Jesse Jackson: Reckoning
- From: "GWhyte" <gwhyte3003@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 12:15:55 -0400
Jesse Jackson: Reckoning
By Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr
© Tribune Media Services
http://www.blacknews.com/pr/reckoning101.html
Will America remain the land of opportunity? Will it remain a nation with a
broad middle class? Or is it turning into two Americas, one rich and one
struggling just to get by?
The Delphi Company, one of the leading automobile parts manufacturers in the
world, has filed for bankruptcy. Its CEO, Robert Miller, says it can't meet
global competition and pay its workers a union wage. And it must shed its
obligations on health care and pensions to its retired workers. Miller,
having dished out some 90 million in severance bonuses to his executives,
wants workers to swallow pay cuts from about $27 an hour to about $10 an
hour.
But this isn't really about Delphi, it's about Detroit. General Motors
verges on bankruptcy, as does Ford. All the auto companies are pressing
workers to swallow deep cuts in pay and benefits. The automobile industry is
headed down the path of the steel industry and the mining industry and
appliance industry. It's going from union jobs that provide a secure middle
class living to low wage, low benefit jobs that leave workers scrambling to
get by.
Used to be celebrators of the new global economy like Tom Friedman argued
that these workers were just the "turtles," the dim-witted, slow footed
victims who were going to get run over on the global highway to a new
economy and a new prosperity. Then the dot.com bubble burst. And many of the
programming jobs that were lost in the bust never came back. They were
shipped to India. As were an increasing number of the service jobs in
banking, finance, and communications. Now the glib Mr. Friedman gets
tongue-tied when he tries to figure out how this country sustains a middle
class in the face of the corporate assault on unions, the shipping of good
jobs abroad and the pressure on wages and benefits at home.
Last year, according to the Bush administration and the White House, was a
sterling year of economic growth. Stocks were up; profits up, CEO salaries
soared once more. But wages for average workers fell. As the Economic Policy
Institute points out, the median - that's the middle - wage for a full time,
year round male worker didn't keep up with the hike in prices - and that was
before gas prices went through the roof.
We teach our children self-discipline. Work hard, stay out of trouble, turn
your backs on drugs, don't have children out of wedlock, get the best
education you can. The promise is that with self-reliance and
self-discipline, you can share in the American dream - a good living, a
secure job, a house, a secure retirement, good education for the next
generation.
But what happens when the ladder to the middle class is broken? When the
jobs that used to provide the way up are gone? What happens when you can't
find a union job at $27 an hour with health care and pensions, but must
accept a job at $10 an hour without health care and without a pension? What
happens to opportunity, to the dream, to America?
This is the fundamental challenge facing our nation. And no leader, outside
of John Edwards, is even talking about it. Bush is spending $250 billion and
thousands of lives in a failed effort to build a unified democracy in an
Iraq torn by civil and religious division. At home, he's just part of the
problem. His first move after Katrina was to eliminate the prevailing wage
in contracts to rebuild the city, and to waive restrictions on the use of
undocumented workers. Instead of decent union jobs going to Katrina's
victims and paying them enough to get back on their feet, he'll rebuild New
Orleans with illegal immigrant labor that can be exploited to work for next
to nothing and then shipped out of the country when the task is complete.
Bush and the Republican Congress are still pushing through more tax breaks
for the wealthy while blocking any increase in the minimum wage for working
people.
But Democrats aren't much better. They talk about education as the answer,
but say little about the fact that college education is getting priced out
of the reach of working families, or that poor kids who need the most help
get the least - overcrowded schools, the least experienced teachers,
outdated textbooks, school buildings that are dangerous to their health.
Instead of providing an avenue to opportunity, our school system, as it is,
is reinforcing the division of America.
Working families have to wake up. We need a new movement, a new agenda, and
new leadership. And with Delphi suggesting that Detroit is about to go down,
we don't have much time.
.
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