It's early September, time for all good schoolkids to go back to class and learn about the world. Except in the home state of the world's best Tyrannosaur fossil, Kansas, where they no longer sanction the teaching of evolution and ... damn, that fossil actually was found right next door in South Dakota, not Kansas, wasn't it? There goes my whole line of argument. Well shoot, no need to waste words slamming the old-time-religionists of the Kansas legislature, their folly is pitifully self-evident.

But I do need another topic. Let's see, there's George W. Bush's possibly snowy past--naah, it's ridiculously early for Presidential politics. Hmm, it's close to Labor Day, maybe it's time to salute the titanic efforts of organized labor to get the minimum wage raised to a million dollars a season.

Of course I'm talking about the efforts of the football players union, not the unions filled with greasy blue collar types. I have a nice Dilbert-ized white collar job myself--no union for me! One day I hope to become an independently wealthy consultant. (Cue the appreciative "Ooooo!" and applause from the infomercial audience.)

Unionized blue collar jobs seem so un-90's. I remember a few years back while working at a public radio station, a scruffy long hair type dropped off some newsletters from the International Workers Party. That's right, the local communists. I innocently asked the guy, "So, how many workers do you have in your party?" The question stopped him cold. It was like he'd never met a real blue-collar wage-slave type worker. Maybe he and his buddies were all anarchist wannabes or something. But it made me wonder about the real workers of the world, the kind Woody Guthrie used to sing about. Have all those guys disappeared? Maybe they sent all those messy manual labor jobs to Mexico and Asia. Who wants to talk about workers' issues these days anyway?

No one it seems. Is Michael Moore's The Awful Truth the only national media that looks real worker issues? Trust me though, there are LOTS of labor actions happening in this country all the time, but the latest free agency dog fights in professional sports are all that's reported. Sometimes the networks will cover a nationwide strike like the one at UPS a couple years ago, but the actions of other unions like the United Farm Workers and ALL the local activities are just flat ignored. In Los Angeles there are frequent labor actions in the harbor--trucker boycotts, hazardous materials issues on the docks and more--that are very rarely reported. Forget the LA Times and the two also-ran dailies, the only paper regularly covering them is a tiny San Pedro biweekly called Random Lengths, and bless their true-believer hearts for it.

This silence on labor issues is the strongest evidence that the "liberal bias of the media" (you know, that whining conservative we-never-get-our-side-of-things-reported-in-the-paper line) is a myth. They love to sound like they are persecuted, but mainstream news is a hell of a lot friendlier to their positions than they'll ever admit. Seriously, I'm trying hard not to put an old counter-culture spin on this, but the media really is the lap dog of the oppressive moneyed interests that we are all enslaved to and anyone who believes otherwise is a stooge of the Establishment.

Whew, that felt good! My hair must've grown three inches just saying it, just like the good old days of the Revolution! You remember the Revolution, don't you? Late 60's, early 70's, right after Flower Power? It's the one Chicago talked about in the liner notes of their second album. They put out lots of revolting albums after that.

But I digress.

What's the most recent story about unions you remember? I'm betting it's that almost comical story about DOCTORS unionizing. It's a far cry from when William Haywood founded the first big union, the International Workers of the World, in 1905. Back then people worked ten or twelve hour days in unsafe conditions. There were no cushy medical benefits either, and the holy two-day-weekend was a pipe dream. Manufacturers viewed the work force as little better than slaves; no wonder the "Workers Unite!" rhetoric of the socialists and communists had appeal. But their biggest experiment, Russia, didn't turn out very well did it? Funny thing about worker's control of factories--when the workers choose someone to represent them, a new layer of management is created. They aren't workers anymore. In Russia they only gave lip service to Marxism anyway--it turned into a sloppy bureaucratic operation that couldn't keep food supplies steady, let alone execute a five year plan.

However in this country over the same period, unionized labor won lots of important rights. Battles were literally fought over some of these rights; people died. Big companies were dragged kicking and screaming to make a better workplace, benefits and the weekend possible. Conversely, unions soon became their own kind of big business. All those guys paying union dues meant a big pile of money somewhere. Too many times union management (there's that word again-they weren't workers anymore) surrendered to temptation and started cheating on the rank and file. Or worse, when the union bosses did their job right, maybe they won a little too much, to the point where American labor priced itself out of the market. That's why downsizing has sent so much work overseas in the last couple decades. They are fewer and fewer real blue collar workers in the US and more white collar cubicle drones clacking keyboards. Enter Dilbert.

In a recent pop-business trends book called Blur, the authors advance the notion that soon all workers will be consultants, letting the free market bid for their services. The new labor model has everyone operating as a free agent and the value of their knowledge and skill is dictated by the market place. That'll work fine until the market goes south. The proverbial bubble will pop when it gets too big; it's the market's way of breathing. So much for all of us being independently wealthy. Who would be our servants if we're all rich anyway?

Their new labor model doesn't take into account where the real work is done. The true working class types are in the factories of the third world, gluing together $100 pairs of shoes with pumps and secret stickum soles. They are the next to be unionized. They'll do it themselves or some neo-communist will inspire them; it's just a matter of time. And things will improve for them. You know Nike could double the wages they pay those poor bastards and not bat an eyelash. In a few decades they'll price themselves out of the market and then their jobs will come back here, giving our non-union burger flippers something to move up to.

Or we might all be replaced by robots. But then who or what would build the robots? And if no one has jobs, who would have money to buy what the robots make?

Isn't economics fun? It's time companies realize that any enterprise requires labor, management and capital in the proper ratio, much like fire requires fuel, oxygen and heat. True workers' control of production lies in owning a piece of the company's profits. Management has to recognize that each member's skill and knowledge is important to the company's health. Capital has to realize that the company must be nourished in order to be productive for all. It's a partnership, a living thing, and all must move forward together.

And if you guys are moving forward en masse, I'll have to get out of your way or I'm going to get trampled. Also I just remembered I've got a meeting of the fossil hunters union to attend in Wichita--if they haven't made it illegal yet-- so it's time to shut the Closet until next month. Give thanks to all those grimy strikers who made weekends possible and as always, my thanks to you for reading.


(C) 1999 Rusty Pipes

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OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER: The opinions of Rusty Pipes are his own, and they may or may not be agreed with by the editors and publisher of Cosmik Debris. In fact, the general concensus around the executive lunch room is that Chicago had at least one more good album after the second one. Oh, wait, one of the guys thinks Chicago NEVER had a good album. But hardcore debate is the bread of life for journalists, so we welcome the diversity of opinion, don't you?