Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site tty3b.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ltuxa!tty3b!mjk From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Unemployment & the minimum wage Message-ID: <456@tty3b.UUCP> Date: Tue, 7-Aug-84 19:37:35 EDT Article-I.D.: tty3b.456 Posted: Tue Aug 7 19:37:35 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 8-Aug-84 08:42:20 EDT References: <1665@inmet.UUCP>, <229@idi.UUCP> Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill Lines: 65 Rick Kiessig writes: >"[Unions] achieve their >effectiveness by creating in effect a monopoly on their services. >If they don't get what they want from their employer, they simply >stop working. Even without a minimum wage law, it may well be >impossible for a company to go out and hire enough sufficiently >skilled people if a union were to strike. This is also called >blackmail. Do what we want, or else." If 11,000 highly-skilled air controllers can be fired en masse and replaced, this argument just doesn't hold water. Which, of course, was the point of the firing: it sent a message to labor of what to expect from the Reagan Labor Department. There are far too many other examples of labor being squashed. Further, the law is always on the side of corporations in these disputes. The police -- who's salary the workers help pay -- are brought in to enforce the corporation's "right" to bring scabs into the plant. Striking workers are barred from receiving normal subsistence aid, such as food stamps and welfare. Tell me who's blackmailing whom, Rick. My big question to those who rail about labor's power is, why aren't they millionaires like their bosses, then? These unions show an incredible amount of self-restraint, settling for middle-class incomes if they are capable of getting whatever they want. >"We don't have guaranteed employment in this country. >Just because someone has to pay you at least $3.35/hr. doesn't >mean that he actually has to hire you. So if what you were doing >isn't worth the government-declared minimum, you lose your job." "Worth" in what sense? For years, the work that blacks did on the plantations was "worth" exactly nothing. In many companies, the work of women is "worth" less than the work of men, even though they have exactly the same responsibilities. What you are paid has very little to do with what your work is "worth". Most people work for whatever they're offered. The difference between what your work is worth (i.e. the value of the products of labor) and what you're paid is called "profit" (but not for you). The point missed here is that the issue is not pay. The issue is jobs. We are not a poor country that has no alternative but to force our unemployed to scape by on bare survival wages. We are the richest country in the world. Ronald Reagan tells us that there is no military item we can't afford. We are going to spend $1.8 trillion on weapons in the next few years. At the same time, the streets of our cities are crumbling. Our public transportation is feeling the result of years of postponed maintenance. Half of the nations bridges are structurally deficient. Much of the interstate highway system will have to be replaced unless repairs are begun soon. We are told that we can't afford to do anything about this; that we can't afford to feed children; that taking care of the elderly is "too expensive"; that providing jobs for those who want to work is none of our business. There is no lack of work to be done, and there is no lack of money to pay a living wage to those who do it. What is needed is a change in priorities, a shift away from the appeals to the meanest part of people, exemplified by Ronald Reagan's attack on labor, to appeal to the best in people. Debates on the minimum wage and the value of trade unions are over. We fought those fifty years ago; the old "solutions" didn't work then and they won't work now. It's time to move on to the real issues we have to face. Mike Kelly