says the Associated Press. Hopefully they will release some capital and start hiring, economists believe.

“Squeezing extra output” is a term that the employers and the strategist of capital use all the time. They’ve come close to reaching that limit in this economy.  After all, they don’t want to cause social unrest.

 But what does this mean concretely for working people?  It means longer hours, speed-ups, fewer benefits, more time away from the family and less time for ourselves.  It means cutting corners including safety.  As the pressure increases and when there is no outlet for the anger we feel at being taken advantage of more and more as we stand on the verge of losing our jobs and our homes, we strike out at each other.  We are nasty to our co-workers, our customers and our family members. Who knows what pressure the airline passenger that Slater was responding to is under?  US workers work longer hours with fewer benefits and social protections than workers in other industrialized countries; if you have no money in this country you die.  Being a war hero or veteran means nothing.  These folks are only championed on the way out, when they return they can’t find work like everyone else.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal editorial today reports on the economy.  “The economy doesn’t suffer from a shortage of money,” it states; instead, “It is suffering from a shortage of confidence and animal spirits”.  Well Steven Slater showed some confidence and some healthy animal spirits.  But these expressions of it that challenge the boss and their control of the workplace are not the animal spirits they are referring too.  For working people, the passive, cowering of a beaten dog and blind obedience is the animal spirit they prefer.

The Journal points out that things are going well for the owners of capital.  “US corporations have repaired their balance sheets enough that they have something close to $2 trillion in cash on hand.”  The problem is that the owners of capital are on strike.  Leaving aside the fact that the capital they own is the collective product of workers like Steven Slater, we have to break their strike of capital like they break strikes of Labor.

The Union leadership at the highest levels has capitulated completely, agreeing to concession after concession for workers like Flight Attendants and giving the bosses what they want.  They support capitalism, worship the market, consequently they only negotiate with the employers in the hope they’ll be less aggressive.  From their perspective there’s no point in fighting them.  It is because they refuse to organize a fight back that frustrated workers sometimes take individual acts of despair and even sabotage.

Steven Slater should be congratulated; he never bought a semi automatic and wiped out his co-workers. He never massacred his family and then himself. For a moment, he liberated himself from the employer’s clutches and control and had a beer on the way.  Now the employer’s other agencies, the courts and the police have intervened.

From what I understand, some Facebook pages have been set up supporting Slater for walking off the job. This is one of those daily indications of the anger and hatred of the system and the way it treats people that continue to grow.

A Defend Steven Slater Campaign should be initiated and this writer for one would be willing to help with such a project. I am a retired Union activist and if we set up something like this, those in Unions should get financial and other support for Slater. The guy at Hewlett Packard just terminated for misconduct was given a $12 million severance package. The bosses defend their own, don’t they?

Given the Homeland Security act and other restrictive laws initiated under the guise of fighting terrorism but applicable to all social activists, Slater could be in more trouble than we think, especially as they may want to make an example of him.

If you have any ideas or want to do something along these lines contact us at: we_know_whats_up@yahoo.com

Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table. George Schultz