Labor Day Isn’t Enough Anymore
by Jonathan Mukes
This is a great year for labor. Amazon warehouses have unionized, and as of August there have been 209 Starbucks stores that have voted to unionize. Class consciousness and class solidarity are on the rise, which is a great thing. Laborers are starting to realize that they do have power and they can use their power to change their circumstances and work conditions. This is not only true today but in the past as well. In the early 20th century when people were working in sweatshops for twelve hours a day, they protested and were disruptive in order to make their work conditions better. They fought for higher pay, eight hour workdays, and better working conditions.
Personally this makes me hopeful for the future at least a little bit. Instead of corporate interests being the number one thing that determines public policy, the interest of the workers can, maybe someday in the future, be as important. Because of the life that laborers fought for in America, we now celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of every September. This is a good thing. We should be celebrating labor and its importance in our society. As we celebrate though, it’s important to see what more we need to do
Labor for Businesses
Labor is important. A business can have all the members of upper and middle management around fully staffed but if there’s no one actually building the product then there’s no money being made. This is the exact reason why businesses are started. Workers work, managers manage, businesses make money, everyone is happy right? If that was the whole story that would be manageable. Unfortunately time and time again we see that corporate interests will always go against the interests of labor. The business will make a larger profit if the workers are overworked and underpaid. It’s this relationship that caused the terrifying work conditions that created the need for labor reform in the first place.
Corporations will do anything they can to ensure that their profits are as high as possible. But how exactly is profit made? Where does it come from? If a business pays the laborers what they are worth, and they pay for the materials that the product is made out of, how are businesses making money? If the business operated entirely ethically they would never make a profit. They would break even every time. Profit can’t just materialize on its own! When someone works for a company the value they generate for the company is greater than what they get paid. The extra money that the workers generate is simply labeled as profit and given to the business. But this surplus value entirely belongs to the workers. They created it, and they should be entitled to the things they produce, but it gets stolen from them. Why would any laborer want this? Well if they don’t own the necessary resources to create a product, the only way to make money to support themselves is to cooperate with this system. If left alone in the free market, businesses will continue to exploit their labor, not because the for-profit organization is evil (they are) but because our society allows it due to how it’s structured.
Labor for Society
Not only is labor integral to the business, but it’s almost even more important for society as a whole. In the most deconstructed terms possible, society needs stuff to be done. Trash needs to be taken out, the things we buy need to be rung up by a cashier, students need to learn from a teacher, buildings need to be built by construction workers. Workers build our roads, they make our clothing, they grow our food. Society needs stuff to be done, and the people who work are the ones who make that stuff happen.
You would think then that the workers in society are heavily praised! It would only make sense that our government and our society would bend over backwards for the people who are doing all the work. Again, unfortunately this isn’t the case. Instead corporate interests prevail again. Billionaires or large corporations can and will just use money to lobby for laws or politicians sympathetic to their cause. A perfect example of this is the fossil fuel industry.
Fossil fuels are 100% undeniably destroying our planet. Scientists agree, politicians agree, even coal and oil companies agree. So why are we still propping this industry up? The devastation that industry has done to the environment will be felt not only by us, the workers, but also the next generation of workers and their children. Due to lobbying and corporate money this dying industry is constantly being protected. Renewable energy, which would be beneficial to everyone excluding, of course, the fossil fuel industry, is constantly being voted against. Asinine things have been done by the fossil fuel industry including fake protests to sway public opinion, social media campaigns, and even just blatantly donating money to politicians campaigns in exchange for a vote. These companies and billionaires are perfectly fine with trading their workers’ lives and future generations’ lives, in order to maintain their cushy insanely high profits.
Laborers for Themselves
Laborers are being eviscerated on multiple levels in our society. By the businesses that they work for and by the society that depends on their work. Workers should be praised. We have made so many uncountable contributions to American society and we need more than just one day for that. Don’t get me wrong, a day off work is great. But we really need to do more as a society to lift up the working class. The issue here is that just about everyone who is not a worker is incentivized by profits to exploit and hurt us. Corporate interests will never align with the interests of the workers. In order for the laborers to take more control of society and to better their position they need to do it themselves and by force. We as the workers need to collectively demand for better positions and we can only do that if we unionize.
A labor union is a collection of laborers in an industry that bargains on behalf of the workers for higher wages, more benefits, and better conditions. Unions have historically been the driving force for better conditions for our workers. Corporations will always be at odds with unions because it gives them less power over their workers. Unions can organize strikes if demands aren’t met, which can disrupt profits and hurt a company’s bottom line.
Labor Reform
While you as a worker in the United States have a legal right to unionize, companies will do anything to stop their workers from starting a union. They do things as silly as having anti-union workshops and as serious as firing prominent union leaders. Good news though, recently America has been rethinking labor reform and there have been a string of labor and union wins throughout the country. Amazon and Starbucks have had unions forming to combat corporate exploitation and greed. Unions are crucial for real labor reform. Even if you are treated well at your job, even if you don’t feel like your industry is exploiting you, you should still unionize. It only benefits the people who deserve it, the workers.
Can you imagine an America with every industry and profession with a union behind it that actually cares about labor? With a fully unionized workforce the workers can not only control what happens at a business but can also control society, which would be the first step in ending the blatant exploitation of the working class. That’s a lot more meaningful than having the first Monday of September off of work.
Organize your workplace.
Go unionize.
The Detroit Socialist is written and produced by members of Detroit DSA’s Newspaper Collective. Interested in becoming a member of Detroit DSA? Go to dsausa.org/join to become a member. Send a copy of the dues receipt to: membership@metrodetroitdsa.com in order to get plugged in to our activities!
Detroit DSA’s Labor Working Group meets biweekly on Tuesdays.
