With the judicial seal of approval of the United Airlines plan to ditch its pensions, comes another battle in the long war of capital against labor. By this attack on those who have spent their lives making the fortunes of United, the business community opens yet another front in their rapacious war to gain more and more profits. Now, thousands of disenfranchised workers must turn to the U. S. government for their pensions [through] a government agency known as the Pension Benefit Guarantee Board (PBGC). But guess what? The PBGC itself is going bankrupt. And even if it were not, the PBGC doesn’t intend to pay out full pensions. If some workers are lucky, they’ll receive one third of their expected pensions. Some workers, who haven’t built up enough seniority, will get nothing. So much for the “holy right” of contract.
As this tragedy unfolds, executives and management make out like bandits. Like United CEO, Glen Tilton, who in 2002-2003 received over 5.5 million dollars in compensation, with a pension for 4.5 million locked up in a trust. And as United goes, so go others in the airlines industry, and also other U.S. industries. But that this comes along at the same time as the Bush administration is trying to scuttle Social Security, is a social obscenity. In fact, many of these companies are having pension problems because they intentionally underfunded pension plans. They meant for it to break down, and then they sought judicial support for their bailout plans.
Everybody wins, except the workers. This war against workers, unless it is vigorously opposed by workers fighting in their own class interests, will result in nightmares, where elderly must work until they drop dead. For with no pensions and no social security, how can it be otherwise? This business-friendly, labor-hating government is actually trying to set up a judicial administrative media regime that will undo the New Deal. After the Great Depression of 1929, mass movements such as rent riots, sit-ins, marches and great demonstrations struck the nation. One such movement was for pensions for those who spent their lives working at hard toil. Movements such as these, in the 1930s, changed things. Business, however, in its never-ending quests for profits, continues its wars through the political leaders that it buys and by furthering their agenda.
Now, as assuredly as the Earth revolves around the Sun, comes this vicious attack on pensions. American politicians who often claim to want to help working families are as quiet as church mice. The Democratic Party, which is as much in big businesses’ pockets as the Republicans, is mum. People see it and shake their heads and go on. They see it and don’t see it, instead of uniting to fight it. From death row this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are produced by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
