Commentary –

A Bad Spring For Workers

By William A. Collins

Flowers blossom,

Life’s athrob;

But I’ve still got,

This lousy job.

For workers of modest means, springtime rarely lives up to its lush promise. The magical appearance of flowers, songbirds, and daylight is not matched by the appearance of better pay, better benefits, or more humane treatment.

The certainty of the daffodil is instead matched by the certainty of Citygroup’s Sandy Weill making another $100 million. (This spring’s annual report clocked him at $224 million.) Other Nutmeg barons can afford groceries for another year too. John Trani of Stanley Works got $61 million, Terrence Murphy of Fleet settled for $16 million, and John Welch of GE took home $76 million. For workers struggling at $10/hour, this springtime ritual of releasing such figures is not a cherished moment.

Neither is the new session of the General Assembly. Although loudly pro-worker, the legislature rarely seems to offer any help. There is talk each year, for example, of requiring companies with state contracts to pay a “living wage,” but nothing ever comes of it. There’s talk too of collaring developers who accept state millions to create new jobs, and then fail to produce. Nothing ever comes of that either.

On the local level, Project SOAR in Hartford just had to close because of state budget cuts. It was successfully helping former welfare recipients through the bureaucratic nightmare of switching to decent jobs. Now even fewer will make it. But that seems to be a detail somewhere beneath the legislature’s radar.

And this year, spring has been especially depressing for health care workers. On the one hand, they just endured a bitter strike at many nursing homes. On the other, there have been lots of misleading articles about the harmful shortage of nurses. In the first case, the press has given the union heavy flak for supposedly using the vulnerable elderly as puppets in its grasping for more money. In the second case, it urges the state to put on a public relations campaign to lure more girls into nursing. Unfortunately, the last thing either the press or the state will admit to is that health care aides and nurses are both badly underpaid and overworked.

It hardly takes a PhD to fathom that our health system is still carried to a large extent on the backs of low-paid women. Still, our governor and newspaper editors get testy when these women act out for decent wages and treatment.

And Washington is surely no help to the working class either. Repeal of President Clinton’s ergonomics rules means more physical pain and less ability to work for Connecticut employees. The administration’s continued effort to expand world trade will also cost many more thousands of Nutmeggers their jobs. Along this same line, it is endlessly intriguing that our state newspapers happily chronicle the success of companies that profit from new export markets, but rarely chronicle the success of those companies that profit from shipping our jobs overseas.

This biased coverage is scarcely surprising. In Connecticut it is both socially and legally acceptable to be anti-worker. No police will swoop down if you violate a labor law. The union must file a complaint and carry it through burdensome channels. If there is no union, most violations go unattended, and in any event, penalties are minuscule.

Therefore spring, while a blissful time for gardeners, brings little joy to workers. Repetitive motion stress will continue to hound them. The earned income tax credit again will not pass. Most workers in health care, hotel, retail, and janitorial service will remain unorganized and poorly treated. And most of all, our newspapers and TV stations will still ignore the whole business.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)