from http://bari.iww.org/~bsheppard/fedup.html
Workers are fed up by Jon Bekken
Nearly three-fourths of U.S. workers now believe rank-and-file workers should be represented on corporate boards, and 58 percent say workers need unions in order to protect their interests.
The poll results indicate a "high level of mistrust, anxiety and frustration ... that can be felt in every assembly line and cubicle throughout America," Employment Law Alliance chief Stephen Hirschfeld told the _Washington Post_. The survey was commissioned by the ELA, an association of union-busting attorneys. Hirschfeld warned employers that they need to respond to workers' concerns if they hope to head off union organization drives.
The employing class is increasingly worried. The far-right American Enterprise Institute reports a large increase in the percentage of the U.S. population that considers big business the "biggest threat to the future of the country." Only 38 percent chose that option, but that is the highest level in the 48 years pollsters have asked the question, and up sharply from 22 percent two years ago. The number of people who believe "what is good for business is good for the average person" is also down sharply.
AFL-CIO surveys have found similar results. More than half of workers who don't belong to a union would join a union immediately if one was available to them. Conditions for many workers are clearly getting worse. The Economic Policy Institute reports that the income gap between the wealthy and poor workers is growing again, after narrowing slightly in the late 1990s.
However, unionization makes a difference. Not only do union workers generally make higher wages, a new Canadian study found that unionized workers are almost twice as likely to have extended medical, dental and disability coverage, and three times as likely to have a pension plan.
Official unemployment is up to 5.9 percent, and one in five unemployed workers have been jobless for at least six months. More than 22 million American workers did not have a single paid day off in 2000, the most recent year data for which Bureau of Labor Statistics data are available.
U.S. workers' vacations are among the shortest in the world. In Japan, long known for its long work hours, collective bargaining agreements provide manufacturing workers with 18 paid vacation days a year, compared with an average of 12 in the United States. Japanese workers also get 13 paid holidays, compared with 11 in the U.S. European workers get more than twice as much time off as Americans.
Management consultant Mike Carter told the Washington Post that globalization means more workers are aware that they are being shortchanged, especially as many work for companies that give more time off to staff in other countries.
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Jon Bekken, Ph.D., is associate professor at Suffolk University, editor of the IWW's Industrial Worker, and is a member of the editorial collective of Anarcho-Syndicalist Review. --
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"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." - Friedrich Nietzsche