Think Again •
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By Tim Nesbitt
BARGAIN COUNTER
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Wanted: A more hopeful agenda
for America’s working families
E
nough of the depressing reality
shows about our vanishing jobs
and declining incomes. We need to
make time for more hopeful points
of view.
Our economy is rebounding to
record highs, but the back story in
most American communities today
is relentlessly downbeat. That story,
which I have helped to tell in these
columns over the past two years,
goes like this:
We’re losing the great middle-
class of this country because corpo-
rate greed and cutthroat competition
in the global economy are decimat-
ing and degrading our jobs. As fam-
ily-wage jobs decline, our children
face fewer opportunities and bleaker
futures. And our public institutions
can’t do much to reverse these
trends, because they’re suffering
from increasing financial constraints
and declining public confidence.
All of this is true. Worst of all,
we don’t know what to do about
these developments that appear to be
so powerful, irreversible and grim.
We’re fumbling for answers. But
maybe we should focus instead on
the equally reasonable premise that
the work we have done to create the
richest country in the world can and
should provide a foundation for a
more prosperous future for our chil-
dren — and that we can make it so.
I was reminded of the bleaker
story when re-reading an article that
appeared in the New York Times last
February about the Caterpillar Cor-
poration, which has slashed pay and
benefits for its newer workers even
though it remains a highly profitable
company that dominates its niche in
world markets. Analyzing the Cater-
pillar experience, the Times’ Louis
Uchitelle concluded: “The long-
standing presumption that factory
workers at successful companies can
achieve a secure, relatively prosper-
ous middle-class life for themselves
and their families is evaporating.”
Caterpillar has a strong union, the
United Auto Workers. But that
union was forced to accept a two-tier
system of pay and benefits that cut
compensation for new hires by as
much as 40 percent. The union’s
representatives rationalize this deal
by saying that new hires at Caterpil-
lar are still doing better than they did
before they came to the company.
But, to their credit, those leaders also
say they will fight for the new hires
in their next round of contract nego-
tiations.
Still, the new hires don’t sound
grateful. And, the union leaders
don’t sound hopeful. If there’s a
common emotion shared by the
older and younger workers at com-
panies like Caterpillar, it’s more res-
ignation than resentment. And that
may be the biggest problem we have
to overcome.
This is why I think we need to
pay more attention to trends in the
global economy and in our nation’s
demographics, which can work to
our advantage.
We in the baby boom generation
may work later in life than our par-
ents, but we’re still going to retire.
And when we do, we are going to
free up a tremendous number of jobs
in our workplaces. Most of those
jobs are good jobs by any objective
measure of their value to the econ-
omy. Whether you are a “knowledge
worker” in an office, a crane opera-
tor on the docks or a millworker
whose plant shaves wood from logs,
you are probably using technology
in ways that enhance your productiv-
ity far above what it was a decade
ago.
And most of those jobs are still
good-paying jobs. We have to keep
them so.
This should open up new oppor-
tunities for cooperation between
older workers and younger workers.
Our unions’ bargaining campaigns
should focus on our fight for the
workers who will succeed us, as the
Machinists did in their successful ne-
gotiations with Boeing last year.
We should find new ways to em-
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PAGE 10
phasize what our generation can give
back to those who come up behind
us. We have a nursing shortage now,
which will only get worse as more
nurses retire. And we have a long
list of young people waiting to get
into our limited nurse training pro-
grams — because we don’t have
enough nurse educators. Maybe our
unions can organize newly-retired
nurses to become teachers and men-
tors for a new generation of health
care workers.
Our building trades unions know
what it takes to provide world-class
training in skilled occupations, many
of which are becoming more techno-
logically sophisticated and challeng-
ing. They’ve developed apprentice-
ship programs that should serve as a
model for more jobs and industries.
And, those newly-hired Caterpil-
lar workers shouldn’t be viewed as
losers in the global economy. They
are likely to be better educated, more
flexible and more skilled in their
jobs than we were in ours. We
should make them and their counter-
parts in other industries the poster
children of a new campaign for inter-
generational equity in our economy.
Finally, we need a new narrative
of hope and opportunity, especially
in the public sphere. That narrative
has to begin with the assertion that
we deserve better for our contribu-
tions to the wealth of our country. It
has to demand more from govern-
ment, from reining in the excesses of
“Caterpillaging” corporations to re-
organizing our health care system in
ways that protect family incomes.
Above all, it should pass along
this lesson from our generation and
the generations before us who cre-
ated the great middle class of this
county — that we can make a suc-
cessful economy and enjoy prosper-
ity again, if our work is fairly re-
warded and our rewards are broadly
shared.
Tim Nesbitt is a former president
of the Oregon AFL-CIO.
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TOWBAR ROADMASTER Falcon, all terrain,
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1110
LAWNMOWER, SCOTTS, gas, self prop, 5 yrs
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PLASTIC DUMP cart, 8 cu ft, never used, $75.
503 639-4443
SKY CLIMBER mod #ME-4, 24 ft aluminum
scaffold, 4 electric hoists and power cords,
$1,000. 503 668-7628 or 503 320-5975
HORSETRAILER, living quarters, 5 horse,
goose neck, awning, tack area, king bed,
$15,500. 503 678-2608
‘04 JD MOD #GS30 commercial mower, 48”,
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$2,900. 503 842-0922
NEW FOLDING 4’ x 4’ wire basket, $50; new
fiberglass tub, slight damage, make offer; 6
sheets 1” particle board, $40; new plumbing tube
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WOOD LATHE, 1/2 hp, $50; two burial plots NW
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