workin' for a livin'
“To me, the labor movement was never just a way of getting higher wages. What appealed to me was the spiritual side of a great cause that created fellowship. You wanted the girl or the man who worked beside you to be treated just as well as you were, and an injury to one was the concern of all.” - Rose Schneiderman
The audio recording of this Morton Train is available to paid subscribers here.
Growing up in Reagan’s America, I was told the magic formula for having a middle class lifestyle as an adult. It goes something like this:
Get good test scores, go to college, choose a profession in your mid-20s, get a job, work hard, get promotions, then retire at 65 and spend your extra time doing interesting hobbies.
The best part about this magic formula? Financial security, home ownership, and emotional fulfillment are 100% guaranteed!
[And written underneath is the disclaimer: If the magic formula isn’t easy for you to execute and/or you don’t get the guaranteed results, that’s completely your fault. Good luck.]
I personally chose a rather unconventional work path, that of an artist, so I mucked up the magic formula early on. And yet, the belief in the magic formula is still imbedded in my brain like any other propaganda.
Because that’s what it is: propaganda. The truth is that entering or staying in the middle class eludes many hardworking people today. (Student loan debt, credit card debt, medical debt, rent hikes, sky high property value, the health insurance racket, the gig economy, job insecurity, low wages... I could go on and on.)
The system is rigged, exploitative, and unreliable. And yet, the “if you work hard, you can have the house-car-lifestyle” message still hangs in the ethers like a mid-20th century phantom.
The real danger of this message is what it insinuates: If you don’t have the house-car-lifestyle, you must not be working hard enough. Or you must not be doing the right kind of work. In either case, it’s your fault and you deserve whatever economic hardship you face.
My beloved 1st grade teacher retired in 2017 after 45 years of teaching. Tucked into an article celebrating her long career was this sentence: “She supplemented her teacher’s salary by working two part time jobs — a paper route she worked for 19 years and at a retail store where she worked for 13 years.”
Why in the hell does a 1st grade teacher need to supplement her income? Why in the hell are “essential workers” with full-time jobs (sometimes two full-time jobs) in no way financially secure? Why in the hell is extreme income inequality accepted as a given?
In the terrific movie Norma Rae, the title character awakens from her slumber and begins to question the status quo. It’s thrilling to see her passionately resist what she’d always passively accepted (low wages and mistreatment at the work place), to see her become a rabble-rousing union organizer.
It’s thrilling now, in 2023, to see more of this awakening taking place, not in a movie but in real life. A full-fledge labor movement is flourishing in the U.S. and around the globe. There’s One Fair Wage, the Fight for Fifteen, new unions being formed, and labor strikes across several industries. The status quo, as it has been many times in history, is being disrupted by worker solidarity.
Here’s a new magic formula for a thriving middle class:
This disruption of the status quo causes a mass awakening across the populace, regardless of income or class or profession. And the dignity of work and the dignity of every worker is recognized by all. So we all fight for a significant hike to the minimum wage. We all fight for more democracy in the workplace. We all fight to make sure everyone has access to affordable housing. We all give a damn when workers are exploited. We all, in solidarity, decide it’s time to unrig the system.
I may be an over-idealistic lefty but I also believe in magic.
Right on, write on, Ms Morton!
Hell Yes!!;