For 33 years labor and workers have been losing real wages and benefits while corporations have enjoyed welfare. Too often your fellow worker will blame the government or the unemployed and working poor for living on the government tit'
The reality is the Reagan and Republican war on America's middle class and our buy-in on the me first society. After all
I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.
Jay Gould
The headline proudly proclaims that “Machinists say yes: Everett gets 777X” (Seattle Times Jan. 4th, 2014) after a re vote mandated by the IAMAW national headquarters. But the vote its self has its roots in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan and his attack on labor and the middle class.
For the last 33 years the American worker, including those at Boeing have worked in destroying the achievements labor has made in improving the American family and the creation of the middle class.
Reagan brought us the narrative of the wealthy will take care of America. Trickle down economics he called it. His Vise President called it voodoo economics. The one thing Reagan got right was the trickle down. And poverty continues to trickle down on each preceding generation.
And yet we are still a divided workforce, not caring about the other guy until our employer takes away from us.
There have been hundreds of books written on why people vote against or why they must vote against their interests. For the last 33 years one party has worked to impoverish the work force trying to end the middle class.
This vote in Washington State kept an industry alive; it also marks the final nails in the labor movement, the middle class. A divided union will build the last airliner to be made in Washington. Half of the workers will blame the other half for their demise.
When Ronald Reagan became president the war on the middle class was instituted starting with the breaking of PATCO. What nourished the Republican’s growth was the endorsement from ALPA of Reagan's actions. Those very workers at Boeing, who are screaming about the concessions, helped to fulfil Reagan’s dream of a union free, low wage service economy.
In the last 33 years, Reagan had help from two republican and two democratic presidents. With NAFTA and other “free” trade agreements that lead to the wholesale migration of our jobs and industry. Combined with tax incentives to help manufactures relocate is causing our cities and soon the states to go bankrupt.
In my career as a union leader I was sicken by those members of my union that also walked lockstep with Reagan. Now 30+ years later the fall out of those actions has hit home with those same union members screaming that it isn’t right to give up their hard earned benefits and pensions.
Yet, in November those same people will vote the democrats out of office and install the party that brought us the new normal of union busting, contract gutting and the downward spiral of the middle class.
The unions are not free of culpability in this matter. While their membership was shrinking, they failed to educate America. Yes America, not only the membership, but every man jack of us. Our government, employers and the media basically “locked” us out. Put us on strike sort of speaking. And in every state we’ve lost our support of the citizen.
We, as unions, need to fight back. Our political funds are not as great as they’ve been in the past so maybe we need to use that strike fund to work on the midterms. Not by donating to candidates but by running issue ads to bring the plight of the American worker, common man and the base of the middle class into the political spot light.
Put the me first assholes on notice that we no longer plan to sit by and wait. That we are going to set the agenda of the election, run the narrative and frame the messages. It’s getting late in the game and we need to score.
If anything, the Boeing workers, all American workers, need to be active in electing local, state and national politicians who want to bring back the middle class. Reagan had it wrong to blame the government for the woes of the nation.
Its time to save us, the middle class, and restore America to being the great society it was.