Hightower: If You Don't Fight for the Middle Class,Kiss It Good-Bye

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Hightower: If You Don't Fight for the Middle Class, Kiss It Good-Bye
By Jim Hightower, AlterNet
Posted on September 4, 2010, Printed on September 12, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/148047/

America's corporate chieftains must love poor people, for they're doing all
they can to create millions more of them.

They're knocking down wages, offshoring everything from manufacturing jobs
to high tech, reducing full-time work to part-time, downsizing our
workplaces, busting unions, cutting health care coverage and canceling
pensions -- while also lobbying in Washington to privatize Social Security,
eliminate job safety protections, restrict unemployment benefits, kill
job-creating programs and increase corporate control of our elections.

It's said that the poor and the rich will always be among us. But nowhere is
it written that the middle-class will always be there. In fact, it is a very
recent creation in our society (and an unavailable dream for most people in
the world). America's great middle class literally arose with the rise of
labor unions and populist political movements in the 1800s, finally
culminating in democratic economic reforms implemented from the 1930s into
the 1960s.

Social Security, wage AND hour laws, collective bargaining rights,
unemployment compensation, the GI Bill, the interstate highway program,
civil rights laws, Medicare, Head Start -- and more -- provided the national
framework necessary to sustain a middle class for the American Majority.

This essential framework was not "given" to us by corporate executives and
politicians -- indeed, they sputtered, spewed and fought every piece of it
tooth and nail. Rather, it came from union-led grassroots movements,
organizing for structural change.

This Labor Day, we see corporate executives and their politicians
relentlessly dismantling that framework, piece by piece -- and we see the
middle class disappearing and poverty rising with each dismantled piece. But
as labor icon Joe Hill said just before he was executed by Utah authorities
for his unionizing activities, "Don't mourn, organize." It's time for
working families to organize again for the revitalization of the middle
class.

Who'll take a stand these days for restoring America's founding ethic of the
common good?

You won't get this leadership from Washington -- and damned sure not from
those in the corporate suites who're ruthlessly pushing an ethic of uncommon
greed, saying to the middle class, "Adios, chumps."

Instead, look to places like Williamson, a town in upstate New York. This is
apple country, home to a sprawling Mott's apple processing plant.
Generations of families have worked at this plant, and there had not been a
labor dispute in over 50 years. But the Mott family is long gone -- and so
is the sense of shared purpose that had unified owners and workers.

In 2008, Mott's became a subsidiary of Dr. Pepper Snapple, a giant Texas
conglomerate that also owns 7Up, Hawaiian Punch and dozens of other brands.
DPS, as it's known, is doing very well, having banked a record profit of
half-a-billion dollars last year. But its honchos apparently missed that
basic kindergarten lesson about sharing. Indeed, the new owners introduced
themselves to the area by eliminating the company's annual summer picnic,
the children's Christmas party and other community-building touches.

Then, this March, DPS bosses abruptly demanded pay cuts averaging about
$3,000 per worker, while also slashing pensions and hiking employee costs
for health care. Why? Because they asserted that Mott's 300 workers were
paid more than others in the area and should simply lower their standard of
living accordingly. This from a corporation that paid its CEO $6.5 million
last year! Adding insult to injury, the plant manager called workers "a
commodity like soybeans" that can easily be replaced. Take the cuts -- or
else, demanded DPS.

The workers chose "else." As we celebrate Labor Day at the beach or at
backyard barbeques, they are on a strike for middle-class survival that's
now in its fourth month.

This is not just about them, but about what kind of country America will be.
If DPS succeeds in knocking down these skilled, experienced, loyal workers,
other profitable corporations will follow. The Mott workers are taking a
courageous stand for the middle class and our country's commitment to
economic justice. To stand with them, go to www.ufcw.org.


Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and
author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go
With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower
Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

C 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/148047/