Caterpillar decided in the '80s that its labor contract with the UAW was "a thing of the past," the Tribune study observes: the company would "permanently change it with the threat of replacement workers." That tactic, standard in the 19th century, was reinstituted by Ronald Reagan to destroy the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) in 1981, one of the many devices adopted to undermine labor and bring the Third World model home. In 1990, Caterpillar shifted some production to a small steel processor that had broken a Teamsters Local by hiring scabs, "a swift and stunning blow to the workers, a harbinger" of what was to come. Two years later, the hammer struck. For the first time in 60 years, a major US manufacturer felt free to use the ultimate anti-labor weapon. Congress followed shortly after by effectively denying railroad workers the right to strike after an employer lockout that stopped the trains.

Congress's General Accounting Office found that companies felt much more free to threaten to call in "permanent replacement workers" after Reagan used the device in 1981. From 1985 to 1989, employers resorted to the threat in one-third of all strikes, and fulfilled it in 17 percent of strikes in 1990. A 1992 study showed that "four of five employers are willing to wield the replacement-worker weapon," the Wall Street Journal reported after the Caterpillar strike, and one-third said they would use it at once.

Labor reporter John Hoerr points out that the decline in workers' income from the early 1970s has been paralleled by decline in strikes, now at the lowest ebb since World War II. Militant labor organizing during the Great Depression brought about labor's first -- and last -- political victories, notably the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) of 1935, which granted labor rights that had long been established in other industrial societies. Though the right to organize was quickly weakened by Supreme Court rulings, it was not until the 1980s that corporate America felt strong enough to return to the good old days, moving the US off the international spectrum once again. The International Labor Organization (ILO), taking up an AFL-CIO complaint in 1991, noted that the right to strike is lost when workers run the risk of losing their jobs to permanent replacements and recommended that the US reassess its policies in the light of international standards -- strong words, from an organization traditionally beholden to its powerful sponsors. Among industrial countries the US is alone, apart from South Africa, in tolerating the ancient union-busting devices.¹⁰

"Paradox of '92: Weak Economy, Strong Profits." The headline of a lead article in the Times business section captures the consequences of the "one-sided class war" waged with renewed intensity since the end of the affluent alliance. "America is not doing very well, but its corporations are doing just fine," the article opens, with corporate profits "hitting new highs as profit margins expand." A paradox, inexplicable and insoluble. One that will only deepen as the architects of policy proceed without interference from "meddlesome outsiders."¹¹

What the "paradox" entails for the general population is demonstrated by numerous studies of income distribution, real wages, poverty, hunger, infant mortality, and other social indices. A study released by the Economic Policy Institute on Labor Day, 1992, fleshed out the details of what people know from their experience: after a decade of Reaganism, "most Americans are working longer hours for lower wages and considerably less security," and "the vast majority" are "in many ways worse off" than in the late 1970s. From 1987, real wages have declined even for the college educated. "Poverty rates were high by historic standards," and "those in poverty in 1989 were significantly poorer than the poor in 1979." The poverty rate rose further in 1991, the Census Bureau reported. A congressional report released a few days later estimates that hunger has grown by 50 percent since the mid-1980s to some 30 million people. Other studies show that one of eight children under 12 suffers from hunger, a problem that reappeared in 1982 after having been overcome by government programs from the 1960s. Two researchers report that in New York, the proportion of children raised in poverty more than doubled to 40 percent, while nationwide, "the number of hungry American children grew by 26 percent" as aid for the poor shrank during "the booming 1980s" -- "one of the great golden moments that humanity has ever experienced," a spokesman for the culture of cruelty proclaimed (Tom Wolfe).¹²

The impact is brought out forcefully in more narrowly-focused studies; for example, at the Boston City Hospital, where researchers found that "the number of malnourished, low-weight children jumped dramatically following the coldest winter months," when parents had to face the agonizing choice between heat or food. At the hospital's clinic for malnourished children, more were treated in the first nine months of 1992 than in all of 1991; the wait for care reached two months, compelling the staff to "resort to triage." Some suffer from Third World levels of malnutrition and require hospitalization, victims of "the social and financial calamities that have befallen families" and the "massive retrenchment in social service programs."¹³ By the side of a road, men hold signs that read "Will Work for Food," a sight that recalls the darkest days of the Great Depression.

But with a significant difference. Hope seems to have been lost to a far greater extent today, though the current recession is far less severe. For the first time in the modern history of industrial society, there is a widespread feeling that things will not be getting better, that there is no way out.

¹⁰ Franklin, et al., op. cit.; RR lockout, Alexander Cockburn, Los Angeles Times, July 13; Robert Rose, WSJ, April 20, 1992. Hoerr, American Prospect, Summer 1992.

¹¹ Floyd Norris, NYT, Aug. 30, 1992.

¹² Peter Gosselin, BG, Sept. 7; Frank Swoboda, WP weekly, Sept. 14-20, 1992. Shlomo Maital and Kim Morgan, Challenge, July 1992. Wolfe, BG, Feb. 18, 1990.

¹³ Diego Ribadeneira and Cheong Chow, BG, Sept.8; Ribadeneira, BG, Sept. 25, 1992.