Our goal should be economic justice

It’s estimated there are 27 million slaves in the world today. There are more humans being trafficked now than at any time in history. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has recently exposed several cases of slave labor in the agricultural fields of Florida.

In April, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) was key in convening congressional hearings on enslaved agricultural workers in America. Florida tomato growers, who supply their product to fast food chains like Burger King, are at the center of the hearings. Surely slavery is the most unequal and unacceptable management/labor relationship.

While this kind of slavery is not the norm in America, most workers, and those who depend on them, are suffering. We have an economic system that is creating great wealth for a tiny portion of our population. Our middle class is losing ground and poverty is on the rise.

From 2001 to 2008, the net worth of the wealthiest 1 percent grew from $186 billion to $816 billion. Productivity of American workers increased 18 percent, while the median pre-tax household income decreased from $49,158 to $48,201. And the number of Americans living in poverty increased from 31.6 million to 36.5 million.

“No business which depends  … on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. … By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of a decent living,” declared former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“Free Market” and “Globalization” ideologies are embraced by corporations as they race across the planet in search of lower costs and higher profits. Period. This is certainly not what FDR had in mind. His approach to economics created the largest and most stable middle class in American history. But capitalism is about the maximization of profit. Workers are assets. Assets are exploited, depreciated and discarded. People are consumers. Do you remember Bush’s advice after the 9/11 attacks? Go shopping.

That economics could focus on the needs and wants of human beings, as if life itself has importance, is no extraterrestrial vision. Economics is a system crafted to achieve a goal. We have a system that is enriching those who don’t need, at the expense of those who don’t have. In other words, plutocracy.

Time to change the goal.

Former President Roosevelt is credited with creating and promoting the idea that the peoples’ government should and would fundamentally improve the lives of Americans. His approach was a terrific success, but the idea preceded him.

For instance, the Panic of 1893 was an economic depression of record proportion. It was a worldwide financial crisis. Like today, much of our economy was propped up by foreign countries-European at that time. As foreign speculators pulled their money out of the U.S., unemployment among industrial workers in this country skyrocketed to as much as 25 percent. This led to many intense labor conflicts, including the infamous Pullman Strike in Illinois. Workers united to literally fight for the lives and futures of themselves, their families and their co-workers.

Jacob Coxey was an Ohio businessman. In 1894, he organized an “Industrial Army” that marched on Washington, D.C. to demand that the federal government create jobs to put the unemployed (officially 7.7 million today, with another 13.5 million either categorized as “discouraged” or “underemployed”) to work-jobs that would improve infrastructure, for example. This was decades before the New Deal. When the marchers reached the Capitol in Washington, Coxey tried to read an “Address of Protest” on the steps of our nation’s Capitol. The “Industrial Army” was routed and Coxey was arrested.

When Ross Perot ran for president of the United States, he denounced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). If that treaty were ratified, he warned, we’d hear a “giant sucking sound” as good paying jobs in America relocated overseas. He was right. A more recent sucking sound would be the Bush tax cuts to the top 1 percent of our population. This group, that needs no help to live a life of dignity and respect, benefited to the tune of $546 billion between 2001 and 2007.

If our private sector is allowed to operate as if the feudal system is an acceptable form of labor/management relations, then our governments, local, regional and national, must improve living conditions. Poverty should be considered a war crime in this country. A living wage, as defined by FDR, is a must.

To that end, on a local level, the Village of Oak Park should enact and enforce a Living Wage Ordinance that village employees, employees of contractors performing work for the village and employees of businesses that receive a significant financial subsidy from the village, receive a living wage.

Justice, not just us.