Current Issue 
The Workers' Nightmare
by Clark Henderson
Every day I read about how mobile our workforce is becoming. For example,
Roger Herman says that any minute now-if and when the job market improves-people
will be "jumping from job to job like you've never seen before."
He says, "This new breed will be characterized by its risk-taking,
its independence, its technological competence, and its quickness to adjust
to changing work demands." (They will stay for two or three years and
move on.) Flexible is hardly the word for it.
As a more realistic writer, G. J. Meyer, puts it: "Ridiculous amounts
of paper are being expended these days about the new (and wonderfully exciting)
challenges that face America's white-collar workforce, and about the things
(also wonderfully exciting) that happen when displaced executives muster
the courage to strike out in new directions."
Many of these optimistic articles are propaganda put out by writers for
right-wing think tanks, whose job it is to talk Americans out of concepts
like job security, seniority, and retirement. Meyer, in Executive Blues:
Down and Out in Corporate America, comments: "We wouldn't be seeing
all these articles if people by the millions hadn't demonstrated an eagerness
to read them" (because of all the downsizing, that is, by corporate
America, whereby one person has to do the work of three). Nobody, whatever
their rank on the job ladder, has any security anymore. Homelessness is
just a paycheck away.
Is America going to become a nation of well-educated migrant workers? This
is exactly what the right wing has in mind! People moving around aren't
going to have such frills as health care, vacations, holidays, or retirement
because in the new global economy they are competing with workers, mostly
female and young, in places like Indonesia. What happens when you grow too
old to compete in this nightmarish new world? Forget about retirement-you
won't have earned any. You can't live on Social Security. What are you going
to do?
In the capitalist's paradise that America is becoming, there is little place
for families either. Politicians have fallen over themselves to proclaim
that the problem with the American family is "moral decay," most
notably Newt "Mouth-of-the-South" Gingrich, who finds the "liberals"
to be the cause. (You may recall that after that woman killed her two small
children by letting her car roll into a lake, Newt immediately blamed "liberal
policies." Later on it came out that one of the things that contributed
to her mixed-up sexual life was that her father, a right-wing "Christian"
Republican, had molested her extensively during childhood. The Newt did
not tell us this).
According to the latest statistics, 615,000 people were "downsized"
in 1993, and only 440,000 in 1995. No working person is safe from such cuts.
What about the emotional cost, especially on families, when everybody is
a temporary worker? People who have to figure out where their next job is
coming from every few months are not likely to have stable marriages! People
in a state of economic insecurity are prone to resort to alcohol and drugs,
causing their families suffering, not to mention the social cost in child
delinquency. Next time you hear Newt Gingrich sounding off about families
and marriage getting worse, tell him what is really destroying the American
family- the American corporation!
If an external enemy were inflicting such pain and suffering upon America,
we would all unite against it. No enemy could destroy our society like the
modern transnational companies are doing! Living standards, wages, families,
decent work hours, medical care, retirement-all of these are going by the
board in the corporate rush to make more money!
The rate of downsizing is expected to soar in the next few months as corporate
profits reach new highs. In the old days if the company reached a new high
in profits, the workers received a bonus. Now they get thrown out on the
street to ensure even higher corporate profits the next year. As Meyer puts
it: ". . . what you're left with is an America in which stability,
continuity, and security-the basic elements of a coherent life-are going
to be beyond the grasp of all but an increasingly small, isolated minority."
The United States is turning into a worker's nightmare.