As a theory Poverty, “exploitation” elicits a muddled response that causes us to think of course and but, no, at the same moment. The word carries a moral charge, but social scientists have a rather cool way of measuring exploitation: when we are underpaid relative to the value of what we produce, we experience labor exploitation; When we are overcharged relative to the value of a purchased product, we experience consumer exploitation. For example, if a family paid $1,000 a month to rent an apartment with a market value of $20,000, that family would experience a higher level of renter exploitation than a family paying the same amount for an apartment with a market value of $100,000 paid in US dollars. When we don’t own property or have access to credit, we become dependent on people who can and can, which in turn invites exploitation, because bad deal for you is good deal for me.
Our vulnerability to exploitation increases as our freedom shrinks. Because undocumented workers are not protected by labor laws, more than a third are paid below minimum wage and nearly 85 percent are not paid for overtime. Many of us who are US citizens or who have crossed borders through official checkpoints would not work for that wage. We do not have to. When they migrate here as adults, these undocumented workers choose the terms of their agreement. But just because desperate people accept and even seek out exploitative conditions doesn’t make those conditions any less exploitative. Sometimes exploitation is just the best bad option.
Consider how many employers now take advantage of American workers. The United States offers some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world. A larger proportion of workers in the United States earn “low wages” — earning less than two-thirds the median wage — than in any other country that is a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. According to the group, nearly 23 percent of American workers work in low-paying jobs, compared to about 17 percent in Britain, 11 percent in Japan and 5 percent in Italy. Poverty wages have swollen the ranks of America’s working poor, most of whom are 35 or older.
A popular theory for the loss of good jobs is deindustrialization, which led to the closure of factories and the erosion of the communities that grew up around them. Such a passive word, “deindustrialization” – gives the impression that it just sort of happened, as if the country got deindustrialization, like a forest being infested by bark beetles. But economic forces labeled as unstoppable, like deindustrialization and the acceleration of world trade, are often aided by political decisions like the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which made it easier for companies to move their factories to Mexico and contributed to the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs in Mexico. The world has changed, but it has changed for other economies too. Still, Belgium, Canada, and many other countries have not experienced the kind of wage stagnation and rising income inequality that the United States is experiencing.
These countries managed to keep their unions. We are not. In the 1950s and 1960s, nearly a third of all US workers wore a union ID. These were the days of the United Automobile Workers, led by Walter Reuther, who were once brutally beaten by Ford’s brass knuckles, and the powerful American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, which together represented some 15 million workers, more than the population of California at that time.
In their heyday, the unions fought against it. In 1970 alone, 2.4 million union members took part in work stoppages, wildcat strikes and tense disputes with company bosses. The labor movement fought for better pay and safer working conditions and supported anti-poverty measures. Their efforts paid off for both unionized and non-union workers, as companies like Eastman Kodak were forced to give their workers generous compensation and benefits to discourage them from organizing. By one estimate, the wages of non-union non-college-educated males would be 8 percent higher today if union strength remained as strong as it was in the late 1970s, a time when workers’ wages were rising, CEO pay was curbed and the country was experiencing it most economically just time in modern history.
It is important to note that Old Labor has often been a haven for white men. In the 1930s, many unions discriminated against black workers outwardly or segregated them into Jim Crow branches. In the 1960s, unions such as the Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America enforced racial segregation within their ranks. Unions have harmed themselves through self-destructive racism and have been further weakened by a changing economy. But organized labor was also attacked by political opponents. As unions faltered, business interests saw an opportunity. Corporate lobbyists penetrated deeply into both political parties and launched a public relations campaign that pressured policymakers to roll back labor protections.
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