When CNN announced "if Al Gore wins, he'll owe his victory to the unions" I jumped up and shouted "union...union ...union" at the top of my lungs. I'd never done anything like that and there were tears in my eyes. The next day headline said W Bush was the likely winner. And for years I didn't bother watching news. But I couldn't avoid the local papers cuz they were everywhere back then. "Local youth visited by President in Army hospital" and "local youth dies from war wounds." Things like that were inescapable, even if you tried.
But as a lifelong union man, I surely knew when W Bush gutted the Post Office. He decided... Well what he decided was that private companies oughtta get that money for mail deliveries. And to further that end, the Post Office oughtta pre-fund all potential retirees to the tune of $10 billion a year.
Bush knowing full well their balance sheet had shown a profit of $5 billion the last couple of years. So if you add those together, now there's a $5 billion annual loss. Not easy to recover from, for an agency that pays it's own way and has never taken a dime from the taxpayer. Suddenly this struggling service needs to be moved to the private sector. Nice guy that Bush, even when he's not killing kids.
With that in mind, I come across William Trent Pancoast's book Wildcat, about America - the wars, the auto industry and the unions - like swimming in gravy for me. And it's fascinating, his account of the life and death of the working man in America as encapsulated in the UAW strike against General Motors in 1970 (look at mother nature on the run.) Ken Burns would've given us a series had he told this story, and maybe someday he will. Pancoast offers us glimpses into what it was like - the key players - the union reps, the company bosses, and the workers who watch their lives being decided.
It isn't enough, but the brevity is part of the telling. A story of how we could've had it made, for awhile...and how quickly that can all fall apart. Gone like dust and won't be back again. Trouble is, according to Pancoast the auto workers never had it made, back then anyway. Working seven days a week in mind-numbing repetition just to get by. And after thirty years, if you survive, you got your $500 a month pension and your company stock which is now worthless thanks to GM's failing business model, as of the '09 crash.
Of course some got rich...off all those people, the thousands of working people who toil and slave everyday in the good old days before OSHA messed things up with safety and health regulations. Before unions messed things up with demands for decent working conditions and a living wage. Before the jobs were shipped overseas to people who didn't need things like safety, health, and unions. Before the bosses took all the money and skipped town.
It's good to know what it was like, what the real world was - because those people had dreams too. They matter too, like you and me. And if you want to know a secret, if you really want to know the truth of things, and how - what is - came to be, well talk to the old union guys at the bar. Buy 'em a beer and ask 'em what really went on, how it all went wrong. Cuz it didn't have to be this way...if people only knew. If we only knew what's good for us.
This is a superbly written story, dripping blood and guts from Matewan to Vietnam and back again. And humor, and humanity, like a CNN reporter telling this all-too American history after a few six-packs and some moonshine to wash it down. It's honest and gripping cuz the people and events are real and there're no punches pulled on either side. It's their story and ours too. How the auto industry and the UAW shaped America and our future; and of the people who fought and died in those wars.
Pancoast knows what he's talking about because he was there. He's an insider who can detail how it all went down. Like the key witness in a trial we're all a part of. And there're two choices here - do you wanna know - or remain stupid. For me and for all people who are curious, and what Emerson would call self-reliant, that's what life is about, finding truth. Cuz we can moan and groan about whatever doesn't go our way and why and who's to blame. Or we can learn to carry our own water, understanding that however things are - it's on us.
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