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Vol. 81/No. 47 December 18, 2017
(front page)
Hiring upturn can lead to advance in workers’ unity
BY TERRY EVANS
A new milestone” has been reached in a nine-year capitalist economic
expansion, proclaimed the Wall Street Journal Nov. 29. But the last nine
years haven’t felt like that for the toiling majority, as working-class
living standards have been slashed, millions driven out of the workforce
and more workers have been hit by a spreading social crisis.
Workers could use an expansion in hiring. And there are indications an
uptick is underway in capitalist production and trade. What the
government calls gross domestic product is growing at the fastest rate
in three years. One gauge of this is the rise of the Baltic Dry shipping
index, considered a leading indicator of economic growth. It was up to
1,578 points Nov. 30 from an all-time low in February 2016. But it still
remains a long way short of its 2008 peak of 11,793.
While the bosses have no way to escape the long-term decline of
capitalist profits rates, any growth of manufacturing is good for the
working class. It means more jobs and the toilers gain confidence to
fight for more.
Declining unemployment figures over the last few years mask how the
capitalist crisis has deepened divisions in the working class. The labor
force participation rate — measuring the number of workers actively
working or looking for work — has changed little from last year’s
40-year low, reflecting the growing numbers who’ve given up. In
addition, the proportion of workers employed as temps, with lower pay
and worse conditions, hit a record high in October.
Workers pushed out of the active working class see little prospect of
escaping the carnage around them. Opioid addiction has hit record levels.
Without a more substantial rise in economic growth that begins to draw
back those who’ve been written out of the workforce, it is harder for us
to tackle the divisions the bosses foster among working people.
Another problem workers face is the pressure of debt. Capitalist lenders
profit by foisting an ever-greater debt burden on working people, then
pressing us to pay it back with interest. Total U.S. household debt has
risen more than 16 percent since 2013, to just under $13 trillion. But
this figure disguises the vastly different impact of this debt on
different classes, and the onerous consequences for workers.
Workers who default on auto loans find that years after their car is
repossessed they’re still paying off the loan with their wages garnished
by the courts. Some 107 million people in the U.S. are currently
carrying auto loan debt, owing over $1.1 trillion — both record highs.
And outstanding student loans now top $1.4 trillion.
The $13 trillion household debt today is greater than the GDP of every
country on earth, except for the U.S.
Health costs continue to rise while medical care is harder to get.
Workers over 65 are becoming the fastest growing group of new-hires as
they find it impossible to live on Social Security or shrinking
pensions. Rents and mortgages keep going up, and so do defaults and
homelessness.
Whatever immediate gains the bosses register for themselves as their
economy expands, they cannot reverse the decline in industrial profit
rates capitalists have faced since the late 1960s. That would take
inflicting massive defeats against the working class, and we will have
our chance at taking political power before that could happen.
But production and trade is growing today. And it makes a difference for
the working class.
More jobs = more confidence to fight
Where workers have stood their ground and fought the bosses in recent
years, their struggles are largely isolated. Union officials have done
nothing to organize workers to rely on our own forces and mobilize union
power to resist the employers’ attacks. They tell us to rely on the
Democrats, or Republicans, or some “independent” capitalist politician,
instead.
But the longevity of the crisis and the multifront assaults of the
bosses make many more workers today hungry for discussion on how we can
find ways around these obstacles and organize to resist what the
employers and their political parties impose on us. As unemployment rose
starting in 2008, bosses and their politicians tried to pit employed
against unemployed, native-born against immigrants, to further divide
and weaken the working class.
When unemployment declines enough that workers in areas where job losses
are widespread begin to see neighbors and friends back at work, when the
bosses’ production needs lead to a new wave of immigration, then the
working class will be in a position for a new rise in organizing and use
of union power to fight for our class interests.
Related articles:
Build working-class unity, confidence
On the Picket Line
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