Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1987. július-december (41. évfolyam, 26-48. szám)
1987-09-10 / 33. szám
Thursday, Sep. 10. 1987. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO 11. Meanwhile, several developments point to an ominous hardening of class divisions. The first important indicator is that there will be no more room for upward movement at the top of the occupational ladder. Between 1950 and 1980, total managerial, professional and technical employment grew from 10.2 million to 25.7 million, increasing its share of the experienced civilian labor force by nearly half: from 17 percent to 25 percent. It appears that tha gates of access to more advantaged occupations are closing. Historically, as professional and managerial employment has supplanted self-employment as the goal of the American Dream, the relative importance of higher education has risen dramatically. Achieving more equitable opportunity requires increasingly open and equal access to college and postgraduate degrees. That is what we had in the first three postwar decades. And that is what we are no longer getting. College enrollments rose steadily through the late 1970s but have leveled off. The portion of the population between ages 18 and 24 currently enrolled in college has also hit a plateau at approximately one-third. Despite the drop in inflation over the past five years, the rate of increase in college tuition and other required fees has nearly doubled over the preceding decade. And whereas the real value of federal outlays for higher education rose more than 200 percent during the 1970s, it declined by almost 20 percent between 1981 and 1985. In short, it appears that we are witnessing an increasingly rigid separation between the top quarter of the population and all the rest: Children from managerial and professional families will be even better able to compete for and afford a stable pool of slots in college. Those with college degrees will be best placed to compete for a stable pool of jobs in privileged occupations. Those from less advantaged background - that is, three- quarters of all families - will find it ever more difficult to realize their families' dreams of upward mobility. There are three important reasons for expecting that this hardening of class divisions in the United States could produce political turbulence. First and most clearly, people experiencing short-term hardship are likely to be less and less mollified by visions of future advancement. Over the past several decades, our political system typically has won acceptance for policies involving regressive shifts in the tax structure by promising future "trickle-down'1 rewards to the vast majority. Witness the almost exclusive reliance since the early 1960s on investment tax credits and depreciation allowances as tools for stimulating economic growth. But if the class structure is frozen, those below the top will be less likely to taste trickles than to be brained by icicles. Second, it is apparent that both Republicans and Democrats are concentrating their attention on the top quarter of the income and occupational ranks. As Washington Post writer Thomas Edsall noted in "The New Politics of Inequality"; "The distribution of power between income groups becomes a critical, if not the critical issue. Over the past decade, changes in the political process have strenghtened the power of the affluent and eroded the power of the poor, the working class and the lower-middle class." Given these conditions, it is little wonder that pollster Louis Harris' "alienation index" rose from 29 percent in 1966 to 60 percent in 1986. The number of people believing that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" rose over the same period from 45 percent to 81 percent; those agreeing that "the people running the country don't really care what happens to you" increased from 26 percent to 55 percent. And when asked wether "most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself", 33 percent agreed in 1971. By last year, the number had grown to 66 percent. Many observers insist that these potential sources of political turmoil will simply have to be faced because we now live in different and more difficult times. But there are some clear policy steps we could take. First we could help revive our economy with policies that would directly reverse recent trends toward rising inequality. Policies aimed at "wage-led" productivity growth would seek to strengthen the economy by promoting fuller employment, wage growth and a movement toward wage equalization (by raising wages at the bottom more rapidly than wages at the top.) Such a strategy would pressure corporations to make more efficient use of their increasingly costly labor force, and would give workers more of a stake in the way their companies and the broader economy perform. Second, we should quickly and decisively reverse recent reductions in support for higher education and occupational training for the non-college-bound - a key element in the simple justice of equal opportunity. A third policy imperative is in some ways both most difficult and most important. Public policy in the United States has relied for decades on individualistic rationales. We now need to turn toward policies that would place a much higher priority on developing strong community ties. In the Scientists' Club of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a panel discussion was organized under the title "Humanism and Human Values" with the participation of Dutch and Hungarian scholars. The Trade Unions and the Question of Employment In the past few months the news about enterprise closing, the restructuring of certain groups of the labour force and about reducing the number of employees in certain jobs has caused considerable concern among the public in Hungary. These announcements have also been met with great interest and approval especially since it is now clear that we will have to review the efficiency of our economic structure, activities and organizations alike. It is becoming a widely recognized fact that the future development of our national economy greatly depends on how much we can link efficiency and profitability to proportionate revenues. With the number of loss-making, financially troubled enterprises on the rise, we can expect inevitable regroupings of both capital and manpower. However necessary these measures may be, closings, the reduction of the labour force and even labour restructuring within enterprises affect human lives and create personal conflicts that are hard to resolve. A new job may mean having to learn a new skill or trade, it may mean having to make a dramatic change of career in mid-life. It may mean having to adjust to a new pace of life, to new habits and accepting the uncertainties connected with the start of a new career. The legal frameworks of organized labour reductions are already elaborated and the manpower movement caused by enterprise closing is also legally regulated. The benefits provided for those who undergo retraining and for those who are compelled to look for a new job are likely to alleviate the difficulties and uncertainties of the transitory period. Legal regulations, however, cannot offer a full solution to individual conflicts and problems. These trends are likely to upgrade the importance of trade union activities aimed at representing and protecting workers' interests. In order to support trade union activities aimed at protecting workers' interests, SZOT's (Nat. Council of Trade Union) Presidium has recently adopted a series of resolutions and guidelines on what the trade union movement's attitude is to be in cases of industrial reorganizations and enterprise closings that directly affect the employment of workers. Management is to provide employees with precise and current information about the financial standing of the enterprise and about the possible measures planned by the management. A proper system of information available for workers is an important condition of effectively protecting workers' interests in a number of cases besides emergency cases. As a matter of fact the resolution of the SZOT Presidium called upon all trade union activists to do their utmost to prevent crisis situations rather than wait passively until a point when emergency measures are inevitable. The trade unions are also expected to focus attention on protecting the interests of old-age pensioners who retired from enterprises that are being dissolved. Pensioners must also be provided with a chance to join trade union branches either in the local trade union councils or in trade union branches created by the individual industrial trade union. (Hungarian Trade Union News.) THE UNREACHABLE AMERICAN DREAM BY DAVID M. GORDON n.
