Workers of the World Unite!!

Post Labor Day Rant

The day Americans are supposed to honor the worker has once again passed without much notice of the plight of workers around the world. Instead picnics, barbeques and camping have become the major focus of the day. In an ironic twist as labor unions and the condition of workers seems to be near their end, the day called Labor Day has really become a day representing the end of summer.
As CEO’s and other business executives reap huge salaries and bonuses, the average wage of all American workers has stagnated or lost ground with the costs of living. Business executives earn up to 2000 times more than the highest paid hourly worker.
Business executives reaping obscene wealth have reduced the high paying jobs for workers by “off shoring” their jobs to third world country workers for a pittance. They exploit international workers at the expense of workers in their own nation.
The obscene wealth earned by these executives who are primarily white males is earned for the destruction of unions and diminishing or devaluing of all workers in America. It’s earned by exploitation of workers in situations of near slavery and abject poverty willing to accept the lower wages because it’s more than they’ve ever earned in their lifetime.
The American worker is being lied to by the employers of their nation. They’re told unions are bad and outdated. They’re given misinformation about unionism that portrays unions as leeches that only want to take their money in form of dues but don’t really help the worker.
If the slander against unions were true it’s interesting how vigorously businesses like Wal-Mart pull out all stops to squash labor organizing at their work sites. If unions were so awful and bad for workers it would seem the workers would not want to organize in the first place.
Labor Day in America is a farce of giving a bone to workers while the prime meat remains on the plate of highly paid business executives. Labor Day in America is a big “atta-boy” failing to give the workers true recognition by sharing more of the wealth for their hard work. Labor Day is American business’ master patting the heads of their serfs and slaves without giving them the living wages and benefits they need.
Sadly the workers of the world are convinced or frightened into believing unionism is a danger to their continued employment. And as long as workers continue to be exploited around the world all workers remain weakened and at the mercy of the “Massa” of the business plantation.
I grew up watching my father work himself to exhaustion as a hard rock miner and pipe fitter. He was a proud man because he knew he gave a full day’s work for a full day’s income each and every day.
My dad was a union steward for the United Mine Workers in several mines around the state of Colorado. He led men out on strike after failing to get management to agree to better wages and benefits.
He became the target of management for his union activism. They found ways to make things harder for him but they seldom fired him because he was one of their most productive workers.
He became a member of the AFL-CIO Pipefitter’s Union and as he’d always done he gave his all in his work. He took joy in doing the best job possible. He expected to be treated fairly for his efforts. When management failed to be fair, my dad had no qualms about walking a picket line to maintain unionism.
In the end, my dad’s work killed him and American business ignored him and all those like him.
The pits of uranium mines poisoned his lungs with radiation. The dust of the molybdenum mines caused his lungs to get “rocked up”. The fine particles of asbestos found on old boilers and the fine dust of the metal trades further damaged his respiratory system.
My father died from the complications of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) at the age of 67. At the end of his life, the once robust and energetic man I’d known when I was younger was unable to walk across a room without suffocating shortness of breath. He couldn’t sleep without sitting up because his respirations were so labored. He literally smothered to death because of the damage to his lungs.
Workers exposed to toxic materials and substances are forgotten by the businesses they help make huge profits. Rather than recognize the worker’s sacrifice, the plantation owners spend huge sums on attorney fees to prevent compensation for the workers’ damaged health.
The list of dangerous exposures to workers seems endless. The denial of responsibility or fairness to the worker by business seems just as endless.
Each year the number of American workers without medical benefits increases. Each year the cost of living out paces the rate of the average worker’s income. The $5.15 minimum wage is an incredible joke and slap in the face to the workforce. A living wage is estimated to be over twelve dollars an hour plus health benefits for any small family.
A union organizer for SEIU Justice for Janitors told a small rally of his personal struggle with employers refusing to provide health benefits as part of the payment for hard work. A family member needed hospital care that cost thousands of dollars the organizer didn’t have.
The hospital, which has a mission to provide care to indigent patients, sent the unpaid bill to a collection agency. The collection agency harassed and hounded the worker to get payment.
The credit rating of the worker who is sent to collection by hospitals receiving federal funding for treating the poor is destroyed. Any attempts later to finance a home or automobile will cost this worker much more than a worker with health benefits or the wealthy business owner. It’s nothing less than a tax upon the poor for simply being poor.
Hospitals representing themselves as religiously affiliated will charge the indigent patient up to ten times the amount it charges a patient with health benefits for the exact same procedure. Then the same hospitals will send the unpaid inflated bills to collection agencies. It will destroy the credit of the indigent patients for years to come. Again the poor are taxed for the poverty they live in.
Janitors cleaning large corporations’ facilities struggle to live on the poor wages they receive for the back breaking work they do. They struggle to receive health care.
The only advocate for these janitors has been unions. They struggle to get wage increases and health benefits that most can’t afford because the matching deductions and co-pays are too much.
The workers have to choose between paying gas and electric, buying food and paying for children’s clothing or reducing what they take home to pay the employee share for health benefits.
One major hospitalization will financially ruin these workers but they often have to risk that ruin. Unions for janitors advocate large businesses step up for people who work hard to maintain the workplaces of others.
Unions advocate for nurses and mental health workers carrying out treatment to the most severely mentally ill patients. Most of these patients are indigent or on disability. The only care they receive comes from professional people with advanced degrees in a field notorious for underpaying the care-givers.
Unions advocate for workers to receive benefits that are considered a human right in most advanced countries. The right to adequate healthcare.
Unions advocate for workers to receive wages that provide the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s called a living wage.
Labor Day is a farce as long as workers continue to receive less than fair compensation for hard work. The general code of unionism is a day’s work for a day’s pay.
Workers in America and around the world deserve a fair day’s pay for a day’s work. They don’t deserve to have their noses rubbed in the obscene income of incompetent and greedy executives of corporations that have bankrupted their companies.
They don’t deserve to have pensions and benefits stolen from them while the captains of industry make one thousand times more income than the highest paid worker.
Workers around the world should take note of the record profits of the major employers around the world. They should question the fairness of what they earn compared with the profit they help these employers make.
Workers should question why employers continue to have great fear of an organized workforce that establishes ways to fairly mediate complaints by both worker and management.
Workers in America complain about workers in other countries taking jobs from them at much lesser wages. They should see the real truth.
The world wide economy with multi-national corporations calls for world wide unionism to prevent jobs lost to other workers at less than fair compensation. Workers around the world will have to understand big business plans to keep them divided and working without fair wages for the work they produce.
May 1st each year is a day to celebrate workers around the world. The day has become ostracized by business and government as associated with socialist, Marxist and communist May Day celebrations. These philosophies continue to be tagged with the same connotation as terrorism.
The fear of a world wide organized labor movement spurs business and government to keep blocking any symbolic or direct attempts for workers around the world to unite for fair compensation, health benefits and a share of the profit pie.
Governments and industries may war against each other but they remain united in their efforts to keep common working people from actually getting a fair wage. As long as they succeed in dividing labor they succeed in working people being treated as dispensable cogs in the military industrial complex.
Workers of the world must unite!!

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN
VVAW – Denver, CO
USMC combat veteran
Ex-union pipefitter
Ex-union RN