American workers have been getting screwed for too long. Screwed by corporations that care only about profits and short-term returns, feeling no ethical responsibility toward the people who work at the company. Screwed by an economic and tax structure that rewards that exact kind of amoral behavior, providing CEOs with incentives, rather than disincentives, to keep wages low and profits high. Screwed by organizing rules that make it really hard for workers to form a union and really easy for employers to break a union. Screwed by the government that refuses to take even the most basic steps – like raising the minimum wage – to tip the balance of power toward workers and away from millionaires and corporations.
Workers are getting screwed, left and right, and so the UAW strike has me feeling both furious and jubilant. I’m furious because a strike is a last resort – a tactic workers use only when their employer, the economic system, and political leaders have let them down so badly that they have to take matters into their own hands. I’m angry that the auto workers have been forced into this corner. But I’m jubilant because it’s in these moments – when people who have been beaten down courageously stand up for their interests – that the elites get shocked and shamed into standing up too. That’s why my position on the UAW strike isn’t: “I encourage both sides to come together and settle their differences so that we can get back to normal.” No, my position is simple: “I support the workers.”
The workers are asking for a 40% pay increase spread out over the next four years. That sounds big, right? But it’s intended to mirror the exact same rate of pay increase that the auto company CEOs have quietly given themselves over the past four years, thanks to a larger economic climate that has normalized exorbitant CEO pay.
It's not like the auto companies can’t afford to give their workers a big pay bump. The big three American car companies are swimming in money these days. They collectively reported making $21 billion in profits – just in the first half of 2023! But they don’t want to use that money to help workers; they want to keep padding the salaries of executives, pay huge dividends to shareholders (like big banks and hedge funds), and buy back their own stock to prop up stock price. The auto companies have the money – they just don’t want to share most of it with workers.
It hasn’t always been like this. For instance, stock buybacks were mostly illegal until 1982. And not long ago, corporate revenue was much more evenly distributed between executives and workers. In 1965, the average CEO made 20 times more than that company’s average worker. Today, CEOs make 400 times the average worker. That’s disgusting, and totally unnecessary. GM’s CEO makes $30 million a year. I can’t even imagine what a human being would do with $30 million in 12 months. It has no connection to actual human needs, and the idea that GM can’t be run well by a CEO who makes $3 million, instead of $30 million, is absurd. Does the extra $27 million magically cause the CEO to come up with better products?
This increasing wealth disparity between workers and executives shouldn’t worry us just because it’s morally bankrupt. No, the massive transfer of wealth from average workers to the small class of executive elites comes with real economic, social, and political consequences for families. Today, nearly 40% of Americans don’t have enough money in their bank accounts to pay for a $400 expense, like a medical co-pay or a minor car repair. That’s catastrophic, and it’s a result of all the gains in worker productivity in the last 30 years being gobbled up by greedy corporations instead of being distributed as higher wages. All across America, we see the social ramifications of increasing economic desperation – rising suicide rates, rising addiction rates, rising overdose deaths. And one driving factor of the January 6th insurrection attempt was the public’s increasing willingness to give up on democracy, having watched this form of government deliver little salvation for workers.
If the auto workers stay out on strike for a long time, it will be no one’s fault except for the rapacious executives who cannot conceive of a world in which they don’t get to capture all the fruits of economic growth. I’m not rooting for a long strike, but I’m also not rooting for capitulation. Sometimes fights are necessary to shake the consciousness of a society. Something stinks in America today – workers are getting shafted, left and right, and all of us have become too accepting of an economic system that has fundamentally changed right before our eyes. It hasn’t always been this way. Workers haven’t always had this little power. This many people haven’t always lived on the edge of financial ruin. A handful of CEO’s haven’t always controlled this much wealth.
We don’t have to accept workers getting screwed and millionaires getting richer and richer. We don’t have to overthink the auto industry strike. We can choose to support the workers.
Boy do I have mixed feeling on this one. I'm for the innovative engine of capitalism, but also for restraining/regulating capitalism's worst aspects (as was Adam Smith, BTW). I'm for living wages and unions supporting workers' rights, but as a union member, I've also seen the suffocating rules it can dictate hurting innovation (and in my case, student learning). Then there's (some) corrupt union leaders.
I'm a "socialist" in that I believe in progressive taxation to support all types of social programs for a fairer and more humane society. But how do you create rules without causing future harm? As an example, I've been deeply following the development of EV (electric vehicles) which take far fewer workers to produce than ICE (combustion) cars. And even current ICE cars need far fewer workers than back in the '50's and '60's. So while the Detroit 3 are flush with cash now, they will soon be swamped by the tsunami of EVs from around the world. The recently won increased union wages are only going to make the D3 even less competitive than they currently are. Will even half the union member jobs be around in 10 years? I doubt it. Should they have gotten their increase wages? I don't know; life evolves.
Senator, do you support repealing Taft-Hartley?