=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #461
—September 28, 1995—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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A HIGH-WAGE, LOW-WASTE FUTURE–PART 4:
SUSTAINABLE AMERICA–PART 1
Some people are comparing the present moment to 1954, the last
time the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate.
But perhaps a better comparison would be to 1896 when the
populist movement was crushed by corporate money and the nation
fell under the dominance of robber barons and an emerging
corporate elite –a dominance that was wasn’t broken until the
New Deal nearly 40 years later.
So what should progressives do? Clearly the answer is NOT “more
of what we’ve been doing.” We are already killing ourselves
working overtime and not getting very far.
We need to do something different –something big that has the
potential to get most of us working together, and has the
potential to excite and engage large numbers of people who are
presently parked on the sidelines. Last week, we described a
large “democracy project” aimed at making democracy itself an
issue –an issue that all progressives could unite around, and
which might motivate some liberals, who now seem paralyzed
staring into their mirrors.
A major advantage of a “democracy” campaign is that it could
address all the root problems of the present system –dominance
of our society by corporations, which answer to no one; the
fully-corrupting influence of private money in politics; the
inability of ordinary people to have some say about their
economic future. These are the fundamental issues of our
democracy.
This last issue –giving people some say about the economy –is
really THE crucial issue of our time: does the economy control
us, or do we control it? Slowly over the last 50 years, we seem
to have forgotten the purpose of the economy: to create
prosperity with stability. In earlier times, Henry Ford said he
wanted to pay his employees wages high enough so they could buy
his cars, thus creating conditions that gave birth to the middle
class. Today the corporados proudly point to the fact that they
have broken the backs of many labor unions, and that wages are
low and steadily falling while corporate profits are setting
records. This is a trend that will produce neither prosperity
nor stability. We seem to have forgotten that the economy is a
tool to serve the needs of society, not the other way around.
Is this some utopian socialist dream, that people really want a
say in the economy? Far from it. In the U.S. today, limits on
the terms and conditions of production and exchange are more
popular than ever. This is what underlies the almost universal
belief that work should be adjusted to the realities of families
(flex hours, family leave, etc.). This is what fuels the belief
that employers have obligations to employees and communities
beyond pay and taxes (job safety; factories that don’t gas the
neighborhood, etc.). If you think about it, having more say
about production and exchange is what the environmental movement
is about (reducing use of toxics, limiting dioxin discharges,
etc.). Giving people more say about the economy would have
ENORMOUS political appeal.
Although government and the general public are ill-prepared to
instruct business on how best to achieve economic goals, the
goals themselves CAN be specified by the general public: for
example, full employment for the able-bodied; decent housing,
education, and health care for all; an economy that is not
obscenely unfair nor massively wasteful of natural resources.
What is most basically wrong with current economic policy is its
failure to block the low-wage option of industrial restructuring
–the option that seeks profit and increased competitiveness via
downsizing, temporary workers, reduced benefits (or NO benefits)
job insecurity, environmental degradation, and cutbacks in social
spending, regulation, and training, combined with lowered taxes
for corporations and the rich. This low-wage, high-waste option
–the “low road” –is what we’ll get IN SPADES if we don’t
intervene.
We need campaigns both to foreclose the low-wage option AND to
harness the productive energies of workers and communities in a
more satisfying restructuring path –a high-wage, low-waste
option (“the high road”). We need a way to limit certain options
for capital AND to simultaneously indicate an alternative, more
democratic restructuring route that is viable under realistic
competitive conditions.
One could imagine a series of projects to “have our say about the
economy” –making economic goals the subject of big organizing
campaigns. To give but one example:
** A livable wage campaign. Everyone who works should make a
wage that allows him or her to raise a family. There shouldn’t
be any such thing as “the working poor.” If you are able-bodied,
you should have work, and if you have work you should make a
livable wage. Is this some nut-ball utopian dream? It is not.
It is a basic human right, affirmed by the United States
alongside the other nations of the world. In 1948, the U.S.
government voted affirmatively to approve the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (which was approved by the United
Nations General Assembly December 10, 1948). Article 23 of the
Universal Declaratiuon says, “Everyone has the right to work, to
free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of
work and to protection against unemployment.” The same Article
goes on to say, “Everyone who works has the right to just and
favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an
existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if
necessary, by other means of social protection.”
Furthermore, Article 25 of the Universal Declaration says,
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and his family, including food,
clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services,
and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood, old age, or lack of livelihood in
circumstances beyond his control.” A “livable wage campaign”
would merely give substance in the U.S. to these basic human
rights.
How to start? A livable wage campaign can begin at the local
level. For example, in Baltimore, Baltimoreans United in
Leadership Development (BUILD), a church-based organization,
joined with a labor union –the American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) –and with the Solidarity
Sponsoring Committee, an organization of Baltimore’s low wage
service workers. Together they successfully campaigned for the
passage of a municipal Living Wage Bill. This ordinance, which
was signed in December, 1994, requires city contractors to pay a
living wage rather than the woefully inadequate federal minimum.
As a result, employees of city contractors saw their hourly wages
go up from $4.25 to $6.10 in the summer of 1995, and will see
their wages rise incrementally to $7.70 an hour over a four year
period. This reverses Baltimore’s old poverty-wage policy, which
gave lucrative contracts to employers who paid family wages below
the poverty line –contracts which cost the city millions in food
stamps and health care.
Or a living wage campaign can take the form of a statewide ballot
initiative, as it has in Oregon where the More Livable Wage
Coalition is aiming now to raise Oregon’s minimum wage to $6.50
an hour by 1999. (For details, call 503-288-7932 in Portland.)
But a living wage campaign is merely one way to “have our say in
the economy.” We need to think larger.
Other ideas might include:
** An “our money, our jobs” campaign targeted at “subsidy abuse”
by government (the all-too-common use of taxpayer money to
subsidize the low-road and make the high-road more difficult);
** A campaign for better rules on the use of monies earmarked for
training dislocated workers (e.g., requiring that people actually
get trained, not just taught how to type their resumes);
** A gigantic summer youth jobs effort (with a continuation in
the fall!).
Less important than deciding on particular campaigns right now,
however, is deciding TOGETHER that we will do that TOGETHER from
here on out, and saying so. We should announce our collective
intention to oppose what we see as this economically stupid and
morally empty low-wage option –to make that itself an issue, and
make it clear that we intend to move on it in a variety of forms.
As a group, we need to say something like, “Diverse as we are,
we stand together in declaring that ruinous low-wage
restructuring must and can stop, and we hold our elected
officials and ourselves account-able to stopping it and starting
something better –a high-wage, low-waste, more democratically
controlled economy. We oppose anything that furthers current
destruction. We support policies aimed at raising social
standards –on wages, production conditions, environmental
sensitivity –and developing popular capacity to enforce them.
We want public policy to support a new social contract, with
public supports for firms complying with its terms and punishment
of those defecting from it. We seek and accept responsibility
and control in the administration of this contract. Its terms
are…” and here we fill in the blanks.
Closing off the low-wage option for American firms and restoring
some significant measure of popular control over our economic
future will be a brutal political fight –fiercely resisted by
well-heeled forces that benefit from the current lack of
constraint. Who in America is most likely to lead this fight?
Will it be the residents of declining rural regions? The rich
white suburban enclaves? The low-wage and non-union ex-urban
manufacturing zones? Surely, none of the above. The most likely
agent will be urban, heavily “of color,” and more unionized than
the norm. In other words, this will be a metropolitan battle –a
fight for the soul of our country, starting in the wreck of our
cities and their hard-luck inner-ring suburbs. This is where a
Sustainable America [1] can begin to be built.
This will require progressives to get serious about linking their
issues (whatever they may be) to economic development, and about
establishing a presence inside corporations. Some
environmentalists are already doing this –establishing “good
neighbor agreements” with polluters, promoting the redevelopment
of “brown field” sites in cities, demanding that “covenants” be
signed between local governments and corporations that get tax
breaks, and so forth.
If we are to achieve prosperity and stability in a sustainable
environment, we must do more of this. To create a Sustainable
America, [1] we will need to gain some control over corporate
behavior and the economy, starting at the local level. It will
not be easy, but consider the low-road alternative and you’ll
most likely agree: plowing this ground is something we must do.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague
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[1] Once again, we have cribbed extensively from Joel Rogers at
University of Wisconsin, and his activist colleagues, though
neither he nor they are responsible for our corrupted version of
their ideas. Rogers and friends have started a large new project
called Sustainable America; for details, phone Elaine Gross at
(516) 692-2601 or send E-mail to egross@igc.apc.org.
Descriptor terms: joel rogers; sustainable america; economic
development; corporations; democracy; strategy; urban
redevelopment; wages; conditions of work; economy;