Re: Immigration and Multiple Labor Markets

["David Schanoes" <Schanoes@xxxxxxx>]

Lou Paulsen:

I think your analysis on "multiple labor markets" is quite insightful.


But we don't have to go to another market or another country or another
world to see the problems this presents.  We can see it in operation in
any industrial or transportation operation.

Every operation sets different wage rates for different categories of
workers. In the railroad industry, among Class 1 railroads (highest
annual revenues) locomotive engineers are generally the highest paid.
And track workers are among the lowest paid.

Do the locomotive engineers benefit from the lower wage rates of track
workers?  In a sense, of course they do.  Railroad management goes into
negotiations with the various unions with a grasp of the top and bottom
lines, and knows, depending on specific circumstances, that it will
"hold the
line " on the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way workers (or Teamsters),
in order to concede a little bit more to the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers (or United Transportation Union).  The decision to give or
hold is based on economic outlook, plans for capital improvements, and
not least the militancy of the particular crafts and who can be pushed
and shoved when push comes to shove.

Not only does railroad management admit this to each other, they even
use it in negotiations in order to isolate, co-opt, settle with one
union at the expense of another.

Now does this make the locomotive engineers co-exploiters of track
workers?  I don' t think so.  Does this mean it will be more difficult
for  locomotive engineers to move "left" than track workers.
Absolutely.  And locomotive engineers are a pretty conservative bunch.


But the process doesn't end there-- not with management.  Because in
the
overall calculations, management will insist on "value" for its wages,
changing work rules, length of job assignments, crew size-- and
technical inputs that will reduce the employement of locomotive
engineers-- like Remote Controlled Locomotives-- like reductions in
service areas, elimination of runs and routes, shuttering of yards.  And
this is what has happened in the railroad industry with operating
employment levels barely 1/5 of the 1950 level.  So that higher wage for
individual engineers is paid for by the class of engineers as a whole.
And everyone's so afraid that he or she is next, nobody says anything.
Most of the time.

There is no question whether or not capitalist development requires
extraction of value from underdeveloped areas.  History has shown that
has been the course of development.

But  if we return to the beginning of this thread, we find the origin
in Nestor's propositon that the working classes in the advanced areas
are in a more or less permanent stasis brought about by their better
standards of living purchased at the expense of the developing world.
Well, that's quite a mouthful, and quite a catastrophic,although not
new, analysis.  Catastrophic in that there really is no recovery from
the situation given that capitalism is just that, capitalism, and will
continue to produce and expropriate wealth from the less developed
areas.

Consequently, Nestor concludes that the proper role for Marxists in the
advancedareas is to curb the rapaciousness of the bourgeoisie by
throwing "grit into the gears, protesting their crimes, and, I
extrapolate, supporting various reforms as long as the reforms diminish
the imperial assaults.

The problem is both theoretical and practical-- theoretical in that
Cecil Rhodes is no substitute for Marxist analysis, and Lenin's remarks
about bribery and superprofits, used as a theoretical substrate for the
argument, don't stand up to careful analysis.

Practically, the problem is that embarking on a program of "protest,"
"obstruction," or reform that does not locate a distinct class
opposition to capital, based on the positon of that class internal to
the imperialist centers, is doomed-- the protest will fail, the
obstruction will be suppressed, the imperial assaults will continue
unabated, the mechanisms of accumulation for capital as a whole will be
left intact.

If you look at the Imperial Foods fire in 1991 in Hamlet, North
Carolina you will find working conditions that are not unique to North
Carolina, but are reproduced  globally.  You will find exploitation of
the work force that is reproduced globally. You will  find the
negligence of the regulatory agencies and emergency services that
reproduced locally that which is a global truth.

You will find that 19 of the 25  women who died there were single
working mothers with incomes below the poverty line.  You will find that
the white fire chief of Hamlet refused the assistance of the
African-American fire department of Dobbins Heights.

You will find there was no trial for the owner who plea bargained to
manslaughter counts.

You will find at every turn....Bhopal.

dms




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