"Workers are fed up"

[Brian O. Sheppard x349393]

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