As things stand now, unemployment imposes losses of wages and benefits, diminished future incomes from pensions, Social Security, and individual retirement funds, holes in resumes (which are likely to lower future wages in the event of reemployment), etc. on individual workers, but the unemployed who give up looking for jobs and withdraw from the labor force do great service to the employed, by keeping their fellow workers' wages higher than otherwise. Therefore, the unemployed's noble act of solidarity ought to be reciprocated by the employed's.
The mettle of any labor movement is tested by its willingness to fight to make unemployment a pleasurable state of being, through struggles for universal health care, high severance pays, high unemployment benefits for long periods (at least three years, considering business cycles), easy qualification for generous disability benefits, and so on.
Workers should make it a goal to stay out of the labor market as much as possible: no child labor (no wage labor allowed until children turn 18 -- the only exception being child actors), free public education (from elementary to graduate school), short workdays and weeks, long vacations (three months a year at a minimum), long paid parental leaves (three years at a minimum, with children packed to free public day care and kindergartens thereafter), unlimited sick leaves, and early retirement (at 50).
There ought to be a law that sets the maximum lifetime work hours, as well as the maximum work hours per day, per week, and per year. Those who willfully work -- or make others work -- more than law allows will be made to stand in a downtown square, wearing a dunce's cap with a scarlet letter S on it, which signifies SCAB. The punishment will be waived upon a televised oath to take more vacations -- or allow workers to take more vacations -- than the law demands.
The idlest worker is awarded a Hero of Socialist Labor medal, designed by the Sandwichman.
To reorient the US labor movement in such a direction, there must be a sea change in its culture. As productivity goes up, there is a struggle to wage, in order to capture more productivity gains for the working class. Even organized labor in the US understands this. What to do with captured productivity gains, though?
Now, there is a choice to make. "Starting from the same level of productivity and per-capita income as the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, Europe fell behind steadily to a level of barely half in 1950, and then began a rapid catch-up. While Europe's level of productivity has almost converged, its income per person has leveled off at about three-quarters of America's. How could Europe be so productive yet so poor [sic]? The simple answer is that hours per person in Europe have fallen drastically in the past 40 years, reflecting long vacations, high unemployment, and low labor force participation" (Robert J. Gordon, "Two Centuries of Economic Growth: Europe Chasing the American Frontier," <http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/economics/gordon/2Cent-CEPR.pdf>, 30 Mar. 2004). High unemployment, low labor force participation, and low per-capita income, however, are not a sign of relative European poverty. It is an index of the European labor movement's strength, successfully keeping more workers out of the labor market, allowing many of the unemployed in Europe to live better than many of the employed in the USA, and having the public sector provide many goods and services (such as health care and higher education) for which Americans must pay fortunes out of their own pockets.
Becoming more like Europeans -- working less, consuming more in public, consuming less in private -- seems to be the way to go. The only problem is that the European model may not be compatible with free movement of labor across borders. But immigrant workers tend to come with immigrant capitalists and petty producers who create jobs by employing them, so immigration may not be a problem after all, especially if native-born workers keep their birth rate far below the replacement level, as many of them do already, fewer births being more conducive to women's well-being, gender equality, and more leisure for both sexes in any case. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>