Saturday, September 12, 2020

day THIRTEEN HUNDRED and THIRTY FOUR


The Way

In the ongoing war
between capital and labor
that surely started in the caves
if not sooner,
labor almost always lost,
except for a brief time
in 1940s America,
when unions exerted
temporary strength
that compelled concurrence
from begrudging bosses.

Then capital developed
international mobility
and no longer needed
American workers
who gave their best
on the assembly lines,
but cost too much
and made too many demands
to be treated with care.

So the lords of profit
closed their factories,
abandoned the workers
who made them rich
and built in third world countries
where labor was cheap
and not empowered.

The decline of the blue collar class
eroded the foundation of the nation
built on sweat and muscle,
now replaced by hi-tech
service jobs for the underclass,
unadaptable
to the Information Age.

So the Land of Promise,
the hope of the mass of humanity,
now resembles other lands
where the rich rule,
their servants prosper
while the rest of us
struggle to survive.

--Gary Beck


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