[ Every walkout, every outstretched hand, every word written or
spoken in defense of workers rights, is a victory—whether it results
in immediate and obvious success or not. ]
[[link removed]]

BARBARA EHRENREICH AND THE REAL WORK OF LABOR DAY  
[[link removed]]


 

Richard Eskow
September 5, 2022
Common Dreams
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Every walkout, every outstretched hand, every word written or
spoken in defense of workers' rights, is a victory—whether it
results in immediate and obvious success or not. _

Journalist and author Barbara Ehrenreich, who died last week at the
age of 81, pictured on July 27, 2006 in Pasadena, California., (Photo
by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

 

ONLY A WEEK OF two before Barbara Ehrenreich’s death I was in a
used bookstore, where I found and bought an out-of-print pamphlet she
co-wrote in 1988 with journalist and author Annette Fuentes. It’s
called "Women in the Global Factory."

That year, as Reaganism was reprogramming both political parties,
Ehrenreich and Fuentes were engaged in the honorable and never-ending
work of documenting corporate exploitation. Their work shows us how,
even before Bill Clinton brought us the WTO agreement with China,
multinational corporations were exploiting impoverished workers and
specifically oppressing women—and that the U.S. government was
enabling it. The trade deals later promoted by both parties would make
the situation far worse in the decades to come.

The pamphlet also reminds us that Ehrenreich was doing the work that
needed to be done well before her best-known book, "Nickel and Dimed,"
made her famous in 2001. It musters facts and figures, as well as
sexist pitches like the investment brochure from the Malaysian
government which boasts that "the manual dexterity of the Oriental
female is famous the world over. Her hands are small and she works
with care… Who, therefore, could be more qualified by nature and
inheritance to contribute to the efficiency of a bench-assembly line
than the Oriental girl?"

There is uplift in the pamphlet, too, when the authors list a series
of woman-led labor actions in the developing world. These actions
often required great personal sacrifice. They include the following
descriptions:

NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO, 1973: Two thousand workers at Transitron
Electronics walked out in solidarity with a small number of workers
who had been fired unjustly. Two days later, 8,000 striking workers
met and elected a more militant union leadership.

BANGKOK, THAILAND, 1976: Seventy young women locked out their
Japanese bosses and took control of their garment factory. They
continued to produce jeans and floppy hats for export, paying
themselves 150 percent more than their bosses had.

SOUTH KOREA, 1979: Two hundred young women employees of the YH textile
and wig factory staged a peaceful vigil and fast to protest the
company's threatened closing of the plant. On August 11, the fifth day
of the vigil, more than 1,000 riot police armed with clubs and steel
shields broke into the building where the women were staying and
forcibly dragged them out. Twenty-one year old Ria Kong Suk was killed
during the melee. It was her death that touched off the widespread
rioting throughout the country that many believe led to the overthrow
of the dictator Park Chung Hee.

The Bangkok action reminds us that workers are capable of
self-management through a program of workplace democracy. And the fall
of Park Chung Hee reminds us that the labor struggle involves more
than just the improvement of workers' wages, benefits, and working
conditions. Important as those things are, they cannot be permanently
achieved unless they also lead to a fundamental realignment of
political and economic power.

That's the real work before us. Consider this sentence from Geoff
Mann's recent examination of the de-growth movement in _The London
Review of Books
[[link removed]]_:
"Everything (in modern economics) is premised on the assumption that
Capital decides, and Labour does what it's told."

That assumption is exactly what the Brisbane, Australia building
trades unions challenged in the 1970s when they struck, not only for
themselves, but for the rights of others, and for the environmental
integrity of the entire city. This effort is documented in a (now out
of print) book called "Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental Activism
and the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation." (Used copies
can be found online.) As authors Meredith and Verity Bergmann show,
Brisbane's building workers used their power to preserve green spaces
(refusing to work on buildings that destroyed them), and defended the
rights of women, LGBTQ, and Indigenous people. Their work was
eventually suppressed, but not before preserving some green parts of
Brisbane forever (at least, so far).

The labor-driven solidarity demonstrated by the "red unions" upends
the premise Mann describes and points the way to a more democratic and
habitable future. As for the pamphlet: Not all of the actions listed
in it resulted in visible progress. But every woman who took part in
them helped advance labor rights, by being present, conscious, and
brave. Our speech and actions resonate in ways we may never come to
understand. Our duty, and our privilege, is to do the work whatever
the outcome. Barbara Ehrenreich did that work. So did the women whose
actions she and Fuentes recorded.

Every walkout, every outstretched hand, every word written or spoken
in defense of workers' rights, is a victory—whether it results in
immediate and obvious success or not. The only failure is not to have
tried.

_RICHARD (RJ) ESKOW
[[link removed]] is a freelance
writer. Much of his work can be found on eskow.substack.com
[[link removed]]. His weekly program, The Zero Hour
[[link removed]], can be found on cable
television, radio, Spotify, and podcast media. He is a senior advisor
with Social Security Works._

* Barbara Ehrenreich
[[link removed]]
* Labor Day
[[link removed]]
* Labor Movement
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]