Re: [Marxism] question re France

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Andy P. wrote:
> Yesterday's strikes and demos are awe-inspiring (and combined with 
> the  actions in Britain, South Africa, and the US in the last week, 
> very  encouraging).
>   One question: comparing the 1 to 2 million on strike yesterday to 
> the  10 million at the peak of 1968, what sectors need to be pulled 
> out  next? The union leaderships have  very consciously and 
> explicitly  NOT declared a general strike, but that doesn't mean it won't 
> happen.  So the question is, based on sectors that WERE pulled out 
> yesterday,  who's next?

I think the French are determined not to put up with the bullshit that the 
U.S. introduced:

NY Times, March 29, 2006
Books of The Times | 'The Disposable American'
How Pink Slips Hurt More Than Workers
By THOMAS GEOGHEGAN

Is the layoff the great American wound? In Louis Uchitelle's account, it 
seems a wound in triplicate. It hollows out companies so they can't 
compete. It hollows out the country by removing middle-class jobs. It 
hollows out the middle-class employees who are laid off and then too often 
drop permanently to a demeaning, low-wage way of life. To Mr. Uchitelle, 
who reports on economics for The New York Times, corporate America's 
addiction to the layoff has gone past the point of economic rationality. In 
this fascinating book he tries to tell the history of the United States in 
our time as the unchecked rise of layoffs.

"The Disposable American" is a history in which odd characters like Pat 
Buchanan, the former chief executives Jack Welch and Albert J. Dunlap 
(known as Chainsaw Al), the economist Alfred Kahn and others loom large ? 
but so do Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Robert E. Rubin, former secretary 
of the treasury. But Mr. Uchitelle is just as interested in ordinary people 
and in the way that layoffs keep tormenting those who have been let go. As 
he writes, "I did not think in the early stages of the reporting for this 
book that I would be drawn so persistently into the psychiatric aspect of 
layoffs."

The layoff, Mr. Uchitelle argues, has transformed the nation. At least 30 
million full-time American employees have gotten pink slips since the Labor 
Department belatedly started to count them in 1984. But add in the early 
retirees, the "quits" who saw the layoffs coming, and the number is much 
higher ? a whole ghost nation trekking into what for most will be 
lower-wage work. This is the Dust Bowl in our Golden Bowl, and to Mr. 
Uchitelle, layoffs in one way are worse than the unemployment of the 
1930's. At least then, most of the jobless came back to better-paid, more 
secure jobs. Those laid off in our time almost never will.

Mr. Uchitelle effectively wrecks the claim that all this downsizing makes 
the country more productive, more competitive, more flexible. He is willing 
to admit that downsizing can be necessary. "The global economy is not to be 
denied," he writes. But to lay off is now like a business school tic, 
whether it makes any sense or not. With fewer employees, many companies 
begin to crumble. Innovation also suffers. "Rather than try to outstrip 
foreign competitors in innovation, a costly and risky process, we gave up 
in product after product," Mr. Uchitelle writes. As he points out, many of 
the business stars now are companies, like Southwest Airlines, that have 
refused to downsize at all. A growing number of economists argue that 
layoffs cause more problems than they solve.

The heart of Mr. Uchitelle's book is his detailed, wide-ranging reporting. 
He is present, taking notes, while airline mechanics are being counseled 
into job training that will take them into lower-wage work. If they were 
not so painful, these moments would have a certain droll comedy. One 
mechanic ends up running a water taxi for tourists. Another goes into 
maintenance. Others find jobs "throwing boxes" at Federal Express. As one 
of the ex-mechanics tells Mr. Uchitelle years later: "It is hard to look in 
your son's eyes and explain to him that you are making $12 an hour and know 
his high school friends are making that much on the side."

In one of his shrewder moves, Mr. Uchitelle goes right into the enemy camp, 
as it were, and looks in on a reunion of Harvard graduates, the class of 
'68. But even Harvard grads are among the wounded now ? some have received 
pink slips. Mr. Uchitelle makes a strong case that the whole middle class 
is at risk. During the Clinton era, the claim was that the United States 
was expanding high-wage, high-skilled jobs, and that the laid off could 
simply jump into jobs as good or better. But Mr. Uchitelle takes apart this 
argument. After all, he writes, as of 2004, more than 45 percent of 
American workers were earning $13.25 an hour or less. The jobs that the 
country has been "growing" the fastest include those like janitor, hospital 
orderly and cashier.

It nettles Mr. Uchitelle that even the center-left politicians have said so 
little about this trend ? or have done so little to stop layoffs. In fact, 
layoffs rose faster in the first half of the 1990's than they did in the 
first half of the 80's. Mr. Uchitelle particularly blames Mr. Clinton. One 
of his chapters is titled "A Green Light From Clinton." Mr. Uchitelle 
writes: "As much as anyone, he disconnected the Democratic party from its 
past, specifically its New Deal concern for job security and full 
employment." Indeed, it is Mr. Uchitelle's point that it took government 
action to bring about the reign of layoffs.

He is also clear that this began long before the Clinton presidency. Mr. 
Uchitelle puts special emphasis on the deregulation of many industries, the 
dilution of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978 and what he 
regards as other political wrong turns. Still, in a brief concluding 
chapter, it is unclear whether Mr. Uchitelle sees any good solutions now ? 
including a solution that he attributes to this reviewer.

In this retelling of American history, Mr. Uchitelle is baffled by the 
collapse of any serious resistance to these mass layoffs. Even the 
protestors who began to sound off in the 90's generally believed that 
companies did have to downsize or die. It bothers Mr. Uchitelle that the 
mechanics and others he covers in this book and gets to know personally 
often blame themselves. "Whenever I insisted that layoffs were a phenomenon 
in America beyond their control, they agreed perfunctorily and then went 
right back to describing ... why it was somehow their fault or their 
particular bad luck."

Many readers know Mr. Uchitelle as a business journalist with an acute 
analytic bent. That is in this book, but there is a surprising passion as 
well. He urges ? demands ? that Americans speak up: not to give empty 
speeches about how more of us should go to college, or "skill up," but to 
stop the layoffs from ravaging us all.

Thomas Geoghegan is a labor lawyer and author.


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