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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