On making a living

May 1st this year was cold and damp in Chicago. Today, it even snowed a little. Is there no end to our suffering?

Aside from its unusual chill, yesterday was notable in that it was May Day, which might be considered an international Labor Day. A good day to reflect on the present state of labor.

Chicago was once an important center of the labor movement. One thinks of the 1890s as having given birth to this movement, a reaction to the robber barons -- meat packers, railroad tycoons, bankers, and other assorted industrialists -- who amassed great wealth at the expense of the powerless rank and file. But in Chicago, a key episode took place in the preceding decade. On May 1, 1886, workers gathered in Haymarket Square in Chicago, at the present-day location of Randolph and Halsted, to demand an eight-hour workday, something many workers take for granted today. The protest continued until May 4 when, tragically, a riot broke out -- a riot that became known as the Haymarket Riot. Around the world, May 1 became a day for workers to commemorate this watershed event.

Today, we have a government in Washington that actually passed legislation to weaken the 40-hour workweek by taking away time-and-a-half overtime pay for a large segment workers who are paid by the hour: professionals, artists, IT workers, salespeople, and others. This is the very thing for which people gave their lives in Haymarket Square over a century ago. And it is just one example of the present-day erosion in workers' rights.

You might recall, in the last Presidential election, how John Kerry would often talk about the increasing prevalence of offshore outsourcing. He'd give an anecdote about how workers had lost their jobs to low-paid foreigners -- after having trained them. As the election neared, I found the source of this anecdote in a transcript of a Congressional hearing from early 2004. The company implicated in this affair was well known to me. It was the company I work for.

Since then, some of my own coworkers have made trips to India to train people to do work that is done at my office today. And every quarter, management has the nerve to send me an e-mail that exhorts me to contribute to my company's PAC -- to influence lawmakers who would clear the way for my employer to send my job overseas.