Will America remain the land of opportunity? Or is it turning into two Americas, one rich and one struggling just to get by?
The Delphi Co., one of the leading automobile parts manufacturers in the world, has filed for bankruptcy. Its CEO, Robert Miller, says it can’t meet global competition and pay its workers a union wage. And it must shed its obligations on health care and pensions to its retired workers.
Miller, having dished out some $90 million in severance bonuses to his executives, wants workers to swallow pay cuts from about $27 an hour to about $10 an hour.
General Motors verges on bankruptcy, as does Ford. All the auto companies are pressing workers to swallow deep cuts in pay and benefits. The automobile industry is going from union jobs that provide a secure, middle-class living to low-wage, low-benefit jobs.
Used to be celebrators of the new global economy like Tom Friedman argued that these workers were just “turtles” who were going to get run over on the global highway. Then the dot.com bubble burst. Many of the programming jobs that were lost in the bust never came back. They were shipped to India. So were an increasing number of service jobs.
Last year was a sterling year of economic growth, according to the Bush administration. Stocks were up, profits were up and CEO salaries soared. But wages for average workers fell.
We teach our children self-discipline. Work hard, stay out of trouble, turn your back on drugs, don’t have babies out of wedlock, get the best education you can. The promise is that with self-reliance and self-discipline, you can share in the American Dream.
But what happens when the ladder to the middle class is broken? When the jobs that used to provide the way up are gone? What happens when you can’t find a union job at $27 an hour with health care and pensions, and must accept a job at $10 an hour without health care and without a pension?
This is the fundamental challenge facing our nation. And no leader, outside of John Edwards, is even talking about it. Bush and the Republican Congress are still pushing through more tax breaks for the wealthy while blocking any increase in the minimum wage.
But Democrats aren’t much better. They talk about education as the answer, but say little about the fact that college education is getting priced out of the reach of working families, or that poor kids who need the most help get the least – overcrowded schools, the least experienced teachers, outdated textbooks. Instead of providing an avenue to opportunity, our school system, as it is, is reinforcing the division of America.
Working families have to wake up. We need a new movement, a new agenda and new leadership.
