Does Hollywood Help Divide the Working Class?

City Versus Country

I watched a movie last night called Breakdown. It was a 1997 film with a theme that was trotted out repeatedly throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties and still circulates today. The plot was a simple thriller about a couple's car breakdown and a wife who mysteriously disappears into the southwest desert cowboy country. The couple has Massachusetts license plates and a new truck. Even though they are deeply in debt and have all sorts of financial troubles, the "red-neck," cowboy types assume them to be rich, snotty, Yankees and display a deep-seated and furiously irrational hatred toward them.

This regional, cultural and trumped-up, different lifestyle hatred has been a staple of Hollywood and the mainstream media for decades now, pretty much since the debut of that pig-squealing masterwork called "Deliverance" where Atlanta city boys get their comeuppance from a bunch of inbred, hillbilly locals. The unspoken moral of both these films is to caution city folk to stay away from the struggling poor from rural areas unless you are willing to risk your life.

Merle Haggard's 1968 song, "Okie From Muskogee," takes up this same theme from the other side and even dives into some old fashioned homophobia and traditional family values. Find lyrics here.

The result continues as a long-standing "culture war" that has divided the working class and kept us from uniting around common interests and goals. There has always been a labor union movement that has, to some limited extent, transcended all this hype and, for a brief window in time, the Civil Rights struggle in the American South did so as well. But, for the most part, the extreme polarization of pseudo-classes, defined by region and lifestyle instead of financial status, has continued unabated until relatively recently.

It has only been the recent American uprisings of the 99% that have threatened this long standing tradition of divide and conquer. And that is why the repression of the movement that called itself Occupy was so immediate and brutal. Remission isn't necessarily death. The discontent and rage that boiled over once has not cooled. Perhaps it's just simmering until the right moment presents itself.

Unions: Safety and Discrimination Protection

The two tragic fires that have killed workers in Bangladesh remind us of labor’s history in the early years of the twentieth century when the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 garment workers most of them Jewish and Italian immigrant women.

Capitalism actively condones the murder of dispensable commodities like people who provide unskilled or semi-skilled labor. Now even the sweatshops of China are moving to even cheaper, less-regulated Bangladesh. American companies like Wal-Mart and Apple have increasingly relied on cheap third-world labor to produce their products as wages plummet and safety regulations evaporate in the United States, our country will once again look like a more desirable sweatshop location for vulture capitalists of all stripes.

With the active collusion of some large city mayors like Rahm Emanuel (Chicago) and Cory Booker (Newark) both labor union power and membership are diminishing. Unions have become an endangered species and will soon go the way of the dodo.

Yes, labor unions fight for the safety concerns of workers. These are paramount. Without your life, a job isn't worth much. But they also fight for job security and retention. The “employment at will” doctrine that is applied in the United States means any worker can be terminated for any reason whatsoever, whether or not it is job related.

If I had been unable to seek out union jobs, I could easily have been a street person instead of a retired homeowner. As a political activist and openly lesbian worker, I have been fired from employment in at least three instances where I was dismissed with the comment, “Your work is fine, you just don’t fit in.” Eating and having shelter are very important factors for a decent quality of life. They are necessary for both those who fit in as well as those who do not. It makes me angry and sad to think that LGBT young people today, who are lacking family emotional and financial support, cannot keep themselves out of poverty.

We desperately need international guidelines concerning workers’ safety. We also need non-discrimination laws to protect the livelihoods of non-traditional employees. Our lives and our jobs should not be too much to ask. We must resuscitate the unions before it is too late. 

Labor and the Left in SF: Refusing to Mingle

I marched for workers on May Day in San Francisco. The march was morale-building, energizing, an extremely SF-style event. Mission Street brimming with thousands of foks. (I won't get into the estimating racket here but 3-7,000 probably covers it). Immigrants rights, all kinds of civil rights, queer immigration rights, Arizona boycotts, Gray Panthers, Code Pink and of course, worker's rights. Individual members of unions were there with some renegade signs, but the split between labor and the left in the Golden State was evident. SEIU held separate events and will hold a rally of its own on the SF Embacadero today, Tuesday May 3rd.

This isn't a lovers' quarrel, this spat between organized labor and the organized left. It's more like a gaping abyss, a great divide. In Wisconsin, the two groups, labor and the left actually came together and it was inspiring to see cops and firefighters in the same room as avowed socialists, pulling together for the same end.

Here in San Francisco California it's kind of a warriors versus worriers situation. Leftists want big change, but have a bad reputation for being insular and dogmatic. There is some truth to this. But the left is way ahead of labor on the analysis part of the big picture. You can't have rights for working people without considering the ways that society oppresses everyone. The Latin origin of the word radical means "at the root." And deep rooted change is what we need. An end to severe economic disparities, civil rights for all people, freedom of speech and the press and the whole laundry list of causes that shape societal attitudes and cause the repression of some individuals.

But the labor movement is worried. Part of that worry is because it isn't the thirties anymore. Labor has gotten far too complicit with management, forcing workers to take all sorts of concessions to pacify and pander to the bosses instead of focusing on improving the quality of life for their members. They are also worried about aligning themselves with the "wrong" people. Many union big-wigs rely on the status quo for their paychecks. Still, the public face of labor is changing. It isn't as straight, white and male as it used to be. In spite of that it still keeps one foot in the McCarthy era. The "Red Scare," is part of what prevents them from uniting with another despised segment of the population, radicals and leftists.

So much is at stake now. If we're going to win this struggle we're going to have to unite and find some common ground. It will take more than the unions' "working families" rhetoric to bring people together. Fighting bigotry is an essential component of our struggle. If organized labor won't come out for these issues we will just have to come to them. So move over boys. Ready or not, here we come!