While I agree with Ginny Scott’s letter that we need to break from the corporate dominated Democratic and Republican parties, I disagree that immigration is the sole problem for the job losses in the U.S. (“Real issues are being overlooked,” Aug. 29).
Jobs are being sent to right-to-work states and to foreign countries in an effort to drag down wages for all workers – unionized or not. This is happening at a time when corporations are making huge profits on the backs of their workers and are making us pay for it, and it isn’t only happening in the private sector. I was laid off from my job three months ago at the University of Washington over “lack of funds and lack of work.” The union I am a member of, and others, are in contract negotiations with the UW and their demands on the table are to outsource our jobs to private companies, tie our pay increases to supervisory performance evaluations and treat us like seasonal employees – laying us off when work is down and calling us back when it picks up.
Pitting workers of different countries against one another only benefits the employers by dividing us when we need to be united to fight these attacks on our wages, benefits and working conditions. It has to be an international struggle, and it will take a strong activist, militant rank-and-file-driven labor movement to achieve this, or our living standards will continue to erode.
Send a message to the two parties of big business in November. Vote Ralph Nader, the only anti-corporate, anti-war, pro-union candidate. But the struggle won’t end there. It needs to continue to build a mass movement to build a system to fight for strong militant unions and to end the occupation of Iraq, and to put a stop to U.S. imperialism.
Patrick Switzer
Lynnwood
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