Jeff Shudak is the president of the Western Iowa Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. He is also an active member in his union hall and an Executive Board member of the Iowa Federation of Labor.
Abraham Lincoln famously said, “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.”
It’s a sentiment that many politicians and policy-makers seem to have forgotten these days, especially those who rig the rules for corporate greed. But Lincoln’s words are no less true. Workers create wealth—period. And Iowa workers deserve more than the small share they’ve been getting.
For more than 40 years, the productivity of American workers has been booming. Unfortunately, wages have not kept pace. That means the “fruit of labor,” i.e. “capital,” is going somewhere besides in our pockets.
It is not hard to guess where. While we’re all treading water, the rich keep getting richer. The COVID-19 pandemic only worsened this problem. According to some estimates, a new billionaire was made every 30 hours during that crisis. So while many of us suffered—either because we could not work (in industries that were shut down), or because we had to go to work, no matter the danger or potential losses—the wealthiest among us kept cashing in.
Price-gouging and pandemic profiteering are the latest ways for greedy corporations to pick the pockets of everyday Americans. But those practices are not new. It’s part of a decades-long campaign to liquidate our gains in productivity, turning them into dividends for wealthy corporate shareholders instead of paying workers what they’re owed, by increasing wages or profit-sharing.
Well, workers have had enough. You can see it all over our country in the strikes and unionizing campaigns aimed at behemoth corporations like Starbucks, Amazon, Kellogg’s, and John Deere.
By paying wages far below the value of work and price-gouging the goods we create, corporate greed is putting the things that matter most—our homes, groceries, gas and medicine—even further out of reach for many Iowans.
Congress has an opportunity to right some of these wrongs by passing a bill through the budget reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes in the Senate. The bill should include provisions like taxing the ultra-rich to hold greedy corporations and their billionaire CEOs accountable. Such policies are way past due and should be marked “PAID” to American workers.
Top photo of Jeff Shudak published with permission.