10-14-2013, 05:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-14-2013, 05:37 PM by FireIceTalon.)
I had a reply typed out and ready for this, but I decided against it at the last minute because we would just end up at square one I think, and we have strayed far from the original topic, to which I will now return.
After giving it some thought, the class structure in the public sector has some additional difficulties. It is my belief that government employees (and perhaps federal workers in general) are in a rather unique situation with this whole ordeal compared to workers in the private sectors who go on strike to protest the corporations. US laws prohibit federal workers going on strike (whether they are unionized or not) even if they technically should do it. Going back to my earlier question of why haven't they done so yet, I pretty much answered my own question: class consciousness is low, and therefore worker solidarity is in complete shambles right now. But there is a greater hostility in general towards federal workers to begin with, than there is towards workers in the private sector - federal employees are seen as the servants of 'big government' and part of an over bloated bureaucratic quagmire due to cultural propaganda machine that demonizes them. As a result this makes it far more difficult for the public to get behind them should they be able to organize than it does employees in the private sector, and it makes solidarity and strikes much more difficult. It isn't so much that federal workers are a unique caste within the working class, but that in general, their wages tend to be a little higher than those who work in the private sector, due to the fact discrimination laws that were designed to protect minorities, or women were implemented in the public sector first. This has lead to a mentality that public sector workers are somehow "privileged" or "entitled", and thus the scorn we often see towards them in American society, though the class relationships are quite similar in both sectors. The shutdown, make no mistake about it, is having and going to have very significant negative effects on public workers. Just some thoughts, no idea if they are right or wrong.
After giving it some thought, the class structure in the public sector has some additional difficulties. It is my belief that government employees (and perhaps federal workers in general) are in a rather unique situation with this whole ordeal compared to workers in the private sectors who go on strike to protest the corporations. US laws prohibit federal workers going on strike (whether they are unionized or not) even if they technically should do it. Going back to my earlier question of why haven't they done so yet, I pretty much answered my own question: class consciousness is low, and therefore worker solidarity is in complete shambles right now. But there is a greater hostility in general towards federal workers to begin with, than there is towards workers in the private sector - federal employees are seen as the servants of 'big government' and part of an over bloated bureaucratic quagmire due to cultural propaganda machine that demonizes them. As a result this makes it far more difficult for the public to get behind them should they be able to organize than it does employees in the private sector, and it makes solidarity and strikes much more difficult. It isn't so much that federal workers are a unique caste within the working class, but that in general, their wages tend to be a little higher than those who work in the private sector, due to the fact discrimination laws that were designed to protect minorities, or women were implemented in the public sector first. This has lead to a mentality that public sector workers are somehow "privileged" or "entitled", and thus the scorn we often see towards them in American society, though the class relationships are quite similar in both sectors. The shutdown, make no mistake about it, is having and going to have very significant negative effects on public workers. Just some thoughts, no idea if they are right or wrong.
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"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)