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Thrown On Backs of Workers: Crisis Deepens

By VVAW

At least something in the economy keeps on going up--unemployment. While President Ford has found a full-time job jetting around the country to "sell his economic program," he suggests another occupation to the American worker--standing in the unemployment lines.

Allen Greenspan, the President's economic advisor who says the government ought to be giving more money to the rich because that will help the economy, gives us the cheerful work about unemployment peaking at 8.5% later in the year; however, the government figures say we reached 8.2% unemployment by the end of January--and "later in the year" is a long ways off when you've got a family to feed. That's particularly truce when the average unemployment check is $61 per week (that is the national average). The figure of 8.2% unemployed translates into 7.5 million working people, and besides that, there's a big difference between the government's statistical people and the real people who want to work, but can't find jobs--3.8 million people want full-time work and can only find part-time work. Millions are just entering the job market (and are not counted) or have given up the search (also not counted).

With less and less money to spend working people are faced with having to pay more and more in order to survive: a report from the Congress Joint Economic Committee notes that food prices for a family on a low-cost diet rose 12. 7% in 1974 (foods consumed in greater quantities by poor families rose most in price in 1974).

Any way you cut it, the economy is in a mess, and the struggle just to stay alive is getting fiercer by the day. Even labor lord George Meany, living comfortably in Bal Harbour, Florida, is compelled to say that unemployment will reach 10% and foresee that Ford won't get re-elected if the figures don't start dropping soon. Meany's solution is a Democrat in the White House.

The people's solution is something different; we know that Democrats and Republicans both operate to keep life comfortable for the profit-makers. And that the constant search for profits is what caused the problem of inflation, recession, and unemployment in the first place. The quest for profits meant that the corporations produced and produced; at the same time, the owners of these factories tried to push wages down as low as they could. The result was a whole lot of products, and little money to buy the products with. So, in the typical fashion of capitalists--who care about their profits and don't give a damn about the workers--they started laying people off.

As long as all the factories, mines and plants are owned by the few, as long as the profit makers decide what is going to be produced based only on what will bring them the greatest profits, rising unemployment, soaring inflation, and deepening recession will continue. As long as the factories can lay off a couple of people--or even hundreds of people-at a time, they can keep pushing the crisis on to working people.

But people are fighting layoffs and fighting unemployment--demanding that the government provide jobs or income now. The key is unity, and unity leads to mass action. All the machines in the factories are no good without the workers who run them; and all the capitalists who own those factories are no good at all!