Why We Fight.
As South Central Indiana Jobs with Justice launches its new website, and hopefully enters a period of increased activity and community involvement, I thought I would take this opportunity to share a few thoughts on why the struggles of working people are so vital. We face many problems today, from ecological degradation to the renewed efforts to suppress the rights of minority peoples, to assaults on civil liberties. And that is just a partial list. AT SCIJwJ, we believe we must act on all fronts, and support neighbors and allies in their struggles. But our emphasis is on working people, whose struggles are part of the global fight for justice, peace, and a sustainable way of life.
The conditions facing Indiana wage workers mirror those in the United States in general, and, indeed, in our global economy, and reflect the plight of working people throughout the world. As our economy continues to stagnate, and representatives of global corporations and big financial houses continue to call for austerity, workers around the globe are organizing in resistance. More and more, mainstream economists are recognizing that low wages and a lack of political power on behalf of the global working class have led to untenable conditions. These conditions, the unbalanced playing field created by global capital, have stalled economic growth, prevented job creation, and forced more and more wage workers to turn to new modes of solidarity to defend themselves, their families, and their communities, against a thirty year assault on their rights. It is in support of these efforts that activists at South Central Indiana Jobs with Justice fight.
Workers generally face a more hostile environment today, one created by the decades-long assault on the ability of workers to bargain for and demand a just share of the economic pie. American workers have witnessed this assault on many fronts, including attacks on wages and benefits, a lessening of rights in the workplace, weakening of the collective political power of workers, and daily injustices committed in an unjust and unsafe work environment.
American workers have seen their wages stagnate for decades. Starting in the 1970’s, when wage earners hit their peak in terms of percentage of profits, U.S companies have waged an all-out effort to weaken the bargaining positions of American workers. The main weapons in the assault have been the erosion of union rights, off-shoring of jobs, and demands for increased productivity. The result is that today, while American corporate profits are at record levels, wages for workers are barely keeping up with inflation, and in many cases, are going down. The result for US workers is a loss of power, loss of community, and loss of sense of hope in the future.
The conditions for stagnating wages and the erosion of benefits are the direct result of the loss of power for American workers, both on the workplace floor and in Washington and state capitals. As more industrial jobs moved overseas, and businesses honed their tactics and techniques for union suppression, membership in work-based organizations that advocated for wage workers, at the workplace, and in the political system, declined drastically. The most direct result for American workers has been the continued troubled and troubling relationship between unions and other worker advocacy groups and a Democratic Party that receives massive financial and campaign support from unions but often offers little in return other than vague promises and the maintenance of an inadequate status quo.
The continuing decline of union influence over the Democratic Party has combined with an ascendant anti-worker, pro-corporate political push from powerful Republicans and think tanks connected to their party to create “perfect storm” conditions for American wage workers. This perfect storm has resulted in a democratic deficit of sorts for U.S. workers. While studies have shown that stagnant wages and lack of purchasing power do definite harm to the overall economy, the flood of unregulated corporate influence in political campaigns has left those most in need of representation at the level of policy, regulation, and law, largely bereft. Democrats pay little attention to the actual policy needs of American workers, while Republicans are openly hostile to their interests. The lack of a viable political alternative has forced many US workers and their allies into aggressive identity politics that span the spectrum from reactionary nationalism to the quixotic quest for alternative communities. The lack of real representation has resulted in a degraded political landscape in which civil discourse is driven by corporate cash, and attempts at direct action are met with a hostile police state that designates the time, place and manner of protest while savagely protecting the interests of propertied capital.
The end result is a hostile environment in which workers are dismissed for engaging in organizing, forced into precarious existences, and made the victims of wage theft and other preventable economic injustices. In this type of environment, when traditional avenues of redress, such as legislation, regulation, public protest, and legal recourse, have either narrowed or closed completely, workers have been forced to find new ways to express their demands for justice, and open new avenues to force power to concede. Each time working people succeed in their efforts, whether it is winning a living wages ordinance in a mid-sized city, or forcing an employer to recognize their legal obligations, or reversing unjust laws at the state and Federal level, the entire system benefits. Each victory, large or small, contributes to the rebuilding of our communities of resistance, and each local struggle creates new activists, new strategies and tactics, and opens up new routes through which justice can flow. That is why we support the struggles of working people.
Workers are fighting back, standing up for themselves here in the U.S. and around the globe. Workers in Walmart warehouses have waged brave campaigns for better working conditions, and employees in Walmart stores have walked off the job to demand respect. Fast food workers in New York, carwash attendants in Chicago, custodians in Dallas, are all showing that workers can organize under adverse conditions by using new strategies and tactics. Mexican mine workers are building bridges to steel workers in the U.S., while college students on America’s campuses create solidarity networks with textile workers in Central America. Workers are doing it for themselves. But they do so under conditions not of their own choosing. They face hostile politicians who call for “austerity” while transferring wealth up the ladder to those at the top. They face a legal system that has stripped them of the tools necessary for a fair fight. They face aggressive employers whose obsession with shareholder wealth has created a race to the bottom for wages, benefits and working conditions. Many are undocumented, lacking legal protections. Many more are afraid, uncertain about their future, scared that they won’t be able to support themselves and their families if they fight back. But fight they do, and that’s why we fight, too.
Our local Jobs with Justice coalition is a volunteer organization dedicated to direct action in support of workers in South Central Indiana. We cannot change the given conditions immediately. We cannot overturn a thirty year long assault on American workers, nor can we provide good paying jobs. What we can do is fight alongside Indiana workers as they struggle to level an unjust playing field. The old adage states “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he feeds himself.” We prefer something more: “Teach a person to fish, and they will eat until some transnational corporation expropriates their labor, and dumps toxic chemicals in the river. But aid people in organizing for resistance, and they can fashion their own solutions, and form lasting alliances that lead to real change.” We can support Indiana workers as they agitate and lobby the political class for support. We can provide space for workers to forge their own solutions. We can stand alongside workers when they confront injustice in all its forms, on the job, in the community, in their neighborhoods an in the streets. To do otherwise is to condone, even encourage, an unjust system that robs workers of their basic rights, their basic dignity, and the hope of a brighter future. That is why we fight.
