Indianapolis: Super Bowl city not so super

Not so super Indianapolis, Indiana's State Capital and largest city, as it was when it hosted Super Bowl XLVI, an event which, ironically, followed one of the absolutely worst seasons ever for the Indianapolis Colts.  Originally posted on Examiner.com--GF

 

By all standard measures, Indianapolis’ first hosting of a Super Bowl, Super Bowl XLVI on February 5, 2012, was a resounding success.  Certainly that’s shown by glowing press coverage.  The Associated Press’ Tom Coyne penned a February 5 story, “No more Naptown: Super Bowl boosts Indy’s image,” that was long, detailed, extensive and fulsome in praise of Indianapolis in snagging Super Bowl XLVI.    “Scoring High Marks,” a February 7 story by Robert King in the Indianapolis Star, the city’s daily newspaper, specifically noted the very favorable impression as Super Bowl host Indianapolis had garnered among the professional sports news broadcasters and networks.  By all press reports (of which those above are only two), Indianapolis had successfully carried off one helluva splashy party that Super Bowl week.

 

But for us who live in Indianapolis, one successful special-event weeklong party doesn’t a successful city make.  For its residents, as opposed to those who came into town from outside specifically for the Super Bowl activities, Indianapolis is still beset by many, many problems and drawbacks.

 

For one thing, participating in Super Bowl week events, not to mention attending the big game itself, was prohibitively expensive for many residents.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Indianapolis-Carmel metropolitan area (Carmel being a suburban town just north of Indianapolis) still had an 8.6% seasonally-unadjusted unemployment rate in January 2012, which meant 76,500 living here were out of work, while many others had only part-time jobs when they wanted full-time, or had dropped out of the labor force altogether.  (Including these, by BLS methodology, nearly doubles the “official” unemployment rate, which measures only those without jobs who are actively seeking work.)

 

Further, parking one’s car in downtown Indianapolis, where the activities that week were, cost $20 per day; and although downtown was served by IndyGo, the city’s public bus system, many parts of Indianapolis aren’t served by public transportation at all, nor are any of the outlying suburban communities.  Just one of the reasons IndyGo is dubbed IndyDon’tGo or IndyWon’tGo by many Circle City residents.  (The moniker comes from Indianapolis having at the heart of downtown Monument Circle, a circular roadway enclosing the War Memorial, the city’s central landmark.)  Nor is public transportation all that convenient even for those areas that are served:  there are long waits between scheduled buses, and because of this, spending six hours’ time at Super Bowl activities could often cost bus riders eight-ten hours’ time when considering the wait for buses.

 

Downtown Indianapolis also presents a sharp contrast between the very rich and the very poor—intermixed with all the high-class hotels and upscale shops, restaurants and bars is a large population of homeless, many of whom are highly-visible street beggars.  Downtown is also home for the city’s missions that provide beds and meals for some of the homeless, though with harsh restrictions.  But they don’t even come close to serving all the homeless.

 

Back in fall 2011 Republican Mayor Greg Ballard succeeded with his plan to privatize the city’s parking meters, resulting not only in a considerable rise in parking rates, from 75¢ an hour to $1.00 an hour an even $1.50 an hour, but also extended the time parking fees had to be paid from 6 PM to 9 PM and eliminated Saturday free parking.  Ballard touted the “convenience” of the new meters which had to be installed, because they now made it possible to feed the meters by credit or debit card—but of course, only if the credit or debit card isn’t maxed out, which isn’t the case for many, including myself at the time (as I was unemployed during Super bowl week, and subsisting on only $150 per week unemployment compensation).

 

 Then there’s Indianapolis’ famous sewer overflow, a perennial problem and health hazard every time there’s a major rainfall or snow melt (neither of which occurred Super Bowl week, so the tourists didn’t have to notice—unlike year-round residents).  This problem stems from a sewer system that was put into place in the 19^th Century and not expanded essentially since then, despite considerable population growth.  The result is sewer water flooding the streets and overrunning river banks during heavy rainfall and snow melt, and it’s a problem that has plagued Indianapolis now literally for generations.  When I moved to Indianapolis in December 1979 residents were then grousing about the sewers, and had been for many years prior; and although everyone acknowledges the problem, political bickering on how it is to be financed, and who is to pay for it, has stymied action.  Due to the conservative nature of Indiana politics generally, which carries over into Indianapolis, the financing plans proposed so far have been regressive, substantially exempting rich property owners while disproportionately soaking the middle-class and poor instead.  The result has been gridlock over the truly-needed extensive overhaul and expansion of the Circle City’s sewer system.

 

While Indianapolis has 43% of Indiana’s college graduates according to the BLS, as

noted in an October 19, 2008 Indianapolis Star story, “Indy area is flourishing while rest of state falters,” it doesn’t mean that having a college degree in Indianapolis automatically translates into a high-paying, high-skill job for many of these graduates.  This results in many college degree-holders being rejected by many employers in low-education, low-skill Indiana as “overqualified,” and thus stuck in low-skill service jobs or only temporary employment.  (After all, 48.6% of Indiana’s college graduates leave the state upon graduation, precisely because of the lack of degree-level jobs.)  I can attest to this firsthand myself, as one who scored the standardized state system standardized tests in a local temp job that requires a college degree and temporarily but regularly employs nearly 1,000 college graduates during the yearly-recurring test-scoring season, but which provides employment only four-six months a year.  Since then, I’ve “moved on” to a permanent, full-time blue-collar warehouse job, grateful that my economics degree from Indiana University was simply ignored, not used against me!  And that was the only permanent full-time job offer I’d even received in the previous ten-and-a-half years.  My personal observations, plus anecdotal evidence, tells me that many of Indianapolis’ college graduates are insecurely employed, working strictly temp jobs when work is available, or if among the better-paid, are working as servers, bartenders, or other tipped employees in Indianapolis’ upscale restaurants, bars and hotels where no college degree is required.

 

Tom Coyne’s story cited above credits long-serving (1976-1991) Republican Mayor Bill Hudnut with making Indianapolis an eventual Super Bowl city.  Hudnut’s goal was to capture an NFL team for Indy, capitalizing on Indiana’s sports mania.  As Coyne put it:

 

In the 1970s, then-Mayor Bill Hudnut decided that sports was the ticket to revitalizing the city and putting it on the national map.

It seemed to be a good fit. Indianapolis was the capital of a sports-crazed state that had Notre Dame winning national football championships in the north, Indiana University winning national basketball championships in the south, the Indianapolis 500 in the middle and a high school basketball tournament that created Hoosier Hysteria.

 

Although Indianapolis already berthed the NBA Indiana Pacers, the team’s uneven playing record, propensity for brawling, and lack of fan support did not make basketball a big-ticket item.  To Hudnut and others, that required snagging an NFL team, which Indianapolis did in 1984, when the then-Baltimore Colts sneaked out of Maryland in the wee hours of the morning, under cover of darkness, and arrived in Indianapolis at dawn.

 

But even that didn’t do it all by itself.  The real ticket to NFL success in Indianapolis all came down to one man:  Peyton Manning, Indianapolis Colts’ quarterback from 1991 until released by Colts owner Jim Irsay on March 9, 2012.  It was Manning’s stellar playing for the Colts that made the team a top-rated NFL contender that went on to play in two Super Bowls and win one of them.  His reputation was key not only in getting Indianapolis to be the site of Super Bowl XLVI, but earlier, in persuading Indianapolis and the State of Indiana to specifically build for the Colts the brand-new Lucas Oil Stadium and tear down the still-serviceable, not-yet-paid-for Hoosier Dome the Colts now found inadequate, threatening to leave Indianapolis if a new stadium were not built. 

 

But as CNN reported, before Peyton Manning the Colts were a “laughingstock.”  They may become so again—during the 2011 NFL season, with Manning out the whole time because of recovery from neck surgery, the Colts were 2-14 for the football year in which Indianapolis hosted the Super Bowl!  The only honor the Colts snagged that season was the dubious one of having first choice in the upcoming NFL draft because of its bottom-of-the-barrel last-place finish.

 

Indianapolis’ turn-around from Naptown (where everyone napped) and IndiaNOPLACE has been based on an economic development strategy that could be called Third World:  using not just big-name sports, but conventioneering, upscale shopping and tourism as well, to attract big spenders from out-of-state and the affluent suburbs surrounding Indy to make the city flush with money.  But that success has come at the price of long neglect of those who actually live in Indianapolis—for the Circle City, along with Indiana as a whole, continues hemorrhaging well-paying manufacturing jobs and replacing them with low-paying service jobs, while, as mentioned above, nearly half the college-educated continue to leave the state.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2009 Indiana ranked below both the national and the Midwest averages for educational achievement among those 25 and older, and each year from 2006-2011 had a drop in per capita income, according to the Department of Commerce.  In just the last year, two major manufacturing plants in Indianapolis, the General Motors foundry and auto parts manufacturer Navistar, permanently closed their doors, further devastating an already-devastated East Side, once home to 100,000 manufacturing jobs.

 

So yes, while in certain ways Indianapolis has turned around, in other, also-crucial, ways it hasn’t at all.  Indianapolis still resembles all too much the final line in that venerable jazz standard, “You Came A Long Way From St. Louis”:  “You came a long way from Missouri/But baby, you still got a long way to go.”              

 

 

 

             

             

           

  

          

 

 

 

 

             

             

           

Work, fatigue, frustration, and—finally!—creativity again

Also originally published on Examiner.com--GF

 

Exhaustion from my previous long-term job at Amazon.com essentially killed my creativity and desire to write the first few months of 2014, from January into early April, when I lost that job.  I was too busy fighting work fatigue to do much of anything else—my life had essentially reduced itself to work, sleep, eat, recover from work on my days off, and then work again.  The few days I had off I mostly just lay around inert.  A real creativity-killer indeed, and also a real killer of desire to do anything but loll around, letting the fatigue and muscle soreness heal itself before I returned to work again.

 

Indiana itself is a killer as well of creativity and the urge to write.  The tsunami wave of Indiana’s hidebound mediocrity overwhelms even the talented and creative one, drowns that person literally body and soul, chokes off the creative urge as it chokes off the better part of one’s personality and talent.  It so overwhelms that the simple urge to create and write is no longer there, that all desire to write and create now becomes totally submerged.

 

That was especially so in my case those prior four months, those months where, even at age 67, I was financially forced to hold down a physically exhausting full-time job at the Amazon.com warehouse in Whitestown, Indiana.  (On which I’ve written before for examiner.com, having previously worked for Amazon at Whitestown, and at another Amazon warehouse in Central Indiana; see George Fish, “Amazon.com’s Whitestown, Indiana warehouse is a hell of a place to work,” January 20, 2013; this article will be subsequently re-posted on this blog.)  My most recent job at Amazon as an order picker required me to walk 10-15 miles each 10-hour shift four days in a row.  It’s a job that pushes one physically to the limit, especially for an older worker such as myself, as it would severely challenge the physical capabilities of even a twentysomething, and makes each shift worked the equivalent of an Army boot camp hike, or several strenuous gym workouts done back-to-back.  But in addition to just the demands put on the body by all that walking is the demanding quota system of orders to be picked in an hour, an exacting computer-determined and computer-monitored system that makes the picker but an appendage to the order-processing machine, with every motion, every order picked, every order bundle placed on the conveyor belt, rigidly calibrated and monitored down to fractions of a second. 

 

A New Yorker article earlier this year pithily summarized this well:

 

Amazon employs or subcontracts tens of thousands of warehouse workers, with seasonal variation, often building its fulfillment centers in areas with high unemployment and low wages.  Accounts from inside the centers describe the work of picking, boxing, and shipping books and dog food and beard trimmers as a high-tech version of the dehumanized factory floor satirized in Chaplin’s “Modern Times.”  Pickers holding computerized handsets are perpetually timed and measured as they fast-walk up to eleven miles per shift around a million-square-foot warehouse, expected to collect orders in as little as thirty-three seconds.  After watching footage taken by an undercover BBC reporter, a stress expert said, “The evidence shows increased risk of mental illness and physical illness.”  The company says that its warehouse jobs are “similar to jobs in many other industries.”

 

(George Packer, “Cheap Words: Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books?”  A Reporter At Large, The New Yorker, February 17, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/17/140217fa_fact_packer?currentPage=all.)  Indeed, a co-worker of mine at Whitestown told me that a fellow picker who’d worked during the Christmas rush brought an odometer to work, and calibrated that, during this busiest, most demanding, of peak seasons, a picker actually walked 20 miles during a 10-hour shift.  Ironically, warehouse jobs at Amazon are among the better-paying jobs in Central Indiana, and are sought after; after losing my Amazon job in April, I got another warehouse job through a temp agency, same as with Amazon, but had to take a $2.00 an hour pay cut.  While the work at my new job is not much easier or less demanding that at Whitestown, it only pays $9.50 an hour compared to the $11.50 an hour I was making.  In Central Indiana, Amazon’s pay is on the high end of what’s paid warehouse workers; unskilled temp jobs at other warehouses only pay within the $9.00-$10.00 an hour range.

 

Moreover, although a college graduate, I have found myself for the past few years, same as many other college graduates, having to work unskilled physical labor because those are the only jobs available in Brain Drain, low-education, low-skill, low-wage, job-hemorrhaging Indiana.  Documentation of these crucial Hoosier lacks is extensive, and below I will list a substantial part of that documentation. 

 

On the Brain Drain and its impact on the college graduate population, there are, for example, two articles of mine: George Fish, “Indiana’s Brain Drain: The problem that won’t go away,” examiner.com, August 3, 2009, which will be re-posted on this blog; and George Fish, “Add another Frustration to Being Unemployed: A Case in Point from Indiana’s WorkOne State Employment Agency,” New Politics, December 12, 2011, http://newpol.org/content/add-another-frustration-being-unemployed-case-point-indiana%E2%80%99s-workone-state-employment-agenc. See generally George Fish and Dave Fey, “Mediocrity—a Hoosier affliction,” Bloomington Alternative, July 12, 2009, http://bloomingtonalternative.com/articles/2009/07/12/10039.  According to the Status of Working Families in Indiana, 2011 report, issued in April 2012 by the Indiana Institute for Working Families, http://www.incap.org/statusworkingfamilies.html, p. 20, 60% of Indiana’s college graduates leave the state, a key reason being lack of jobs.  Further, in the “Hoosier Mediocrity Fact Sheet” contained in Fish and Fey, op. cit., http://bloomingtonalternative.com/f/Hoosier%20Mediocrity.pdf, 46.6% of Indiana’s college graduates leave the state within one year of graduation (citing data that originally appeared in the Indianapolis Star).

 

On Indiana’s per capita income, although it has increased 9.8% from 2006 to 2011, according to Hoosier Data webpage provided by Indiana’s Department of Workforce Development, going from $33,087 in 2006 to $36,342 in 2011, Indiana’s per capita income in this time has actually dropped as a percentage of the national per capita income, from 86.8% in 2006 to 85.9% in 2011. (http://www.hoosierdata.in.gov/dpage.asp?id=2&view_number=1&menu_level=&panel_number=2.) Standing at $38,812, or 87.1% of the national per capita income, in 2013, Indiana’s per capita income ranked only 39^th among the states.  But Indiana ranked 34^th  in 1983, 28^th in 1993, 36^th in 2003, so while per capita income has grown, it has declined compared to growth at the national level—Indiana continues to fall behind due to job loss and low wages.  (STATS Indiana, compiled by the Kelly School of Business, Indiana University, http://www.stats.indiana.edu/sip/inc/inc2_18.html.) As the Indianapolis Star reported, “Income for Indiana residents last year was $38,812 per person, a 2.3 percent increase. That compares with $44,543 for the nation, a 2.6 percent increase.  Indiana’s income ranking has dropped in recent decades, down from 30th in 1980, and 21st in 1950. The drop has been tied largely to the decline in high-paying manufacturing jobs.” (Maureen Groppe, Star Washington bureau, “Indiana’s per capita income ranks 38^th among states,” Indianapolis Star, March 26, 2014, http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/26/indianas-per-capita-income-ranks-th-among-states/6934411/.) Even in recovery, Indiana still continues to lose jobs.  For example, while Indiana gained 144,007 jobs in the three months September-December 2010, during this same period it lost 131,387 jobs, for a net gain of only 12,620 jobs. (http://www.bls.gov/cew/ew10table14.pdf.)  And even though Indiana’s unemployment rate continues to drop, and in April 2014 stood below the national average at 5.7%, that still leaves 182,900 Hoosiers without jobs. (http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.in.htm.) [Jobs, unemployment data from the Bureau of Economic Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor.]

So statistically one could say I’ve been one of the lucky unlucky ones, having generally secured unskilled labor employment through temp agencies since 2003, even though, as a college-degree holder, not the work I would desire by any means.  But, as indicated, this “luck in unluck” employment took its toll on me creatively and as an active writer, and that certainly generated frustration and chagrin.  However, and felicitously, since April Fool’s Day that creativity and urge to write has actively returned, and I’ve been on a somewhat consistent writing jag since then, having written several poems which I’ve shared in fellowship at the Tuesday afternoon gatherings of poet colleagues here in Indianapolis.  And despite the economic hardships involved with my new employment, I have gained in not being so overwhelmed with fatigue I could not create, only sleep and loll around in utter exhaustion after a grueling workday and workweek.  A mixed yet palpable gain for this poet/economist/laborer/journalist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dispatch from the work shift from hell

 

Also originally published on Examiner.com--GF

 

The job I lost June 20, 2014, which I’m about to detail below, was truly like herpes, a “gift that keeps on giving.”  For five weeks now after the loss of that job I still continue to have the leg pains that job engendered, requiring me to take 1600 mg. of ibuprofen daily just to be able to walk and stand without pain; but as of now the only thing that’s substantially changed is that while the pain has attenuated, it only reduced my need for ibuprofen from 1600 mg. daily to a “mere” 800!  Ah, such a lasting “gift” from a job that was a lived descent into the lower rungs of Dante’s hell!

 

As was typical of the “employment opportunities” in Central Indiana, the job I worked was yet another unskilled warehouse temp job through a temp agency, another in a seemingly endless cycle of only temporary employment—where, as usual, the “opportunity” of “temp to hire,” i.e., the job turning into a permanent, full-time position as, if one’s considered “good” enough, the company hiring one through the temp agency will take the temp on as one of its own.  But reality is, though the dangling of “temp to hire” is ubiquitous, it actually occurs only 27% of the time, according to statistics.  It’s bait dangled, and as such, is a lot like bait-and-switch, where, at the end of the assignment, one still lacks permanent, reliable employment and must instead scrounge around for more strictly temporary “temp work opportunities” through the various temp agencies.

 

Yet I was grateful for this job when it first occurred, coming as it did after a month unemployed and not qualifying for unemployment compensation. That followed my loss of employment at the Amazon.com warehouse in Whitestown on April 5 where I had been for nearly six months—which was long as such jobs usually go.  The new job was at another warehouse run by a major national corporation, this one the book publisher and distributor RR Donnelley in Plainfield, another significant commute from my residence in Indianapolis.  Both jobs shared the trait that they were physically demanding; and I’ve written notably before on examiner.com on just how difficult work is at Amazon. (See “Amazon.com’s Whitestown, Indiana warehouse is a hell of a place to work,” January 20, 2013, and “Work, fatigue, frustration, and—finally!—creativity again,” May 28, 2014, which will subsequently be re-posted on this blog.)  However, while Amazon is a horrendously demanding place to work, at least it pays a fairly decent wage as far as temp warehouse employment in Central Indiana goes, $11.50 an hour for the day shift, and $12.50 an hour for the night shift.  Further, the temp agency that hires for Amazon, Integrity Staffing Solutions, has perks available for its employees at Amazon that are unheard-of with other temp agencies, perks such as the ability to acquire penalty-free time off work. 

 

 

The temp agency that employed me at RR Donnelley, Employment Plus, provided no perks; instead it had, and enforced, a penalty point system for being absent or late for one’s work shift no matter what the reason. In fact, I had been burned twice by Employment Plus before, in late 2011 and late 2012, but had no place else to go when it offered me employment again in May 2014.  Employment Plus does like to brag on its website, http://www.employmentplus.com, how well it services its industry clients and how many awards it’s received from employer organizations, but that’s because it’s quite willing to cater to whatever the employer demands, even (or especially?) at the expense of the employees it provides!  But I don’t write this out of any invidious desire to single out Employment Plus: as a temp employee ever since September 2001 who’s worked for several temp agencies, I can honestly say that there are no “good” temp agencies to work for, only a Hobson’s choice between more tolerable and less tolerable, which is either exacerbated or mitigated by the type of work actually available at any given time.   Or in other words, only what amounts to a practical choice between what’s bad and what’s worse!

 

I worked at RR Donnelley from May 7 until about an hour-and-a-half before my shift was scheduled to end on June 20, being summarily fired and escorted from the building by the officious manager who, due to his goatee and shaved head, reminded me of a bearded version of Saturday Night Live’s Coneheads in appearance, and Godzilla in temperament. 

 

 

Central Indiana warehouses tend to be rather badly managed, and in this RR Donnelley was the worst I’ve encountered.  A morass of dysfunction, equipment malfunctions and breakdowns, a conveyer belt system for feeding products that was frequently overloaded with more product pulled and ready to ship than it could handle, and a management that, when it was on the floor and not in the office, simply strutted around and barked orders, despite not having any real idea of what was going on—but lack of knowledge was never allowed to interfere with barking orders and rendering summary judgment, no matter what!  Such was integral to my being summarily fired for being upset and having shouted out my anger and frustration at almost having my fingers crushed due to an equipment malfunction that was a regular occurrence on the particular task I worked, but of which the big boss, the Conehead, was previously oblivious.  So, yes, I was partially responsible for blurting out an angry obscenity, but who wouldn’t do such under such conditions?  I was in an edgy and vulnerable emotional state of exhaustion at having worked over six hours virtually without respite, handling a nearly-impossible shift dealing with an extremely overloaded conveyor belt system.  Just this hapless worker trying desperately to keep pace with a tyrannous ever-flowing conveyor belt!  Then the taping machine, which taped the boxes in which I packed stuffing so that they were ready to ship, developed the regularly-recurring malfunction that prevented it from taping, and though I had never repaired the malfunction before, I did know what to do, having watched others do it repeatedly.  And so I fixed the malfunction, no help whatsoever from my more experienced co-worker, who stood there staring at me, dumb and silent as a rock.  But the machine started before I had expected it to, and only my quick reflexes prevented my fingers from being caught between two pieces of metal moving together to make a vise for holding the box—while my co-worker, who had contributed to the problem, stood there Sphinx-like; staring at me absolutely wordlessly as though she didn’t know how to talk or react!  And so I blurted out an epithet that my immediate supervisor saw as “upsetting” to the other employees, and she escorted me to Mr. Conehead, who couldn’t have cared less about what I was upset about, and cared even less that I’d almost crushed the fingers of my left hand.  All he knew was I was upset, and so he blurted out demands that I cease being upset.  And when I couldn’t, the combination of ruefulness, anger at both my co-worker and at my near miss, plus extreme fatigue for being terribly overworked for a measly $9.50 an hour, $2.00 an hour less than what I’d received at Amazon despite actually working harder,  he escorted me out the building; but before he completed the task of escorting, he reprimanded me once more as I stopped to put on my watch (we weren’t allowed to wear watches while on the job, as they were considered hazardous,  something that could get caught in the rollers of the conveyor).  One simple solution to my anguish does come to mind, and I’m sure the reader catches it—just let me sit down and become calm again after my trauma.  Ah, but such is not allowed in the workplace of today.  No, you aren’t allowed to simply sit down when the unexpected happens, you must either be working when it’s not scheduled break time, or be out of the building.  No rest for the “wicked,” which means us, the very employees who make the business operate in the first place!

 

Truth is, up until that incident, my immediate supervisor had regarded me as an able employee, someone who actually did my job better than my two regular co-workers.  But “upsetting the work environment” for any reason whatsoever, even a good one, is simply a Big No-No which is to be dealt with harshly.  Production must flow, even in the case of a conveyor system that itself was inadequate to handle the volume placed on it, which was constantly breaking down, and where the ancillary equipment frequently malfunctioned—but with no actually certified maintenance person on duty to fix it, just supervisors who jerry-rigged as best they could, even when they didn’t really know what they were doing.  Another reason why RR Donnelley gets an F for its management.

 

While I was rueful over having the paychecks stop so abruptly, I also regarded this loss as a mixed blessing.  I had felt terribly used on this job, working my butt off for $9.50 an hour; and the day I was fired, Friday, was also a payday with my quarterly auto insurance bill due, leaving me essentially with nothing.  $9.50 an hour is actually poverty wage, no way around it—a far cry from economic sustainability, which my job at Amazon had at least provided.

 

I’d been walking or standing on hard concrete since November 2013, something quite hard on one’s legs, especially for an older worker like me—one past his mid-sixties but with no choice but to work anyway.  My legs had been consistently sore for a good half-year, and the leg cramping had actually been exacerbated by the statin for cholesterol my doctor had put me on at the end of May.  But even when off the job for the next month, and also having been taken off the statin, which can cause muscle aches, the leg pain had only subsided, not disappeared; and I still needed ibuprofen to make it through.  But on July 22 I started a new job with a different temp agency, one in which I get to sit down while working, and in which I am not subjected to the tyranny either of a computer-monitored quota system or the speed of a conveyor belt.  So I actually have a job now I like, where the work pace is not ruthlessly demanding, and where I feel comfortable.  And though I didn’t qualify for unemployment compensation this last time I was off, the combination of paychecks once again flowing and working at a job I actually like makes me optimistic for at least the near future; this even though my new job pays only the poverty-level $9.50 an hour, but which is supplemented by a monthly Social Security check.  And my total time unemployed in 2014 has only been 65 days, so I’ve had it much worse.  Simply put, I finally lucked out and am living a Life of Riley, with the proviso that my Riley has only modest expectations needing fulfillment.

 

But in the workplace of today, employees are regarded as expendable inputs and not persons; the notion of workers’ rights is nonexistent and considered a quaint throwback to an earlier time; and managerial fascism is the norm, not the exception.  A far cry for the work environment I knew in the 1960s and 1970s.  But that was back in a time when unions were strong, active, and even tolerated by management; so even if one worked in a non-union workplace, the norms of the union workplace still set the general work norm.  No more.  In our “leaner and meaner” business environment, work norms harkening back to the 19^th Century have become the rule now in the 21^st.  Older workers like myself can still remember when it wasn’t this way, but virtually any worker under the age of 40 only knows workplaces in which managerial fascism is the norm, and is not only ubiquitous but seemingly unchangeable.  Managerial fascism and low pay is now the new “normal,” and while some places can be far worse than others, there is now virtually no “good” job any more than there is a really “good” temp agency.  Of course there is at least a theoretical solution to this problem, and it’s spelled U-N-I-O-N, but in this age of a much diminished union movement and the widespread use of temps instead of regular workers, more a theoretical than a practical solution for most workers, unfortunately.  And that is why for so many of us the best that can come our way is a move from the lowest rungs of Dante’s hell to higher, less oppressive and onerous, rungs.  We’ve lost the capacity to attain the good, and most of us can only hope to attain a lesser evil we can at least live with.

 

 

THE “JOBS FOR ALL” LETTER AGAINST THE CURRENT NASTILY REFUSED TO PRINT

Recently, I tried to post the following Letter to the Editors of Against the Current on Occupy movements and the unemployment crisis:

To the Editors of ATC:

While I appreciate the coverage of left movements I get from Against the Current (ATC), including the extensive posts on the Occupy movements in the latest issue, #156, January/February 2012, as a very much "self-interested" unemployed worker I have to object to the consistent exclusion of articles in ATC that has been going on for the last couple of years (only one exception), the unemployment crisis, which is at the heart of the people's massive misery caused by the Great Recession. I can't help but personally feel that this exclusion flows from the fact that the left generally has no personal understanding or awareness of the severity of the crisis, and cannot seem to grasp its devastating impact on the unemployed themselves, who often feel psychologically as though trapped in the lowest rungs of Dante’s hell.

Noted socialist writer Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." That doesn't just apply to the business and managerial classes alone--I submit, it can also apply to those who are economically comfortable either as workers or as retirees--and thus have no inkling of what it's like to be one of the working poor, what it's like to be chronically unemployed and "living" on a mere $600/month in unemployment compensation, to live constantly desperate. Such as I do, even as a college graduate (but with the "wrong" degree for the job market!), along with my college graduate friends who also have the "wrong" degrees, who are also older (as I am), who have to try and subsist on only temp agency work that pays $10/hour or less (as I had to do for 10 years, before being cut loose even from this kind of employment!) And yes, Upton Sinclair's remark applies to many a putative socialist as well, and to numerous "activists" in Occupy movements and left groups who don't have to worry about the economic wolf at the door, at least for the time being.

It is literally shameful the way the U.S. left has ignored the unemployment crisis, either slighting it through silence altogether, or not proposing bold Keynesian measures such as a new WPA, which created 8.5 million jobs in the 1930s and provided paychecks to 9.7 workers then, according the UCubed, the "union of the unemployed" set up by the Machinists' union (but which is not conceived as an "unemployed council" such as were established in the 1930s, but merely as a voting bloc to pressure Obama and the Democratic Party to "do right."). The reformist socialists such as DSA and CCDS only advocate for Obama's tepid jobs program, which will create merely 1.2 million jobs in an economy with a far bigger workforce than existed in the 1930s. The "revolutionary" socialists are even worse, aiming their fire at the "inadequacy" and merely "reformist" measures that would result from implementing Keynesian measures such as were instituted during the New Deal. So afraid of "saving capitalism," our "revolutionaries" would rather sacrifice the unemployed upon the altar of ideological purity, thus presenting themselves through their inaction as tacitly “aligned” (though for much different reasons) with the obstructionist Republicans and Tea Partiers--who also don't want any Keynesian measures applied to help the unemployed by providing decent-paying, productive, valuable jobs that fulfill real economic needs such as repairing infrastructure, and can actually become Green jobs.

Fortunately, there is one honorable socialist exception, the semi-Trotskyist/Third Camp socialist journal and website New Politics, http://newpol.org, of which ATC Editor David Finkel is a Sponsor, and of which leading Solidarity member Dan La Botz is an Editor. I published on New Politics online on February 3, 2011 my "Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis" calling for a new WPA, http://newpol.org/node/425; in this I was ably seconded by Brian King's supportive article and history of the WPA, "Jobs for All," http://newpol.org/node/445. Radical historian Jesse Lemisch also contributed mightily to this discussion with two articles on New Politics online, "Occupy the American Historical Association: Demand a WPA Federal Writers' Project," http://newpol.org/node/555, and "A WPA for History: Occupy the American Historical Association," http://newpol.org/node/582. I also briefly discussed Occupy youth and their roles as probably unemployed workers once they leave the student confines in "Carl Davidson, Bill Ayers, and Zig Ziglar Moments," http://newpol.org/node/568, where I pointedly noted in a footnote that, according to the New York Times, only 56% of the graduates of the Class of 2010 had found jobs by 2011! But these are virtually unique in what is otherwise a blackout of articles and analyses on the unemployment crisis in "revolutionary" socialist publications!

Jack Rasmus’ article in ATC 135 (July/August 2008), “A New Phase of Economic Crisis,” http://solidarity-us.org/site/node/1608, which was touted to me by one of the Editors of ATC as an exception to my claim of silence on the unemployment crisis, is no exception, really, to this blackout. Much of the article is but a compendium of economic statistics that leads only to the weak, deterministic conclusion that essentially the unemployment and ancillary crises caused by the Great Recession can’t even be seriously ameliorated under capitalism. A “revolutionary” call to passivity in concrete action now while calling for the overthrow of capitalism in the indefinite future. Certainly not a call for a “Jobs for All” new WPA as we called for in New Politics, which, while possibly “saving capitalism from itself” (albeit with major restructuring of this “saved” capitalism), would directly benefit millions, galvanize and energize them, and draw them into more militant political action precisely because they would now feel a sense of real hope and empowerment—plus having the material means to live a decent life, not merely scrounge to survive! Same as the (admittedly) reformist and inadequate New Deal did in the 1930s—which aside from achieving real changes in the way capitalism worked, also radicalized millions and pushed the “limits of the possible” much further to the left. Good things, yes? One would really think so, especially on the part of the “revolutionary” left as represented by ATC and Solidarity, but—these “revolutionaries” tragically disappoint by only wanting to say “no” to this.

But as my comrade and fellow New Politics contributor Brain King put it in an e-mail comment to me that was shared with this ATC Editor, “Why don't ‘Socialist’ groups and journals want to support ‘Jobs for All’? That's a tough one, but it's gotta have something to do with how they see their own group interests and the maintenance of their institutions. They must figure that it's much cooler to promote some pie-in-the-sky version of an ethereal state of affairs called ‘socialism’ than to get jobs for all, gain a lot of control over labor markets, but leave capitalism still functioning. I also think a lot of these so-called ‘socialists’ don't much like the idea of being involved with a lot of politically incorrect schlubs, like me and you. If your gonna build a mass movement, you're gonna have to learn to get along with a lot of working people without left pedigrees.” [As originally written by King—GF]

Leaving socialists such as myself, Brian King and Jesse Lemisch who are aware of the horridness of the unemployment crisis and the sting of unemployment between the Scylla of reformist tailing after Obama's inadequate approach, or the Charybdis or the tacit “alignment” with the Republicans against Keynesian measures that would actually work by the "revolutionary" left (although, again, for entirely different reasons), as demonstrated by the deafening silence coming from the "revolutionaries”!

I write this letter out of my great respect and appreciation for ATC.

George Fish

This was a revised version of an earlier draft I’d sent to this socialist bimonthly—most notably revised from the original in that I’d excised some language that Against the Current Managing Editor and Editorial Board Member David Finkel had vehemently objected to. For in the original I’d talked of persons on the left not understanding what it was like to be unemployed because many of them were among the “smug employed” and the “smug retired.” Finkel also drew my attention to the article by Jack Rasmus, on which I commented in the revised letter. Those were the two notable changes made, and made specifically to answer Finkel’s objections; and so I sent off the revised letter to Against the Current for re-consideration. Despite Finkel’s nastily reproachful tone, I’d been professional enough to take his objections into consideration, and revise accordingly. I expected no problems with the revised letter, even though personal relations with him were strained, had been for some time, and in the fall of 2010 Finkel personally instigated proceedings that led to my expulsion from Solidarity, the socialist grouplet (only 200-some members nationally) that publishes Against the Current as a ‘broader” left magazine. In fact, many’s the time I’d previously published in Against the Current, frequently with Finkel’s previous encouragement and approval. (It should be mentioned here that David Finkel is also a listed Sponsor of the New Politics hard-copy journal.)

What I got instead from Against the Current was this below, directly from Finkel:

My final note to you, last week, very explicitly stated that “…you don’t need to send us any more ‘letters to the editor’ or proposals for articles, and in fact you can stop sending messages here on anything whatsoever. If there is any part of the above that is not clear, please re-read as many times as necessary.” There is no way to make the point clearer. We will not acknowledge or respond to any further communications from you.

There it is, ladies and gentlemen, friends and comrades! Just like Lucifer, I’ve now been cast into the pit of hell by Almighty God himself, in the form of a Managing Editor of a small, and to most people, highly obscure, magazine of the left with which I’d been associated with before; and had even been told by Finkel himself that I could submit proposed articles and letters to Against the Current even after I’d been expelled from Solidarity.

What’s particularly interesting, I think, in all this is not any objection to “offensive” language (which had been excised, anyway, in my revision) on the part of Against the Current, but the fact that, like much of the left today, it doesn’t really want to talk about “Jobs for All” new WPA-style programs. New Politics online has been the only notable (and to me, honorable) exception, having first published my awkwardly-titled "Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis" that called for such a new WPA, which was ably seconded on New Politics online by Brian King; further, also on New Politics online, radical historian Jesse Lemisch posted three articles in support of a WPA-like proposal for unemployed cultural and intellectual workers. (Two of Lemisch’s articles are linked above in the letter, as are King’s and my articles).

That “Jobs for All” programs and the left’s failure to adequately address the unemployment crisis because new-WPA proposals are seen as either inherently “reformist,” or conversely, other elements of the left don’t want to destroy “unity” by going beyond what Obama’s proposed, seems to me what’ at the ideological crux of Against the Current’s refusal, not language that had since been removed. That was seen to be the ideological issue involved by Brian King and three other friends and comrades of mine, who sent me the following remarks on my original draft, and whose words of support had been passed on to Finkel. They wrote, from a variety of political orientations, as seen below.

Greg King, member of CCDS, shop steward, SEIU Local 888, Boston city workers:

George, the Left hasn't been completely silent on the unemployment issue. They probably haven't devoted anywhere near as much time and energy to the crisis as it deserves. Discussing & pushing for solutions such as your WPA proposal would be a very good thing to do. Sometimes there is too much posturing and abstract theorizing, not enough attention to the real problems of real people.

Also, I didn't think your letter was that offensive. I thought it was well-argued and frank.

Harold Karabell, former left activist in Indianapolis, now living in St. Louis, Missouri:

In addition to infrastructure work, my own city could use a few thousand trees in various neighborhoods.

So perhaps it's time to revive the CCC as well!

Brian King, comrade from Seattle, long-time activist, contributor to New Politics:

I'm not surprised that ATC refused to publish your letter. For the record, I thought it was very good, and, for you, remarkably restrained. [I admit to sometimes getting carried away with harsh language—GF] My experience with all these guys (ATC, CCDS, DSA, Monthly Review, Nation) is that they are very uncomfortable with the idea of Jobs for All and the idea of building a movement for a new WPA. Actually, as far as I know, the only person of national prominence who supports us is Robert Reich, Clinton's old Secretary of Labor.

Why don't "Socialist" groups and journals want to support "Jobs for All"? That's a tough one, but it's gotta have something to do with how they see their own group interests and the maintenance of their institutions. They must figure that it's much cooler to promote some pie-in-the-sky version of an ethereal state of affairs called "socialism" than to get jobs for all, gain a lot of control over labor markets, but leave capitalism still functioning. I also think a lot of these so-called "socialists" don't much like the idea of being involved with a lot of politically incorrect schlubs, like me and you. If your gonna build a mass movement, you're gonna have to learn to get along with a lot of working people without left pedigrees.

and Phil Davis, former member of Solidarity, unemployed recent college graduate:

I think Dave should publish your letter regardless of whether or not he agrees with it. He could perhaps publish it and then write a rebuttal explaining why he disagrees with you. Instead, he chooses not to publish it at all. This is sad and unfortunate and yes it is censorship…you are correct.

Yes, I agree with you that "Jobs for All" is the slogan we should be fighting for. As someone who is unemployed, I believe that's a very, very important demand. I think Finkel should publish your letter regardless of whether or not he personally agrees with it. He could always write some type of rebuttal explaining why he disagrees with it, but I guess he won't even be doing that.

Refusal to even discuss “Jobs for All” programs compounded by censorship. Those are the political issues at the heart of Against the Current’s vehement refusal to print my Letter to the Editors, nor even allow the issue to be raised, even in a miniscule journal of the U.S. left where, given the mood of the U.S.’s also-miniscule left as a whole, both the letter itself and the issues it addresses would soon be forgotten. If anyone on the left ever wonders why, in this time of continuing deep economic recession, there exists this historical anomaly of the great bulk of the 99% not identifying with the left, nor wishing to get involved, even in amorphous Occupy movements, we need look no further than this incident for at least partial explanations.