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Land of opportunity fading fast
(by Dave Lange - October 26, 2011)
UNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Land of opportunity fading fast
This is an obituary for an old automobile manufacturing plant and a eulogy to a fading American way of life. I would not be here if it were not for the Ford Motor Co.'s Cleveland Stamping Plant in Walton Hills and the United Auto Workers union.
Members of the national UAW agreed to a new contract with Ford last week that may save some of their jobs elsewhere but will shut down the Cleveland Stamping Plant. Most of its remaining 432 jobs will be exported to Mexico. Unlike those newly jobless Americans, I will not be standing in the unemployment line wondering how to feed my family and how to pay the mortgage, but I consider it a personal loss nonetheless.
Soon after that 2.1 million-square-foot stamping plant, with its booming presses, sparking welders and optimistic outlook for America's future as the manufacturing leader of the world, opened in 1954, my father, a World War II veteran, landed a job there. He moved his young family, including me, from suburban Pittsburgh to Northeast Ohio.
My favorite president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was the leader of the free world at that time. His Republican Party supported hardworking Americans, including immigrants like my dad who were vital to the nation's growing economy. The top federal income-tax rate was 92 percent. The average CEO earned about 20 times as much as the typical worker, who was scraping his way into the middle class.
Because of unions like the UAW, working families like mine finally were getting a slice of the American pie with such hard-won human rights as the 40-hour workweek, overtime pay, paid holidays, safer working conditions and even health benefits and pension plans.
Eighteen years later, after returning from Vietnam, I, too, joined the 6,000-man workforce at the Ford plant. Each afternoon, I trudged across the massive parking lot off Northfield Road, crossed a pedestrian bridge, punched my timecard, changed from street clothes to coveralls, donned safety glasses and earplugs and descended to the cavernous, noisy, sooty, hot and, yes, perilous factory floor and my place on an assembly line. After my shift ended at midnight each Friday, I picked up my paycheck. I deposited as much as I could in my savings account the next day.
Richard M. Nixon was president at the time. His Republican Party had not yet turned its back on American workers. In 1972, the top federal income-tax rate was 70 percent, and the average CEO earned 30 times as much as a typical worker.
Within a couple years, I'd saved enough money to finish college, earn a degree and become a journalist. I left the Ford plant and the UAW, but I've never forgotten them.
Today, the top federal income-tax rate is 35 percent, and the former political party of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon insists that even a tiny increase back to its 2002 level of 38.6 percent would be intolerable. Today, the average CEO makes 275 times as much as the average American worker, but even that isn't enough for the hoarders of wealth.
The America that my father and I fought for, the America I grew up with, the America that was the land of opportunity for me is fading into history. Today, working people are devalued, labor unions are begrudged, immigrants are despised, the unemployed are ridiculed.
There is a word for those who tear down the people whose labor made this country great. It's un-American.
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