The Bearing of Labor in Wichita Falls and Texas

In the Texas Workforce press release last month, the TWC Commissioner Representing Employers, Hope Andrade, announced, “Across the country and around the world, the word is out that in Texas, we work hard to welcome businesses – large and small – with open arms.” This proclamation was prompted by the most recent labor market data, showing an unemployment rate that dropped from last year’s 7.0% to 6.4% this March. “Our growing labor force should encourage businesses to continue investing in the Lone Star State,” Andrade proudly concluded.¹ Wichita County boasts an even lower unemployment rate of 5.9%, which declined from 6.1% a year ago.² The unemployment rate shows how many people (as a percent of the population) have been actively looking for work in the past 4 weeks and have been unable to find it. Excluding all other factors, the decrease in this rate does indeed make it seem like the labor force in Wichita Falls and Texas is moving forward.

From a broader perspective, however, the labor force seems to be moving in other directions. About 71% of people receiving unemployment compensation in Wichita County have been unemployed for more than 6 months, a circumstance that brands them as the “long-term unemployed.” ³ Along with the usual obstacles met in a job search, these workers must also confront the widespread prejudice held against them. Research by Rand Ghayad illustrates the ubiquity of this discrimination. He sent out thousands of fake resumes, each with varying lengths of unemployment and different degrees of industry experience, leaving all other variables constant. Remarkably, those who were only unemployed for a few weeks were 8 times more likely to get a callback than the long-term. Ghayad also found that industry experience increased a short-term unemployed candidate’s chances of getting a callback by 7%, but for the long-term it only increased chances by 2%.⁴ Facing these odds, many of the long-term unemployed give up hope and stop looking for work. It is difficult to determine exactly how many people are unemployed and not looking, or how many unemployed people the official rate ignores. With this in mind, one could say that the labor force is segregating.

Or, one could say that it is fragmenting. The reason employment is growing in Wichita Falls and Texas is largely due to an influx of part-time and/or low-wage jobs.⁵ The manufacturing industry that bolstered Wichita Falls’ economy and provided quality full-time, middle-class jobs in the 1980’s has since deteriorated, with the most recent sign being the shutdown of the St. Gobain/Vetrotex America fiberglass plant in 2009. Over the past five years, the service industry has grown to replace it, offering jobs inferior in both hours worked and income earned.⁶ Part-time workers are more vulnerable to illness and poverty than their full-time counterparts. Working less than 30 hours a week disqualifies a person in the United States from employee benefits. In fact, Texas has had the highest uninsured rate in the country for the past five years, and this is partly due to an increase in part-time labor.⁷ Furthermore, with more employers relying on automated scheduling programs, part-time workers have more difficulty coordinating multiple jobs and consequently find it challenging to secure enough income to live on. Even laborers in Texas who do work full-time do not necessarily earn enough to be financially stable. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percent of the labor force being paid at or below minimum wage in Texas hovered around 4% from 2002 to 2007. Now, it is at 7.5%, which is the second highest rate in the nation.⁸

In conclusion, the Texan labor force may be growing in size, but this development is at the expense of the working class. In its statement of purpose, the TWC asserts that “by focusing on the needs of employers, TWC gives Texas the competitive edge necessary to draw business here.” In most cases, strategies of economic development by cities and local organizations concentrate on catering to outside investors and big business. As implied in the April press release, the labor force is seen as bait for employers rather than as an assembly of community members.

Contemporary politics about the economy has turned into a blame game: Republicans blame the poor for not trying hard enough, and Democrats blame the rich for being unsympathetic misers (an oversimplification, certainly). In actuality, no one person or group of people is responsible for the economic woes of Wichita Falls or anywhere else. The problem is systemic. Specifically, there is something wrong with the management of the workplace.

In Wichita Falls and the rest of Texas, workers are wary of talking with each other or with supervisors about work-related issues, and they should be. Even though the National Labor Relations Board technically protects employees’ rights to concerted activity and collective bargaining (whether or not they are in a union), employers are not required by law to share that information with their workers, nor do they have any incentive to do so. Businesses are free to push limits in terms of the safety, treatment, and compensation of their workers with little fear of retaliation from above or below. Moreover, the NLRB has recently been under attack by several politicians and may be rendered inoperable altogether by political gridlock.⁹

“No taxation without representation” was a slogan of the American revolutionaries. It articulated the injustice of being subject to an institution’s rules and regulations without having a voice in that institution’s policy-making. The English Parliament rejected this idea and assured the colonists that they were being “virtually” represented; that is, the House of Commons and the House of Lords “promised” that they would respect all English subjects’ interests in their role as lawmakers. The colonists did not buy it. They understood that short of actually participating in the government’s decision-making process their interests would be viewed as secondary.

One of the greatest American ironies is how citizens hold this principle of democratic representation as one of the founding pillars of their nation but refuse to honor it in the workplace. The interests of workers are instead being “virtually” represented by employers’ upper management staff and primary shareholders. When that happens, the well-being of employees becomes auxiliary to corporate interests. Under that pretext, the long-term unemployed are seen as out-of-date junk, part-time workers as expendable scraps, and minimum-wage employees as a bargain. This callous misrepresentation of workers emerges out of their omission from managerial policy-making, and that exclusion is what produces the financial insecurity of the working class and moreover the economic depression of communities. Workforce agencies and non-profits scramble to alleviate this suffering with income supports, job training, and financial education. While their efforts are noble, they are ineffectual in addressing the source of the problem - the disenfranchisement of employees in the workplace.

Income inequality inhibits economic development in several ways.¹⁰ Workers borrow money when they have little or no income, which increases the risk of major financial crises. Wichita Falls has over 150 credit access bureaus that facilitate payday and/or auto-title loans.¹¹ Income inequality also correlates with infant mortality, mental illness, drug use, high school dropout rate, obesity, incarceration rate, and homicide rate – all of which repel outside investors.¹² As of 2010, Wichita County has an inequality index of .47 (0 being total equality, 1 being total inequality), which ranks 199^th out of the 254 Texas counties.³ Taking these facts into account, a change in economic development strategy must be contemplated. Rather than focusing on the needs of employers, cities and organizations should shift their attention to the needs of workers. In order to do that, workers must have a way to express themselves in the context of the workplace.

Advocating for workers’ representation will undoubtedly meet resistance from all sides. On the surface, it is a radical agenda. But in its essence it is a demand for the same rights enjoyed by every American citizen, just in a different setting. No amount of non-profit aid or government intervention will be enough to reset the costly asymmetry of employees waiving their right to be involved in the deliberation of workplace conditions and operations. If the labor force in Wichita Falls and Texas is to grow into a sustainable, prosperous community and not into a faceless mass for businesses to exploit, these considerations must be taken seriously.