Sawtown Report: V1 N13: A Voice from the Past!

I was a Sawtown delegate to an economic conversion conference a few decades ago.  The union had some extra funds and they thought it wise to look into the future.  It helped, of course, that one of the keynote speakers was an international union president.

I can’t claim to have ever met him.  I, like about a thousand others, simply sat in the audience and was mesmerized.   He was clearly on a different level than the rest of us.  He spoke about the need to transition from a war based economy to an economy measured not by the gross national product but by social justice.  He did this in the middle of the cold war.  We heard him say:

The devotion of the lion's share of the nation's resources to the military comes at a terrible expense to those who live, work or dwell outside the militarized economy.  They feed the machine or bear its burden but get little or nothing in economic benefits back. They're trapped in the holes in the Swiss cheese economy. It is a zero-sum game.  Based on sound economics and

econometrics, there is more job bang per billion bucks in civilian economic pursuits than in military production.  In fact, inspite of the military build up over the past decade, employment in defense production industries is down some 3 million from 1976 levels. Capital intensive, labor displacing technologies and offshore procurement are responsible for that.

Here's the definition we use in the Machinists Union: Whenever, wherever and for whatever reason military production, whether for goods or services, ceases, then a plan for alternative civilian production should automatically go into effect to make jobless workers and impacted communities economically viable and whole. If the federal government is going to draft or lure workers and communities into military production, in the name of providing for the national security, then when they are no longer needed or are deemed nonessential to that purpose, the government, indeed, society owes those workers and communities alternative means to make a living and contribute to the net national product, with no loss in income or their dignity as free and prosperous citizens

When U.S. companies move capital and technology overseas and produce over there, then at that point they are the foreign competitor! What's good for their balance sheet and income statement is not good for America's. What's more, this system of unlicensed global mobility of capital is not working in the national interest. It is not increasing the nation's wealth or the people's prosperity. It means pitting workers in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico against each other and against the least common denominator in terms of global wages, labor standards and economic, political and social equality. Exploited labor overseas cannot buy or consume that which it produces and unemployed labor here at home cannot buy it either.

For many of us it was difficult to believe that this was a union international president, not only because of what he was saying but because who he was with on the podium.  Next to this union leader was Michael Harrington, one of our countries most vocal and visible socialists.  The Berlin wall was still up. European capitalists were unwilling to declare class war on their own unions for fear that the communists would sweep to power in their own countries.

Sure enough a couple decades later and most if not all of President Winpisinger’s predictions had come true.  We gave away our industrial base and focused production almost exclusive on military power.  The stronger we became militarily the weaker we became economically.  As our weapons arsenal grew our security decreased.

I returned from that conference convinced that as woodworkers we too had to look to the future.  New products were being developed, engineered panels and something new then called OSB.  Our employers continued to let others do the R&D and then would pay a premium to buy into the technology late.  They didn’t care about the costs since we paid for them in the form of longer hours, less benefits, fewer days off, less overtime eligible work, and below cost of living level pay increases.

Our employers still saw trees, wood, and workers as commodities.  They had little interest in managing their forests to insure higher or other values since it was after all only a commodity.  They put their money into developing new super trees with genetic modified cell structure proven to grow twice as fast.  It took years for them to figure out that while the trees grew faster the juvenile fiber was not as strong.

Eventually in a fervor to chase short term profits by capitalizing on a tax loophole they sold their forests to investment companies.  Oddly, the green communities celebrated this as a victory since it took the short sighted timber companies out of the management scheme.  It is only lately as they see harvest cycles followed by conversion to agriculture or up scale resorts that the greens are realizing that without a longer term economic motivation keeping forests intact is a far more difficult task.

As the companies misjudged the long term consequences of altering how they managed their forests and their trees they also misjudged the workers.  Following the lead of Wall Street they harshened their treatment of us.  We went from being cogs in the machine to numbers on a ledger sheet.  At least as cogs we could expect to be maintained.  As numbers our dehumanization was complete.  It was no wonder that when they asked for our help to save their companies and their forests that we just shrugged and walked away.

I have just returned from another conference.  This one comprised of foresters and industry representatives who met to discuss something they call sustainable forest management.  They want to get out from under “green mail”.  Some want to promote an environmentally sound forest management policy.  The problem is few understand that the root cause of the problem is social and economic as much as it is environmental.  As long as profits are to be made by exploiting human and natural resources, then we and our environment will be abused.

It is a common mistake in our economy.  Its values the contribution of the rich more than the worker who creates the wealth.  It’s more than a matter of not seeing the forest for the trees.  It is as if we are not part of the ecosystem that everyone now wants to save.  We are not to be protected.  We are not worth protection, our contribution is not valued.

Whatever the future brings, with new demands on forests from global warming, bio fuels, and fiber based engineered products, it is clear that we workers need to start to plan where in that future we fit.  Because if we do not actively plan for that future, it will continue to treat us as disposable.

November 22, 2006