There was a time in America when you went to work and were paid.  It was a very simple, fair and uncomplicated system.  Somewhere along the line, something changed in that equation.

Around these parts – the big employer for young people is the local outlet mall – chock full of corporate retailers.  This monstrosity spans acres of land with dozens upon dozens of stores.  When my daughters were in high school, they would work there sporadically, and often get a full-time job during the summer.  It’s been a couple of years since either of them has had to go the retail circuit, but at the end of their mall service years, they found that it was impossible to find full-time employment because the big business chains didn’t want to offer benefits or pay some taxes, so they would just hire a busload of part-time help instead.  Additionally, they were being offered positions as “contract employees.”  Contract employees at a mall?  It sounds so important, or maybe more like organized-crime.  But, actually, it’s just another measure to keep more money in the hands of the corporations.  For me, the most bewildering part was that for the first time I was aware of the new normal in the paycheck arena – how they were getting paid every two weeks.  Since that time, they’ve both graduated from college and are on to other employment – but the practice of bi-monthly paychecks continues, no matter where they work.  This has become so standard, that no one even questions it anymore.  And for young people especially, they must assume that this is the way it’s always been.  And, what are you going to do about it anyway, desperate-American-worker-with-no-job-security-whatsoever?  Complain?  I think not, not if you want to still have a job in the morning.

It wasn’t always this way though.  I spent years laboring in various jobs, from restaurants  to television to office work.  I was always paid every week.  It makes living paycheck-to-paycheck in an economically unjust society so much easier.  I think so, anyway.

My husband is a member of a private union.   He’s not a public employee, but he’s a union man, which is really a kissing cousin to private sector employees.  For thirty years he’s been paid every single week.  I’m not sure if it’s like that across the board, as every union has its own contracts.  Anyway, he also receives benefits like sick leave and paid vacation time.  He earns a living wage (or what passes for one these days).  We have health insurance.  And if it wasn’t for his job security and the benefits he receives, I probably wouldn’t be writing this right now.  Instead we’d be living in a shelter or not have enough money to pay for the internet service we receive, and I’d definitely be a lot edgier than I am, and no one needs that.  I’m fortunate to be in this position, and so are our daughters, and we’re all keenly aware of that fact.  

Lately though, there has been a boatload of anti-public service union stories swarming through the media.  They blame the public employees for the budget deficits at the state level, and even President Obama has instituted a salary freeze on federal workers of all stripes, no matter what their pay scale actually is.  Public employees are people like – firefighters, police, teachers, postal and sanitation workers, home health aides, office workers, the people who drive buses and trains and do repairs on the machinery – lots of folks like that.  I’ve personally known a whole bunch of people in many of those categories, and I can vouch for the fact that not a one of them owns a private plane or a vacation home in Aspen or buys their jewelry at Cartier.

Naturally, instead of laying the blame for budget deficits where it truly belongs – in the laps of big business and corporations – they want to pit one working-class American against another.  Unions, both public and private, have been under assault from the very beginning, by the very same forces that want to pay their employees every two weeks to save themselves some money.   Who don’t want to ensure worker safety – in mines, oil rigs or factories.  Who don’t want to give employees paid sick leave or vacation time or health care.  They want everything for themselves – to go with their private jets and Aspen chalets.  It’s no more complicated than that.  If you go to work every day, desperate and fearful to keep your underpaid, dangerous job without benefits, well, that’s the employee model they have in mind for everyone outside of their country club circles.

Union members are often more fortunate than some in the private sector, because at least for unions there is some measure of job security, safety and decent pay.  Boss Man can’t just fire you at will or without cause or stick your head in a bucket of asbestos and order you to breathe.  Some might argue that this isn’t good.  “Look how few teachers are ever fired,” they exclaim – “And my son, Joey Jr. has one lousy history teacher who is ruining his life.  Teachers!  You can’t get rid of them!  They’re like bed bugs, for crying out loud!”  I’m not suggesting that there aren’t flaws in the union model what with the difficulty inherent in ridding a stupid or troublesome member, but if we’re going to fix systems – then let’s start at the top first.  Let’s address the massive, astronomical corruption in America at the business and political ends, and then we can sit down and talk about the tweaks that would be beneficial where unions of working-class people are concerned.  

The fact is, everyone should have the benefits that public and private union workers have.  Truly, if it weren’t for the early days of unionization in America, then almost everyone would be pawns of the big business predatory system that we have now.  But instead, unions – both public and private, have taken a little something away from the masters of the universe, by demanding a decent quality of life.  Honestly, how dare workers want anything for their betterment or that of their families!  Of course, big business doesn’t like this at all.  They like the gigantic income inequality that has become the American way.  But if it weren’t for the sacrifices and struggles of union members going back decades, then we wouldn’t even be looking back at the ‘50s and ‘60s as a time of a more equitable prosperity for the middle-class.  We would’ve been living then what we’re living now – and now we’d all be Bob Cratchit from A Christmas Carol.   

Working people of all kinds should be standing together, and demanding the same rights and benefits that the public sector workers have, not vilifying them.  Things are getting nasty out here in regular-people America - states are closing libraries, cutting social services at record speeds, not repairing the roads and infrastructure, laying off city workers.  On the federal level they want to destroy what’s left of the social safety net and give even more benefits and tax breaks to big business and Corporate America.  If we let them set up this false narrative that public sector employees and the unions are the ones to blame for the fiscal ills of the world, thereby destroying the few remaining work-related securities and benefits that they receive, then all of us will soon be reduced to the scene in Oliver – pathetically holding our apportioned bowl of gruel and heading up to our master to beg imploringly, “Please, sir, I want some more.”