Identifies The Domestic Losers In The "War" Against Terrorism
Lafer, Gordon
THE LAST YEAR has been a tough time for anyone who cares about economic justice in the United States. Since September 11, trying to promote a labor union agenda—or talking about...
...Unions pulled together to provide payments to families of undocumented workers killed on September 11 when the government was unsure that they deserved payments...
...In order to maximize the profits of drug companies, the Bush administration is willing to expose the country to a seventeen-month window in which, if we are subject to a mass anthrax attack, we DISSENT / Fall 2002 n 7 COMMENTS & OPINIONS will not have enough drugs...
...For many union activists, it feels as if we're just waiting for it all to be over...
...Working people, and the union movement, are the ones who have provided a real meaning to the word "patriotism," who have shown any real sense of what it means to come together, to sacrifice for the common good, and to get through a national crisis as a community...
...Our idea is that Americans pull each other up...
...In addition, the bill provides for long-term "terrorist" sentences for anyone who engages in acts such as "disrupting" or "interfering" with maritime commerce...
...We've been silenced by the fear that protest will seem anti-patriotic or have been chilled by a climate of fear and timidity...
...Or take a chance and send us your article...
...Airlines have to apply to the government to get their part of the fifteen billion, and one of the official criteria for approving applications is that the airlines are supposed to force concessions from their employees...
...This wasn't enough for the Bush administration, which supported the insurance executives' request that the public foot the bill right from the first dollar...
...We are the country...
...But economists on both the left and right agree that the best way to stimulate the COMMENTS & OPINIONS economy is to give money to people on the bottom, who will go out and spend it on goods and services that put other Americans to work, rather than speculating in the stock market or buying expensive art, which creates jobs for no one...
...The difference between these two proposals is eight billion dollars...
...The "lock box" was raided one day after the terrorist attacks, when the president took forty billion dollars from Social Security, declaring it necessary for the war on terrorism...
...We know that our problems haven't changed, but we can't figure out how to articulate our issues in a way that seems compelling to anyone...
...It's over in the sense that we know we can support government efforts to prevent terrorism, and we can do other things at the same time...
...This may be a hard thing to say to others, but it's true...
...3) Type your ms double-spaced, with wide margins...
...By contrast, either the eight billion dollars for Cipro or the eight billion dollars for the insurance companies would be enough to pay a full year of family medical premiums for all one million Americans who were laid off in 2001...
...5) We're usually quick in giving editorial decisions...
...When Portland city employees voted to strike over health-care cutbacks, local editorial writers and talk-show personalities attacked them for selfishness in a time of national crisis...
...But what does it mean to "pull together...
...Not only did the senators punish firefighters in this way, but they had the gall to use September 11 as the reason for doing so...
...If firefighters were allowed to unionize, some Republicans argued, they might go on strike during a terrorist attack...
...The Bush administration is not going to declare the war "over" in this sense, because its interests are too well served by a permanent crisis...
...In any case, this stance continues the rhetorical suggestion that to be prounion is to be soft on national security...
...They have simply defended themselves against unilateral cuts— most often cuts in health benefits...
...their idea is that we tear each other down...
...This agenda has moved forward because the rest of us have been stunned into inaction...
...Even worse, they justify all the grabbing as if it's part of the war effort...
...To Our Contributors A few suggestions: (1) Be sure to keep a copy of your manuscript...
...The USA Patriot Act: This legislation is now being used to threaten immigrant workers and union activists around the country—with language so vague that any non-citizen (including legal residents) could be arrested and deported for supporting a union boycott...
...There is fifteen billion dollars to bail out airline investors, but not a penny for workers...
...The Bush administration has found or been unable to find money for the following items: There is a hundred billion dollars for corporate tax giveaways, including twenty-five billion dollars in retroactive tax cuts, given with no strings attached at all...
...Cipro is produced by the Bayer company, and at market rate a month's supply of Cipro costs $350...
...If there's a delay, it's because a few editors are reading your article...
...After September 11, the insurance industry asked the government to guarantee that taxpayers would foot the bill for any future payouts on anti-terrorism insurance policies...
...Politics by, of, and for the Rich Unfortunately, while we've been silenced by the need to sacrifice for the common good, big business and the super-rich have used the national crisis to pursue a selfish agenda at the expense of the great majority of the country...
...We want the government to continue doing everything needed, and everything possible, to prevent future attacks...
...At Delta, where flight attendants held a union election earlier this year, a Delta vice president sent voice mail to all flight attendants stressing how the events of September 11 had created a closer bond among the "in-flight family," and urging them not to allow a union to destroy that bond...
...Just before the Portland employees' strike deadline, the Oregonian published an opinion column suggesting that it was anti-patriotic for workers to strike, because we all needed to "pull together"—both because of the war and because it is a time of recession...
...But this is not the job of every American...
...First, we're told that there is no money—every cent is needed for the war on terrorism...
...In all these cases, we see not only that the war on working people has continued full steam ahead, but that it has repeatedly trumped the war against terrorism as the administration's top priority...
...For example, the Bush administration preferred to leave airport security in the hands of private companies—even those that had a proven track record of hiring ex-cons and lying to the government about hiring procedures— rather than let baggage screeners become federal employees and potential union members...
...Pulling Together": Two Visions Again, many people have compared the period since September 11 to the Second World War...
...Or one can appeal to the nastiest impulses in others, encouraging them to be bitter and resentful of those workers who are supposedly living high off the hog at taxpayer expense...
...GORDON LAFER is assistant professor at the University of Oregon's Labor Education Research Center and author of The Job Training Charade...
...Funds that were needed for the anti-terrorism effort—including funds for rebuilding New York City, for the public health infrastructure, and for fighting bioterrorism—have all been cut back in order to provide tax giveaways to big business and the rich...
...It is hard to imagine something more cynical than the way the administration has bastardized and abused the meaning of "patriotism" to get the rest of us to look the other way while their friends raid the treasury...
...And please remember that we can't consider articles unless they're accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...Huge Corporate Giveaways: The president proposed a hundred billion dollars in corporate tax cuts with no guarantee that the money will be used to create jobs...
...It is up to us, the majority of the country, to give the real definition of patriotism, and to declare that the period of silence, of being duped, of being robbed—all of that is "over...
...Check all your figures, dates, names, etc.—they're the author's responsibility...
...The real problem is that the richest people in the country have used the war to make themselves even richer, at the expense of the rest of us...
...Either one can say that it's especially important to protect the living standards of public sector workers because in a competitive market that will help pull up the standards of all other workers...
...This is the difference between our idea of pulling together and theirs...
...There are several reasons offered to justify these attacks on unions...
...Where Is the Money...
...In fact, in the month following the terrorist attacks, the Senate rejected a proposal that would have granted collective bargaining rights to firefighters in twenty-two states where they now lack the right to organize...
...While our eyes are on Afghanistan, their hands are in our pockets, grabbing as much cash as they can...
...We're not for the country...
...these people wouldn't know patriotism if it fell on their heads...
...If we were really operating under Second World War conditions, there wouldn't be a strike because employers wouldn't be allowed to use wartime as an excuse for cutting the health benefits of thousands of employees...
...But what is the "over" that we want it to be...
...It was more important to preserve the ability of big business to avoid its share of the tax bill than to guarantee the strongest possible anti-terrorism legislation...
...Workers around the country have paid the country's way through the post–September 11 adjustment by accepting smaller wage increases in contracts, and through large-scale layoffs in many industries, and for the most part these sacrifices have not tarnished laid-off workers' support for the country and the war...
...This is not only legal, it's encouraged by the Bush bailout law...
...compared to buildings falling down, protesting about our own wages and benefits seems like petty, self-centered whining...
...If this were the Second World War, some of the administration's friends might be behind bars for war profiteering, because there were regulations in those years against profiting from the nation's misery...
...Since September 11, trying to promote a labor union agenda—or talking about economic equality at all—has been like walking under water...
...There are two ways to think about a recession...
...This is never more important than during a recession...
...The bill only appears to have something to do with security: shipping companies have refused to allow inspection of the actual cargo containers, but want workers screened and fired if they have any felony conviction in the past twenty years...
...In addition to this political agenda, we've also seen direct attacks on unions' efforts to DISSENT / Fall 2002 n 5 COMMENTS & OPINIONS protect the wages and benefits of working Americans...
...The government should continue doing everything it can to prevent a future terrorist attack...
...So the administration is helping the shipping companies use September 11 to strip workers of their free speech rights...
...But the president has already ruled that baggage screeners will have more restricted whistleblower protections than those afforded all other federal employees— this despite the fact that national security would presumably benefit from baggage screeners' ability to speak out if they think something is going wrong...
...There is also eight billion dollars for insurance industry subsidies...
...Look at our last few issues to see if your idea fits in...
...When Minnesota public employees went out on strike shortly after September 11, they were accused of being unpatriotic...
...When the International Longshore and Warehouse Union asked for language clarifying that this would not apply to labor disputes, the White House explicitly refused...
...Is it that we want the government to guarantee that there will never be another terrorist attack in America...
...One of the more extreme corporate give6 n DISSENT / Fall 2002 aways involves Cipro, the most popular drug used to treat anthrax...
...There are two wars, and one of the most dramatic facts of the past year is that whenever there's a conflict between the war on terrorism and the war on working people, the administration has shown that the war on working people is its top priority...
...The Bush administration has promoted a dramatic legislative agenda, any part of which would have provoked large-scale opposition before September 11...
...We will not consider manuscripts submitted simultaneously to several publications...
...American Airlines received eight hundred million dollars from the federal government, and then laid off twenty thousand employees, declaring that it would pay no severance to those who lost their jobs...
...The companies could use all the money for executive bonuses, and that would be just fine...
...8 n DISSENT / Fall 2002 We won the war in Afghanistan...
...2) Please don't write to ask whether we're interested in such and such an article—it makes for useless correspondence...
...But according to the administration, the country cannot pay continuing health insurance for laid-off workers...
...In most strikes since September 11, however, workers have not demanded big advances...
...If you are submitting to Dissent electronically, our e-mail address is editors@dissentmagazine.org . (4) Notes and footnotes should also be typed double-spaced, on a separate sheet...
...The administration has not yet determined whether the baggage screeners, following federalization, will have the right to organize...
...A lot of people have compared September 11 to Pearl Harbor and the period we're in now to the days of the Second World War...
...therefore, for working people to fight for their own wages is selfish or worse: it is a betrayal of the nation...
...Please use inclusive language so that we don't have to make adjustments during editing...
...As we're not an academic journal, we prefer that they, wherever possible, be dropped altogether or worked into the text...
...For unions negotiating new contracts it's even worse...
...Everyone, go back to what you were doing before...
...There is no evidence that any of these has ever been a hindrance to national security—on the contrary, the critical revelations by the FBI field agents regarding mistakes in the leadup to September 11 were made possible by exactly the type of whistle-blower protection the president now wants to restrict...
...The Port and Maritime Security Act: This bill is the worst of pending legislation...
...But there isn't seventeen billion dollars to extend unemployment insurance to cover parttimers and provide increased benefits for those laid off after September 11...
...it is not the only thing that all of us have to be thinking about all the time or the single issue against which the importance of every other issue must be measured...
...The amount of Cipro needed to protect the country from an anthrax attack will take twenty months for Bayer to produce, but generic producers could make the same quantity in just three months...
...Two Wars The truth is, there are two wars...
...The country doesn't belong to the super-rich and corporations that are raiding the treasury...
...But the feeling that every American has terror-prevention as a primary responsibility, or that nothing else can be important as long as there's a possibility of another attack—all of that is over...
...Postal workers and flight attendants accepted frightening risks on the job for weeks or months following September 11, in order to ensure that the country's normalcy would not be totally undermined...
...In fact, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill complained that to do so would create a "new entitlement class," and House Majority Leader Dick Armey stated that helping these workers is "not commensurate with the American spirit...
...Just a short list of these sweeping changes includes the following: Social Security: Before September 11, Al Gore and George Bush were competing over who had the stronger "lock box" for safeguarding the Social Security surplus...
...Based on the number of pills the government determined were needed to combat an anthrax attack, the difference between paying market rate and using generic drugs amounts to a total of eight billion dollars...
...But let's look at where there is money, and where there isn't...
...It's over...
...We can't let them steal the word "patriotism" and use it to attack normal working people...
...That's the kind of "over" we want it to be...
...THE EDITORS DISSENT / Fall 2002 • 9...
...For many of us in the labor movement, it's as if we've been administered a nationwide dose of anesthesia...
...The second argument we hear is that money has to be given to the super-rich and big corporations in order to stimulate the economy...
...No—that's unrealistic...
...In many cities, the government is one of the biggest employers...
...Democrats agreed and said that the public would cover 80 percent of the insurance companies' costs—but only after the first ten billion dollars was paid out...
...It's true that in the Second World War unions were banned from striking—but employers were also banned from making unilateral cuts in wages or benefits...
...So there are two ways to think about public employees in a recession...
...It's over in the sense that we don't all need to be looking for terrorism everywhere we go or in everyone we meet...
...That possibility is not "over...
...The state of emergency has passed...
...For one thing, it seems impossible to rally the public around the issues we face...
...What I think we mean by its being "over" is for the government to acknowledge what we all know to be true—that in this war, we can have guns and butter...
...Missile Defense: We are diverting huge amounts of money to this project when there's no clear evidence either that it will work or that it is needed...
...In Canada, the government suspended Cipro's patent, so that the country could meet the emergency need for large quantities of the drug at affordable prices...
...Who cares about the problems of farmworkers or nurses when we're worried about anthrax...
...By comparison, generic producers manufacture a chemically identical drug that costs just $10 a month—I/ 35th the brand name price...
...Being the biggest employer means that you're the trendsetter—you set the conditions that other employers have to match...
...Not only has it not been suspended, but the rich have used the terrorist attacks as an opportunity to accelerate their agenda...
...The House Republican leadership delayed improving the nation's airport security for two months after the hijackings, in the hopes of keeping baggage screeners insecure and unorganized...
...This is the equivalent of having uselessly strict checks on airport workers while refusing to xray luggage going onto planes...
...In this atmosphere, we've become tonguetied...
...Republican leaders tried to prevent the anti-terrorist legislation from including restrictions on offshore banking used by terrorist money-launderers—because the same moneyhiding schemes are used by corporate America and super-rich investors (such as Enron...
...Let me be clear about what this means...
...We can also pay attention to the other issues that shape our lives...
...So we have to do it...
...And there's the war on working people, which has been going on for more than twenty years...
...Most recently, Bush threatened to veto the Homeland Security Bill unless he was granted the power to suspend whistle-blower protections, civil service status, and collective bargaining rights of all employees in the new mega-department...
...Construction workers brought the World Trade Center cleanup in one year early and one billion dollars under budget...
...And it's especially over in the sense that we are not going to be duped into lying down as willing victims of a rich people's war on the majority of Americans...
...It is a means to help shipping companies that are out to break the longshore unions...
...The problem we face is not that there's no money, and it's not that we need to stimulate the economy...
...There's the war on terrorism...
...It's not enough for us to wave flags on our picket lines, as if to say "we're for our contract, but we're for the country, too...
...If a secretary working for the city of Portland gets family medical insurance, it increases the pressure on COMMENTS & OPINIONS other employers to offer the same benefits...
...In the first weeks after September 1 1 , when union firefighters were the universal symbol of heroism, some hoped that the war on working people would be suspended in the name of national unity...
...Fast Track: This is likely to cause at least as much damage to working people as NAFTA...
...But the Bush administration refused to break the patent for Cipro—pleasing the big pharmaceutical companies that were among the biggest donors to the Bush campaign...
Vol. 49 • September 2002 • No. 4
