One thing must be avoided at all costs: narrow-mindedness, pedantry, dull pettiness. Mot things are interconnected, most threads lead to the same reel. Have you ever noticed swallows rising in flocks from between the lines of certain books, whole stanzas of quivering pointed swallows? One should read the flight of these birds…
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass – Bruno Schulz
Well…not quite the adventure it sounds, as we didn’t precisely go for a wander. We sat comfortably, if not entirely warmly, in the cemetery chapel (which was completely full) to listen to Dr. Brent Elliot discuss the History of Cemetery Memorials. I suppose I have a significant photographic interest in the subject, but perhaps more so in those who make graveyards their life profession or obsession. I had only been to one cemetery briefly mentioned (que viva Glasgow!), but it exemplified many of the subjects discussed:
Close your eyes and take a moment to imagine the expert on cemetery memorials, and, there before you, you have Dr. Eliot. Tall, precise, pale, bearded, dry. Owner of a broad forehead and wide set eyes. Soberly suited. He opened by emphasizing that this talk would cover cemeteries, not graveyards, crematoria, and etc…Happily, I am now cool enough to know the important differences.
I also now know that East Anglia was notorious in its conservatism in retaining the use of body stones. The stylistic existence of muscular gothic. The fact that many of those creepily black head stones are in fact white marble, simple victims of a staggering air pollution. And I now know just how many sculptures have been stolen from cemeteries (now that would take a level of superstition-free courage I do not see within myself…)
And of course the minor scandal of Italy exporting grave sculpture wholesale, and English masons taking the credit. The angels with their come hither expressions and decolletage. The brilliance of Anselm Oddlings of Hull. The gravestone in the form of a baby grand piano. Next month is on The English Way of Death, which could be even more interesting. And of course, I now have a list of London cemeteries to visit during the daylight hours…
Seeking balance in life (and er, death), yesterday I read Gramsci all morning and then took a friend’s place in the season-ticket holder section of Arsenal v Sunderland. Fucking hell but I love football, even more than eccentrically morbid talks in burial chapels. The game was, however, much much colder. I came home, made tea, and got under the covers immediately, finding it impossible to emerge.
Well. I am as amazed as you are to actually find this stated out loud, I am rather leery of it in fact, it seems something that is far too good (well, good only in terms of my research) to be possibly true. And I can’t be the only one to have found this buried deep in a rather bad book called Why GM Matters, but here is the exact quote from Rick Wagoner, (ex) CEO of General Motors:
The toughest question I ever asked Wagoner was, Did you have to destroy the American middle class to save the company? “If you look at the circumstances we’re facing today, if we hadn’t done that, it would have been very dire for all three of the U.S.-based auto businesses,” he responded. “So, unfortunately, the answer is yes.”
So I was originally quite struck with a bit of anger…but what in the book didn’t make me angry? And then of course, a friend pointed out that as a quote it is really quite absurd, though typical of some good old-fashioned GM megalomania. And as an attitude it is stunning. So what is the greater good of such a business really, if not the jobs it provides? Apart from retaining American industrial capacity? Because surely there must be a cheaper way to do that than giving such a company billions of worker’s dollars…
I know it’s impossible to believe that anything as extraordinary as the trilobite above should be mine (all mine and absolutely no one else’s ever…one of my few ridiculous materialisms) but so it is. Happiness.
Trilobite – Order Lichida
Superfamily Odontopleuroidea – Family Odontopleuridae
Lower Devonian
Fossil Site: Hamar Laghdad Formation, Zerg, Morocco
I don’t know where my superhero name came from exactly, it was invented on a little trip to Tijuana so I suppose no more need be said. And I don’t mean to brag, but La Fwindy’s adventures in her own comic are going to be incredible (Heavy Load, 2011), along with Diamante (aka Jose the amazing artist…) and Sharkey…not that I will always be in Dia de los Muertos drag, that’s only my away uniform in the battle to understand the intricacies of vortices, carteles, chicleteros and global capitalism (and of course, the daily grind, the run-ins with love, getting jumped by cholas in the bathroom and this time it’s me kicking ass!)
I saw Jane Wills of Queen Mary University of London speak last night on the battle for a living wage in the UK, a great talk and fascinating in its comparisons to the US…though the comparisons are all my own!
I think graphs always speak so much louder than words, so just a quick snapshot in the most comparable format I could find of growing inequalities in the two countries.
On inequality in the UK from The Guardian:
On inequality in the US from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez (via The New York Times)
The US retains its role as a world leader… as of 2005, the top 1% in the US held 21.8% of the wealth, and it is perhaps more frightening to look at the other lines. But many of us aren’t so happy about this, as it means we’re generally fighting each other for the little that is left. So what is being done?
In the UK, as in the US, there has been a growing movement for a living wage. It is only a very small step towards the truly just world that I believe possible on alternate Wednesdays, but I will never say that such small steps do not require a most inhuman amount of work by an admirable and massive number of people.
Essentially the minimum wage (only introduced in the UK in 1999, upon which 2.1 million people received a raise averaging 10%!) is the maximum salary that the market says it can afford to pay people. The living wage is the minimum salary that people actually need to live. A bit simplified I know, but they reduce nicely to moral foundations.
The UK living wage campaign (inspired by the US living wage campaign, begun in Baltimore in 1994) is spearheaded by a non-profit called London Citizens, a group closely based on the organizing model of the Industrial Areas Foundation, working to create a broad and powerful coalition of those already involved in churches, mosques, schools, unions and community groups.
The victories have primarily been won in London. One of the main problems has been identified as the widespread, almost ubiquitous, practice of employers outsourcing every job possible (see the brilliant new book co-authored by Jane, Global Cities at Work). This forces contractors to compete amongst themselves and underbid each other in a mad rush to the bottom. So a huge push of the campaign has been to negotiate with large employers (hospitals, office buildings, the Olympic contractors) to only outsource to businesses providing a living wage.
This reminded me a great deal of SEIU 1877’s strategy in the Justice for Janitors campaign. So I asked, and indeed! They were here at the beginning, working with one of the unions involved in the struggle. Governmental authority works a bit differently here in London and so there hasn’t been a push for anything like a city-wide ordinance, but there are talks of a campaign to get any organization receiving Government funding to ensure the living wage.
It’s a small world, and hopeful to know that some of the lessons of struggle are crossing the Atlantic (and Pacific). May that continue and grow.
So to end not on a cliche, but on John Cleese (because I’m smitten with him), here is a final graphic from The Guardian. Of course, it’s a load of doom in pretty colors really. The only bright light is the success of civil partnerships. I haven’t anything as pretty from the US, I just know (in my gut) everything is worse…
[Also posted on www.drpop.net]
A beautiful Sunday with family, tramping the countryside near Headley with glorious impunity due to one of my favourite inventions – Wellies.
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So. I have always vaguely wondered about the rather unique love-affair between African-Americans and the Cadillac. I stumbled across this story in a book called The Chrome Colossus by Ed Cray, while doing some research for my dissertation…
It is 1932, and GM is actually at the point of abandoning the Cadillac forever…what was on the cutting board? This beauty of an automobile:
Nicholas Dreystadt, head of the Cadillac division, breaks into the meeting
As Cadillac service manager, Dreystadt had earlier discovered that the car was very popular with the small black bourgeoisie of successful entertainers, doctors and ghetto businessmen. A surprising number brought Cadillacs in for service–surprising because corporate policy was not to sell Cadillacs to blacks at all; the Cadillac was reserved for the white prestige market. “But the wealthy Negro,” business critic Peter F. Drucker recalled, “wanted a Cadillac so badly that he paid a substantial premium to a white man to front for him in buying one. Dreystadt had investigated this unexpected phenomenon and found that a Cadillac was the only success symbol the affluent black could buy; he had no access to good housing, to luxury resorts, or to any other of the outward signs of worldly success.”
Overwhelmed by Dreystadt’s audacity and bemused by his proposal, the committee gave him eighteen months in which to develop the Negro market. By the end of 1934, Derystadt had the Cadillac division breaking even, and by 1940 had multplied sales tenfold… (Cray 279)
It is one side of the story to be sure, a comfortable retelling of an atrocious racism prevalent in this most American of institutions. And all of America. There must be so much more to it of course, but what a fascinating glimpse from a very corporate angle. Turned around, in spite of the fury it inspires, it seems to say that African-Americans saved the Cadillac from extinction. What did they save again?
God damn. I know it’s conspicuous consumption, but I continue utterly smitten with the craftsmanship and beauty of something such as this.
But there is more. I continue reading and 50 pages later I find this story from the WWII years:
Dreystadt had accepted a contract to produce delicate aircraft gyroscopes. despite mutterings on the fourteenth floor that the job was a killer and needed skilled hands unavailable. The dissent turned to outrage when Dreystadt and his personnel manager, Jim Roche, hired 2,000 overage black prostitutes from Paradise Valley–uneducated, untrained, but willing workers. Dreystadt hired the madams too, blithely explaining, “They know how to manage the women.”
Dreystadt himself machined a dozen gyroscopes, then produced a training film detailing the step-by-step assembly process. Within weeks the women were surpassing quotas, and the outrage turned to chagrin on West Grand Boulevard. Jokes about Cadillac’s “red-light district” angered Dreystadt. “These women are my fellow workers, and yours,” he insisted. “They do a good job and respect their work. Whatever their past, they are entitled to the same respect as any one of our associates.”
Dreystadt knew he would have to replace these women at war’s end–returning veterans had job preference, and the United Auto Workers, heavily white male with a southern-states orientation, wanted the women out of the plant. “Nigger-lover” and “whore-monger” Dreystadt fought to keep some, pleading, “For the first time in their lives, these poor wretches are paid decently, work in decent conditions, and have some rights. And for the first time they have some dignity and self-respect. It’s our duty to save them from being again rejected and despised.” The union stood adamant.
When the women were laid off, a number committed suicide rather than return to the streets. Nick Dreystadt grieved, “God forgive me. I have failed these poor souls.” (Cray 318-319)
Again, only one side and a highly problematic retelling of what is truly a remarkable story by any measure. And again, racism in bucketfuls. But who was this Nick Dreystadt really? And where are the other sides of this story to be found? I shall be looking, no fear…
There is a word in Chinese that translates, very uneasily, as eating bitterness. I heard it in a talk I went to today, on rural people who have migrated to the city. One of the fruit sellers said of the city people, “they are all turnips!”
“Turnips?”
“They do not know how to eat bitterness.”
It means to suffer towards something, to scrimp and to save, to be frugal, to sacrifice. I was thinking about it on the train ride home, I think it is a very good description of something that rich people can never quite understand about what it means to be poor.
As for being turnips, I’m not so sure about that.
Even among the many books on economics and transnational corporations that I do not agree with, there are some among them that are at least rationally argued and relatively factual. But I rather enjoy when they are not, it allows me to stay awake through the boredom, mumbling angrily at the page and marking exclamation points and question marks in the margins. And their own contradictions and prejudices always come to the fore…a few choice quotes from my recent favourite:
Ford also expanded mechanical parts manufacturing in the United Kingdom (such activities are less sensitive to labor disruptions) and body and assembly in Germany, where the work force was more efficient.
Ah, racial…er…national profiling? Grand generalizations? You have to love them, especially when they’re tossed into the argument like olives of unknown provenance into a greek salad.
Increasingly, these disagreements within the US Big Three made it difficult for the US government to intervene effectively in their bargaining with the Mexican government.
Long live free trade! I wonder who was more vexed, the big three or the US government?
The UAW’s failure to negotiate better with the auto makers that had recently established in the United States also accounted for the disadvantage that the US Big Three face vis-a-vis their foreign rivals…
Is this the present or the past, who can tell? One thing I know is that it’s those damn unions again, always letting the home country’s corporations down…but I suppose if you can’t blame the workers for not kicking some Japanese ass, who can you blame for the American corporation’s failure?
The maquiladoras became the most visible symbols of the threats that low-wage countries could pose to jobs…
Again, if you can’t blame those greedy low-wage countries for the threats against jobs, who can you blame? Oh wait…
US government policies that fostered automotive production in maquiladora plants also altered the negotiating dynamic between the Mexican government and the US vehicle producers. The US auto makers learned about the low costs and the high quality of automotive production in Mexico, and the Mexican government learned about the benefits of rationalizing Mexican automotive production on a North American basis.
This is an extraordinary thing to say by any standard (unless you’re a patriotic elementary school teacher reading directly from a company brochure). It is especially extraordinary if you’re aware of the fact, as the author states earlier in the book, that Ford opened its first Mexican factory in 1925 and GM and Chrysler in 1935. And all of them had been operating there continuously for decades.
Sadly enough, the ongoing silliness of this right-wing hodgepodge of contradictory imperialist and free-trade theories kept me entranced until the very end! So I have now read a book in its entirety that I can never use as a source in good conscience, though I shall certainly find some of the original sources useful. I could have just read the bibliography…I suppose I know who has had the last laugh.
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