A Financial Meltdown 30 Years in the Making
This is from the fantastic Labor Notes:
By Mark Brenner
They break it, and we’re stuck with the bill.
In less than two weeks Congress lined up $700 billion to bail out the nation’s bankers, leaving millions of homeowners on the sidelines, facing foreclosure, bankruptcy, or both.
Somehow the argument that “it may seem unfair, but it was necessary” just doesn’t cut it. It’s no wonder that the most popular sign at labor’s September 25 protest on Wall Street said “Bailout = Bullsh*t.”
For union members, it sounds all too familiar. Management’s perennial argument for concessions—take the cuts or say goodbye to your job—hasn’t exactly saved U.S. manufacturing, whether in the 1980s or today.
In past recessions, it’s been each union for itself, and the companies always came out ahead. Corporations are already using the deep hole they’ve dug for themselves to demand even more from workers. Teamsters at the Minneapolis Star Tribune bucked the trend, refusing mid-contract concessions on September 10 and prompting newspaper executives to suspend a $9 million payment to their creditors.
“The company is asking us to slash our own throats to save their profits,” said Kevin Bialon, a 27-year pressman who served on the bargaining committee. “Management made the mistakes and they want workers to pay for it.”
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