Thanksgiving wasn’t always just about family, food and football.
The First National Proclamation of Thanksgiving was given by the Continental Congress in 1777 and recognized “the Trade and Manufactures of the People, and the Labor of the Husbandman.”
And in 1863 the modern Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November, was proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln who gave thanks to the work of “the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe [that] had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, [that] have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.”
As we enter this Thanksgiving season with news reports describing yet another “jobless recovery,” we are confronted with an economy that over the past several decades has given America’s workers a worse deal.
Every Thanksgiving since 2003, Food AND Medicine, or FAM, an organization whose goals include aiding laid-off workers in gaining basic necessities such as food, medicine, and housing, has organized a Solidarity Harvest. Unions, farmers, churches and small businesses work together to provide local foods for Thanksgiving basket to laid-off workers and families in hard times. This year FAM will distribute more than 200 baskets.
For each of the past seven years, members of FAM, including laid-off workers, have met and talked about the layoffs. A constant theme has been the lack of a workers’ voice both at work and in policy decisions.
During this time we’ve witnessed trade policies that support outsourcing of jobs, health care policies making insurance companies’ profit go up 428 percent in the past eight years while millions face a life of choosing between basic necessities and health care, and a corporate bailout paying billions to the biggest banks, while regular people lose their homes.
Workers haven’t just been front row spectators, they’ve borne the brunt of these decisions, and hearing workers’ voices can help the whole community understand the impact. FAM has gained special permission from HBO to show “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant,” a 40-minute HBO documentary film directed by Steve Bognar and Julia Reichert and told completely through the voices of workers. On Dec. 23, 2008, the General Motors assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio, shut its doors. At least 2,500 workers and 200 management staff lost their jobs and much more. They lost the pride they share in their work and the camaraderie built through the years. Work on the assembly line proved to be much more than a paycheck, for many it became an important part of their identity. “The Last Truck” views the final months of the plant through the workers’ eyes as they reflect on their work and consider their next steps.
“It could have been us” was the theme of comments of laid-off workers from the paper mills in Eastern Fine, Millinocket and Baileyville after watching a preview of “The Last Truck.”
“People who’ve got jobs, young people need to see this,” said Randy Tompkins, an Eastern Fine worker from Brewer. “You’re not too employed to be unemployed and you’re not too young to be unemployed.”
“People need to wake up,” added David Blanchette, also from Eastern Fine, about what jobs really mean, “what it’s like to work with a bunch of people for that long.”
With so much at stake, Blanchette adds, “We can’t let the company have all the say.”
When listening to the workers in “The Last Truck,” or to any laid-off workers, certain truths emerge. The first is that a job is a lot more than a paycheck. It supports you, your family, your community and ultimately the whole economy. Like it or not, it’s where you spend a huge chunk of your life and make some of the most important relationships. To describe the employer-employee relationship as simply a “labor marketplace” cuts short a useful conversation about the meaning of jobs.
Far from being just being bought and sold at a “labor marketplace,” workers are critical in giving input on the big public policy issues of our day.
This Thanksgiving, it would benefit us as a society to appreciate and listen to those who do the work. Just maybe, we’d give more support to keeping jobs from getting outsourced to sweatshops, use our nation’s treasury to back up workers instead of big banks, and design policies that provide health care for all instead of obscene profits for health industry corporations.
Jack McKay is the director of Food AND Medicine in Brewer. “The Last Truck” will be shown free to the public at 6 p.m. Nov. 20 at the Bangor Opera House. After the movie will be a panel discussion featuring laid-off workers and CWA President Larry Cohen. For more information call 989-5860 or go to foodandmedicine.org.