Friction and Fiction

Before I get to the meat of this post, there are a couple things you should know about me.

First, when I was in college, I was a (to quote a teacher of mine) Myers-Briggs junkie. The Myers-Briggs is a personality test that categorizes people into one of 16 groups. I took the test countless times, read books about it, and studied all its little nuances and quirks. The specifics of the test aren’t important here, but one of the questions on this personality test is. “Are you more convinced by a logical argument or a touching appeal?” More convinced? Certainly by a logical argument. It is impossible to argue with reason, save by some metaphysical Kantian avenues. But reason itself surely stands above emotional appeal.

This is not to say that I am unmoved by such appeals. In fact, I am probably one of the most susceptible people I know to a well-structured emotional plea. Don’t tell anyone, but I have been known to tear up during some television commercials. Of course, this is all with the understanding that, as I stated before, reason trumps feeling.

The second point with which I should contextualize this post is that, while I have a certain respect–indeed, admiration–for the principles behind organized labor, I feel that many of its contemporary manifestations have lost sight of the equilibrium it once sought, and have begun perpetuating claims of near absurdity. I am not against unions in principle, but neither do I subscribe to all that they have become. In fact, I have a great many problems with the evolution of organized labor.

I suppose this may have been somehow instilled in me by my late grandfather, whose work ethic seemed to be an asymptote to which I might strive my whole life, but never quite attain. Until he was diagnosed with cancer, he missed fewer work days over his 40 year career than I have missed over my thus far short one. His conservative views of labor throw mine into an almost liberal light. From him I implicitly learned about propriety, generosity, and the importance of hard work. He died when I was ten years old, so he was not able to nurture many of the seeds he had planted, and many of them are just now beginning to sprout.

Now that the stage is set, I may begin to pull the characters out of the wings. The first is Republic Windows and Doors, a Chicago factory. Republic Windows came into extreme financial disarray recently, and last week, closed down, leaving about 300 workers out in the cold just weeks before Christmas. This is a sad story, one which this year has plagued the nation as companies everywhere have been going under, leaving their employees to fend for themselves. The difference is that the workers of Republic Windows were entitled, upon their severance, to 60 days notice, or to 60 days pay, which they have not received.

Enter Bank of America. The lending giant canceled Republic’s credit line, due to its dismal performance outlook. It is worth noting here, if only to underscore the nationwide woe and to illustrate the scale and scope of this downturn, that Republic Windows and Doors had successfully been in business for 43 years. But this year, Republic did not succeed, and Bank of America cut its loss and denied a continued line of credit to the company.

The problem comes in the fact that Republic can no longer afford to pay its workers the 60 days severance pay to which they are contractually entitled. In an effort to discern who is responsible for this mess, we look at the problem from the point of view of the bank, who claims it is the company’s responsibility to pay the workers and to honestly communicate a realistic timetable for ending their employment, and the point of view of the company who claims that the sudden withdrawal of credit has made it impossible for them to give the money to their employees, and point the finger at Bank of America.

But in any story, I believe that we are hardwired to jump to the character to whom we may relate most. In this case, for most of us, that would be the worker. Perhaps it’s because we cling to adversity, perhaps because there is something to gain in rooting for the underdog, or perhaps even because some compassionate better angel of our nature pushes us in that direction. The third character that seems all but forgotten in this is the group of employees, many of whom had worked at Republic for decades, who have lost everything. Their livelihood has been taken from them, without the mere compensation of two months of employment.

By coincidence I was listening to Christmas carols in my car on the way to work this morning, and The First Noel started playing. I’ve heard the song countless times before, but this morning, the first lines of the song caught me in a new way. “The first Noel the angel did say/was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay.” I thought of lowly shepherds, lying out in a dark field. Nearly all the flock is asleep, and the night drags on in tedium. In an instant, the sky lights up with blinding force and angels emerge from the clouds, bestowing upon the lowly shepherds, before anyone else, the light of a savior.

Take the last part as you will, metaphor, history, fable, what have you. But the image conjured strikes me with the same power, regardless of the truth behind it. For some reason, while listening to this song, my thoughts turned to the sit-in workers in Chicago at Republic Windows and Doors, the workers who have had everything taken from them, and yet see a light that you and I may not yet see. Together, they have endured a betrayal, and together they persist in fighting an injustice that, in today’s economic conditions, seems almost commonplace.

While a touching appeal can be very effective, and reason even more so, when they work in conjunction, the two possess an unstoppable synergy that neither our compassion nor our rationality may ignore. What the workers have done in uniting to demand what is theirs is to create a wave, a non-violent, righteous wave that throws back to the Great Depression era, as Nelson Lichtenstein and Christopher Phelps point out in a CNN commentary. And inasmuch, they have restored the long-dormant principles to organized labor.

Almost two decades ago, my father was laid off the week before Christmas. I didn’t understand what was happening at the time. My parents didn’t tell me; I merely sensed something terribly wrong, and overheard the bad news–although indecipherable–in the adult conversations. Unbeknown to me at the time–I would not find out for many years–my grandfather, the same one who (I was convinced) was disappointed in my imperfection, visited my house upon hearing of my father’s (his son-in-law’s) unemployment. He handed my parents money, telling them not to let circumstance ruin Christmas for the kids. I was one of the kids. I’d like to think that, while I inherited quite a bit of “conservativeness” from my grandfather, I also inherited an uncommon empathy from him. The two may seem contradictory today, but I think the dichotomy is not so mysterious.

It was the interplay between these two forces, the two I saw so alive in my grandfather, that washed over me this morning during my commute to work. The firm and unbending, and the empathetically yielding; the rational, and the compassionate. Many people now are not nearly as blessed as my family was to have someone willing and able to help in times of need. And I believe that’s what makes the goings-on in Chicago now all the more potent. For many, this is a very real and tangible line that is being crossed between the abstract and weighty economic principles at work and the very real effect on their families. We’re all feeling it in one way or another. But for the workers of Republic Windows and Doors, a demand for rightful compensation is a last stand, a final attempt to hold the line between the economic downturn and their own well-being. In many ways, their voices represent so many millions more.

A touching appeal? Yes. But there is reason behind it. This is not simply a discourse on the sadness of being laid off. It is more a look from both the inside and the outside, an examination of the reasons, both rational and personal, for the sit-in staged by the workers in Chicago. Perhaps we can all see in them a band of shepherds charged with a tiresome task, who are now seeing a light yet hidden to us, and thus will not budge from clinging to their last hope. In so doing, they have sparked in us that hope we had been seeking, that in the deep cold of the winter, in the middle of economic chaos, justice may yet pervade.