Because I drive a cab, people say, “You must have a million
stories to tell.” I don’t. But this
morning I realized that I have one story that needs to be told. It is the history of the taxi industry in San
Francisco.
Once upon a time there was a chauffeur's union (and before
that a union of "hackmen" which ended with a strike in 1904 during
which one driver was killed), but now we are "independent
contractors" and technically not employed by anyone. So cabbies have no
set wages, no medical or dental insurance, and no retirement benefits. Instead
we guarantee the business owners a fixed income -- fixed, that is, until they
decide to raise it. And on the other side of things, web-based apps such as
Uber and Lyft have cut our ridership by more than half. (We're not likely to
get much help from the city in fighting those completely unregulated and
unlicensed businesses: too many local
politicians have family members who have been given jobs or places on the board
of Uber and Lyft.)
A book about the history of the taxi industry in San
Francisco could enlighten many about the realities spawned by the triumphs of
Reaganomics and the internet. Few people
realize that Steve Jobs could have been a founding member of the Tea Party,
with his ruthless pursuit of wealth couple with a Libertarian attitude toward
social issues. Silicon Valley companies
have dazzled everyone with their whizz-bang technologies, and they have charmed
Liberals and Progressives with their libertarian attitudes toward homosexuals,
with their willingness to allow flexible work schedules, to provide daycare on
site, to treat women equally (or appear to), and to foster casual dress and
informal corporate etiquette in their operations. They have allowed employees to form “affinity
groups” that create good will toward management among various groups of
employees who share personal, religious, or social concerns. The companies also provide free restaurants
and all manner of games and amusements to allow (force?) their employees to
work endless hours.
But such window-dressing aside, they have been ruthless in refusing
to allow their employees any real power by forbidding the formation of unions, by
fighting any government regulation of their businesses or their products, and
by promoting the “celebrity CEO” culture.
As class-oppressors they have triumphed.
I remember a long conversation I had one evening a couple years ago when
I was homeless.
A friend had invited me to stay with him for the night, the
weather being cold and wet. While my
friend did his laundry after dinner, I sat with one of his roommates who told
me about the horrible injustice that was being done to him at work. He had been a very early hire at Twitter, had
worked hard and received great evaluations, while the company was developing
and scaling up its systems. Then, when
the big venture capital money came in, he and his peers began to get bad evaluations
and to be forced out. Fired. He still had his job but could see that the
process was grinding on for him, too.
The problem with these earl hires was that by law they would have to
receive the same stock and stock option benefits that the upper management
received, and management did not want to share the spoils of the upcoming IPO.
This man’s experience has been repeated over and over
throughout corporate America. I remember
when companies like General Electric were suddenly giving bad evaluations to
previously model employees because they had learned through their insurance
carriers that these men had HIV or AIDS.
No individual worker can fight such tactics. Indeed individual workers are always
powerless because as long as employment is governed by a “free market” for
labor, there is always someone else to take the job of any employee who
com[plains of injustice.
During the Great Depression, workers driven to desperation
by poverty stood together for fair pay and safe working conditions. They struggled through protests and strikes,
some of them dying at the hands of police and such thugs as the Pinkerton
men. Their heroic efforts established
labor unions in this country and led to the passage of laws limiting the work
week to 40 hours and setting requirements for workplace safety, overtime pay,
etc. But by the late 1970s Corporations
and Capitalists had gained enough influence in politics to begin turning the
tide against unions.
When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 he signaled that the
government would no longer support the rights of working people by busting the
Air Traffic Controllers union within days of taking office. Since then a steady campaign of
misinformation about unions, of political and legal oppression, and of the reclassification
of workers as “independent contractors” has castrated the union movement. We are back to the injustices of the 19th
and early 20th centuries.
Steinbeck told stories of the injustices done to farm workers in the
agricultural industry in the 1930s that expose the same tactics and the same
ruthless greed of the owners that we see in every industry today, tech
included.
Nothing has changed. Senior
managements pay themselves outrageous amounts through sleazy stock and stock
option deals while at the same time constantly trying to cut labor costs. Without unions, workers have no recourse when
they as individuals are forced out by such tactics. The false ideology of Individualism – the
myths of meritocracy and of free market entrepreneurialism -- is used to establish Fascism.
Mussolini defined fascism as “the perfect marriage of the
corporation and the state”: that defines
the high tech industry in a nutshell.
Just ask the NSA. (See the
Frontline Report “United States of Secrets.”)
Maybe someone in Hell is planning a gay wedding for Jobs and
Reagan just to make the point. I’m sure
they are both there.
