Tag Archives: capitalism

Beyond the Great Resignation: The Wave of Organizing Workers

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I love the headlines I read about The Great Resignation. Leaving your job and sticking it to a bad boss has appeal. I should know; I have quit several jobs. For anyone resigning, though, the individual motivation can vary. Many employees are frustrated by inflexible work policies and mismanagement during the pandemic. On the other hand, the waves of recent resigning staff often have some financial resources, another position lined up, or are boldly taking the plunge to self-employment.

Power to the People

Fight Back

However, the option to resign is not in everyone’s hands. There is new hope for those who have to continue with a less-than-ideal employer! With rising labor shortages, employees have new bargaining power. A silver lining in the post-pandemic world is a slow-growing trend of employees organizing. The effort to improve working conditions is both inspiring and telling. There is no perfect way to go about creating significant changes. For the man in the arena, I have enormous awe and respect.  

In shipping, food and beverage, and even academia, people are working to improve employee rights. An eruption of discontent resulting from a classic imbalance between labor and capital is bubbling underneath the surface. Employees are fed up with picking up the slack for understaffing and inconsistent work schedules. Many feel quite literally like cogs operating under impersonal corporate controls. American wages have been stagnating since the 1970s. Meanwhile, the disparity in compensation between workers and their employers is widening.

The Last Mile

If you have been waiting for the delivery of an online purchase, you probably have looked up issues about the supply chain. A top story there points to delays in delivery. Through the pandemic, it has become commonplace to hear about the conditions for workers at Amazon. For example, it appears that their staff regularly pee in cups. The best news on this front is that groups of Amazon workers are unionizing. Led by Christian Smalls, one group has organized without the help of old school union professionals. Smalls was initially fired for staging a walk-out at Amazon. Instead of accepting this fate, he managed an effective and historic response.

Tip Please!

Underpaid workers roll silverware for less than minimum wage in the restaurant industry. For them, unionization is an essential step in the right direction. Employers, though, are not huge fans. They rely on a culture of tipping which grows from a post-Civil War practice, to avoid paying a living wage. Starbucks is not a safe space for its own workers though many Americans consider it a favorite place to hide between work and home. Starbucks staff are unionizing for better work conditions. Along the way,  union organizers are losing their jobs. Howard Shultz has returned to Starbucks to fight off the moves to unionize; still, workers are staying firm on their demands.

TA for Free?

Well-educated academics are not immune to this trend. In the last few years, Temple University faculty have found support within the student body for better working conditions. Across the country, the standard is rising for universities. Recently,  an unpaid teaching position at UCLA created an uproar. It is a running joke that Ph.Ds are the free labor of academic institutions. A student union at Columbia thinks otherwise.  

In the past, unionizing was most readily associated with manufacturing work. For large multinationals, it was easy to quell unionization efforts. Thanks to globalization, and corporate-friendly tax policies, it was possible to send manufacturing work abroad. With mixed results, our American economy has changed. There is invariably some work that requires location-specific help. For example, staffing a café, physically delivering goods, or teaching in person requires a warm, local body. These are the places where union organizers are needed today.

A Brave New Way

An ideological shift is underway. Through radical imagination, we are beginning to see solutions. In addition to unions, there are other ample opportunities to balance the employee-employer relationship. I see growth in cooperative organizations, the power to technology to support self-governance, and the exercise of courage in imagination. Indeed, shareholder activism, organizing workers, and the rise of B corporations suggest that we all want more from our workplaces and our dollar.  

Reflecting on MLK Day: James Baldwin & Last Year’s Insurrection

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This Martin Luther King Day, I am reflecting on Dr. King’s legacy while still wondering about the mob attack on the Capitol last year. The mob, led by a demagogue, carried to the symbolic heart of our democracy the fire of America’s unaddressed spiritual crisis. The joint tensions of race, class, and social change fueled the rage of these angry white men. The work of James Baldwin, Dr. Martin Luther King’s contemporary, can shed insight on the rage of the mob. Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time diagnoses our current predicament with the juxtaposition of history, myth, and an understanding of our personal American psyche.


James Baldwin & Dr. Martin Luther King:
They Did Not Always See Eye to Eye

Though first published in 1964, Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time can shed light on the psycho-spiritual issues in America today.  Baldwin’s work provides insight into how contemporary race relations grow from the country’s history and how this history has tainted our social relations. While Baldwin is searing in his criticism for America, he also has an unshakable hope for the country.  His optimism is rooted in our capacity for spiritual growth. Baldwin suggests that the black & white souls of America must work together to resolve our racist pollution.  The way out of our mess requires confronting the same venom that led to the Capitol mob on January 6, 2021.  We must face our past injustices, our current inequality, and our national psyche.

An Unmitigated Disaster

In early January 2021, I was re-reading The Fire Next Time when I saw that Baldwin’s language could speak directly to the attempted coup of January 6, 2021:

“…the political institutions of any nation are always menaced and are ultimately controlled by the spiritual state of that nation.  We are controlled here by our confusion, far more than we know, and the American dream has therefore become something much more closely resembling a nightmare, on the private, domestic, and international levels.  Privately, we cannot stand our lives and dare not examine them; domestically, we take no responsibility for (and no pride in) what goes on in our country; and, internationally, for many millions of people, we are an unmitigated disaster” (emphasis added).

The tarnished American dream, seen on private, domestic, and international levels, grows from our unconfronted past.  Baldwin points to America’s early history as the origin of our crisis.  The American experiment began on lands taken by force and then cultivated by slave labor.  This violation of humanity and land speaks to America’s imperialist roots.  We have used stories of chivalry and the white man’s burden to appease the victors’ conscience.  We have scrubbed away our guilt in the washed-out versions of American history in high-school textbooks. Irrespective of the justifications provided, this pillaging of land and humans requires a blatant disregard for indigenous cultures, ways of life, and belief systems. For the sake of profit, an entire empire was built. The profiteering at the onset of our country set the pace for our current breakdown.

Our Injustices

              In the book’s first essay, Baldwin addresses his nephew: “You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being.  You were expected to make peace with mediocrity.” In America, without a doubt, the cards are stacked against blacks. Housing is the clearest example of America’s inequalities. Many abroad wonder why the world’s most prosperous country has so many slums and ghettos.  A fascinating video based on the book, The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein points at how the federal government has helped create the defacto housing segregation we see now.  Our various other inequalities illustrate a pattern of systemic injustice.

             Baldwin shows with heart-breaking tenderness the spiritual consequences of racial prejudice.  Baldwin writes, “One did not have to be abnormally sensitive to be worn down to a cutting edge by the incessant and gratuitous humiliation and danger one encountered every working day, all day long.” A life of indignity compounds the difficulties of an adult trying to earn a living to support his family.  A poignant example is the helplessness a black parent feels when they cannot prepare their child for the cruelty of the outside world.  There can be no compelling explanation for why police might beat up a 7-year-old child or why that child may be called `boy` well into his adulthood. The psychological effect of this implicit oppression cuts deep.

              Baldwin’s insight parallels the lessons from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Without a sense of security in life’s necessities, individuals cannot rise to their full potential.  Before arriving at self-actualization, we need a sense of psychological safety and reliable daily bread. The injustices of police brutality, social prejudice, and overt hatred gnaw away at the very peace of mind required to truly blossom. While there are outstanding examples of individuals rising above their circumstances, for many the path to flourishing is obscured. In this way, Baldwin carries forward an extended metaphor. Imagine when an entire community is subject to the whims of white supremacy.  Indeed, imagination is not required; we see examples of the wreckage every day. American society does not provide her black citizens the psychic space to self-actualize. Many blacks worked through the toughest odds to self-actualize in a meaningful way. Nonetheless,  for generations, the nation has used its collective energy to suppress the full humanity of its people.  This loss is magnified in America on a much larger scale, from the individual to our dominant culture.  

A Difficult Identity

For Baldwin, the social identity of whites in America is dangerously linked to the subjugation of others. He writes that American mythology places the white man at the top of the social hierarchy. In our status-anxious society, whiteness is a mark of higher social standing. In this world, color represents stability, success, and predictability. Any move, then, towards equality is threatening to those at the top.

A groundswell of new activism suggests that the social order is changing. The mob on January 6 represents an angry reaction to shifts in our race relations.  The first psychological response to that threat is existential fear. In turn, those benefiting from the status quo are awash in fear and insecurity about the new world. Our national non-response to the mob of January 6 suggests our difficulty awakening to a more egalitarian world. The country’s lackadaisical response to the insurrection reflects the calloused soul at the heart of our institutions.  Our spiritual crisis will be unresolved while a contingent of America is uncomfortable with being social equals with a black man.  

Baldwin demands, “We, the black and white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation.” We must go beyond our reason and logic. We must address one another through brotherhood.  We have that capacity within us.  The angry mob of January 6, 2021 was pointing to our problem.  Can we look within ourselves to expand our idea of America?   Baldwin writes, “It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity to teach your child not to hate.” This depth of psychological understanding, emotional intelligence, and generosity of heart is just the start.  Baldwin’s solution and power come from reaching for our shared humanity.  It is necessary.  Can we hold a vision of a more just and equal America? This wealthy nation has a whole group wanting to see a better version of the country. Where could we all be if we saw race as fiction?  Who has it in their heart to hold such hope? Imagine what we could be if we shook out the fear in our insides and turned that energy into helping one another confront the struggles of life.  Ultimately, Baldwin’s insights are the starting place to see America in the context of history. It is within ourselves that we must ask the hard questions about our prejudice, injustice, and inequalities. The mob last year was seeking out a better America. Through great courage, we can work on that together.

The Landless Lot

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Do you see me?
A roving mass of human forms, itinerant 
shifting from one ledge to another
outfitting corners of shelter with plastic crates
the shelves, the detritus of China's factory molds
feeding our ever growing hunger

An exsistential hole in man's rumbling, hungry stomach

The mass leaping under clouds
thundering for resolution
and our scurvy ridden human crawlers 
between crevices, moving back and forth 
as we shift onward in time

No respite under concrete bridges while
trams zoom by overhead and time
passes these vermin by

In the cold cycle of seasons 
the landless lot muffle into the snow
cherishing the root of flowers
and cooking on cement ledges

Their plight, a pleasant artificial contrast for 
their well-heeled home living comparers
Plush buttoned up purveyors of soft lit parlors
accesorised in glass ornaments 
twinkling before muted backrounds

The mass of unhomes, relearning routes
and park avenues, descending onto corners 
scraping shreds of goodwill from an indifferent human flow
Trickling into gambling houses and pouring into empty seats
chancing their last 100 yen for a game with no end

Degrowth: A Critique of Capitalism

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Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman wrote, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” The economic policies of the World Bank & IMF have increased global inequality. The COVID pandemic illustrates how public health and environmental failures spill past national borders. Our interconnected planet faces transnational phenomena that increasingly have the potential to disrupt our day-to-day lives. Global economic development and justice require a model of development which values global public goods.

Dr. Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist, writes on global inequality, “The notion that aid is a meaningful way to reduce global inequality represents an extraordinary failure to grasp the structural forces that produce and perpetuate global inequality. Poor countries don’t need charity, they need justice.” Contemporary global economic inequality and environmental degradation are two sides of the same problem. They represent a post-colonial economic order meant to preserve the wealth of the global north.     

Development policies promoted by the IMF and World Bank demand the borrower countries resort to fiscal austerity and privatization. Argentina and Greece are excellent examples of the consequences of this type of policy. However, historical analysis of wealthy nations shows that protectionism and investment in human capacities ended up creating service-oriented prosperous country economies. Thus, the logic of privatization and the forms of development pushed on poor borrowers are flawed. Arguably, they are unjust.

 A fundamental theory in international studies is that economically tied democracies do not fight one another. The economic integration model linked strictly to GDP does not deliver long-term global peace and stability. As developing countries destroy their environment to sell natural resources to the global north, they undermine their growth potential. The marginalized poor suffer the worst consequences of environmental degradation. At the community level, the desire for economic development pits disparate parties against one another. A clean environment is a public good. When communities disregard this, conflict and degradation follow reckless economic growth.

We need new metrics. We can improve economic injustice and environmental degradation through complex systems thinking by valuing public goods differently. There are environmentally sustainable global development forms that correct the global North-South wealth inequity. Naomi Klein’s work suggests a starting point. We need a new analysis that considers human well-being. Solutions can develop once worldwide health and environmental stewardship become global concerns.

 Creative solutions and a re-imagining of global public goods are our existential imperatives. As this pandemic has shown, nation-states do not exist on their own. Good immunity to withstand disease, the knowledge to distinguish fact from fiction, and strong domestic infrastructure can have global consequences. When countries revisit national priorities with these well-being metrics, we will be on our way to just international development.