Roy Scranton

Roy Scranton's powerful essay on why America still needs labor unions stood out as he argued that our democracy is at stake without the presence of unions. Roy is working toward his BA in Liberal Arts at New York's New School University where he plans to further his education by pursuing a PhD. Originally from Oregon, he has spent the last ten years doing such varied things as protesting the World Trade Organization and serving as an American soldier in the occupation of Iraq.

Roy Scranton's Essay:

America Needs Unions Now

Looking into the 21^st century, we face tremendous challenges across the entire spectrum of human endeavor.  Global warming, resource depletion, international terrorism and nuclear proliferation are just a few of these challenges.  More importantly, our ability to handle these problems, our democratic power as self-determining citizens, has slipped through our fingers—the reins of power have been taken from us by transnational corporations and conglomerates whose only interests are more profits and more power.  They choose who we’re allowed to elect, they decide what issues the media calls relevant, and moreover, they set our wages, hours and conditions of labor.  If we don’t like it, they move our jobs overseas.  As individuals, as Joe Barista and Sally Shelf-stocker, Mike Plumber, Gary Teacher and Jane Accounts Clerk, we have no power.  We simply cannot individually resist the imposition of corporate rule.  Individually, all we can do is vote in the elections and gripe about health care.  Individually, we’re doomed. 

The good news is that we’re not individuals.  We’re not atoms bouncing around some abstract system.  In fact, we are the system.  We’re industry.  We’re transportation.  We’re service.  We’re the people who run the machine, not the CEOs who make 300 times our yearly wages, not the politicians they put up for vote, not the talking heads in the media, and we have tremendous power to determine our economic and political futures, power that can only be tapped through solidarity—in unions.

            Three main issues facing America today, all related to the concerns addressed above, demand stronger unions.  First of all, the American middle class is being squeezed out.  Inequitable and unfair wealth distribution is making the rich richer, the poor poorer, and wiping out the middle class entirely.  This is fundamentally warping the economic shape of the nation and killing the American dream.  The middle class has long been the heart of America, and the American dream is founded on the idea that anyone and everyone can climb into the middle class from whatever lowly origins.  A strong middle class, through economic self-determination, investment, savings and purchasing power, makes for a robust economy.  As well, through having a stake in the system, through education, through a concern for the future and through the leisure time their wealth affords, the middle class make democracy work, forcing it to respond to the needs of the people.  What’s happening now is that the downwardly mobile middle classes find themselves with less time than ever, working more and more, and as days go by they have little energy to devote to democracy, little time to insist on their political and economic rights.  The rapacious and power-hungry take advantage of their distraction and steal a little more, swindle a little more, write another bad law, and suddenly the downwardly mobile find themselves no longer mobile but just plain down.  Through unions, through the political power of solidarity, workers can insist on fair wages, demand better distribution of wealth in and through industry rather than through government, and not only slow the middle class’ disappearance, but bring it back and even make it stronger.     

Second, corporations based in America are behaving today with greater and greater irresponsibility both at home and overseas, destroying our world and ripping off consumers, workers and shareholders all.  Through environmental depredations, violations of workers rights, gross fraud and malfeasance, war-profiteering and gouging consumers, corporations have shown again and again that they cannot behave responsibly without strict oversight.  As consumers, we may urge a boycott of this product or “choose” a competitor, but the fact is we have little power.  In a globalized economy, local action means less and less.  Transnational companies don’t have to worry about the repercussions of their behavior in one town, one state, one country even, because they make enough profits globally to offset local damage, and there’s nothing consumers can do about it.  As workers, however, joined together nationally across a spectrum of service, production, clerical and technology industries, perhaps even joined internationally with other workers in other nations, we have tremendous, titanic power.  Through union bargaining, strikes, general strikes and political work the power of unions can hold corporations accountable, ensure laws are enforced, and counteract the baleful influence of corporate PAC money.    

Lastly, American democracy is dying.  Our republican values are eroding every day as we become more and more disenfranchised and estranged from our government.  In spite of the rhetoric declaring recent Democratic Party victories to express the voice of the people, American politics has for most Americans long ago descended to the level of pure spectacle, barely even news, with a vote once ever four years (if even that) forming the only meaningful method of participation.  Thoughtful and intelligent young people get their politics from a comedy show, while working families are preyed upon by fear-mongers spreading vitriol, hate, and snake-oil, and behind it all, our leaders and representatives lie, cheat and steal with the most flagrant disrespect for any kind of civic duty or statesmanship, much less public decency and integrity.  A democracy, it is said, gets the government it deserves.  Yet people want something better.  People want to do more.  Many voices are clamoring to be heard.  Blocked from public discourse, prevented even from organizing their labor, public struggle spills into the blogosphere, onto private web-pages, into ad-hoc protests and general malaise, but frustrated anger can only build so long before it sours to bitter cynicism—or explodes.  Through unions, through working together as economic and political agents, we can revitalize American democracy and save the dream of our promise from fading into distant memory.