LAST IN. FIRST OUT

"Last In, First Out" or last hired, first fired, is the new byword for women and other minorites in regard to unemployment. The unemployment rate is up to 10%, including the people who have given up looking for work (700,000 recorded, millions unofficially). The unemployment rate for women is 33% higher than the male rate. Six million women are living in households without adult males. 7.5% of white families and 24% of all Black families. Their unemployment rate is two and a half times the rate for male heads of families.

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Recent gains in anti-discrimination in well-paid employment are virtually eliminated. Short-term crises are increasingly frequent and stopgap strategies to cope with them are woefully indadequate. while, there is no long-term plan to eliminate the high unemployment that persists in so-called "good times". Even worse, permanent high rates of unemployment are now widely accepted, and those in power use fiscal and monetary policy to create rather than to prevent recessions.

No action is taken to prevent these conditions because white middle class males are not, and have not been, willing to sacrifice their traditional economic advantage so minorities can have economic equality. As wealth declines, and poverty ascends, the principle that difference in ethnicity, sex, or age have no relevance to the economic question is pushed aside and competition is keen. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided legal support of minorities wanting equal employment,but prejudicial attitudes of the American public, particularly white males in well-paying jobs. prevented this legislation to become reality. They conceded only what they could well afford without feeling the pinch.

This attitude of selfishness, and unwillingness to share the wealth and pull together as a nation is causing unemployment, says economist Terence McCarthy. The greed for money and luxuries finds workers demanding overtime while millions of

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their former coworkers remain jobless. Where management is concerned, overtime proves profitable despite the fact that productivity declines as the work day lengthens. They offset this deficit by maximizing volume when 'demand is high, and by knowing that despite wear and tear on tools and equipment, a greater physical output is obtained with overtime rather than with the standard work week.

The combination of workers' desire to work and managements' demands have caused the auto workers to state in their 1972 contract that no workers could re-

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fuse overtime until she or he had worked 57 hours a week! And to think that unions fought for a forty hour week! Those deprived of employment by this overtime working received nothing except welfare or unemployment benefits. Those overtime workers stockpile hours, but their take-home pay is severly cut into by taxes. wages as their weekly wages rose at overtime rates.

We need A New Form of govermati To help The People

Which brings up the question of unions and the fight over seniority vs. affirmative action. Pension rights for aging and union activist workers were hard won, and union positions in shops are usually filled by older workers. Fear that these pension rights will be lost is real and justified. The seniority clause ensures that employees shall not be made jobless because of their role in union organization. That it also violates the principle of equal opportunity, and thrusts back into permanent poverty many women and non-white people of both sexes is unfortunate and the fault of em ployers. Big business uses this conflict to play one group of workers against the other, Instead, pressure should be made through legislation and taxation of companies to demand a forty hour week with adequate pay. One approach to the question, McCarthy states, is to tax the profits of corporations on a graduated scale if they work their employees overtime while minorities or others are out of work.

Economist Helen Ginsburg talks about employment and inflation as being companion problems in our economy. She traces our economic problems back to the Employment Act of 1946. This was to prevent the recurrence of mass depression and the col lapse of the American business system. It

not designed to prevent unemployment. Our economy has progressed upward, as far as businessmen are concerned, but things have been disastrous for workers as unemployment has risen. It has become an accepted phenomenon, as the rate moved from 4.5% in 1946 to our present 10%. Percen tages of unemployment considered low here, say the 3.5 to 3.8% levels, would be viewed

with alarm in most other countries where there is greater worker solidarity and a stronger determination not to accept unemployment.

To absolve themselves from the unem ployment and inflation condition, econo mists invented the Phillips curve, meaning the lower the unemployment, the more the inflation, and conversely. This im

plied that full employment was inflation ary, and thus unattainable, and even undesirable. A different meaning of "full employment" took root. At one time the concept of full employment had fo cused on human beings. It meant that those who wanted work could find it. The Phillips curve shifted the focus from people to prices. Full employment now meant that the unemployment rate was assumed th be consistent with the degree of price stability desired by policy makers. This definition allowed a rise in unemploy ment to accommodate high prices imposed by businessmen. When demand falls, firms in highly concentrated industries tend to raise prices, not to cut them. The corporate hand sets prices and even plans recessions and unemployment, feeling inflation and profits.

Planned recessions are a neat way to take income away from the poor and mid dle classes and give it to the rich by eliminating jobs, charging higher prices, and increasing profits. In the last recession, lingering unemployment was falsely attri buted to the entrance of women and teenagers into the labor force. Powerless groups are simply written off as not quite ligitimate members of the work force. the unemployment of white males is a problem.

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Another factor that adds to inflation is the bloated "peacetime" military budget. Expenditures flow into the economy, but they do not produce goods and services. You cannot eat missiles

Another growing problem is the uselessness of a college degree as a tool for employ ment. A degree no longer guarantees a job. In fact, many educated people of both sexes have found it to be a detriment to employment, as they are classi fied as "overqualified".

Political response to these problems has been weak because SO many of the un employed have little status, suffer the most discrimination, have the least poli tical power, are often outside unions or underrepresented at leadership levels within them. Unemployment has been tolerated because mostly minorites are involved. When many workers who are usually fair ly safe from the ravages of unemploy ment are threatened and they find their immunity relative, action is taken to

trol the situation.

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This assault on jobs could become a unifying force, if the opportunity is taker to reassess ourselves in regard to employ ment practices. Solutions are made by both economists.

McCarthy says a body of national laws 阵 and regulations should be required.

total employment falls, the general work ing week must be cut for all industries continued on page 8

page 3 W She Wants/July, 1975