It would be ideal if nations viewed the contributions of their labor forces with close to the same respect, if not with as much regard, as those of their corporations and financial institutions.
In our society, however, the two can probably never have equal value. At best, labor can be the sentimental favorite over capital; it can be lionized in some quarters, but it lacks the hold over the American imagination that the corporation has. And over the last 30 years, however, labor in general has been devalued as manufacturing has gone into decline, while the management, and especially, the financial class has been elevated in the popular mind to the point that no amount of malfeasance has been able to reduce its status significantly.
As has been plentifully noted, during the period 1945-75, the working classes of Europe and North America rose into the middle class as their wages and benefits increased. Obviously, the improvement in the standard of living for many ordinary workers was the result of a generations-long struggle. But in the post-war era, labor finally took its 'place at the table' in the new consumer society that was coming into being. It was true that in some ways labor was feared more than respected, and the growing power (and oftentimes, corruption) of labor unions was resented. But at the end of the day, a person without much education could, through a union labor job, provide middle-class comforts for himself and his family. The larger society, in general, believed in providing this kind of opportunity to the workforce.
I can't exactly relate the series of events that has led to the precarious state of labor in the present day, but a couple of trends do stand out. The world is no longer as parochial, economically or culturally, as it used to be. There is now a willingness to have things manufactured wherever it may be cheapest to do so; at the same time, many more countries are able to produce consumer goods than before. In such a climate, a high-wage traditional manufacturing sector is difficult to sustain. The strongest argument for maintaining manufacturing jobs is, sadly, largely the sentimental one.
But for all the pain and dislocation caused by the loss of jobs making durable goods in this country, I have consistently been surprised at how weak the protest has been. The economy has probably adjusted well enough: other kinds of jobs, some high-paying (though many have not been so), have come into being; but the fabric of our society has been damaged severely by the loss of manufacturing jobs. For over 30 years, the regions of the country that formerly relied on factories, mills, mines, and so forth have sustained blow after blow, never really fully taking part in whatever prosperity we have enjoyed during this time period.
This is not a class-conscious society we inhabit -- that is probably one reason for the quiescence of the working class during these last decades of economic transformation. No matter our background, most of us don't like to be thought of as anything but middle class -- it would distasteful, in many cases, to see oneself as part of a victimized stratum of society, and to engage in protest on one's own behalf as a member of such a stratum. That social class is so difficult to define in a society such as our own has had the odd effect of making it difficult to try to defend the interests of those who are economically and socially most vulnerable. For all the evidence that birth often determines our station, we Americans refuse to believe that could be possible: at bottom, we believe that our place in society is always earned. So while we generally sympathize with the farmers, factory workers, and others whose ability to earn a living has dwindled in the past decades, the truth, I believe, is that we feel that if those whose skills have become obsolete or unneeded were just cleverer they could find the solution to their difficulty. This attitude is not particular to one's political affiliation, necessarily (and regrettably).
How else to explain the lack of engagement on the part of most of the influential classes regarding the diminishing rewards not just of all manner of blue-collar work, but of other kinds of jobs that are essential to maintaining society, such as teaching, nursing, and so forth? It might be romanticizing the past to say that work was ever held to be as intrinsically important as the product of that work. But the evidence that we at one time, as a society, believed far more in ensuring the long-term well-being of workers than we do now is incontrovertible.
The rightward turn of American politics since 1968 is often the scapegoat for many of the ills that have beset the American workforce. However, our government policy, as it impacts labor issues, is as much the symptom of our society's changed (or more to the point, diminished) view of work as it has been the cause of Labor's ills.
When our society was more hierarchical, it was also more paternalistic. This paternalism could be heavy-handed, as inevitably would be the case when institutions act in loco parentis. Like any solicitous parent, big business and government are inclined to make glaring mistakes: giving the wrong kind of support to its citizens (old-style welfare I believe is a fair example), or withholding support altogether. But they also created programs that they thought would be in the best interest of citizens: Social Security, Works Progress Administration, Medicare, in the case of government; fully-covered healthcare and other generous benefits for autoworkers and some other blue-collar workers.
Even when management and labor were in firm opposition (during the birth of the labor movement, for example), there was a sense that however much one side may have been anathema to the other, both were part of the same 'family' (forgive the continuation of this metaphor, for I think it is apt); there was no possibility of unilateral exit. Management treated labor at first as a disobedient child, but eventually accorded its respect to unions. Nowadays, companies must overcome a great deal of their own spite before even agreeing to the formation of a union, much less agreeing to union demands. And most manufacturers simply close factories and set up shop overseas to escape the burden of union contracts.
For reasons that are obscure, many Westerners, particularly Britons and Americans, grew weary of protecting and providing for workers. The costs of social supports for workers were (and are still considered) high, and strikes were disruptive. But something else was at work. We began to believe that the individual, unguided will was more efficacious than collective action. We no longer could see any advantage to large government, large management structures, and powerful unions: they stood in the way of individual decision-making and innovation.
This last observation is at least partly true. Even if we were able to do so, we should not wish to replicate the old-style war of attrition between unions and business. Nonetheless, while our business environment is more open to innovation than practically any other in the world, and there are numerous ways to acquire wealth, we find that our wealth, once acquired, is terribly vulnerable. Our individual persons are also vulnerable, as we have less and less health care, retirement savings, ability to afford tuition, and so forth than formerly. Our new-found faith that work is only a private matter that large, general-interest entities such as government and unions should stay out of has undermined society. Our freedom to fend for ourselves has left our economic and social landscape barren.
In our society, however, the two can probably never have equal value. At best, labor can be the sentimental favorite over capital; it can be lionized in some quarters, but it lacks the hold over the American imagination that the corporation has. And over the last 30 years, however, labor in general has been devalued as manufacturing has gone into decline, while the management, and especially, the financial class has been elevated in the popular mind to the point that no amount of malfeasance has been able to reduce its status significantly.
As has been plentifully noted, during the period 1945-75, the working classes of Europe and North America rose into the middle class as their wages and benefits increased. Obviously, the improvement in the standard of living for many ordinary workers was the result of a generations-long struggle. But in the post-war era, labor finally took its 'place at the table' in the new consumer society that was coming into being. It was true that in some ways labor was feared more than respected, and the growing power (and oftentimes, corruption) of labor unions was resented. But at the end of the day, a person without much education could, through a union labor job, provide middle-class comforts for himself and his family. The larger society, in general, believed in providing this kind of opportunity to the workforce.
I can't exactly relate the series of events that has led to the precarious state of labor in the present day, but a couple of trends do stand out. The world is no longer as parochial, economically or culturally, as it used to be. There is now a willingness to have things manufactured wherever it may be cheapest to do so; at the same time, many more countries are able to produce consumer goods than before. In such a climate, a high-wage traditional manufacturing sector is difficult to sustain. The strongest argument for maintaining manufacturing jobs is, sadly, largely the sentimental one.
But for all the pain and dislocation caused by the loss of jobs making durable goods in this country, I have consistently been surprised at how weak the protest has been. The economy has probably adjusted well enough: other kinds of jobs, some high-paying (though many have not been so), have come into being; but the fabric of our society has been damaged severely by the loss of manufacturing jobs. For over 30 years, the regions of the country that formerly relied on factories, mills, mines, and so forth have sustained blow after blow, never really fully taking part in whatever prosperity we have enjoyed during this time period.
This is not a class-conscious society we inhabit -- that is probably one reason for the quiescence of the working class during these last decades of economic transformation. No matter our background, most of us don't like to be thought of as anything but middle class -- it would distasteful, in many cases, to see oneself as part of a victimized stratum of society, and to engage in protest on one's own behalf as a member of such a stratum. That social class is so difficult to define in a society such as our own has had the odd effect of making it difficult to try to defend the interests of those who are economically and socially most vulnerable. For all the evidence that birth often determines our station, we Americans refuse to believe that could be possible: at bottom, we believe that our place in society is always earned. So while we generally sympathize with the farmers, factory workers, and others whose ability to earn a living has dwindled in the past decades, the truth, I believe, is that we feel that if those whose skills have become obsolete or unneeded were just cleverer they could find the solution to their difficulty. This attitude is not particular to one's political affiliation, necessarily (and regrettably).
How else to explain the lack of engagement on the part of most of the influential classes regarding the diminishing rewards not just of all manner of blue-collar work, but of other kinds of jobs that are essential to maintaining society, such as teaching, nursing, and so forth? It might be romanticizing the past to say that work was ever held to be as intrinsically important as the product of that work. But the evidence that we at one time, as a society, believed far more in ensuring the long-term well-being of workers than we do now is incontrovertible.
The rightward turn of American politics since 1968 is often the scapegoat for many of the ills that have beset the American workforce. However, our government policy, as it impacts labor issues, is as much the symptom of our society's changed (or more to the point, diminished) view of work as it has been the cause of Labor's ills.
When our society was more hierarchical, it was also more paternalistic. This paternalism could be heavy-handed, as inevitably would be the case when institutions act in loco parentis. Like any solicitous parent, big business and government are inclined to make glaring mistakes: giving the wrong kind of support to its citizens (old-style welfare I believe is a fair example), or withholding support altogether. But they also created programs that they thought would be in the best interest of citizens: Social Security, Works Progress Administration, Medicare, in the case of government; fully-covered healthcare and other generous benefits for autoworkers and some other blue-collar workers.
Even when management and labor were in firm opposition (during the birth of the labor movement, for example), there was a sense that however much one side may have been anathema to the other, both were part of the same 'family' (forgive the continuation of this metaphor, for I think it is apt); there was no possibility of unilateral exit. Management treated labor at first as a disobedient child, but eventually accorded its respect to unions. Nowadays, companies must overcome a great deal of their own spite before even agreeing to the formation of a union, much less agreeing to union demands. And most manufacturers simply close factories and set up shop overseas to escape the burden of union contracts.
For reasons that are obscure, many Westerners, particularly Britons and Americans, grew weary of protecting and providing for workers. The costs of social supports for workers were (and are still considered) high, and strikes were disruptive. But something else was at work. We began to believe that the individual, unguided will was more efficacious than collective action. We no longer could see any advantage to large government, large management structures, and powerful unions: they stood in the way of individual decision-making and innovation.
This last observation is at least partly true. Even if we were able to do so, we should not wish to replicate the old-style war of attrition between unions and business. Nonetheless, while our business environment is more open to innovation than practically any other in the world, and there are numerous ways to acquire wealth, we find that our wealth, once acquired, is terribly vulnerable. Our individual persons are also vulnerable, as we have less and less health care, retirement savings, ability to afford tuition, and so forth than formerly. Our new-found faith that work is only a private matter that large, general-interest entities such as government and unions should stay out of has undermined society. Our freedom to fend for ourselves has left our economic and social landscape barren.
