Socialist Viewpoint

Often now it seems that people are fleeing their homelands, much like people flee a burning home. Some are fleeing oppression, others the storms of civil conflicts, but most are impoverished refugees seeking a way to make a living—so as to continue living. And who could be so uncaring as to blame them for deserting their ancestral lands, perhaps forever?

Unfortunately, there are those who have no tears and no time for the destitute from another land. We read that, “Migration and ensuing social problems have moved to the center of political debate in almost all 15 countries in the European Union, and in many of the former Communist countries that wish to join the bloc and often serve as transit lands for illegal migrants.” Worse yet, we read that the debate is between those who advocate a “Fortress Europe” on the one hand and those, on the other hand, who agree with England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair that “there has got to be some order and rules” governing how refugees find refuge in Europe.

Why the debate doesn’t include those whose heartfelt sympathies are with the hard-up migrants isn’t explained; but no explanation is needed to account for the absence of the refugees themselves in the debating and then the deciding of their fates.

A May 23 New York Times article skims the surface when reporting the growing ordeals in store for refugees seeking subsistence in the birthplace of the Enlightenment, the Rights of Man and the Industrial Revolution. Mentioned are raising still more funds for tighter borders and tougher crackdowns to halt the passage of undocumented migrants from the Balkans, Greece, Turkey and, no surprise, the “boat people from North Africa.” And more money, more guards, and more barbwire are indeed needed. For it is well established that stinking cargo holds on leaking vessels, shifty smugglers and countless bribe takers have been no match for the power of the desperation that spurs fearful families to begin their uncertain flights.

On this side of the Atlantic, there is first-hand knowledge of the plight of migrants. U.S. seaports are guarded and ships are rummaged and, sometimes, human cargo that pointlessly endured cramped stench-filled containers and empty stomachs are ferreted out. In the U.S. new border fences are being built and old fences lengthened, forcing all-season treks through Southwestern deserts, which in their own way sometimes accomplish what fences and armed patrols fail to do. Parenthetically, one in three acres under cultivation in America produces crops for export, forcing Mexican and Central American farming families off their dinky plots and into big city slums and then often to the U.S. border.

There is a debate in the U.S., too, on how to stem the flow of those the poet Emma Lazarus compassionately named the “wretched refuse.” There is no irony in the U.S. debate, because for at least 150 years the nation’s gatekeepers have regulated the admission of migrants according to a rough-and-ready measure of the need for human laborpower, indispensable for turning a profit. In recent years, some U.S. service industries have made a place for immigrants as janitors, maids, gardeners and jacks-of-all-trades, provided they worked cheap, as indeed they do. Coincidently or not, as some employers have sought to exploit recent immigrant workers, U.S. labor unions have altered their views about immigrant labor and have adopted a comradely view, at least with respect to foreign nationals once they are within the U.S. borders.

But U.S. unions can and should do much more. Immigrants the world over are seeking jobs, a living. A successful effort in the U.S. by organized labor to reduce the workday from its nominal eight hours would go a long ways toward providing desperately needed jobs. Of course, U.S. workers alone can’t solve the problem of worldwide unemployment, estimated to total hundreds of millions. But successes here are likely to set an example certain to be heralded by workers around the world, as were U.S. organized labor’s often successful efforts to reduce the workday, even in the midst of the Great Depression (1929-1939). U.S. workers’ productivity has soared in the past sixty years, and the economy has passed the ten trillion dollar level, making possible more jobs by reducing the workday without reducing living standards, provided the bosses don’t manage to hang on to all of their present profits.

U.S. labor should pay attention to the ominous rise in Europe of anti-immigrant political parties. The new formations are radical rightist formations, which under worsening economic circumstances are likely to threaten the very existence of unions. Anti-immigrant sentiment, much like racism, has a virulent history in this nation. That clearly means that labor’s chieftains should not dismiss the rise of anti-immigrant political formations with their dangers for organized labor as something that only European unions need worry about. In short, a shorter workday would be more than merely good for all workers, native born or not, unionized or not. Moreover, a successful overdue fight for a shorter workday could provide the key to revitalizing our ever-declining labor movement.