While the press has extensively covered the Wall Street meltdown, little attention has been paid to what this means to the American worker. We speak to longtime labor activist and writer Bill Fletcher, co-author with Fernando Gapasin of the new book Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice. Fletcher is the executive editor of BlackCommentator.com and the former president of TransAfrica Forum.
The Wall Street Journal has called it the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The Washington Post described Wednesday as one of the most tumultuous days ever for financial markets. A recent Financial Times headline read “Goodbye capitalism American-style.” The events on Wall Street in recent weeks have shocked the financial world. The federal government has used taxpayer money to bailout the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the American Insurance Group.
Meanwhile Lehman Brothers has declared bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch has been bought out by Bank of America and Morgan Stanley in in talks to sell almost half of the company to a state-run Chinese investment fund. And now the the Fed and Congress are working on an unprecedented bailout plan that could result in the most direct commitment of taxpayer funds so far in the financial crisis.
While the press has extensively covered the Wall Street meltdown, little attention has been paid to what this means to the American worker. On Thursday the Federal Reserve announced that American households had lost three trillion dollars over the past nine months. The nation’s unemployment rate has reached 6.1 percent, a five-year high. The unemployment rate for African Americans is now in double digits, at 10.6 percent.
Wages remain stagnant and retirement funds are taking a major hit as stock values plummet. Since President Bush took office the S&P 500 has fallen 14 percent.
We are joined in Washington by longtime labor activist and writer Bill Fletcher. He is co-author with Fernando Gapasin of the new book “Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice.” He is the executive editor of BlackCommentator.com and the former President of TransAfrica Forum.
Bill Fletcher, co-author with Fernando Gapasin of the new book Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice. He is the executive editor of BlackCommentator.com and the former president of TransAfrica Forum.
A new direction for labor by two of its leading activist intellectualsThe U.S. trade union movement finds itself today on a global battlefield filled with landmines and littered with the bodies of various social movements and struggles. Candid, incisive, and accessible, Solidarity Divided is a critical examination of labor's current crisis and a plan for a bold new way forward into the twenty-first century. Bill Fletcher and Fernando Gapasin, two longtime union insiders whose experiences as activists of color grant them a unique vantage on the problems now facing U.S. labor, offer a remarkable mix of vivid history and probing analysis. They chart changes in U.S. manufacturing, examine the onslaught of globalization, consider the influence of the environment on labor, and provide the first broad analysis of the fallout from the 2000 and 2004 elections on the U.S. labor movement. Ultimately calling for a wide-ranging reexamination of the ideological and structural underpinnings of today's labor movement, this is essential reading for understanding how the battle for social justice can be fought and won.
