Editor,

As a fervent believer in capitalism, I wish to take exception to several characterizations in the article "Support Committee Defies All Practicality," which ran last week and compared some of the Workers Support Committee’s goals to communism. The letter betrayed an astonishing ignorance of communist ideology, international affairs, and the real goals of the committee.

The Workers Support Committee’s central goal is to ensure that dining halls staff can organize (and, potentially, unionize) in the manner they see fit, free of interference or intimidation from Aramark management. This is the sole demand they have made to the Council of Presidents.

The right of workers to organize and unionize has been legally recognized in America since the Roosevelt Administration. Today as then, unions play a vital role in our economy and politics, as they do in all democratic societies. Those who have studied communist ideology will recall that Marx, Engels, and Lenin unequivocally opposed labor unions because unions’ goals are evolutionary, not revolutionary. Precisely because unions seek incremental improvements in the quality of workers’ wages, benefits, and working conditions through legal means–that is to say, working within the system–Communists believe that unions are detrimental to their efforts to exploit class divisions and social unrest.

The Communists couldn’t be more right. For over sixty years here in America, labor unions have helped to ensure decent wages and safe working conditions for blue-collar workers throughout the United States. They have helped bring us closer to the often-expressed ideal of a classless society. It may be hard for some students, coming from white-collar families, to appreciate the role unions play for working-class people, whose ability to change jobs is far more limited than those in the professional class, and who are therefore less able to simply quit when they are being underpaid or mistreated. Unions are a necessary counterweight to large corporations like Aramark, for whom the welfare of their low-level employees is not always the first priority.

Many Workers Support Committee members have talked about improving health benefits, a "living wage" campaign, and other goals. These are not goals they are imposing on the workers, but rather aspirations the workers have expressed to them. The Workers Support Committee, according to its leaders, is not directed towards achieving these goals through pressure on the colleges’ administrations. Rather, it wants to ensure that the workers can pursue these goals themselves on a fair footing. This means an end to Aramark’s intimidation campaign.

The authors are half-correct in stating that outside of America, this sort of movement would be seen as preposterous. Indeed, in most Western European countries, the sorts of wage and benefit demands that are being talked about are already guaranteed by minimum wage and health care laws. I am not endorsing German or French social policy over American social policy–I merely point out that other capitalist-democratic societies have made different choices about the social guarantees they want to make. This is an antidote to the kind of thinking that informs the statement "The fact is, the federal minimum wage is in place for a reason"–as if God Himself had come down from Heaven and ordained that it should be $5.15 per hour, as opposed to $4.75 or $6.10.

I do not consider myself a liberal, let alone a Communist. In fact, I vote Republican more often than not. I do not consider myself a labor activist or an anti-business activist or any kind of activist at all. But the right to organize for better wages, benefits, and working conditions is a fundamental part of the American way of life. That most of the people involved have brown skin instead of white skin, or that many of them speak Spanish better than English, does not change the fact that they deserve the same protections that all American workers enjoy. I’m sure that the authors, Ben Glatstein and Eric Weiss, will never have to join a union to ensure they’re paid fairly, or have a safe workplace, or have the insurance they need. These people do. And it’s time they had a chance–just a chance–to fight for the wages, benefits, conditions, and respect they think they deserve.

Sincerely,

Matt Bender ‘99