Imagine yourself as a deeply conservative American political know-it-all. You've spent years patiently explaining the issues to
your less-gifted countrymen. You've told them about how necessary it
is for private profit to be considered the supreme human virtue. You've
berated those of the working class (you call them "employees") who
have the gall to demand pensions, benefits and safe working conditions.
You've lectured these grubby semi-literates about the necessity of a free market, and reminded them that in this star-spangled land nobody gets a handout. "Work your way up the ladder...obey your superiors...
the customer is always right...", over and over you've repeated these
mantras for success. Now you find yourself in 1997, witness to a labor strike at UPS.
You are, in a word, aghast. You squirm at the television reports, the
writhing masses of unwashed Neanderthals on the picket line. This is
an outrage, and by God, you are going to give intellectual aid and
comfort to those who deserve it: the beseiged bosses. You ready your
rhetoric pen to deliver a withering blast of...hypocrisy.
Sure you've praised authoritarian methods of employee control in the
past, but this is different. There might be a chance that some of
those Teamsters don't want to strike. Therefore, "Let the people put
it to a vote!" Your sudden conversion to workplace democracy gives you
a vaguely superior feeling. Warming to your subject, you continue:
"Those strikers are disrupting the delivery of needed medical supplies.
This is unprecedented!" You've never really thought about just how
important this job is, but you still think it merits only nine dollars
an hour, four hours a day. That ought to be enough for anybody. One
final assault on these lazy faux-commies. "Many small businesses are
going to go bust because they aren't getting their deliveries. That
means more people out of work!" Of course, when CEOs decide to put workers out on the streets, they're just doing what it takes to keep
us strong in the competitive global economy. They're not criminals,
like union presidents, for God's sake.
You put down your pen and smile. Your future in corporate journalism
is assured.
