Folks, we are losing newspapers all across the country. Somewhere in the U.S., a newspaper closes its doors on almost a weekly basis. Even the ones remaining are laying off staff and it seems like the first to be let go are the investigative reporters.
The end result of this is that you and I don't receive the information that we need. For a democracy to be strong, it needs a well-informed citizenry. And we are becoming less informed by the day.
What brings this lack of information into focus is an article in "The American Prospect" by Harold Meyerson. The article reports on a worker demonstration in Fontana, Calif. Fontana is a major warehouse area that receives products from communist China and a few other Eastern countries.
The goods are then sent immediately from Fontana to the big box retailers for American consumption. This area has so many warehouses, most of them 60 acres and larger, that Fontana is the fourth highest area in the U.S. for diesel pollution. It also has the third highest home foreclosure rate in our country.
What is really amazing is that there are approximately 100,000 workers in these warehouses and there are a minimum of 25,000 undocumented immigrants included in that number.
As you can probably imagine, with the high home foreclosure rate, families are doubling and tripling up in the homes remaining.
The demonstration took place May 14, 2009, only two months ago, and I am just now learning about it. So far, I have quizzed 64 people and none of them knew about the rally. I guess it was either the lack of good reporting or the "powers that be" decided it was something we did not need to know about.
Only a few more than 200 workers were protesting and this was for wages, benefits and working conditions. Supporting them were several ministers and priests. Two-hundred does not seem like many from a total of 100,000. But to protest in this day and time, means that you could be blacklisted and even go to jail. Six or so of these people were taken to jail.
Most of these workers are paid minimum wage or less. How they can be paid less than minimum wage I'll explain later. But now I'll attempt to explain how the big boxes keep their hands clean. The warehouses are owned by investment companies that lease the buildings to warehouse operating companies. At least one of these operating companies is foreign.
It is estimated that about 60,000 of the workers work for one of the 270 temp agencies located in just this area. There is very little temporary about these workers. "Permanent temporary" is a better term.
It is reported that some of these workers receive two paychecks to cover what is owed them. When they sign on to a temp agency, they are given shares in the temp company, or maybe a subsidiary company.
The first check is a regular paycheck, but the second one is given to the worker as if they were company owners. In this case, the temp agency can pay less than minimum wage. And it does not have to pay any of the unemployment taxes.
There are some economists who claim that for every job that we ship overseas a new job is created here in our country. I have studied their numbers and I can't come within 3 million created jobs verses lost jobs.
But even if somehow their numbers are correct, we have traded good-paying jobs, that an American worker could support a family with and live a decent lifestyle, for jobs that are below a substance level of living.
These are minimum wage jobs, or maybe lower, that even with two of these jobs per family there is a life and death struggle.
And more and more there are less and less benefits. Benefits like health insurance and decent working conditions. These 100,000 workers cannot form a union because, number one, they are temporary workers and, number two, there is no company to form a union against.
So, you and I wind up paying. Our tax dollars go to support the big boxes - and not just their employees, but hundreds of thousands of workers who do their warehouse work and are not their employees.
Furthermore, there are no sales involved in these gigantic warehouses so the local communities lose that possible source of income. We support the big boxes with government assistance to their regular employees and now they have found a new way for us to support them, even when American workers do their work and are not their employees.
As each day goes by, I am becoming more and more convinced that the American worker is the only true capitalist in our society. My use of the term American worker includes farmers and small business owners because they are also forced to compete.
In true capitalism, every company would compete down to the break even point or lower. The only people that I see competing down to the break even point and lower, much lower, are American workers. These are people whose wages, benefits and working conditions have been deteriorating for more than 30 years.
Without real investigative news, you and I become separated from reality and each other; but I guess that is what we are coming to.
Bill Horne is a professor of economics at Southern State Community College and a columnist for The People's Defender.
