So...the writer's strike is causing an uproar with television executives and that means I might have to watch reruns of my boyfriends Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert until things get figured out. That's fine. Being from Texas and surrounded as I am with fans of Big Business and the political party that guarantees their unchecked access to my tax dollars continued participation in government doings it's common to be confronted with an eye roll or audible snicker when the subject of labor unions comes up.
But see...you and I were born in a century when a married and pregnant teacher was required to resign her post since the sight of her swelling belly might lead her students to understand she was sleeping with her husband. And she was required to do this no matter how much her salary was needed...you know...because of the sex. The married sex which probaby caused most students' mothers to look exactly the same way back home. But...whatever. And when I started teaching there were still noises being made about being slapped with "moral turpitude" charges if folks from the school district caught you putting a six-pack of beer in your grocery cart. Because one was supposed to find other--more creative--ways (aside from drinking yourself into a stupor) to express one's outrage over the fact that, after four years of college and a diploma, someone who was teaching the nation's children to read and write was only earning $13,000 a year. Before taxes.
So...I wonder what it is like to write a joke or a script for someone famous and watch them become obscenely wealthy from repeating your words while you are...um...not so much. So, no, I don't really question whatever it is they're asking these days. Probably a more level playing field...or some similarly frivolous idea.
But before that? There were the teeming masses of people who were not fortunate enough to be born to families who worked, like mine, so that that each of their children could earn a college degree. Those who, instead, followed their parents to the paper mill or the assembly line at the bomber plant. Labor unions tried to make sure factory workers retired on their paltry savings with--at the very least-- all ten fingers or...two functioning hands. Or healthy lungs from a reduced exposure to caustic chemicals. And even before that during the century into which all of us were born? In March of 1911? The Triangle Factory fire in New York which is what illustrated the desperate need for a voice made up the unified words of unrepresented workers in the first place. And...later...this poem by poet laureate Robert Pinsky. It's worth the read, despite its length and it's why I don't laugh when someone says "Union". And if you do laugh you should ask yourself the following: If Ralph Lauren or Donna Karan didn't make the shirt you're wearing with their own little hands...then...who did? And how much do you think they were paid?
SHIRT
The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians
Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band
Of cuff I button at my wrists. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needles, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze
At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--
The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out
Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.
A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once
He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacked flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers--
Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt ballooning."
Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked
Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plainds, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans
Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,
Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
to wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,
The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:
George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit
And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,
The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.
