Jobs

Several years ago I wrote a short piece for my own amusement on jobs and labor in general. I tried to make two points, one being that the word “jobs” is used often to promote decisions of questionable merit without mentioning the other half of the equation, profits. A laughable example of how far this innuendo can go is the statement made last week by James Mulva, head of Conoco Phillips. In supporting subsidies for oil companies he said that removing them would cost jobs by discouraging investment in oil. Oil companies are not major job providers. But more important, he said that removing these subsidies, which amount to 1% of the $35 billion quarterly profits, not revenues, for the “big five” companies would discourage further investment. Interesting!  

The other point is that a job is a trade of services for money. The value of these services is not immune from the vagaries of the free market. With current supplies exceeding demand, many workers have volunteered a price cut of sorts by shortening their work week. But lest we forget, we are dealing with people, not barrels of oil.

In view of the relative paucity of jobs, employers in general are often viewed as benefactors. In my opinion this view is not only undeserved, but antithetical to the transparent posture of the greater business community, in evident conspiracy with several newly elected governors, to end to the rights of workers to bargain collectively.

American labor is more vulnerable now than at any time since the Great Depression. It can be properly helped, as it was by the artificial respiration applied to General Motors and Chrysler. Trying to eviscerate organized labor, particularly at this time, is unconscionable.

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The following is the text of what I wrote before discovering the wonders of the computer. I include it because it deals with considerations that would be awkward in the preceding narrative;

When a prospective enterprise of questionable environmental consequences is being debated, its proponents often argue, in reverent tones, that what’s at stake are “jobs.” This is only half the truth. Profits are never mentioned. Of course there’s nothing wrong with profits, the anticipation of which creates jobs and the realization of which preserves them.

People tend to think of employers as benefactors to their employees. Granted, to would be employees an enterprise in question may be what keeps them off welfare and food stamps while to their employers it may mean that new yacht or villa. But a job is basically a trade of services for a consideration, usually money.

Political pressure for such projects, and the money accompanying that pressure, comes almost entirely from corporate interests rather than labor unions. If the planet is eventually destroyed by such ventures it would be unfair to blame working stiffs.